Cressida McLaughlin

The House of Birds and Butterflies


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       Copyright

       Harper

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain as four separate ebooks in 2018 by HarperCollinsPublishers

      First published as one edition in 2018 by HarperCollinsPublishers

      Copyright © Cressida McLaughlin 2018

      Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

      Cover illustration © Lindsay Spinks / The Artworks

      Cressida McLaughlin asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008225841

      Ebook Edition © July 2016 ISBN: 9780008225858

      Version: 2018-07-12

       Dedication

      For Kate Bradley – thank you for taking a chance on me.

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Part 1: The Dawn Chorus

      Prologue

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

       Part 2: The Lovebirds

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Part 3: Twilight Song

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Chapter Nineteen

       Chapter Twenty

       Part 4: Birds of a Feather

       Chapter Twenty-One

       Chapter Twenty-Two

       Chapter Twenty-Three

      Chapter Twenty-Four

      Chapter Twenty-Five

      Chapter Twenty-Six

      Chapter Twenty-Seven

      Epilogue

      Acknowledgements

       Keep Reading …

       About the Author

       Also by Cressida McLaughlin

       About the Publisher

Part 1

       Prologue

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      The autumn wind rustled through the trees, and it was as if the building was sighing. The Georgian house was still beautiful, with its yellow paintwork, white pillars either side of the double front door, a curved gravel driveway and a long-dry fountain. The September sun made the tall grass of what must have once been a manicured lawn shimmer invitingly.

      But the black, wrought-iron gates were rusted closed, an ancient-looking padlock and chain adding an extra layer of security. The house had been empty for over fifteen years and, behind its elegant exterior, the cracks were expanding, the sturdy bricks and plaster giving way to trails of ivy and birds’ nests, crumbling to dust after so much neglect.

      It still looked proudly over Meadowgreen, the village it had once been the beating heart of, and the Meadowsweet Nature Reserve, its decay shielded behind tall, redbrick walls. But grass, brambles and bushes thrived where there was nobody to tame them. The mansion would soon be lost to nature, only an echo of the home it had once been.

      A ruby-red Range Rover drove past the walls and into the village, slowing to a near stop as if the driver were lost, before turning right into a narrow, tree-lined road. Then, towards the south corner of the house, where Meadowgreen’s main thoroughfare met a street of cosy terraces, a young woman, her dark-blonde hair in a ponytail, breathed in the clean, countryside air and started walking, a handsome husky trotting alongside her.

      Suddenly, the air was full of birdsong: blackbirds chorusing, the high, repetitive call of a chaffinch, the conversational tweet-chat of a flock of starlings. If anyone had been paying attention they might have noticed the flash of the afternoon sun in one of the upstairs windows, or heard the sudden rush of wind that made each blade of grass stand to attention, almost as if Swallowtail House was waking up.