’No one appeared to have heard me arrive, so after a little hesitation I went crunching over the gravel and climbed the cracked stone steps. It was a hot, still summer’s day – ’

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’No one appeared to have heard me arrive, so after a little hesitation I went crunching over the gravel and climbed the cracked stone steps. It was a hot, still summer’s day – so windless that when I tugged on the tarnished old brass and ivory bell-pull I caught the ring of it, pure and clear, but distant, as if in the belly of the house. The ring was immediately followed by the faint, gruff barking of a dog.’

In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable permanently fixed at twenty to nine. Its owners – mother, son and daughter – are struggling to keep pace with changing society, as well as with conflicts of their own.

But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life?

Prepare yourself. From this wonderful writer who continues to astonish us, now comes a chilling ghost story.