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to howl on the grave permanently, like Greyfriars Bobby,’ Ottie said with a grin, then walked off, her shirttails flapping and the black bootlace that held back her long grey hair starting to slide off.
‘Perhaps you would like to go to your room before lunch?’ Hebe suggested.
Everyone else had vanished. Still carrying Charlie, I lugged my carpetbag out of the van with one hand, then followed Hebe through the door from the porch and round a huge, heavy carved screen into a cavernous hall paved with worn stone.
She crossed it without pause and began slowly to ascend the curved staircase towards the balustraded gallery—but I had come to a stop in the middle of the floor under a sky of intricate plasterwork, overwhelmed by a flood of emotion. Suddenly I was fused to the house, wired in: I was Sophy at eight and at the same time Sophy at considerablymore than thirty-eight…But I was back where I belonged and the house was happy about it, for there was a space in the pattern of Winter’s End that only I could fill.
It was an acutely Tara moment: the years when I had been away were gone with the wind. This was my house, my place on God’s good earth, and nothing would ever tear me from it again. I knew I would do anything— anything —to keep it.
I had thought I was a piece of insignificant flotsam swept along on the tide of life, but now suddenly I saw that everything I had learned, every single experience that had gone into moulding me, had been leading up to my return.
I was transfixed, translated, transformed…trans- anything except, ever again, transient.
Tomorrow might be another day, but it certainly wouldn’t be the one that saw me signing away my inheritance.
Jack was out of luck.

Chapter Six: Unravelled
Father still hath not sent for mee, nor any word, so I asked leave to return home. But Thomas Wynter hath suddenly set his heart on marrying mee, despite his family’s opposition—and mine, for I feel for him as though he were a brother, no more than that. They do not like the match, yet he is Sir Ralph’s onlie child and he will denie him nothing…
From the journal of Alys Blezzard, 1580
I did a slow turn, arms spread wide to embrace the house, letting my long-suppressed memories of Winter’s End rise to the surface at last like slow, iridescent bubbles.
The Great Hall and the cross passage, which was partly hidden by the enormous carved wooden screen, separated the family part of the house from the service wing, the area I seemed to recall best. Over there was the door to the kitchen with its huge black Aga, Mrs Lark’s domain and the source of comfort, warmth and treats. Then came the stillroom, where Aunt Hebe held sway, brewing up potions and lotions, and receiving mysterious late visitors to the side door for whispered, urgent consultations. Beyond that again, a maze of stone-flagged, utilitarian rooms and the cellar steps.
Here in the hall there was no longer a fire in the cavernous hearth, only cold grey embers, but ancient cast-iron radiatorswere dotted about as though dropped randomly into place and a hollow, metallic clunking indicated that they were working, a fact that wasn’t immediately obvious from the chill air. A powerful energy ran up from the soles of my feet to the crown of my head, filling me to the brim with a life force compounded of the vital essence of Winter’s End and of my ancestors who had loved it before me—the alleged witch, Alys Blezzard, among them.
From the dark shadows behind me I heard the once-familiar echo of her light, serious young voice whispering, ‘ Welcome—welcome home, at last! ’
‘There you are,’ I murmured.
‘ Of course—I never left. ’
‘I missed you, Alys.’
Aunt Hebe’s face, an elderly Juliet, appeared like a waning moon over the balustrade high above and she called, slightly querulously, ‘Aren’t you coming, Sophy?’
‘Yes, of course!’ I came back to earth with a start, and ran up the stairs to the gallery with Charlie, who