Page 1 of A Sky Painted Gold

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PROLOGUE

It all started with an apple. Trouble often does, I suppose, and this particular apple was a real troublemaker – a Pendragon, red-fleshed and sweet, that I stole from someone else’s orchard.

I don’t know why I chose that particular day to make my way over to the island. After years of staring longingly across the water, it seemed suddenly urgent that I make it there, that I put my feet on the shore. When I arrived I practically fell into the orchard, plucking the shining red apple from its branch without a second thought. With the first bite of that apple I was lost.

By then the Cardew House in all its sprawling, faded beauty had not seen a single friendly face (or an unfriendly one, for that matter) in over five years. The walled orchard, like the house, had been abandoned, growing tangled and wild until I crept in and started helping myself. After that first taste I didn’t even try to stay away. I came back the next day, and the next, always exploring a tiny bit further, pushing deeper into the secret island, making each part of it my own.

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The house itself was on top of the island, a grand old Georgian building with far-reaching views. The front, facing towards the village on the mainland, was long and low with tall windows cut into the honey-coloured stone and tangled ivy. Rough steps reached down through overgrown gardens to a sloping gravel driveway that stretched to meet the causeway. At the back, a huge lawn overlooked the changeable sea – at times a dazzling turquoise, at others a murky, mysterious grey-green. The orchard that first drew me to the island curled around one side of the house, groaning with apples or ruby-skinned cherries, or heavy, velvet plums depending on the time of year. On the other side of the building, more crumbling steps wound their way down to a small hidden cove of golden sand where the sheltered waters were still and warm. It was a jewel, this island, a treasure left alone and unloved for too long.

A restless feeling hung over my visits, and I knew that it was only a matter of time before my curiosity moved beyond the grounds to the building itself. I began by skirting around the house, as though afraid of antagonizing it. When I discovered a broken window latch on the ground floor, it felt as though the decision had been made for me.

The old building should have been unwelcoming in its emptiness, with the furniture draped in sheets and the shutters closed up tight, but to me it felt calm and friendly. Odd shafts of light cut through the gloom here and there, illuminating clouds of dancing dust particles and giving the place an air of drowsy sadness. It seemed like the sleeping princess in a fairy tale just waiting to be brought back to life.

For almost a year after that first apple I escaped to the house at any opportunity – to raid the neglected library and to curl up comfortably on a faded oriental rug, enjoying the quiet. My own home was never quiet, but all that noise didn’t stop me from feeling lonely at times. Somehow, despite being more alone than ever, I never felt lonely when I came here. Slowly, I began to feel that the sleeping house and I were getting to know one another. I daydreamed about what it would be like if it was full of people – about the conversations they would have, about the parties they might throw and the way the rooms would come to life, full of blazing light. I wrote pages of nonsense, scribbling furiously in my notebook, or I read detective novels and ate stolen apples, throwing the cores into the fire that I lit to warm the huge, empty sitting room.

In the end it was that fire that gave me away.

It was a cold, wet Friday when I first saw them.

Grey sheets of rain pounded outside while waves hammered against the rocks to the back of the house. I was oblivious to the noise, quite happily lost in an Agatha Christie novel, making myself sick on too much fruit. I had been there for a couple of hours, maybe more, when I heard a sound: something new, something more than the usual groans of the old house settling. I froze, the book dangling from my fingers, and strained my ears, listening carefully.

Voices.

Someone was here.

Someone had finally come.

And more than one someone: I heard the low rumble of a man’s voice and the higher melody of a woman as well. Already I could tell that these voices belonged, that they fit into the house like missing puzzle pieces. Footsteps clipped along the floors, echoing through the empty hallways, growing louder as they came closer and closer to where I sat, still frozen.

My heart thundered, as though someone had broken in – although the only intruder here was me. I dropped the book and slipped over to the window as quickly and as quietly as I could, though my legs trembled at this abrupt breaking open of a space I had come to consider completely my own. I threw one shaking leg over the sill, and my bare foot burrowed into the long, wet grass below. There, half in and half out of the house, I realized that the voices were almost on top of me. I scrambled out of the window and stood safely on the other side, holding my breath and pressing myself flat against the wall. Then I heard the door to the sitting room open and the footsteps stopped.

“Robert! Who on earth has lit the fire?” The girl’s voice was clear and precise, ringing through the air like a knife against a glass. “I didn’t think we were expected?”

I didn’t wait to hear any more. As fast as my legs would carry me I darted around the side of the house and down the crumbling steps, across the crunching gravel drive that led to the causeway. Luckily, the tide was out and, as I sped past it, I saw that the strangers had arrived in a dazzling blue car. With a glance over my shoulder and small whoop of exhilaration at finding no one chasing after me, I plunged along the cobbled path, running until my chest ached, filling my lungs with jagged gulps of salty air.

I was laughing now, the runaway laugh of the thief who knew that she was getting away with it. I dared myself to turn around, to look back at the house.

A silhouette appeared in the front doorway – a man, tall and silent and too late to catch me. The wind whipped my hair around my face, stinging my flushed cheeks, and the rain had finally stopped.