The Hall loomed up before us, dominating the horizon, the guardian at the gates of reality. The long-standing abode of the Drood family, and humanity’s last defence against the forces of darkness. It’s a miserable old dump, truth be told, draughty as hell and entirely innocent of modern innovations like central heating. I grew up thinking wearing long underwear from September to April was normal. The Hall is a huge sprawling old pile of a manor house, knocked up in Tudor times and much added to down the centuries. Currently home to some three thousand souls, all of them Droods. You can marry into the family, but not out of it. We’re like the Mafia; once in, never out. Unless you want to wake up with a unicorn’s head in bed next to you.

I slammed the Bentley to a halt in a spray of flying gravel and parked right outside the Hall’s front door, mostly because I knew I wasn’t supposed to. Start as you mean to go on, that’s what I always say. Molly jumped out over the closed side door while I was still turning off the engine, and I scrambled out after her before she could start any trouble. If anyone was going to start any trouble, I wanted it to be me. First impressions are so important. We’d hardly made it through the front door and into the vestibule before a mob of angry family members descended upon us. It appeared they’d been waiting for some time to have a determined word in my ear, and they weren’t prepared to take No, Not now, or even Go to hell as an answer. They all started shouting questions and demands the moment they clapped eyes on me, constantly raising their voices to be heard, and actually pushing and shoving at each other in their eagerness to get to me first.

Which was almost unheard of, in the disciplined, tightly structured, and almost feudal system that our family has followed for centuries. It seemed when I challenged authority and got away with it, I unleashed a flood tide of repressed resentments. The family wanted change, and it wanted it now, but unfortunately it couldn’t agree on just what should be changed, and how. Molly and I stood close together with our backs pressed up against the closed front door, as everyone in the crowd did their best to outshout each other. The din was appalling, and the faces before me were strained and ugly with anger, impatience and determination.