The Lake House Read Online Free PDF Page A

but remained, seemingly glued to the spot, wearing that serious, melancholy expression and staring straight at her, almost as if he were trying to memorise her features.
    â€œMr Llewellyn?”
    â€œDo you remember the time we took the boat out on Clemmie’s birthday?”
    â€œYes,” she said. “Yes, it was a lovely day. A rare treat.” Alice made a point of gathering her basket from the fountain steps, and Mr Llewellyn must have taken the hint, because when she finished he was gone.
    Alice felt the nag of an unspecified regret and sighed deeply. She supposed it was being in love that made her feel this way, a sort of general pity for everyone who wasn’t her. Poor old Mr Llewellyn. She’d thought him a magician once; now she saw only a stooped and rather sad man, old before his time, constrained by the Victorian dress and habits with which he refused to part. He’d had a breakdown in his youth—it was supposed to be a secret, but Alice knew a lot of things she shouldn’t. It had happened back when Mother was just a girl and Mr Llewellyn a firm friend of Henri deShiel. He’d given up his professional life in London and that was when he’d come up with Eleanor’s Magic Doorway .
    As to what had prompted his breakdown, Alice didn’t know. It occurred to her now, vaguely, that she ought to make a better job of finding out, but not today; it wasn’t a task for today. There simply wasn’t time for the past when the future was right there waiting for her on the other side of the hedge. Another glance confirmed that Ben was by himself, gathering his things, about to go back through the garden to his accommodations for lunch. Alice promptly forgot about Mr Llewellyn. She lifted her face towards the sun and relished the blaze that graced her cheeks. What a joy it was to be her, right now, in this precise moment. She couldn’t imagine that anyone, anywhere, could be more content. And then, she stepped towards the jetty, manuscript in hand, intoxicated by an enticing sense of herself as a girl on the precipice of a glimmering future.

T hree
    Cornwall, 2003
    Sun cut between the leaves, and Sadie ran so that her lungs begged her to stop. She didn’t, though; she ran harder, savouring the reassurance of her footfalls. The rhythmic thud, the faint echo caused by damp, mossy earth and dense trampled undergrowth.
    The dogs had disappeared off the narrow track some time ago, noses to the ground, slipping like streaks of molasses through the glistening brambles on either side. It was possible they were more relieved than she that the rain had finally stopped and they were free. It surprised Sadie how much she enjoyed having the pair of them alongside her. She’d been resistant when her grandfather first suggested it, but Bertie—already suspicious of her sudden arrival on his doorstep (“Since when do you take holidays?”)—had proven characteristically stubborn: “Those woods are deep in places and you’re not familiar with them. It wouldn’t take much to get lost.” When he’d started making noises about asking one of the local lads to meet up with her “for company’, regarding her with a look that said he was on the brink of asking questions she didn’t want to answer, Sadie had swiftly agreed the dogs could do with the run.
    Sadie always ran alone. She’d been doing so since long before the Bailey case blew up and her life in London imploded. It was best. There were people who ran for exercise, those who ran for pleasure, and then there was Sadie, who ran like someone trying to escape her own death. A long-ago boyfriend had told her that. He’d said it accusingly, bent over double trying to catch his breath in the middle of Hampstead Heath. Sadie had shrugged, puzzling over why that might be considered a bad thing, and she’d known then, with surprisingly little regret, that it wasn’t going to