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her hands on her hips and gave him a stern glance, the sort that had quelled impertinent folk in Furness Road. ‘Well, you’re not needed. And that poor animal is going to get chilled through if it has to wait here all morning.’
    Truth to tell, she preferred to be on her own today, with neither the lad from the inn nor Mr Pursley, whose shrewd eyes had missed nothing the previous day, to witness her feelings. Indeed, she felt remarkably like weeping for joy already as she slowly mounted the shallow stone steps, studying the entrance.
    Varnish had faded unevenly from the wood of the door and the hinges were rusty. It looked as if it hadn’t been opened for years. A hole in the wall suggested that the bell pull was broken and hadn’t been repaired, which seemed a strange thing to happen.
    ‘Poor house!’ she murmured, stroking the brickwork as if it were a living creature. She knocked on the door and waited for a minute or two, then hammered on it again, but there was no sound of life from inside. And yet, Mr Jamieson said there was a caretaker of sorts.
    The door was firmly locked, so she set off to look for another entrance. A path which was only slightly less overgrown than the drive led round the side of the house. In summer it would be almost hidden by foliage, but now most of the plants showed only bare twigs, with some of them in bud. Here and there stood an evergreen shrub to cheer the eye, but they were growing untidily and clearly hadn’t been trimmed for years.
    As she followed the path, she began to get an uneasy feeling, as if someone was watching her. She stopped and looked round, but could hear nothing. ‘Is anyone there?’ she called. There was no answer. She was just being silly, she decided.
    However, as she was about to start moving again, there was a rustling sound behind her. She spun round. There was someone following! Her heart began to pound and she moved to stand with her back against a tree. ‘I know you’re there!’ she called, more loudly this time. ‘Come out at once!’
    Heavy breathing was the only answer. It sounded like an animal in distress, not someone out to attack her, but she bent and picked up a stick to defend herself with, just in case.
    When no one appeared, she decided surprise was the best strategy. Rushing forward into the shrubbery, she pushed her way past the tangles of branches and there, behind one of the evergreen shrubs, she found a man in ragged clothes crouching. She stopped, holding the stick at the ready, but he remained where he was, hands clasped protectively over his head, as if he expected her to hit him. He looked up, whimpered, but made no attempt to speak to her.
    ‘Who are you?’ she demanded.
    As she took another step towards him, he gibbered with fright, then lurched to his feet and ran away round the house, crashing through the shrubbery. When she called out to him to stop, he only sobbed and ran faster. 
    He was more afraid of her than she was of him, she decided then, feeling a little better. She was astounded at her own rashness in confronting him, but it was her house, after all, and she had every right to be there.
    As she followed the path towards the rear of the house, she noticed that the brickwork here didn’t match that at the front and paused to study it. From its dilapidation, she guessed this part must have been built at an earlier date than the rest, for the walls were sagging visibly, the mortar crumbling from between the bricks.
    Rounding another corner, she found a paved courtyard enclosed by the wings of the house, with tumbledown stables and outhouses filling in most of the fourth side.
    Limping on, still feeling apprehensive, Sarah finally came to what looked like the kitchen door. Inside she could hear a woman’s voice scolding, such an ordinary sound that she closed her eyes for a moment in thankfulness before calling, ‘Is anyone there?’
    As she knocked on the door, the voice stopped abruptly and footsteps come