Nicola Cornick - House Of Shadows - Discover the thrilling untold story of the Winter Queen

The line clicked as the call went dead.

Holly put the phone down slowly, found her bag and grabbed her tablet. She typed in the name Espen Shurmer and the time, the date and the name of the Ashmolean Museum. The information came up at once – a lecture and private view of portraits and artefacts from the court in exile of Elizabeth, the Winter Queen, sister of King Charles I, which preceded a major new exhibition starting at the end of May. Espen Shurmer, she read, was a Dutch collector of 17 th-century painting and glass, and he had donated a number of items to the museum.

She felt a pang of regret as she closed the tablet. She would have loved to see an exhibition of seventeenth-century artefacts and talk to a renowned expert. But there would be no need. Ben would be back soon, she was sure of it. She had to be sure because there was Flo to console and there were her own fears to fight. The longer Ben was absent, the more those shadows grew like monsters, the fear that Ben would never come back and she would be alone again, totally alone this time, like they had been after their parents had died, only so much worse …

She fought back the panic. It was important to keep busy. She needed to make breakfast for Flo, then they could both take Bonnie for a walk, and by then Ben would be home …

But Ben had not come back by lunchtime when Holly drove down to the deli to fetch sandwiches, nor was he back by three when they came back from another walk in the woods with Bonnie. All day Holly had felt her anxiety rising and squashed it down relentlessly, but it grew inside her, filling the empty spaces, filling her mind so she found it almost impossible to concentrate on anything. When she heard a car coming up the track towards the mill she had to restrain herself from running outside to see if it was Ben.

‘It’s Mummy!’ Flo had none of Holly’s reticence and had bounded up from the painting they had been doing to rush out of the door, Bonnie at her heels. Holly followed them more slowly. She and her sister-in-law had always had a brittle relationship. Ben had been a link between them, but now he was missing, and Holly felt suddenly wary.

Tasha, looking as elegant as though she was stepping onto the catwalk, slammed the door of her little red sports car and came hurrying across the gravel on her vertiginously high heels.

‘What the fuck is all this about?’ She demanded without preamble, meeting Holly by the gate. ‘I’ve had to come all the way back from Spain! Where is he, the stupid bastard?’

Holly blinked. Tasha seemed to notice Flo for the first time and bent down to pick her up. ‘Hello darling.’ She held Flo and her sticky painting fingers a little bit away from her. ‘Don’t worry, sweetie, I’m here now.’ She gave Bonnie a vertical pat, designed as much to push her away as greet her. Tasha was not a pet person.

‘Let’s go inside,’ Holly said.

‘I don’t want to stay,’ Tasha said, taking off her sunglasses and fixing Holly with her big blue eyes. ‘I’m going home to Bristol. I’m not hanging around here waiting for Ben to turn up when he feels like it. Have you got Flo’s bag?’

‘It’s not packed,’ Holly said coldly, ‘since you didn’t let me know you were coming.’ She was too exhausted for tact. She and Tasha had never been close; she had tried to like her sister-in-law but it had proved very difficult.

‘Sorry.’ To Holly’s surprise Tasha seemed to deflate all of a sudden like a pricked balloon. ‘I really do appreciate you coming down, Holly, and looking after Flo. But I’m just so bloody angry ! It’s just not on for Ben simply to walk out on all his commitments—’

‘Wait.’ Holly put a hand on Tasha’s arm. ‘What do you mean? Surely you don’t think he’s just upped and gone?’

‘That’s exactly what I think,’ Tasha said fiercely, scrubbing at her eyes. She pushed the dark glasses firmly back down on her nose. ‘He was spending all his spare time down here. He’s probably got another woman, for all I know.’

‘He was doing family history research,’ Holly protested.

Her sister-in-law gave a look of such searing scorn that she blushed.

‘Yeah, and I’m Marilyn Monroe,’ Tasha said.

‘I don’t believe it!’ Holly said. She was so outraged she forgot that Flo was listening, taking it all in with her blue eyes wide, so like her mother’s. ‘Hell, Tasha, you know Ben would never do a thing like that! He’d certainly never leave Flo alone! And besides, where would he go? He’d never disappear without telling anyone!’

‘You mean you think he’d never vanish without telling you,’ Tasha said, a hint of pity in her voice now that set Holly’s teeth on edge. ‘Oh Holly …’ She shook her head. ‘I know you think the two of you are really close but you don’t know Ben that well. Trust me.’ She took Flo’s hand. ‘Come on, sweetie, let’s go and get your stuff.’

Holly watched them walk up the path together and into the mill. Desolation swamped her, along with a terrible fear that her sister-in-law might be right. Secretly she had always believed she knew Ben better than anyone, even his wife. Had Ben hidden the truth of deeper fissures in his marriage? Holly could not believe it.

The sun, sparkling on the millpond, dazzled her eyes. Suddenly she felt close to tears. It felt as though she was trapped in a world where nothing was what it seemed and she was the only one trying to keep a tenuous faith. Beside her, Bonnie stood tense, her head tilted to one side, picking up on her mood once again.

‘Come on, Bon Bon,’ Holly said, suddenly fierce. ‘I know this isn’t right. I don’t care what everyone else says.’

Back in the mill she could hear Tasha moving about upstairs. The floorboards creaked and then Tasha and Flo appeared at the top of the stairs, Flo looking sulky and bumping her suitcase on each step. Tasha had Ben’s holdall in one hand and a cross expression.

‘I’m sure he’ll turn up, Holly,’ she said as she reached the bottom step. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘I know there’s something wrong,’ Holly said doggedly.

‘Look.’ Tasha put the bag down with a thump. ‘Don’t think I don’t understand. I do. You’ve always been a little bit clingy where Ben was concerned, haven’t you?’ Then, before Holly could open her mouth to give her a blistering put down: ‘Oh I understand why. I know about losing your parents and all that, and I don’t mind. Really.’ She gave Holly a little, patronising smile as though she had given Ben full permission to pander to his neurotic sister’s neediness. ‘But this has all happened before, hasn’t it? There was that time when you thought Ben had disappeared and he’d simply gone off for a weekend with his mates.’

Holly’s face flamed. ‘That was years ago and it was totally different!’

Tasha shrugged. ‘Whatever. The truth is you have a rather idealistic view of your big brother and you worry about him rather a lot. My advice would be to calm down. Like I say, he’ll turn up in a few days.’ She glanced around the living room. ‘Send on anything I’ve missed, won’t you,’ she said.

Holly took a deep breath and counted to ten. Then she surreptitiously slid Ben’s phone into her back pocket.

‘Of course I will,’ she said.

The mill was as quiet as a sepulchre after Tasha and Flo had gone. The silence was so loud it hurt Holly’s ears. It was three thirty and she felt unbearably weary, but restless at the same time. Time felt irrelevant, suspended. She found she was waiting for her phone to ring or for a knock at the door, or for the sound of a voice, something, anything, that might herald Ben’s return.