Chapters (46)
- Cover
- Praise for Lisa Hall
- About the Author
- Also by Lisa Hall
- Note to Readers
- Dedication
- Prologue
- Chapter One
- Chapter Two
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Five
- Chapter Six
- Chapter Seven
- Chapter Eight
- Chapter Nine
- Chapter Ten
- Chapter Eleven
- Chapter Twelve
- Chapter Thirteen
- Chapter Fourteen
- Chapter Fifteen
- Chapter Sixteen
- Chapter Seventeen
- Chapter Eighteen
- Chapter Nineteen
- Chapter Twenty
- Chapter Twenty-One
- Chapter Twenty-Two
- Chapter Twenty-Three
- Chapter Twenty-Four
- Chapter Twenty-Five
- Chapter Twenty-Six
- Chapter Twenty-Seven
- Chapter Twenty-Eight
- Chapter Twenty-Nine
- Chapter Thirty
- Chapter Thirty-One
- Chapter Thirty-Two
- Chapter Thirty-Three
- Chapter Thirty-Four
- Chapter Thirty-Five
- Extract
- Chapter One
- Acknowledgements
- About the Publisher
It’s Caro’s Facebook page. Rupert has been looking at Caro’s Facebook page. I feel sick as I run my eyes over the screen, over her face pressed against his in the top photo. He has clicked onto her photo albums and her face dominates the screen over and over again, tiny pictures of the woman who came before me. I press my hand to my mouth, pulling in a shaky breath. Eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves. My mother’s voice rings in my ears, and I can almost feel her grip on my arm as she marched me back to bed after she had caught me sitting on the stairs one night, listening to her spin lies to her latest flame. Clearly snoopers never see good things either. I hear the faint flush of the toilet, and jab at the top right-hand button to send the computer back into sleep mode.
‘Em? Are you OK?’ Rupert’s face is flushed as he rubs his hands together, his socked feet silent on the carpet.
‘Just seeing if you wanted a coffee?’ I say brightly, waving the empty coffee mug at him from the desk.
‘Err… yeah, OK. Thanks. I won’t be too long.’ He kisses the top of my head as I squeeze past him, and he takes his seat at the desk, not touching the keyboard until I leave the room.
I wrap my fingers around my mug, letting the warmth soak into my cold hands as I stare out of the kitchen window. Despite what Rupert says, he’s not over Caro, and I have to face up to the fact that perhaps he never will be. Why else would he be looking at her Facebook photos? I move towards the double doors to the orangery. We don’t use this room, and as I push open the doors I am struck by the light that fills it. There is a faint hint of dust on the air, which tells me that Anya doesn’t clean in here regularly, and underneath that is the tiniest hint of nectarines. I know why we don’t use this room. It’s Caro’s room. She wanted it, and Rupert built it for her just before she died. She never even got to use it, not properly. After she died Rupert closed it off and we have an unspoken agreement that the room doesn’t get used.
Not anymore. The words come to me as I move towards the huge windows, looking out onto the garden. Maybe we should use it, lay Caro’s ghost to rest a little. I stare into the garden, Caro’s other domain. It would have looked amazing once, when Caro was here and tending to it regularly, but now, although Rupert cuts the lawn, the bushes have been allowed to run riot and brambles fill large patches of the borders at the end of the garden.