The Empty House by Rosamunde Pilcher Read Free Book Online Page A

the little hallway. The Lingards and Mrs. Philips were already at the open front door when Eustace spoke from behind Virginia.
    "Goodbye," he said.
    "Oh." Confused, she turned. "Goodbye."
    She began to put out her hand, but perhaps he did not see it, for he did not take it. "Thank you for letting me come."
    He looked amused. "It was a pleasure. You'll have to come back again, another time."
    And all the way home, she hugged his words close as though they were a marvellous present that he had given her. But she never came back to Penfolda.
    Until today, ten years later, and a July afternoon of piercing beauty. Roadside ditches brimmed with ragged robin and bright yellow coltsfoot, the gorse was aflame and the bracken of the cliff-tops lay emerald against a summer sea the colour of hyacinths.
    So engrossed had she been in her business of the day, collecting keys, and finding the cottage at Bosithick, and considering such practical questions as cookers and fridges and bedclothes and china, that all the heaven-sent morning had somehow gone unnoticed. But now it was part of what had suddenly happened and Virginia remembered long ago, how the lighthouse had flashed out over the dark sea, and she had been, for no apparent reason, suddenly excited and warm with a marvellous anticipation.
    But you 're not seventeen any longer. You 're a woman, twenty-seven years old and independent, with two children and a car and a house in Scotland. Life doesn’t hold that sort of surprise any longer. Everything is different. Nothing ever stays the same.
    At the top of the lane which led down to Penfolda was a wooden platform for the milk churns, and the way sloped steep and winding between high stone walls. Hawthorns leaned distorted by the winter winds, and as Virginia followed the back of Eustace's Land-Rover around the corner of the house, two collies appeared, black and white, barking and raising a din that sent the brown Leghorn hens squawking and scuttling for shelter.
    Eustace had parked his Land-Rover in the shade of the barn and was already out of it, toeing the dogs gently out of the way. Virginia put her car behind his and got out as well, and the collies instantly made for her, barking and leaping about and trying to put their front paws on her knees and stretching up to lick her face.
    "Get down . . . get down, you devils!"
    "I don't mind ..." She fondled their slim heads, their thick coats. "What are their names?"
    "Beaker and Ben. That's Beaker and this is Ben . . . shut up, you, boy! They do this every time . . ."
    His manner was robust and cheerful as though during the course of the short drive he had decided that this was the best attitude to adopt if the rest of the day was not to become a sort of wake for Anthony Keile. And Virginia, who did not in the least want this to happen, gratefully took her cue from him. The dogs' noisy welcome helped to break the ice, and it was in an entirely natural and easy fashion that they all went up the cobbled path together, and into the house.
    She saw the beams, the flagged floor, the rugs. Unchanged.
    "I remember this."
    There was a smell of hot pasties, mouthwatering. He went in through the kitchen door, leaving Virginia to follow behind, and across to the stove, whisking an oven cloth off a rack as he passed, and crouching to open the oven.
    "They aren't burnt, are they?" she asked anxiously. Fragrant smoky smells issued out.
    "No, just right."
    He closed the oven door and stood up. She said, "Did you make them?"
    "Me? You must be joking."
    "Who did?"
    "Mrs. Thomas, my housekeeper . . . like a drink, would you?" He went to open a fridge, to take a can of beer from the inside of the door.
    "No, thank you."
    He smiled. "I haven't got any Coke."
    "I don't want a drink."
    As they spoke, Virginia looked about her, terrified that anything in this marvellous room should have been altered, that Eustace might have changed something, moved the furniture, painted the walls. But it was just as she