The Ghost Tree: Gripping historical fiction from the Sunday Times Bestseller

On the day stipulated in her ultimatum he moved out. She had been to the shops. Pushing open the front door she stopped in the hall. The house felt different; empty. She knew at once he had gone. Dropping her bag on the floor she stood at the bottom of the stairs looking up, then she caught sight of an envelope on the hall stand. It contained a postcard – a picture of the Scott Monument in the rain – and a set of keys.

Thank you for your brief hospitality. I am sorry I outstayed my welcome. I will return when you have gone back to London, Tim

That was all. No forwarding address, nothing.

‘I don’t think so!’ She found she had spoken the words out loud.

She ran upstairs two at a time. Both doors on the top floor stood open. She hesitated in the doorway of the first and looked round. He had left the window open and the room was cold, immaculately tidy, the bed stripped, the furniture neatly ordered. The wardrobe doors were slightly open. She peered in to find a mixed collection of empty coat hangers, nothing else. The second room, which overlooked the narrow parallel gardens at the rear of the long terraced street, was of identical size and layout except that the bed had been pushed against the wall to serve as a sofa. On the table there was a tray with neatly washed cups and saucers, an electric kettle, a couple of plates and an assortment of knives and forks and spoons.

In this room there was a range of fitted cupboards across the full width of one wall. Their doors were closed but she could see from where she stood that at some point they had been forced open; the wood was freshly chipped and splintered around the keyholes. Her heart sank. Pulling open the first door she saw the cupboard was full of boxes and suitcases, hat boxes and cardboard files, carelessly stacked on top of each other. With a sense of rising despair she opened the next door. That too was stuffed with boxes and papers. Only one cupboard appeared to have been left untouched. It contained a hanging rail and on it there were some half dozen of her mother’s dresses, some of the tailored trousers she had loved and a slightly moth-eaten fur coat.

It was the first time Ruth had cried since her father died.

She found herself sitting on the makeshift sofa sobbing uncontrollably. These were all her mother’s things. She recognised them; she could see letters and papers scrawled with her mother’s large cursive handwriting; she remembered the old handbag that lay on top of one of the boxes, the little make-up case, her hair brushes, her faded silk bathrobe, scarves, hats.

Had her father pushed them all in so carelessly, or had someone else forced open the cupboards and ransacked them? It had to be Timothy who had so terribly violated her mother’s privacy. Who else would have done it? Her father was a meticulous man. If he had kept her mother’s things, he would have kept them neatly. Standing up, Ruth fingered them miserably. Now, when it was too late to talk to him about it, was this a sign of her father’s love and his loss when her mother died? He had bullied his wife, and harangued her, questioned everything that made her who she was and made her life unbearably unhappy, and yet he had kept all these memories of her. It doubled the insult that Timothy had gone through the cupboards and then shoved the contents back out of sight, not even bothering to hide his depredations.

Why hadn’t she come up to Scotland sooner? Unable to reconcile herself to her father’s treatment of her mother, she had never visited him again after her mother died, not until these last weeks, when he was too ill to speak to her. It had been his next-door neighbour, Sally Laidlaw, who had found her phone number and called her. Timothy had done nothing to contact her and seemed to have been surprised that she existed at all. He had been living in this house for several months and her father had not mentioned to him even once, or so Timothy claimed, that he had a daughter living in London.

Suddenly she couldn’t bear to stay there a moment longer. Running downstairs, her cheeks wet with tears, she went into the front room. She didn’t turn on the light. She just sat there as the colour faded from the sky outside while indoors, behind the heavy net curtains, everything grew dark.

It was only as she was falling asleep that night that it occurred to her to wonder if Timothy had stolen anything.

She had made the room next to her father’s into her base when she had moved into the house; the small box room next to it had been occupied by Harriet for the few days she had stayed. A carer had slept there during her father’s last weeks, but Harriet’s vivacious personality still filled the room now, as did the scent of her various lotions and creams. ‘Glasto’s best,’ she had joked as she was packing to leave. ‘All herbal; all guaranteed to give me a luscious skin or spiritual insight or both. Here, have them.’ She had pushed several bottles into Ruth’s hands. ‘Your need is greater than mine. They will soothe your aura. I can always get more. And here’s the book I told you about. I’ve marked the first place Lord E is mentioned, though he seems to have guided her through her whole life.’ She clasped her fingers round Ruth’s wrists. ‘Remember, for a couple of weeks or so I won’t be too far away. Call me, any time, if it all gets too lonely.’

It was a complete surprise when next morning Ruth received an email from her father’s solicitor inviting her to the office to discuss an ‘unexpected problem’.

James Reid had been a friend of her father’s for many years. The tall, grey-haired man who rose to greet her with great courtesy, pulled out a chair for her then returned to his own side of the desk and produced a folder which he aligned on his blotter without opening it. This was an office, she noticed, where all signs of modernity – computer, scanner, printer – had been relegated to a shelf along the back wall beneath a solid phalanx of old law books. It was somehow comforting.

‘I’m sorry to ask you to come in so soon after our telephone conversation,’ he said once she was settled, ‘but there is something that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.’ They had spoken briefly on the phone after her father’s death, and again at the funeral. Her father’s affairs, he had assured her then, were relatively straightforward. Donald Dunbar had left her, his only child, everything, the house and all his money of which there was quite a substantial sum. Now James Reid glanced up at her with what appeared to be some anxiety. He was a handsome man, perhaps in his mid-sixties, she guessed, and was blessed by a natural expression of wise benevolence. She felt her stomach tighten with anxiety.

‘A possibly contentious issue has arisen.’ He paused.

Ruth felt her mouth go dry. ‘What’s happened?’ It came out as a whisper.

‘Do you know a Timothy Bradford?’

Her heart sank. ‘Yes. He was staying with my father in the last months of his illness.’

‘In what capacity?’

‘Capacity?’ She echoed the word helplessly. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Was he there as a friend? A guest? A carer?’

‘A bit of each, I suppose. I don’t really know.’

‘Not a relative?’

‘No. Absolutely not.’

‘And you hadn’t met him before?’

‘No. I had no idea he was even there until I came to Edinburgh. I assumed he was some kind of lodger. He claims Dad never mentioned me. It was a neighbour who got in touch to tell me about his illness.’

‘So your father didn’t tell him he had a daughter?’

‘He said not.’

‘I see.’ He sighed. ‘Mr Bradford has written to us informing us that he has a copy of your father’s will. A far more recent will than the one which I have, leaving everything to you, which was originally written fifteen years ago.’ He paused for a moment. ‘The new will leaves the house and all your father’s possessions to Mr Bradford.’ Before Ruth had a chance to interrupt he went on, ‘He further claims that he is your father’s son by a liaison formed in the late 1970s before your father and mother were married. I am sorry. This must be an awful shock to you.’

Ruth sat speechless for several seconds. ‘I can’t believe it. Daddy would never have done such a thing.’ She looked across at him helplessly. It wasn’t clear whether she was thinking about her father’s affair or the fact that he had changed his will.

‘I find it incomprehensible,’ James Reid said gently. ‘I have known your father for over forty years and I remember no mention of such a circumstance, but we are forced to take this claim seriously. The will is, as far as we can see, properly drawn up and signed and witnessed by someone from a reputable firm. I am so sorry.’

‘Who was his mother?’ At last Ruth managed to speak.

‘He doesn’t give her name.’ He opened the folder on his desk. It contained a single sheet of paper. ‘He gives no details of how long he has actually known your father, or of how he came to be living in Number 26.’ He looked up at her. ‘As soon as the will is processed, he wants vacant possession of the property. In other words, he wants you to leave.’

4 (#u9320a8f9-f8fa-5911-b5c5-a3f41d6e7018)

Ruth took a cab back from the lawyers, terrified that she would come home to find Timothy had returned. Her hands were shaking as she inserted the key in the lock, but to her relief the front door opened normally. She closed it behind her and drew the bolt across, then she paused to listen. The house was silent.

Tiptoeing into the sitting room she sat down on the edge of the sofa just as she had the night before. Velvet-covered, under a tartan rug, it was placed in the window so the light fell over her shoulder. She remembered from her childhood how it had been a favourite place for her mother to sit and read. Now it was dusty and faded; the room smelt stale and cold and unloved. The whole house felt abandoned and empty. Even the ticking of the clock had stopped. She had hated that clock as a child. It had underlined the echoing quiet of the place, the passing of time, her loneliness as the only child of two older parents, and she had felt it was mocking her with every jerky movement of its hands.

James Reid had assured her that nothing would happen while he appealed on her behalf against the new will. The absolute worst that could happen was that, if it was proved genuine, she would have to share the inheritance. As her father’s undisputed daughter, she was entitled to at least half of everything. He also told her that she was quite justified, at least for now, in changing the locks if she was nervous; after all, whether or not Timothy was related to her, he was still a stranger.

Her phone made her jump. It was Harriet. ‘How are things going? I’m loving it here in North Berwick. Liz and Pete are being so kind. I can stay as long as I like, so I’ll be here for a while, working on my book.’

The sound of her voice broke the spell. Ruth stood up and, walking round the sofa, drew back the curtains that had blocked half the light from the room. She stood staring out as she relayed the morning’s events.

‘Shit!’ Harriet summed up in one word.

‘I’d never given the inheritance a thought; of course I hadn’t. I’d spoken to James on the phone after Daddy died; he had told me that my father’s will, which he made after Mummy died, left everything to me.’

Harriet snorted. ‘I told you Timothy gave me the creeps. What a bastard! So, what happens next?’

‘I wait to hear from James. He is formally going to contest the will. Apparently, if Timothy is genuinely Daddy’s son, he can claim half the inheritance, whatever the will says, but then so can I.’

‘Ouch. I’m sure he’ll sort it out. Keep calm, Ruthie. It’ll be OK. There’s no way that vile toad could be a relation of yours.’

Switching off her phone, Ruth sat for a moment, staring into space.

The house and all your father’s possessions, his money …

‘Don’t panic,’ James had said as he shook hands with her at his office door. ‘Your father’s bank accounts are frozen and nothing will happen for a while. These things take time.’

And, she reminded herself, he had told her she was entitled to change the locks.