Lucy Atkins’s follow-up to her fourth novel, Magpie Lane, will please that book’s many admirers. Once again she serves up vivid, slightly unhinged characters, a plot tangle worthy of a kitten in a knitting bag and a richly atmospheric backdrop. In this case the setting, an ancient windmill and cottage on the South Downs, is brought to life in such detail – from its trapdoors and untrustworthy upper storeys, to its damp patches, ghosts and secret tunnel – that it threatens to upstage the humans who live in it.
In the present day these are two apparently mismatched women in hiding from the wider world. Astrid, the mill’s owner, was once an RSC star in the vein of Judi Dench and Glenda Jackson: regal and commanding, a noted Lady Macbeth. Her career was cut short by scandal when she was framed by her ambitious actor husband in cahoots with an abusive Hollywood director. Since being tabloid-hounded into hiding, she has clung to her beloved, impractical retreat, eking out a sparse living offering haunted house B&B and spirit writing to wealthy eccentrics, working as a paid mourner to the unloved, and making do on less and less. Her companion in sordid chaos is Mrs Baker (not her real name), a sturdily capable woman in hiding from a dangerous criminal husband. She entered Astrid’s life as her cleaner, but is now bound to her by deep loyalty, shared secrets and a grudging respect. Woven through their story is that of Constance Battiscombe, a free-spirited Bloomsbury-style aristocrat who once filled the mill and cottage with scandalously free-loving friends, then remained tied to the place by tragedy.
