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of small pigeon holes which the opened lid revealed. It was tidy but not empty and it was immediately obvious that the desk had been her mother’s. Taking a sip from her glass Joss reached for a bundle of letters. With a strange feeling half of guilt, half excitement she pulled off the ribbon which bound them together.
    They were all addressed to her mother and they came from someone called Nancy. She glanced through them, wondering who Nancy was. A close friend and a gossip by the look of it, who had lived in Eastbourne. They told her nothing at all about her mother, but quite a lot about the unknown Nancy. With a tolerant smile she retied the ribbon and tucked them back in their place.
    There were pens and a bottle of ink, paper clips, tags, envelopes, all the paraphernalia of a busy person; a drawer of unused headed note paper, and there, in another drawer by itself, a leather-bound notebook. Curiously Joss pulled it out and opened it. On the flyleaf, in her mother’s hand was written ‘For my daughter, Lydia’. Joss shivered. Had her mother been so sure then that she would come to Belheddon; that one day she would sit down on this chair at this desk and pull open the drawers one by one until she found – she flicked it open – not a diary, as she had half expected, just empty pages, undated.
    And one short scrawled paragraph, towards the middle of the book:
    He came again today, without warning and without mercy. My fear makes him stronger –
    ‘Joss?’ Luke’s voice in the doorway made her jump out of her skin. He was dressed in his bathrobe and from where she sat she could smell the musky drift of his aftershave.
    She slammed the book shut and took a deep breath.
    ‘What is it? Is something wrong?’
    ‘No. Nothing.’ Slotting the notebook back into its drawer she pulled down the flap on the desk, turning the key. ‘The desk was my mother’s. It seems so strange to read her letters and things – ’
    My fear makes him stronger
    Who, for God’s sake? Who was her mother so frightened of and why had she written about him in an otherwise empty notebook which she had left especially for Joss to read?
    As she lay in the four-poster bed, staring up at the silk decoration in the darkness over her head Joss found it hard to close her eyes. Beside her Luke had fallen into a restless sleep almost as soon as his head had touched the pillow. They were both worn out. After all, the day had started at five in London and now, at midnight, they were at Belheddon, and for better or for worse this was now their home.
    Moving her head slightly to left or right Joss could see the squares of starlight which showed the two windows on opposite sides of the room. Divided by stone mullions in the old plaster one looked over the front of the house and down the drive towards the village, the other across the back garden and down towards the lake and beyond it, over the hedge to the river estuary and beyond it the distant North Sea. Initially Luke had closed the curtains when he came upstairs. They were heavy with woollen embroidery, double lined against the cold, luxurious. Looking at them Joss was grateful for their weight against the draughts, but even so, she pulled them open before she climbed into the high bed. ‘Too claustrophobic,’ she explained to Luke as he lay back beside her. His only answer, minutes later, was a gentle snore. Outside the moon shone onto a garden as bright as day as the frosty sparkle hardened into a skim of ice. Shivering, Joss huddled down under the duvet – a modern concession, the embroidered bed cover carefully folded away for safety – glad of the solid warmthof her sleeping husband. Surreptitiously her hand strayed to his shoulder. As she snuggled up against him in the darkness she did not see the slight movement in the corner of the room.

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    I t was still dark when Joss slipped from the bed, tiptoeing across the icy floor in