Chapter One PORT ANTONIO, JAMAICA. JULY 1966.

      A shiver ran through her as the wind outside rose to an agonized howl, rattling the shutters on the chalkstone house with a ferocity that threatened to rip them off their hinges.

      The storm had begun.

      Feeling relatively secure inside the drawing room of the sturdily constructed beach-house, Lady Serena Frazer-West was quite enthralled by the prospect of experiencing a Caribbean storm first-hand. Overcome by curiosity, she carefully prised open a tiny gap between the louvres of the floor-to-ceiling shutters and, bending forward, strained her eyes to see through the blanket of dark silver rain.

      She had never seen such a downpour. A solid sheet of water was teeming out of a sky the colour of charcoal.

      Serena remembered the first time she had come to Jamaica on her honeymoon two years previously. It had been raining then. A flicker of a smile crossed her face as she recalled the three-hour drive across the island from Kingston the capital, to the sleepy little town of Port Antonio. She had laughed, and Nicholas had complained loudly, when they had been squashed into the back of a broken down Morris Minor with four pieces of luggage, and a box of rotting paw-paw belonging to the chattering driver. As the old car approached the rushing Rio Grande, the sun had made its first appearance over the top of the soaring blue mountains. Submerging the lush green valley in a translucent pinkish light. The avenue of flamboyant trees lining the roadside, rain dripping from their tightly packed blossoms, had reminded Serena of a mass of scarlet umbrellas.

      It was a sight she’d never forgotten.

      Now the wind was roaring across the island at more than eighty miles per hour, driving the rain violently, soaking everything in its path. And with it came a veil of mist which seemed to hang over the ground, covering the huge Cannonball tree at the foot of the garden in a ghostly cloak.

      Serena’s eyes travelled across the covered terrace, then down the garden path, littered now with fallen branches, and on to the dark sea beyond.