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Harper
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The News Building
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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
For Kate Bradley – thank you for taking a chance on me.
Contents
Part 1: The Dawn Chorus
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
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
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.