Prologue
1988
Hallow House was just asBella remembered it. The last time she’d visited Pine Bluff, she was only ten years old. She and her mother had fled their home in the middle of the night and climbed exhaustedly up this same path into the warm embraces of their family. A few days later, her father had arrived and made great proclamations of love and promises that he would never keep, and they had left with him soon after. Bella had waved at her aunts through the back window of the old Ford Cortina and stared longingly after the house until only the spire atop the small turret was visible, and then that too was lost behind rugged hills and Scottish fog.
Six years later, she was back. She peered through the iron railings, her eyes following the path up to the house, a tall gothic sandstone structure, all Victorian gable trims and too many chimneys. The morning sunlight blinked off the windows and a flag—emblazoned with the Hallow-Hart family crest—flew at half-mast; this, she knew, was for hermother and the sentiment warmed her, despite the chill of an early autumn breeze biting into her bones.
Cancer had taken her mother in the spring, and last night Bella’s remaining parent had disowned her approximately thirty minutes after she had tearfully confessed to being pregnant. She had hurriedly scooped her possessions into a rucksack, so blinded by tears she couldn’t properly see what she was packing. Her father didn’t bid her goodbye, but the front door was left wide open, inviting her to use it, and the noise as it slammed shut at her back ricocheted around the tidy terraced houses in the street.
As for Karl, the nineteen-year-old guitar-playing bricky who had sworn his undying love to her just a few short weeks ago, he had miraculously disappeared the day after she’d told him about the baby. The landlady at his boarding house could tell her only that he’d moved to Yorkshire.
So, she had bought a train ticket and headed for the only people in the world she could rely on. The iron gate was unlocked, and it gave with a shuddering groan when she pushed at it. Aside from the flag, it was as though time had stood still beyond the railings encasing the grand house and its generous gardens. To the front, either side of the path, a profusion of flowers danced across the lawns like a carnival, displaying their color and fragrance right up to October.
The gardens at the back were filled with greenhouses, cold frames, neat raised vegetable beds and a voluptuous herb garden that her aunts used for cooking, cure-alls, and the occasional spell. Overlooking it was the workshop whereher aunt Aggie and her life partner, Aunt Cam, worked alongside each other, looking out of windows with unobstructed views of the Atlantic Ocean. At the far end of the garden there stood a cluster of ancient stone buildings—the oldest structures on the Hallow-Hart land, sheltered from the worst of the coastal winds by a small wood where Bella had foraged for mushrooms with her aunts while her mother rested. Once upon a time—so she’d been told—you had to walk nearly half a mile from the workshop to reach the cliff edge. Now it was five hundred yards. One day, all those stone buildings would crash down into the sea. “Mother Earth reclaims us all, eventually,” her mother used to say. Some sooner than others.
Granny Hazel had recently retired and was currently trekking in Nepal, while Aggie and Cam ran the family business, designing and constructing Hallow-Hart Christmas Crackers. Bella’s father decried it as a frivolous enterprise, unbecoming of Christ’s birthday, and wouldn’t allow them in the house. But the likes of Selfridges and Fortnum & Mason begged to differ.
It was still early, and the welcoming smell of woodsmoke drifted down from the chimneys. She put her hand to her stomach. There were options. She could put the baby up for adoption, let someone older and wiser than her provide it with a good home. Or she could get a termination; the school nurse, a compassionate woman who smelled of cigarettes and disinfectant, had said that she would help her. “This needn’t define your life,” she had said kindly. But Bella knewthat unless she could produce a time machine, she would be changed by whichever path she chose. And since her whole body seemed to revolt against all other solutions to her situation, there really was only one path left. She’d already lost so much; she didn’t think her heart could survive any more goodbyes. She didn’t have much to offer, but she had a lot of love—and since her mum had died, she had a lot of it going spare. She put her hand to her stomach. “Well, I guess it’s me and you. Let’s hope the aunts don’t mind the ‘shame’ we’re about to bring on their household.” As though her words were a charm, the front door flew open to a waft of baking bread and frying bacon.
“I told you it was her!” Aunt Aggie trilled, stomping down ahead of Aunt Cam in her Wellington boots and pulling Bella into a hug.
Cam was only seconds behind her, and Bella found herself muscled out of one aunt’s embrace and unceremoniously squished against the ample bosom of the other.
“How long have we got you for?” Aggie asked. “Please tell us you can stay a while. We’ve been burning herbs all summer, especially on the full moons, asking the universe to bring you to us, but your father’s a tough nut, and we weren’t sure our invocations would work on him.”
Her aunts looked at her expectantly.
Bella took a deep breath. “Um,” she began haltingly. “I-I can’t go home. Ever. He threw me out. Because I’m, um…” Instinctively her hand moved across to her stomach and hovered there, protectively. She looked down at it, and the aunts’ gazes followed hers, until they were all three staringat her belly. Though there was no sign of a bump yet, her aunts cottoned on quick enough.
“It would seem that our dear niece is carrying more than just a bag,” said Aunt Aggie, knowingly.
“Then she’s arrived in the nick of time!” Cam declared. “Don’t you worry about a thing”—she smacked a kiss on Bella’s forehead—“you’re home now. We’ll work this through, together. Whatever you decide to do, we are unquestioningly here for you. You’ll find no judgment in this house.”
“Well, don’t keep her out in the cold, Cam. Good Christ, there’s nothing of you, child! Never mind, it’s nothing that a few home-cooked meals can’t remedy. Come along now, in you come, your room’s ready for you.”
“It’s been ready since your mother passed,” added Aunt Cam, throwing an arm around Bella’s shoulders at the same time as Aggie wrestled the heavy rucksack off her back and began to herd them both toward the house.
“Cam, throw some more bacon in the pan, mushrooms too. I’ll fetch more eggs from the henhouse once I’ve got Bella in front of the fire. And tea! Put the kettle on, I’ve never seen a wretch more in need of tea in all my days.”
Bella allowed herself to be herded and fussed into the house. As her boots crossed the threshold she was engulfed with warmth and a comfort so deep she could have gone to sleep right there on the welcome mat. Dark wood paneling lined the walls of the generous hallway, and a fire crackled in the hearth. On the rug in front of it lay a fat tabby cat and a Labrador shaped like a barrel, who both woke up and stretched before coming to greet her.
“Hello, Isobel,” Bella said to the cat as it twisted itself around her legs. “Hey there, Gowdie.” She rubbed the top of the old Lab’s head. “I’ve missed you two.”
“And they’ve missed you!” said Aunt Cam. “But that’s all behind us now. You’re safe and you’re home. And that’s all that matters.”
1
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Fred Hallow-Hart shivered as sheswiped the key card and pushed open the door to her room for the night. The Forest Inn was situated halfway up the high street. On the ground-floor level was a quaint old bar, which served real ale and pub grub and held open mic nights on Tuesdays, or at least it did when Fred had lived in Pine Bluff. The upstairs—which once had served as a dingy pool hall and boasted questionable function rooms—had undergone a full renovation and now offered the kind of boutique bedrooms found in the pages ofCountry Livingmagazine.
It was in room number twelve that Fred put down her overnight bag before throwing herself heavily onto the generous sleigh bed and closing her eyes. She’d already been recognized on her way from the busy bar to her room. She should have known it would be impossible to sneak back into her hometown; the Hallow-Harts were as much a part of Pine Bluff as the forests of firs and the wild ocean that surrounded it, and her resemblance to her ancestors wasstriking. Maybe she should have worn a disguise. Her eyes—like all the women in her family—were the color of forget-me-nots and her long black hair kinked in lazy “S” shapes down her back, past her shoulder blades. She’d never seen a picture of her father, but judging by how similar she was to her mum and Aunt Aggie, she doubted he’d influenced her looks very much. They all three had the same button nose and high cheekbones, but Fred had the most freckles.
Hallow House was only half a mile up the hill and yet despite having driven for ten hours from London to get here, she couldn’t quite bring herself to close that final distance. She needed to acclimatize, to brace herself; she needed one more night where she could kid herself that she hadn’t officially failed at adulting. Tomorrow she would admit defeat and go home.
She sat up and checked her phone. It was only half past eight. She’d grabbed a bowl of noodles for dinner at the last motorway services, and now she fancied a glass of wine. She rang for room service but no one picked up, which was not surprising; she could hear the muffled din from the bar through the floor, the place was heaving tonight. There was nothing for it, she’d have to go back down to the bar and hope nobody tried to engage her in conversation. She wasn’t quite ready to admit out loud that a run of bad luck—both financial and romantic—had brought her scurrying home with her tail between her legs. Though let’s face it, half the town probably already knew. Her great-aunts’ community WhatsApp group—the Pine Bluff Jezebels—was the modern equivalent of a town crier.
The bar was even busier now than when she’d arrived, and by the time she’d fought her way through the noisy crowd and put a large glass of red on her room tab, she was feeling stifled and in need of some air. She sidled around a particularly boisterous group of tankard-clanking drinkers and inched past the huddle near the piano singing “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day” badly, and finally made it to the door that led out onto the high street. She welcomed the burst of cold air that washed over her as she stepped outside.
