The Sin Eater by Sarah Rayne
ONE
Benedict Doyle had always known that if he ever entered the house that had belonged to his great-grandfather, the ghost that had shadowed most of his own life would be waiting for him. If it had been possible to avoid coming to the house today, he would have done so – in fact he would have travelled to the other side of the planet if he could have managed it.
But the visit could no more be avoided than tomorrow’s sunrise. In a couple of weeks he would be twenty-one, and Holly Lodge, that tall, frowning old place, would become his.
‘You’ll have to go through all the stuff that’s in there,’ his cousin Nina had said, with her customary bossiness. ‘I shouldn’t think you’ll want much of it yourself, although my mother used to say there were some quite nice things in the house.’
It was all very well for Nina, whose life had been entirely ordinary, and who, if she ever encountered a ghost, would most likely breezily tell it to sod off.
Still, Nina was right about the house’s contents needing to be sorted out before it was sold. The solicitors, who had administered the trust fund left by Benedict’s parents, had let Holly Lodge to a series of tenants over the years, but it had been empty for the last two years. They assumed Benedict would want to sell it, rather than live in it. Would they be right?
‘Yes,’ said Benedict, who would not have lived in Holly Lodge if he had been homeless and starving. He said he would sort out the contents and sell the furniture, and agreed that the house must not stand empty through another winter. Yes, he would see to it. No, he was not putting it off, but he was busy at the moment. This was his third year at Reading and there were exams looming, revision – his finals were next year. You did not acquire a decent degree in law and criminology by sitting around doing nothing. He would go up to London at half-term, or perhaps Christmas . . .
Inevitably it was Nina who pushed him into it. If nothing else, he should have the contents valued by an antique dealer, she said. As it happened, she knew someone who might help. Nina always knew someone who might help – she was constantly offering people to all her friends, from doctors and acupuncturists, to marvellous little boutiques who sold designer clothes at a fraction of the cost. Benedict thought he might have guessed in the present situation she would offer him an antique dealer.
‘Her name’s Nell West,’ Nina said. ‘She lived in London until her husband died, but she’s based in Oxford now. I expect she’d travel to London for what’s practically a house clearance though. She won’t rip you off, either. I’ll phone her, shall I?’
‘Well, all right.’ It was already the beginning of December and Benedict knew he would have to face up to entering the house. ‘Make it just before Christmas. Say the eighteenth.’
It was to be hoped Nina’s antique dealer contact would not turn out to be one of her butterfly-minded friends, playing at running a business. A young widow might be anything from a mournful workaholic to an extravagant dragonfly, squandering insurance money and trailing strings of lovers.
At first 18th December was far enough away not to matter, but as it got nearer Benedict was aware of an increasing nervousness. He woke on the morning of the 18th to find his stomach churning with apprehension.
London was a seething mass of Christmas shoppers. Benedict eyed them and wished his day could be as normal as theirs. He would far rather grapple with Oxford Street in the Christmas rush than enter an empty old house where God knew what might be waiting for him.
He had not been sure he would remember the way from the tube station and he had been more than half prepared to find himself lost and have to ask for directions. But when it came to it, he recognized the landmarks from twelve years ago – the clusters of shops, the scattering of restaurants, the jumble of house styles, interspersed here and there with single modern office buildings. But he thought that in the main this part of London, which was a kind of satellite suburb of Highbury, would not have looked much different in his great-grandfather’s day.
Here was the road now – a polite-looking street, with large dwellings, some fronting on to the pavement, others standing behind hedges. Most of them looked as if they had been divided into flats and some had brass plates indicating they were doctors’ or dentists’ surgeries. Holly Lodge was halfway along – one of the few private residences left. The gardens were unkempt and the holly hedge that gave it its name was thick and spiky.
Benedict stood looking at the house for a long time, telling himself it had been empty for nearly two years, and that any old, empty house would look gloomy and forbidding on a grey December day. Twelve years ago he had believed in ghosts; these days he did not. There would not be anything waiting for him inside the house.
But there was. He knew it the minute he stepped inside.
Benedict’s parents had died shortly after his eighth birthday, in a car crash which had also killed his grandfather who had been travelling with them.