Chapter 1
Four hours driving in heavy traffic and steady rain, and Ollie has been wondering why he bothered to come down from London. Some whim of his grandmother’s. It has been wet all the way down, but now at last he is in Dorset and has passed Wareham. The clouds are lifting, the sun appearing, and for the first time he has a clear road and a chance to put his foot on the accelerator. He stops for a minute to bring down the roof on his yellow Beetle convertible, and can feel the wind at last.
The roads through the Purbeck hills are narrow and winding, the tarmac is wet with autumn debris, but the evening is warm and a few miles further on the sun starts to dip behind the hills as he nears Stanton Bay. He hasn’t been here for several years, but he remembers as a child visiting the area; he remembers the villages he drives through, the quiet countryside, the shape of the hills, signs warning of the nearby military ranges, the views over the Jurassic coast. The road gradually rises as he nears the village, and the view opens out, approaching the bay with the sun fading to red low in the sky and a view towards Lulworth. It is still, and there is no one about, just the noise of the engine and the wind. He turns left off the road that drops down to the bay and onto a made up track heading back up the hill.
Suddenly a girl appears ahead of him at the side of the road. She is about Ollie’s age, has long brown hair and looks out of place wearing a long yellow dress, close fitting to the waist and flaring out at the ankle, not wearing any shoes. She stops briefly at the side of the road, looks around, pauses, taking in the car. Ollie slows but she looks away, checking something over her shoulder. And then suddenly she runs across the road straight in front of the car. He brakes hard, the car shuddering as the anti-lock kicks in, the engine stalling. But he has missed her by a metre or so. He stops, sweating, and swears loudly, gets out of the car and looks round; but he can’t see her, she must have run on. He crosses the track and walks a few yards up a slight rise and onto the grassy heath the other side. The landscape opens out, and in the distance he can see the Clavell Tower at the top of the hill, but there is no sign of the girl, and it is starting to get dark. Without a thought he returns to the car and accelerates on towards The Manor half a mile away.