Cover

LAURA PURCELL is a former bookseller and lives in Colchester with her husband. Her first novel for Raven Books, The Silent Companions, was a Radio 2 and Zoe Ball ITV Book Club pick and was the winner of the WHSmith Thumping Good Read Award, while her subsequent books – The Corset and Bone China – established Laura’s reputation for spooky, page-turning fiction.

laurapurcell.com

@spookypurcell

By the Same Author

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Silent Companions

The Corset

Bone China

Dedication Page

For Kevin

‘… we together called into being, a weird shadow which was neither of us, only an unshapen, unformed thing … the ideas crossed each other as the lines of two wet drawings laid face to face become crossed, blotted, effaced and unrecognisable.’

Elizabeth d’Espérance, Shadow Land or, Light from the Other Side

CHAPTER 1

It is the cocked hat that draws her to him: the way it arches above the barricade of toppers. Its golden edges end low to the brow and gild the face beneath.

He stands talking with half a dozen other gentlemen under the dying bonfire of Sydney Gardens’s autumn foliage, impeding the passage of walkers like a clot in the blood. As he extends a hand, emphasising a point to his nearest companion, Agnes sees it: the perfect pose for a full-length silhouette.

She reaches for the scissors in her reticule but her fingers are cold, fumbling. By the time she has hold of the handles and the sable paper gripped, ready to walk through her hand, the man has already turned and replaced his arm at his side.

She will have to cut him from memory.

There is the familiar slip in her stomach, the tangle of breath within her breast. Hope refuses to die. Never will she see the dark blue coat of the Royal Navy without a wild belief that somehow, somehow …

But this man is not Montague. Even through her cataracts, Agnes can see enough of his features to dismiss that fantasy. If John Montague is still alive – and she has no guarantee of that – he will not be a slim, active man engaged in debate, but a seasoned sailor, even older than herself. Decades on deck will have weathered his skin and aged him beyond his years. There may be a paunch beneath his waistcoat, or a limp from a bullet wound. Her dashing lieutenant belongs only to the past.

She cuts the outline of his face in smooth, bold waves, sliding the paper between the pad of her thumb and the finger that still bears his ring.

The breeze picks up. Her paper flutters, objecting. It has grown damp on the walk and does not hold its form as it should, but Agnes persists.