The Last Days of Summer: The best feel-good summer read for 2017

My skin burned, and I knew I’d be bright pink from head to toe. I liked my showers hot – hot enough to leave me gasping for breath when I stepped out.

Pulling the towel from my head I shook my wet hair out across my shoulders, and clutched the towel around my body tighter as I crossed the room to open the balcony door. Fresh air filled my lungs as I stared out over the Rose Garden. Edward was there, I realised, his blonde head moving between the remaining blooms. Isabelle had been right; I did have a magnificent view of the Rose Garden. I felt I could almost reach out and pluck one from its stem.

Suddenly, something else in the garden caught my eye. Another figure, too pale in the sunlight. She seemed to move in a different plane to Edward, as she ran her hands over the decapitated rose bushes, as if to her they still bloomed.

Was it really the Rosewood ghost?

I leant further out across the balcony railing to get a better look, until a rush of cold air told me that my towel hadn’t leant with me. I grabbed for it, yanking it back up over my breasts, but not before Edward turned towards the house again.

Even at a distance, I could see the sardonic eyebrow he raised at my state of undress. Then he turned his gaze away and walked slowly towards the other gardens.

Damn.

I was beginning to think that I hadn’t made the best ever first impression on my grandfather’s new assistant.

Chapter Two (#ulink_7f149ac4-067b-5404-a45b-95435b4eff50)

Family is who you have left when there’s nothing and nobody else. When the wind blows cold and the waves batter the cliffs, when night falls and darkness seeps in… family is still there.

On A Summer’s Night, by Nathaniel Drury (2015)

When Ellie and I were young, we visited Rosewood every weekend. Then, as now, my parents kept a house in Manchester, to be near the university – a small, untidy, cosy terrace house not far from where many of the students lived. Day to day, a perfectly ordinary existence for the daughters of a professor and a secondary-school drama teacher. But at weekends and holidays, we were spirited away to the magical, mysterious grounds of Rosewood, where there was always something new to discover or explore.

Rosewood was a grand old manor house from the Georgian era, hidden away in the Cheshire countryside behind wrought-iron gates and too many trees. It had been crumbling when Nathaniel and Isabelle bought it, back in the sixties, but slowly they’d invested in it. First, just enough to keep it standing and habitable. Then, as Nathaniel’s career continued to blossom, enough to make it a proper home.

The house’s flat-fronted brick exterior was punctuated by white frame windows betraying the sheer quantity of rooms in the place, and the acres of gardens surrounding it led straight onto the woods. The symmetrical chimneys still puffed smoke, and every room held a new surprise, even now – decorated ceilings, or a hidden door, or a story. Isabelle had redecorated a dozen times since they moved in, but she couldn’t paper over the magic and the history of Rosewood.

It was my favourite place in the world.

From my usual attic bedroom over the main staircase, which had long ago been the servants’ quarters, I could hear everything that went on down below: the sound of feet stomping up the stairs, the laughter floating up from the terrace as my grandfather mixed cocktails for his friends, a couple arguing on the landing.

The Yellow Room was clearly more suitable for guests – situated to the far right of the building, above the back drawing room (rarely used because of the rotting window frames, and the awful draught that blew through every afternoon), away from anything interesting that was going on. It was disconcerting, I found, to be at Rosewood and not know what was happening elsewhere in the house.

But by the time I’d changed into my costume for the evening – Therese’s blue dress and sandals, bright red lipstick and my dark, bobbed hair curled into waves around my face – I felt strangely more like myself again, and almost prepared for the night ahead. Almost.

I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel quite ready to see my sister again, or Greg. But neither could I stay away.

As I made my way down the main staircase into the hall, I could hear the strains of jazz music emanating from the kitchen – a sure sign that my father was cooking. I smiled. Whatever he was making smelled like home to me.

Sticking my head around the kitchen door, I checked to make sure I wouldn’t be interrupting a moment of culinary magic by stopping in to say hello. And if it put off seeing Ellie for a few more moments, well, I wasn’t going to complain.

“That smells good,” I said, slipping through the doorway.

Dad dropped his wooden spoon into the pan and turned, beaming, wiping his hands on his apron even as he stepped towards me for a hug.

“Kia! I’d heard you were home.” He held me close, then stepped back to inspect me, just as Therese had done. “You know I’m not one for formalities, but I believe an RSVP is usual for one of Isabelle’s events…”

“And if I’d received an invitation, I’d have sent one,” I said, as brightly as I could.

“Lost in the post, huh?” Dad asked, but I could tell from his tone that he knew full well it hadn’t been.

“Something like that.” I boosted myself up to sit on the edge of the kitchen table, my feet swinging, as Dad turned back to his bubbling pot. “So, what have I missed around here?”

“The usual. Can you hand me the basil from the windowsill?” Dad held out a hand, and it was as if I’d never been away at all. I smiled to myself for a moment before moving to the window to retrieve the herb. “Nathaniel is writing and won’t tell us what; Isabelle is fretting that he’s really just up there playing solitaire and avoiding her, which he might be. Mum’s latest class musical was Les Misérables, so we’ve been eating garlic and misery for months. Ellie…” He stuttered to a stop. “Well. Ellie and Greg are well. And Caro thinks she’s a fairy. Still. Didn’t you grow out of that sort of thing by ten?”

“I don’t remember,” I said, absently, as I handed him the plant. I was more concerned with what he wasn’t saying about Ellie. “So, Ellie’s okay? I mean, she was?” I didn’t imagine that discovering I’d returned home had filled her with any particular joy.

Dad sighed, and started stripping the basil plant of its leaves with unnecessary force. “As far as I know. I haven’t seen her since we got back from town, but she was happy enough at breakfast.”

I bit my lip. “Do you think—”

“Saskia,” Dad interrupted me. “I don’t know exactly what happened between you and your sister, and that’s fine with me. Because it is between you and Ellie, not the rest of us. And if you’re hiding in here to avoid seeing her…”

“Can’t a girl come and get a ‘welcome home’ from her father these days?”

Dad turned and flashed me a smile. “Of course she can. And, sweetheart, I am so very glad to have you home. I’ve missed you.”

A warm glow spread through me at his words, one that had been missing ever since I left Rosewood two years earlier. “I missed you too.”

“Good. Then maybe you’ll visit a bit more often after you go back to Perth.”

“I will,” I promised, and hoped I wasn’t lying.

“And in the meantime…” He pointed towards the door with a wooden spoon dripping with sauce. “Go say hello to the rest of them. Because it won’t get any easier the longer you put it off, and dinner is nearly ready.”

“Yes, Dad.” I gave him a small smile, and headed for the lounge, the heels of Therese’s sandals clicking on the wooden floor. I paused at the door, and sucked in a deep breath. Dad was right. Might as well get this over and done with.

My mother was mixing some luridly coloured cocktails at the sideboard under the window, while Isabelle critiqued her bartending capabilities from her cream wing-backed chair. Therese, leaning against the gold and cream sofa, was the first to spot me.

“Oh now, there,” Therese said, beaming. “It looks perfect on you. Doesn’t it, Sally?”

My mother turned away from the drinks tray, the multicoloured chiffon scarf around her neck clashing with the cocktails. She smiled, but it seemed a little forced. “Kia, darling, there you are! What a wonderful surprise.” Glass still in hand, she bustled over and wrapped her free arm around my waist. “If only you’d told us you were coming, we’d have collected you from the station.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I told Mum. “I got a taxi easily enough.”

“Yes, so Isabelle said.” Mum glanced briefly over at Isabelle, then smiled at me again, more naturally this time, squeezing my waist with her arm. “It is lovely to have you home, sweetheart.”

“Where’s everyone else?” I asked.

Therese patted the sofa beside her and I went to sit as instructed. “Your grandfather is still writing, or so we are given to understand.” Isabelle made a small, disbelieving noise that, coming from anyone else, would be termed a snort.

“Edward’s gone out to fetch Caroline from the woods,” Therese went on, ignoring Isabelle completely, as was her usual technique for dealing with her sister-in-law. “Greg isn’t home yet and Ellie is…”

“Here.” The voice, soft and familiar, was calm and expressionless, without feeling. But the sound of it made my whole body freeze, just for a moment, waiting for a reaction that never came. I forced myself to turn, to look, to accept whatever truth I found in my sister’s eyes.

And there she was, pale and blonde in a pastel blue skirt and camisole, her fringe framing her face. Biting the inside of my cheek, I searched Ellie’s face for the answers I’d come home to find, but they weren’t there. Her eyes were still as sad as I remembered from the day she left for her honeymoon, but there was nothing else. No hate, no recriminations – but no forgiveness or love either. Nothing.

It was as if I didn’t matter to her any more at all.