Cover

Praise

Praise for The Hiding Place

‘Haunting and atmospheric, The Hiding Place lingers in the dark spaces of a home as Amanda Mason deftly crafts a steady, creeping tension. As the Elder House’s secrets are revealed, Mason shines a brilliant light on the unsettling extents of desire’

A.J. Gnuse, author of Girl in the Walls

‘Satisfyingly unsettling, this is a hugely atmospheric novel that oozes with uncanny menace’

Lucie McKnight Hardy

‘A really convincing ghost story. Elder House, like Shirley Jackson’s Hill House, evoked a chilling and eerie sense of past mystery and unhappiness. I was completely pulled along by the narrative and read it in a fevered rush’

Zoë Somerville, author of The Night of the Flood

‘The Hiding Place is the perfect modern ghost story— evocative, unsettling and genuinely spine-tingling’ Katie Lowe, author of The Furies ‘The Hiding Place has everything; chills that build, an immersive setting and a wonderful clash between the present and the past, the living and the dead. At the heart of this haunting novel are characters so real and compelling their stories continue to resonate long after reading’

Jess Kidd

‘Full of intrigue, with hidden agendas, lingering resentments and thwarted desires, this sinister tale is dripping with an insidious malice that is sure to leave readers unsettled’

Anita Frank, author of The Lost Ones

‘The Hiding Place is a tense, creepy novel that vibrates with mystery. A page-turning, spine-tingling horror story perfect for a windy night’

Inga Vesper, author of The Long, Long Afternoon

‘Tense, atmospheric and suffused with the peculiar longing of motherhood’

Araminta Hall

Dedication

For my mum, Sylvia, with love.

There was no signal. Of course there wasn’t; there never was here. The house was too close to the cliff, overshadowed by it. But still she gripped the phone tightly, staring at the screen, willing the little bars at the top to fill up, trying to think.

The kitchen was a mess, and she was sitting on the floor, backed up against the cupboard under the sink, her legs splayed out – not very elegant, not very ladylike – and she could smell blood.

No. That was just her stupid imagination.

Get a grip, she thought, her fingers aching as she clutched the phone in both hands. Get a grip, get up and – she paused, lifted her head, listened.

It was faint, too faint to be sure, but wasn’t that . . . ? She strained to hear. Couldn’t she hear someone upstairs, moving slowly, deliberately along the first-floor landing?

Now, she thought, her heart hammering. Get up now.