Summer House Read Online Free PDF

secondly, even if they could, Sara would be furious. She was incandescent when you told her that I was to be allowed to stay on here if you died before I did.’
    â€˜That provision still stands. Nick’s fine with it.’
    â€˜I know.’ She smiled at him. ‘Let’s not talk about it.’
    â€˜I know that you’re not really happy with the plan. That’s why I was thinking about Im and Jules buying the Summer House. If anything happened to me maybe you could move in with them.’
    â€˜My dear Milo, it would be hell for all of us. Anyway, I don’t want to live with Im and Jules in the Summer House. And I still think that it would be much too expensive for Im to buy at its proper value, and you can’t simply give it to them. Look, Matt might come in at any moment. Let’s talk about it another time. But you mustn’t do anything foolish. You’ve done enough for us all already. Forget it for the moment and tell me what else should be on this shopping list.’
    Â 
    Up in his high attic bedroom, Matt kneeled at the low dormer window. Across the vale the slopes of Dunkery Hill were washed with sunshine and patched with wintry colours: red-rust bracken and pale stones; bleached brown grass and the cold white flash of water. Away to the west, low cloud lay along the Severn Sea, dense as a thick grey
curtain drawn across the Channel. Sheep, pretty Exmoor Hornies, strayed across the drive and grazed beneath the great beeches. Leafless, as they were now, it was almost impossible for him to identify the beech dragon in the tree nearest to his window. As a small boy he’d first noticed it: the branch extending like a leafy, flexible neck; the head formed by an oblong bunch of leaves, whilst two twigs, set at right angles on the skull, made the ears, and the small gap, through which he could see the darkness of the trunk of the tree, looked just like a round, fierce eye. The jaws snapped and gaped when the wind blew, and one long slender twig, bright with leaves, looked exactly like a tongue of fire.
    He’d used the image in his childhood stories and, later, in his book. The beech dragon had become such a familiar friend of his childhood that he’d been unable to make his dragon an enemy of his child hero but instead had made him the boy’s champion, whistled up by the spirit alter ego, whom he’d called ‘David’.
    â€˜Why “David”?’ his mother had demanded almost angrily. He’d been surprised by her reaction until he’d reminded himself that his father’s second name had been David and that, anyway, most of her reactions were unreasonable and exaggerated.
    â€˜Why not?’ he’d answered calmly. ‘It just came to me that that was his name.’
    She’d shaken her head, her face twitching with that old distressing tic that tore at his heart.
    â€˜You said that he was a spirit,’ she’d mumbled. ‘Such a silly name for a spirit.’
    There had been many such conversations, always critical and negative, and he wished that she could have
been truly proud of him. His unhappy relationship with her had taught him to be wary of giving away too much of himself to the girls to whom he was attracted; part of him, instinctively expecting the same reactions from them, made him too cautious. He turned away from the window, pulling a jersey over his head, turning his thoughts to the day ahead. Perhaps Imogen was already on her way over. He switched on his mobile to see if there was a message from her.
    There wasn’t, but there was one from Annabel. ‘Sounds gt. Wd luv 2 c xmoor. Cd get down @ wkend.’
    â€˜Damn,’ he muttered, and put the phone in his pocket. He went out and down the steep narrow stairs. He loved this old house, parts of which were two hundred years old and which was a veritable warren of small, cosy rooms. He passed through the parlour where the ashes of last