LITMIR.BIZ

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his pocket and read on planes and during breaks on film sets. He’d found it by chance in a secondhand bookshop in Bloomsbury on his first trip to England. He had been nineteen, working as a lowly runner on a film job in London. Broke and homesick, and the word Cypress on the creased spine of the book had called to him like a warm, thyme-scented whisper from home.

      Idly now he flicked through the yellow-edged pages, his eyes skimming over familiar passages and filling his head with images that hadn’t lost their freshness in the twenty years since he’d first read them. For a second he felt almost light-headed with longing. It might not be commercial, it might just end up costing him more than it earned but, Dio, he wanted to make this film.

      Involuntarily, his mind replayed the image of the girl from The Rose and Crown—Sarah—walking through the field of wheat; the light on her bare brown arms, her treacle-coloured hair. It had become a sort of beacon in his head, that image; the essence of the film he wanted to create. Something subtle and quiet and honest.

      He wanted it more than anything he had wanted for a long time.

      A piece of paper slipped out from beneath the cover of the book and fluttered to the floor. It was the letter from Tate’s publisher:

      Thank you for your interest, but Ms Halliday’s position on the film option for her father’s book The Oak and the Cypress is unchanged at present. We will, of course, inform you should Ms Halliday reconsider her decision in the future.

      Grimly he tossed the book down onto the clutter on the low coffee table and went back over to the open window. He could feel a faint breeze now, just enough to lift the corners of the papers on the desk and make the planets in the mechanical model of the solar system on the windowsill rotate a little on their brass axes.

      Change was definitely in the air.

      He just hoped that, whoever and wherever this Ms Halliday was, she felt it too.

      CHAPTER THREE

      SARAH woke with a start and sat up, her heart hammering.

      Over the last few weeks she had got quite familiar with the sensation of waking up to a pillow wet with tears, but this was more than that. The duvet that she had kicked off was soaked and the cotton shirt she was sleeping in—one of the striped city shirts that Rupert had left at her flat—was damp against her skin. It was dark. Too dark. The glow of light from the landing had gone out and, blinking into the blackness, Sarah heard the sound of cascading water. It was raining.

      Hard.

      Inside.

      A fat drop of water landed on her shoulder and ran down the front of her shirt. Jumping up from the low camp-bed, she groped for the light switch and flicked it. Nothing happened. It was too dark to see anything but instinctively she tilted her face up to try to look at the ceiling, and another drop of water hit her squarely between the eyes. She swore quietly and succinctly.

      ‘Mummy,’ Lottie murmured from the bed. ‘I heard that. That’s ten pence for the swear box.’ Sarah heard the rustle of bedclothes as Lottie sat up, and then said in a small, uncertain voice, ‘Mummy, everything is wet.’

      Sarah made an effort to keep her own tone casual, as if water cascading through the ceiling in the middle of the night was something tedious but perfectly normal. ‘The roof seems to be leaking. Come on. Let’s find you some dry pyjamas and go and see what’s happening.’

      Holding Lottie’s hand, Sarah felt her way out onto the landing and felt her way gingerly along the wall in what she hoped she was remembering correctly as the direction of the stairs.

      ‘Please can we switch the light on?’ Lottie’s whisper had a distinct wobble. ‘It’s so dark. I don’t like it.’

      ‘The water must have made the lights go out. Don’t worry, darling, it’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m sure—’

      At that moment loud shrieks from the direction of Angelica’s room made it clear that she had just become aware of the crisis. Then the door burst open and there was a sudden and dramatic increase in the volume of her wailing. ‘Oh, God—wake up, everyone! There’s water pouring through the roof!’

      Lottie’s grip tightened on Sarah’s hand as she picked up on the hysteria in her aunt’s voice. ‘We know,’ said Sarah struggling to keep her irritation at bay. ‘Let’s just keep calm while we find out what’s going on.’

      But Angelica only did calm if it came expensively packaged in the context of a luxury spa. Fenella appeared beside her, ghostly in the gloom, and the two of them clung together, sobbing.

      ‘Darlings, what on earth has happened?’ As she joined them Martha’s drawl was faintly indignant. ‘I thought I’d fallen asleep in the bath by mistake. Everything’s soaking.’

      ‘Must be a problem with the roof,’ Sarah said wearily. ‘Mum, you look after Lottie. Angelica, where would I find a torch?’

      ‘How should I know?’ Angelica wailed. ‘That’s Hugh’s department, not mine. Oh, God, why isn’t he here? Or Daddy. They’d know what to do.’

      ‘I know what to do,’ said Sarah through gritted teeth as she made her way towards the stairs. Because that was what happened when you didn’t have a man around to do everything for you; you developed something called independence. ‘I’m going to find a torch and then I’m going to go out and see what’s wrong with the roof.’

      ‘Don’t be silly—you can’t possibly go climbing up onto the roof in this weather,’ snapped Angelica.

      ‘Darling, she’s right,’ said Martha. ‘It’s really not a good idea.’

      ‘Well, let me know the minute you have a better one,’ Sarah called back grimly. The dark house was filled with the ominous sound of trickling water and her feet splashed through puddles on the tiled floor of the kitchen as she searched for Hugh’s expensive and unused collection of tools.

      Amongst them was a small torch. Flicking it on, Sarah let its thin beam wander around the walls and felt her heart sink. Water was dripping from the ceiling and running down the walls in rivulets, just like the ones streaming down the window panes outside. The patio doors shed squares of opaque grey light over the wet floor. She opened them and stepped outside.

      It was like walking into the shower fully clothed. Or maybe not quite fully clothed, she thought, glancing down at Rupert’s striped shirt. Within seconds it was soaked and clinging to her, which at least meant that she couldn’t get any wetter. Shaking her hair back from her face, blinking against the teeming rain, she sucked in a breath and forced herself to walk further out into the downpour, holding the torch up and pointing it in the direction of the roof.

      The low pitch of the single-storey roof was easy to see, but the torch’s weak light showed up nothing that would explain the disaster unfolding inside.

      ‘Sarah—you’re soaked! Darling, come in.’ Her mother had appeared in the doorway, a raincoat over her elegant La Perla nightdress, an umbrella shielding her from the rain. ‘We’re way out of our depth here. Angelica and Fenella have taken Lottie with them to get help from the yummy man next door.’

      Sarah directed the torchlight higher to the spine of the roof, squinting against the rain. ‘But it’s the middle of the night. You can’t just appear on someone’s doorstep at this hour.’

      ‘Darling, we’re damsels very much in distress,’ Martha yelled above the noise of the rain, collapsing the umbrella as she retreated indoors. ‘This is an emergency. We can hardly wait until morning—we need to be rescued now.’

      ‘Speak for yourself,’ muttered Sarah disgustedly under her breath, dragging over one of the patio chairs so she could stand on it. Clamping the torch between her teeth, she used the drainpipe to hoist herself onto the low roof.

      The tiles were rough beneath her bare knees, but they felt firm enough. Cautiously, shaking dripping hair from her

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