SEEKING SANCTUARY

Theodore Calvert walked out on his wife and their children, Anna and Therese, when they needed him most. Now, from beyond the grave, his carefully crafted will is set to unravel his daughters’ lives all over again. . . It was Isabel Calvert’s pious Christianity that drove Theodore away. When he left, it was the Church that replaced him in his daughters’ upbringing. By the time Isabel died, it was the Blessed Sacrament Convent that the daughters were calling home. And while Anna rebels and returns to the real world, Therese is still consumed by the life of duty and worship. In the midst of all this arrives the mysterious Francis: a young, good-looking, golden-haired gardener. Although the nuns are besotted by his charm and handiwork, Anna is less convinced by his motives: the killing of a magpie is an eerie, ominous sign of what is to follow. As Anna tries to unpick Francis’s sinister plans, she realizes that the answer lies in finding out the truth about her own family’s past. The question is, can she do it before it is too late? Seeking Sanctuary is another brilliant tale of enveloping, encapsulating suspense. It was wrong to be so fearless of the dark, but it was a fear she had never learned and the lack of it made her indifferent to being followed at night. Girls being followed was a fact of life: she could run faster than any thief and besides, had nothing to steal from her shoulder pack. . . . The footsteps trailed away as she neared her own flat. Probably the one who followed tonight was one of the homeless who parked themselves at the back door of the convent, encouraged by the rumour of Christian charity. They had banged on the door last winter, persisting until the ivy had grown down to shield the exit and announce its permanent disuse. . . . She drew level to the back door on the way to her own, and she saw that the ivy had been clipped, neatly trimmed to frame the wood. Once inside, she went upstairs and onto the roof to gaze down into the garden where there was nothing to see. Looking up she could see the stars; imagine the souls in the firmament. Sister John and her darling mother. Her father would surely be in hell. from Seeking Sanctuary