Page 1 of We Live Here Now

Prologue

The raven watches the stone house on the crossroads through the long year.

Freezing winter turns to gentle spring and then to summer, and his dark feathers heat like the sticky tarmac of the narrow lane that bakes and shimmers below him. He knows his mate is long dead, but he remains, constant, perched on the uneven wall, watching and listening. At night, in the cooler air, he feeds and drinks and calls out, but there is never a reply.

The house does not give up his mate. His mate is dead. He knows that. He should have moved on. Found another to share his solitary life. To nest in the worn rock cavities on the moors. To enjoy the endless skies. Perhaps a better mate. But still he watches.

He does not like the house. He has never liked the house. It stirs something inside him that speaks so loudly of danger that when he heard her cries, he did not follow her in, but now he finds he cannot leave.Not yet. Not yet, he croaks, parched, into the sky, as his black eyes stare and wonder if anything will live within those walls again. The house stares back at him, defiant. No, he does not care for the house.

Summer cools to autumn, and as winter stirs once more, a long year of watching over, he is almost ready to take flight, to start again, when suddenly cars arrive and doors open. His mate does not emerge—his mate is dead, he knows this—but his feathers tremble in the wind as he watches, curious now.

Life is coming back to the house.

Me

1

Emily

The house looks different from how it did in the photos.

Freddie pulls the car up close to the front door and smiles across at me before getting out. I try to reciprocate but my heart is sinking. The pictures were taken in summer when the front garden was full of color and life. Now, as I push the car door open and swing my bad leg out before gritting my teeth against the pain and hauling myself inelegantly onto my feet, everything is covered in icy gray mist and the ground is hard and dead.

I lean heavily on my stick. My joints are sore from sitting for hours on the drive, and the sharp air is like icing sugar in my lungs, making me want to cough with every breath, the wind coming in from the moor cutting into me despite my thick coat. The quiet of the frozen countryside makes my stinging ears ring. Everything is awash with shades of gray, but still it makes me squint. There’s too much to take in.

“What do you think?” We both rest on the bonnet of the car as I contemplate my answer, looking up at the large house looming over me.Larkin Lodgeis written in thick black letters above the imposing front door. Larkin Lodge. Our new home.

The house stands alone on a hill, the drive simply a turn off a country lane, marked by old low stone walls. Beyond, all I can see is moorland, wild and untamed, a spattering of snow here and there that has refused to melt. No sheep or cows. Just uneven ground and rough shrubs amid rocky outcrops.

“I feel like I’m in a Brontë novel.” I take his arm, and our feet crunch loud on the gravel as we move toward the front door.

“Does that make me Mr. Rochester? Are you my Jane Eyre?”

“Well, you’d better not have another wife locked up in the attic here, otherwise you’re in trouble, my friend.” I don’t tell him it’sWuthering Heightsthat had come to mind and how that one doesn’t end so well for the characters in it, the ghost of Cathy pleading at the window to come inside. Freddie only knowsJane Eyrebecause he claimed to like the classics when we met and I’m sure he quickly scanned a couple, when in fact the years have proven that he’s more a a-few-Lee-Childs-on-holiday reader than a proper bookworm like me.

“It looks different in the flesh. It’s like it’s suddenly real.”

“It is real.” He unlocks the door with an old-fashioned key and nods me inside. I step across the threshold, and while the immediate air—the exhale—that rushes out to greet me is not exactly cold, neither is it warm, as if Larkin Lodge is perhaps as unsure of me as I am of it.

I do relax a little as the door closes behind us and the warmth from the radiators finally envelops me. There are polished wooden floors and a feature central staircase that is both imposing and austere, but there are also fresh flowers in my vase from Heal’s sitting on the stylish Rose & Grey hallway table Iso bought us for our tenth anniversary. Freddie promised he’d have all the unpacking done by the time the hospital let me out, and he’s been true to his word on that.

Farther into the house I peer into a bright sitting room, or drawing room, or whatever people who have more than one living room call a second or third downstairs room, and our teal Loaf sofa, wine stain and all, is waiting there for me to collapse on.

“It’s bigger than I thought.” I’m trying to be happy, but I’m having a massive pang of missing our little garden flat in Kentish Town and feel a little sick.What have we done?I know I’m being childish. It was my dream, after all, a house in the country, away from the madness of London, with space and air to breathe, and it was me who first saw Larkin Lodge online and made a lot of noise about escaping everything and how it would be perfect.

I didn’t, however, expect to wake up from a coma several months later and find Freddie so enthusiastically suggesting we sell and move here that I heard myself agreeing. But then I hadn’t been expecting to be in a coma either, and I hadn’t expected the gut punch of being let go from work after I’d done so much—so much I didn’t want to think about—to get the promotion secured just before my accident.

“Marriage is teamwork,” he’d said as he held up the keys in the rehab center. “You wanted a life in the country, and I’m on board with that.” The move kept him busy at least. Freddie has never been good with worry, and while I lay between life and death, getting all the pieces in place for me to nod a yes to kept him busy.

It would be a lie to say I’ve had no excitement about the move too. I have. From my hospital bed it felt like exactly what I needed—a fresh start—but as the days ticked round to leaving, the excitement trickled away to something close to regret as the reality of my situation sank in. I wanted the safety of theknown.The comfort blanket of my familiar nest to lick my wounds in.

Freddie’s still looking at me, expectant, and I give him a big grin, shaking away my gloom. A year to recuperate fully, that’s what Dr. Canning said I needed. The quiet country life will probably be good for me. And it is a beautiful house. I have to get used to it, that’s all.

“I guess we live here now,” I say.

“I guess we do,” he answers.

2

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