Contents ( 57)
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-One
- Fifty-Two
- Fifty-Three
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
- Also by Sharon Gosling
Recently, though, her habit of working late into the night had begun to return. Edie had not slept well since Cullen’s death. This was partly grief – she missed her friend – and partly because she was worried about the lighthouse and what a change of ownership would mean. She hadn’t voiced this to Rachel because the poor woman had worries of her own that were far greater. But Edie feared how what was coming would affect her, too. Cullen had opened the hill so that the village had access to the bookshop, but it was really private land. The first thing Dora McCreedy would do if she got her hands on it was close it off. Then would come the building. Sure, it was a hill, it wasn’t prime for development. But it was a big tract of real estate with a great view, and it was right behind Edie. Whatever McCreedy did with it, the hill would likely not remain the quiet corner of the world that it had been since before the artist had moved in.
How could Cullen not have left a will? It was insanity of the highest order. Edie delineated another delicate leaf on a tree two inches high, using a gouge no more than half a millimetre wide, its smooth wooden handle worn smoother still with use. She wondered what Dez would say if he could see her now. Probably nothing. He had never really seen her at all.
She put down the tool in her hand and reached for another that had a slightly wider blade. Her fingers refused to open for a moment, remaining tensed in the shape she had used to grip the smaller blade’s handle. Edie cursed, watching her hand as if it belonged to someone else, reaching for her wine glass instead and only realizing she had already emptied it when she put it to her lips. Cursing, she got up. Experience had told her not to keep the wine bottle beside her so that she was less likely to spill the whole thing across her workspace if she were to knock it over.
Edie stretched as she stood, feeling the muscles of her back protest after so long in the same position. That was probably why her fingers had seized up, she told herself – she’d been working too long without a break. No wonder they ached, no wonder they were stiff. She went over to where she had left the bottle, on the workbench that stood beneath the windows looking out over the garden. Edie looked at her reflection in the window, her face up-lit by the yellow flame glow, the contours of her body silhouetted by the harsher white-blue glow of the lamp behind her. She couldn’t see the garden, only herself imprinted over the darkness, ghostly, impermanent, and her attention was still on this as she reached for the wine bottle and instead knocked over three of the candles.
‘Christ.’ Edie tried to grab at them. She managed to right one. The other two rolled away from her, softly intersecting with her new stock of handmade Awagami editioning paper that had arrived only that morning and that she had yet to put away. The thin paper caught fast, the first flame curling the wisp-thin edges to black ember in a fraction of a second and then multiplying just as quickly.