Still dazed by her dream, she stood up and reached for her clothes. There was something she had to do; something urgent. The pounding behind her eyes was insistent, like the beat of the tide upon the shore, driving her, pushing her against her will. Opening the door she stood for a moment on the landing, listening. The house was silent. Her parents slept at the far end in a bedroom which looked out across the woods. Next to her, Greg and beyond him, Patrick, always slept like the dead until they were awakened. She shivered violently. Today was a day for awakening the dead.

Scarcely knowing what she was doing she hauled on her waterproof jacket and forcing her feet into her boots she opened the door and peered out into the icy morning. The wind was roaring in from the north-east full in her face as she pulled the door shut with difficulty behind her and set off in the darkness towards the track through the woods. All she knew was that she had to get to the grave; she had to get there before the tide washed it away.

She had to save it.

XXV

Kate had slept in the end, too exhausted to do anything else, but she too had awoken at six to the sound of rain against the windows. It was steady rain this time, hard and unrelenting and behind the sound of it she could hear the wind.

She didn’t want to get up. There was something frightening downstairs, something which when daylight came she would have to confront, but until then she was going to stay where she was, safely tucked up in her bed with the lights on. Wearily she reached for her book and lay back huddled against the pillows.

When she dragged herself out of bed an hour later and pulled back the curtains all she could see was blackness, alleviated only by the streaks of rain sliding down the glass. But she couldn’t go back to bed. She was too conscious of the silence outside her door.

Pulling on a pair of jeans and a thick sweater she went out onto the landing and peered down. All seemed as usual down there. She stood for several seconds, then taking a deep breath she ran down and flung open the living room door. The room was empty. The woodburner still glowed quietly. All was as it should be. Lights burned in every room – God knows what her electricity bill would be when she left – but all was quiet. There were no strange smells, no figures lurking in the shadows.

Her face doused in cold water and a mug of strong coffee at her elbow she poured some muesli into a bowl and reached into the fridge for some milk. She was a first class prize idiot with a powerful five-star imagination – how else could she be a successful writer – and a bad dose of nervous collywobbles. All she needed was food, coffee – both being attended to – and then a bracing walk in the rain to clear her head. Then in the cold light of day, probably with more coffee, she would switch on the computer again and get back to young George and his mother.

The knock on the front door took her completely by surprise. Greg stood outside, his collar pulled up around his ears, rain pouring off his Barbour jacket. His hands were firmly pushed into his pockets.

‘You see. No key. I had to knock,’ he said grimly. The wind snatched the words from his lips and whirled them away with the rain. ‘May I come in, or am I too dangerous to allow over the threshold?’

‘Of course you can come in!’ Kate stood back to let him pass and then forced the door closed behind him. ‘Why the sarcasm?’

‘The sarcasm, as you call it, was perhaps engendered by two hours of questioning by the police last night who seem under the impression that you still think I robbed the cottage.’ He pulled off his jacket and hanging it on the knob at the bottom of the bannisters, shook himself like a dog. ‘I just thought I would come and thank you in person for your vote of confidence and, incidentally, collect one or two of my things which I would rather not leave here any longer.’

Kate could feel her antagonism rising to match his. ‘I assure you, I didn’t tell the police it was you. If they thought so they must have got the idea somewhere else,’ she said furiously. ‘And I must say, I wonder if they aren’t right. It seems the sort of half-baked stupid thing you would do to try and get me out. That was the idea, I take it? To get me out.’

‘It would be wonderful to get you out.’ He folded his arms. ‘As it happens, I think the wind and the weather will do it for me. Now, if you don’t mind, I should like to collect my property and then I shall leave you to your triumph behind your locked doors.’

‘What property exactly have you left behind?’ They were facing each other in the hall like a couple of cats squaring up for a fight. ‘It seems to me you cleared everything out on Wednesday night.’

‘The torn paintings, yes. There are two more here. On the walls.’ He strode past her into the living room. There in the corner, hanging near the window, was a small portrait sketch of a woman. Kate had hardly noticed it. He took it down and laid it on the table. ‘There is another upstairs. If you will permit me.’ Still unsmiling, he turned away and ran up the stairs two at a time.

Kate shrugged. How petty could you get! In spite of herself she walked across to the picture and looked down at it. It was the woman whose portrait she had seen over and over again in the study at Redall Farmhouse, but in this version her figure was full length, her garment clearly drawn.

He had come back into the room again in time to hear her gasp. ‘What is it?’

She looked up at him, her face white. ‘You’ve seen her. You’ve see her here.’ She was accusing, taut with shock.

‘Who?’ In his hand he held the small picture of the bluebells which had been hanging in her bedroom. She glanced at it regretfully. It was so unlike his usual style. She had really rather liked that one.

‘The woman in the picture. I saw her. Last night.’

He frowned. ‘You can’t have. I made her up. She came out of my head. She’s a pastiche of styles – something I was doing for fun. A doodle.’ A doodle of a face which had come without his bidding and which had tormented him.

‘A doodle of so much importance that you can’t leave her here with me.’ Kate spoke so softly he had to strain to hear.

‘That’s right,’ he said. His voice was aggressive. ‘What do you mean you saw her last night? You had a visitor, did you? Are you sure she wasn’t a burglar or a vandal?’

‘She was a ghost.’

She said it so flatly that he wasn’t sure he had heard her correctly. For a moment he stared at her. He was the one who was supposed to be doing the frightening; the one who had decided to use ghosts to scare her away, and yet, with that one small sentence she had sent a shiver down his spine, a shiver which had raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

A moment later he shook his head. She was trying to play him at his own game. Fine, if that was the way she wanted it. ‘Where did you see her?’

‘There. Almost where you are standing. Your sketch is monochrome, but her dress was blue, like the other pictures you’ve done of her, the ribbons and combs in her hair were black.’

Greg had to fight very hard the urge to move to another part of the room. ‘Supposing I admit that I have seen her.’ In his dreams; in his head; even in his heart. ‘Doesn’t it frighten you, sharing the house with a ghost?’

For a moment she paused, as if she were considering. She looked him in the eye. ‘I suppose, if I’m honest it does, yes.’

‘But you’re going to stay, just to spite me.’

‘If you don’t mind my saying so, you have a very inflated idea of the importance you hold for me,’ she said seriously. ‘I’m staying because I came here to write a book; because this is my home for the next few months and because -’ she hadn’t meant to add this, but it came out anyway ‘- I have nowhere else to go. I can’t afford London rents at the moment.’ None of his business why.

‘So, you’re staying.’

‘So, I’m staying.’ She glanced at the painting under his arm. ‘I’m sorry you’re taking that. I liked it.’ The remark was a concession.

He did not rise to it. It was a trifle, a pretty sketch of which he was not proud. ‘I am sure you can buy yourself a print if you need bluebells on your walls.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘I don’t think I’ll bother,’ she said dryly. ‘Now, if there is nothing else, I would like to get back to work and I expect you have to report to a police station somewhere.’ She smiled sweetly and was rewarded with a scowl.

‘No, I am sorry to disappoint you but they did not arrest me. Nor any of my friends.’

‘I’m sure it is only a matter of time.’ She stepped past him and went towards the front door.

The wind had changed slightly and as she opened the door, rain swept into the hall, icy, harsh, cruel. She stood back and he walked out without a backward glance. By the time he had climbed up into the Land Rover she had closed the door and walked back into the kitchen.

She was thoughtful. Every shred of intuition told her that he was not lying; that the break-in had had nothing to do with him. But the picture? What did the picture of the woman mean?

She waited until he was safely out of sight before donning her weatherproof jacket and her scarf. Her enthusiasm had gone but she was determined to go out anyway, to clear her head, to get rid of the terrible throbbing behind her temples and, dragging her mind back to the book, to straighten out her thoughts about the next chapter. Somehow she had to rid herself of the images of the last few days. The cottage had ceased to be an impersonal place to work and think. It had become tied up with personalities: with Greg and Alison; with Roger and Diana – and, God help her, with Marcus and the lady in a blue gown.

The grass clung wetly to her legs above her boots, soaking her trousers. Then she was on the short turf and then the sand. The tide was on the ebb, but the angry white-topped waves still lashed the beach, sucking at the stranded weed, filling the air with the sharp, cold smell of far-off ice.