Daisy Rockwell’s new novel: Alice’s ancestral home is crumbling, and a spectre is haunting her

Alice had been having the most peculiar dreams since she’d returned to Nanette’s house. In fact, she was beginning to wonder if she had been hallucinating the last few nights. As she stood in the kitchen eating a piece of stale toast smeared with marmalade, she gazed out the window at the garden sloping below. Her eyes smarted and she blinked. It was either a series of connected dreams or a hallucination. If the former, perhaps it was something she’d eaten, and she might try changing her diet or maybe read a different kind of book before she went to sleep. If the latter, she’d have to inform Ronit, and he would make a fuss and possibly suggest medication, which would be irksome. She finished off the piece of toast, and absentmindedly wiping the sticky crumbs from her fingers on her nightgown, she wandered into the sunroom and out onto the veranda. She would work with the dream hypothesis first, she decided; there was no need to bother Ronit just yet.

There were long weeds growing between the broken paving stones of the veranda, and Alice had been pulling up a few of these each morning after breakfast, as her contribution...

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