CHAPTER ONE

      SAIRA looked forward with eager anticipation to seeing her great-aunt’s cottage again—no, not Aunt Lizzie’s, her own. It was hers now, she must not forget that; she was a property owner! The thought brought a smile to her face, yet it was tinged with sadness. It was going to be difficult walking into the cottage without her aunt there. Honeysuckle Cottage was Aunt Lizzie. The two had always been inseparable in her memory.

      She could visualise the grey-stone building standing on its own at the end of the village street with its little crooked chimney and the honeysuckle after which it was named twisting and climbing all around the doorway and windows. She could almost smell the heady scent it gave off on summer evenings, and she silently urged the taxi driver to put his foot down on the accelerator.

      She had happy memories of the cottage, of being spoilt and pampered and given all sorts of treats. She had been Elizabeth’s favourite great-niece and had spent every summer holiday there, and many weekends in between.

      Of course, when she started college she had moved in a new circle of friends and they had holidayed together, and when she qualified and got a job and her holidays were much shorter she had not visited quite so frequently. But she had always kept in touch and had worried a great deal as her aunt’s bronchitis had worsened over the years.

      When Lizzie had announced that she was going to spend the winter in Florida with friends, Saira had thought that, health-wise, it was the best thing she could do, and had actively encouraged her. She had never dreamt that anything would happen, had not known that her aunt had heart problems as well—she had kept that well hidden—and had been shocked to hear that she’d had a heart attack while out there and had been in Intensive Care. She had come home eventually, and everyone had thought she was adequately recovered, then she died without warning a few weeks later.

      The news of Elizabeth Harwood’s death had come as a considerable shock to all the family. Lizzie had been an institution, a wise old figurehead always ready to dole out advice. She had been brought home to Darlington for the funeral, buried next to her husband and other members of their family, including Saira’s father.

      A close solicitor friend of Elizabeth’s was executor of the will and it was from him that Saira learned she was to inherit the cottage, her mother and sisters sharing whatever money there was.

      As this hadn’t turned out to be very much, it had seemed an unfair sort of arrangement to Saira, and she had offered to sell the cottage and share the proceeds equally. But the family knew how much Lizzie had doted on her, and vice versa, and insisted she keep her inheritance.

      Both of Saira’s sisters were married with homes of their own, but even at twenty-six-Saira still lived with her mother. Maybe if her father hadn’t died she would have moved out and perhaps bought or rented a placebut she hadn’t, and now it felt good that she owned property as well—even if she only used it for holidays. It was really too far away from her job for her to live there permanently.

      The driver turned off the main road and negotiated the lanes to Amplethwaite in North Yorkshire—and to Honeysuckle Cottage. The tiny square-paned windows would probably need cleaning, Saira thought, the paintwork would be dirty, the garden might be overgrown, but it would not matter; she would soon have everything neat and tidy exactly as Lizzie had kept it.

      As they reached the village Saira asked the driver to slow down, looking with new eyes at the rows of sleepy cottages, the shop, the pub, the church. It all felt different now she was no longer a visitor—it felt different too because Aunt Lizzie would no longer be there to welcome her. She would be going into an empty house, there would be no smell of freshly baked bread, no bowls of roses on the table, no cheerful greeting. A lump welled in her throat.

      Saira, green-eyed and fair-skinned, had thick, dark blonde hair which she almost always wore brushed straight back off her face, plaited to one side and brought forward over her shoulder. She played with it now, as she always did in times of stress, running her fingers across the end which was like a round, fat paintbrush.

      When the taxi finally pulled up she sat still for a moment surveying the silent cottage, tears in her eyes, and even after she had paid the driver and he had disappeared out of sight she still stood looking at it, and her feet were slow on the flagged path when she finally forced herself to move.

      Her hesitancy turned to puzzlement and then dismay when she discovered that the key Mr Kirby had given her would not fit the lock. There had to be some mistake. Had he sent her the right one? Or——

      ‘Excuse