When I woke up it was dark. Something jolted me out of sleep so suddenly that it felt as if my brain hit the front of my skull. For a while I looked blankly at the darkness in front of my face, bewildered. I didn't know where I was, or my name, or the year.

Then I felt the sticky leather of the sofa against my face and remembered. My arm was trapped underneath me and I had pins and needles down the side of my body. I was cold, too. There was a draught playing round my neck, making my scalp prickle. And it was so dark darker than London, where there was always light coming through my curtains and so still.

Then I knew what had woken me.

Quietly but clearly, I could hear something: a soft, regular sound coming from the other side of the room. It was so faint I could only just make it out. But I wasn't afraid. It was something I'd heard before, something familiar, but I couldn't place it.

I stared up at the shadowy ceiling, not moving. I felt disorientated, heavy-eyed, as though I had been dreaming. That intriguing, gentle sound went on and on, tantalising me. What was it? I strained my ears in the silence, wishing my heartbeat would quieten down. It wasn't the breeze: it was too rhythmic, too repetitive. I closed my eyes again, puzzled. I held my breath until I ran out of oxygen and had to inhale; then, suddenly, I realised.

It was someone breathing.

There was someone there, standing by the window. I knew that if I rolled over to look I'd see him, outlined dimly against the glass. But I didn't move; I listened to the soft sigh of air: in, out, in . . . Perhaps I was wrong perhaps it was the wind, or an animal outside the window, or cars going past on the road but I didn't believe it. There was someone else in the room. I gazed at the smooth leather blackness in front of my face and wondered how he'd got there, and who he was. What was going on? I eased my arm out from underneath me, ready to roll over as quietly as I could.

Then there was a kind of rustling, a brief papery noise and a clink.

I recognised that sound too; I knew what it was. My mind fumbled, moving too slowly for me to put a name to it. Something I'd heard hundreds, thousands of times at home. Then I heard the breathing resume more deeply, and a creak, a half-footstep, as he shifted his weight.

He'd lit a cigarette.

I could smell the smoke instantly; the same scent that had been in the air when I first came into the room. I'd thought it was on my clothes, from Granddad but how could it have been when Granddad hadn't been at home for weeks? No, it was here, in the room. Maybe there really was someone there a real person, a burglar. Maybe someone sneaked in every night to stand there and smoke. Maybe it was the caretaker, who got a kick out of breaking the rules.

But there should have been a spark.

I'd have seen it. If there'd been a light, I'd have seen it a flicker reflected in the leather in front of my eyes, or just a golden tinge to the darkness. There'd been the clink of a cigarette lighter. He'd lit his cigarette; I could hear him smoking it. But there hadn't been a flame.

I took a deep breath, thinking how strange it was; very strange. But I still wasn't scared. There was nothing threatening about it: I knew nothing could hurt me. It was like a dream, like it was happening to someone else.

The breathing paused, and resumed. There was a footstep: someone turning to look over his shoulder at the sofa, where I was lying.

And a voice said, 'Oliver?'

The voice was . . . old. It was a skeleton of a voice, dusty, brittle, but it had a kind of friendliness to it. It didn't sound quite right; but it wasn't frightening.

I didn't answer, because I didn't know what to say.

It coughed. 'Oliver,' it said. 'I knew you'd come back.'

The floorboards creaked. I heard the tap of shoes on the wood, moving in my direction. The voice whoever that voice belonged to was coming towards me.

I thought, I don't understand. What's going on?

I sat up. There was no one there.

There was no one in the room except me. There was silence and dim blue light from the windows, and the only thing I could smell was damp leather and my own sweat. There was a gentle, fragrant gust of wind, and the rattle of ivy against the window.

Had I dreamt it? Maybe I had. If it had been real I would have been terrified, surely? And I wasn't; I wasn't even uneasy.

A wave of tiredness hit me. I shifted slowly until I was lying down. The leather sucked at my skin, making a farting noise, and I felt myself smiling. I was safe here safer here than in London, probably. There was nothing to be afraid of.

I shut my eyes, and the darkness and silence were comforting, luxurious. They rose round me like a sea until I was asleep again.

I woke up in a haze of orange, half blinded by the sun shining through my eyelids. My T-shirt had got rucked up around my shoulders, and the skin of my lower back was stuck to the leather of the sofa. It made a ripping noise as I pulled away and sat up, rubbing my eyes. The light from the window was green-tinged, flooding flatly through the ivy. It showed up the dust on everything, but it made the room look beautiful, like something from a museum, all leather and books and old wood. I thought, I'm staying here, and smiled. My night's sleep left me with a clean, serene feeling, as though I'd recovered from an illness. And it was the first day of the summer holidays.

I laughed aloud. I couldn't think of anywhere else I wanted to be. Far better to be here than in London, or in LA with Granddad, or even Casablanca or Paris or Sydney . . . I glanced at my rucksack, remembering my letters from Dad, but now the pain was dulled, as if Tyme's End was an anaesthetic, surrounding me with warmth and welcome-ness. I thought, deliberately, about the other papers Granddad's letters and photos and exercise book but all I felt was curiosity and anticipation. On an impulse I bent forward and pulled them out of my backpack, and put them in a precarious, yellowing pile on the nearest table. They fitted in; I'd enjoy going through them later, discovering all Granddad's secrets.

But first things first. I needed breakfast and a shower. Well, maybe a wash would have to do if there wasn't hot water, but breakfast was important. There was food in my rucksack but there was Granddad's emergency stash of money too, and I was ravenous. I stood up, stretched, and shoved my wallet into the back pocket of my jeans. I'd get breakfast in the village and anything else I felt like, because Granddad's idea of an emergency was something that cost five hundred quid.

The drawing-room door groaned when I opened it, scraping along the floor as if it had swollen in the night, and the front door was worse, refusing to open. I braced myself to pull at it, laughing. The sun was throwing a thin grating of shadow on to the floor. Something rustled outside the window.

I said, 'Oh, come on. For God's sake.' The floorboards creaked again, as if there was someone watching me, listening. 'I'm coming back I only want to get breakfast I'm coming b-'

The door burst open, almost knocking me off my feet. I hung on to the edge of it, still laughing. Bloody hell. It hadn't even rained in the night. Nothing had changed, to make the door stick, but it had stuck.

Not that it mattered now it was open. I took a great breath of early-summer-morning air and puffed it out. My lungs felt double their normal size. I thought, I have never been this happy.

Then I took off towards the break in the wall, running for the sheer hell of it.

I went to the bakery first, then wandered down Falconhurst High Street, eating a bun out of a paper napkin. It was still early, and there weren't any people around. Once I'd had something to eat I felt more solid, as if someone had turned the volume knob back up.

I finished the bun, chucked the rubbish in a bin and paused, wondering whether to go straight back to Tyme's End. I could feel it tugging at me like an anchor, wanting me back. It was telling me there wasn't anything else worth looking at here nothing that compared to Tyme's End. There were Granddad's letters to look through, and the rest of the house to explore, the gardens, the woods . . .

Granddad . . .

For a moment, standing there in the sunlight, I just wanted him to be here. If only he'd been at home when I found those letters. I could imagine how he'd have sat me down, and it would have been too serious for champagne serious enough for brandy, or a tiny glass of absinthe. He'd have looked at me like I was the same age as him and explained why, exactly, he'd hidden all the stuff from my father.

I was staring absently into the window of a bookshop. There was a display of hardbacks. The Owl of the Desert, Walks in East Sussex, H. J. Martin: A Biography.

I swallowed. It was the same book that Dad had bought me, that Granddad had stolen.

I looked over my shoulder, down the High Street, towards the station. I could go back to London. Or I checked my pocket or I could just phone Granddad right now, wherever he was. I imagined his voice, saying my name: Olly, old chap, how delightful to hear from you.

No. For a moment I was there, in his study again, staring down at Dad's letters, frozen. No. Whatever he said, however he said it, nothing could make me forgive him that.

I said to him, in my head, I don't owe you anything. Screw you.

Watch.

I walked into the bookshop, leant my elbows on the counter, and said, 'Could you give me a copy of every book you've got about H. J. Martin?'

The bloke glanced up from his newspaper and took a swig of his tea. He didn't smile until after he'd swallowed. Then he said, 'You sure? All eight biographies? That'll be about hundred and sixty quid, boyo.'

'Oh,' I said. 'OK. Just two or three, then.'

In the end I left with a hefty plastic bag of books. I went into a little grocery shop and bought a couple of bottles of water and some other stuff, and then I made my way back to Tyme's End, loaded down with bags. I'd only been away an hour or so, but I felt like I was coming home after a long journey. The front door opened almost smoothly, giving at my touch as if it was trying to make up for sticking before.

I went back into the drawing room, dumped everything beside the sofa and stretched out on it, putting my feet up on the arm. I rummaged in the bag of books for my new copy of H. J. Martin: A Biography. It felt strange to be holding it in my hands again, knowing that the face on the cover was the man who had lived here, the man that Granddad knew. He'd probably sat here, sixty years ago; everything that was in front of me had been in front of him. It made me feel giddy for a moment, as if I was as close to him in time as I was in space.

Then I reached for one of the eclairs I'd bought from the bakery, and started to read.

I read for hours, eating my way through an eclair and an apple turnover and another eclair, until when I looked up it was hot in the room and the light had narrowed and brightened as the sun went overhead. I felt like I'd been miles away, and I stretched, surfacing slowly. I couldn't believe I'd never got further than the first few pages. How could I have thought it was boring? Right now it felt like it was amazing. H. J. Martin was . . . I grinned up at the ceiling. He was . . . great. I felt as if he was in the room with me, making jokes, talking me through his adventures, making me hang on his every word. I was hardly even reading; it was going straight into my ears, as if I was there, living it, falling in love with the desert and the war and I could almost hear his voice: clipped and upper-class, like Granddad's, but warmer, deeper, nearly-but-not-quite familiar, as if I'd heard it before.

I let the book fall gently on to the floor and lay down. The back of my neck stuck to the leather of the sofa. I shut my eyes and imagined that Martin was here, smoking at the open window, tapping the ash absent-mindedly into the ivy. God, I wished he was here. When I'd been reading it was like I knew him already, as if the book was just reminding me. I knew him, as well as I knew Granddad better than I knew my father. And Martin wasn't like them he was . . . special. My stomach twisted and my throat tightened. Why had I got stuck with Dad and Granddad? Why hadn't I been born sixty years ago? If only . . .

I wanted to stay here for ever.

Well, I thought, that's tough, because I can't. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. I grabbed an apple and reached for the book again.

When I turned the next page, I was looking at Tyme's End.

It was a photo black-and-white, of course and the caption said it had been taken in 1902, but the house looked the same as it did now. Then there were a couple of pictures of Martin's parents, one of him as a child, two whole pages of desert scenery, another page of other faces I didn't know. I turned the page again, and I saw the same photo that I'd seen in Martin's study: him and Granddad, laughing. HJM and Oliver Gardner, May 1936. It was strange, seeing my own name there, even though I was used to it. I slid my finger over the glossy paper. So Granddad was important enough to be in the biography. On impulse, I flipped to the index.

I glanced down, running my finger over the entries. Fortescue . . . Fraser, James, 32-33; suicide note, 408 . . . Frobisher . . .

He was there.

Gardner, Oliver, 393-5, 402; and HJM's will, 405-7; Tyme's End, 409.

Something made me pause then a flash of unease or guilt or . . . It felt like spying. And I could remember my thirteen-year-old self giving Granddad my word of honour that I wouldn't try to find out more about Martin.

But he'd forfeited any right to expect me to keep that promise when he took all Dad's letters and hid them, and I didn't pause for very long.

On the same evening Martin made the acquaintance of Oliver Gardner, then a student of Philip Langdon-Down at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Gardner, now a popular historian of some standing, has been somewhat taciturn on the subject of his relationship with Martin (understandably, perhaps, given the amount of attention he received after Martin's will became public knowledge) and has commented that 'while I was, as most people would have been, impressed by Martin's celebrity and charisma, it was as far as I was concerned an unemotional, social, superficial friendship.'(2) While this may be slightly disingenuous, it seems clear that Martin, uncharacteristically, was the more emotionally involved of the two; although, if we are to believe Gardner's statement, Martin seems more characteristically to have hidden his feelings extremely effectively. Apparently the extent of his attraction was only revealed, even to Gardner himself, after Martin's death.

However, that evening in the Lent Term of 1936, Gardner's reaction when he was introduced to Martin was no doubt flattering enough, and Langdon-Down noted in his diary that the evening had been a success. A few days later, after he returned to Tyme's End, Martin sent Gardner a copy of The Owl of the Desert, which he mentioned in a letter to Langdon-Down: 'Sent your young protege a 1st Ed of the Ood [i.e. The Owl of the Desert] . . . should really have sent him something better, but I didn't like him that much . . .'(3) .

There was more, on the next page, but I was already flicking back to the index . . . and HJM's will, 405-7 . . .

Given that Martin had no immediate family, there was no question of his will being contested; nevertheless, the mere facts were enough to raise the spectre of scandal in the popular press and among some of Martin's less charitable friends. For him to leave his entire fortune including Tyme's End, the house that had been in his family for generations to a young man, not yet twenty-one, whom he had known for only a few months, seemed at best extraordinarily capricious, generosity raised to rather histrionic level. At worst as Edie Quincey pointed out, in rather more robust terms it implied an unsavoury element to their relationship. Gardner himself denied all suggestions that Martin had been infatuated with him. When the will was made public, he commented: 'Martin was notoriously unpredictable. I'm naturally very glad of the money, but I really can't say what his motives were for leaving it all to me.' On the rare occasions in recent years when he has been questioned further on the subject, Gardner has shown the same reluctance to speculate, and has restricted himself to pointing out the current laws regarding libel . . .

I stopped reading because I couldn't take it in. Part of me wanted to laugh, because well, I could imagine Granddad answering impertinent questions with a courteous, point-by-point summary of the libel laws. But the rest of it was . . .

I looked down at the page again and the room seemed to shift and slide around me. Granddad had been left all Martin's money when he wasn't even twenty-one, only a few years older than me . . . denied all suggestions that Martin had been infatuated with him . . . I couldn't get hold of the idea; it kept slipping away, like a bead of mercury. The spectre of scandal? It couldn't be the same Oliver Gardner . . . But I knew it was.

So Granddad owned Tyme's End.

It made sense, now I thought about it. Of course. Why else would he have the key? But to have kept it all that time, for sixty years, not living here but not selling it either why would he do that? He must have had to employ someone to do the repairs, to mow the lawn, to make sure no one broke in. He must have gone on paying the electricity bills, and the water, and . . . Why would he bother? It didn't make sense, any more than it made sense that someone had chucked the dust sheets over everything without even emptying out the sherry decanter first.

And there was something else. I could hear Granddad's voice, talking about Martin, the afternoon when he'd given me my book back: He was . . . not a good man . . . It was a strange thing to say about someone who'd left you his entire fortune.

Not that it mattered now. I shut the book. The breeze from the window ruffled my hair, smelling of warm grass, and I suddenly realised how thirsty I was. I thought, So I can stay here. No one's coming to chuck me out.

And I hated myself for thinking it, but I couldn't help it one day Tyme's End will be mine. My heart gave a great joyous thump at the thought. I wanted it so much even more than before, now I knew that one day it could be, would be mine. It was as if nothing mattered not home or school or Adeel, not Dad, not Granddad except being here. As if my whole life had been leading up to this moment.

Yes, the house said to me. Yes.

I carried on reading and reading. I didn't remember eating lunch, but when I got up to go to the loo, hours later, there were crisp packets and banana skins scattered around, and the water bottle I'd opened was empty. The sun had dropped out of sight behind the trees, and there was only just enough light to read. It was hard to stand up, and I was aching from being in the same position all that time. I had to keep blinking to stop the world spinning.

But I still felt that elation, that wonderful sense of being in the right place, doing the right thing. My heartbeat was fluttering in the roof of my mouth. It was extraordinary, like the barrier between then and now had worn thin, almost to nothing.

I felt someone's eyes on the back of my neck. I swung round and for a fraction of a second I thought I saw a movement near the window, but it was only the ivy leaves fluttering in the breeze. Nothing. Just my brain playing tricks.

There was that smell of cigarette smoke again, and a gust of air ruffled the pages of the biography I'd left on its back on the floor. The pages turned slowly and then stopped, open on the photo of Granddad and H. J. Martin. I crouched down and looked at it again. HJM and Oliver Gardner, May 1936. It must have been taken in Cambridge, a few months after they met, almost exactly sixty years ago. I stared down at them, standing together, laughing at the camera, and I felt an odd twist of hatred in my stomach. How could Granddad have lied about that? How could he? Even after Martin had left him all his money left him Tyme's End, for God's sake! Granddad couldn't say what a great man he was, couldn't even be grateful.

I thought, If I knew someone like Martin I'd But I didn't know what I'd do, except that I wouldn't let him leave, like Dad or Granddad. And I wouldn't let him get killed, stupidly, for no reason, on a flat, straight country road.

I stared so hard at the picture, narrowing my eyes, that I half believed it was me. I could almost remember the photo being taken, the smell of hot stone and the flash of the sun on the camera lens. It was what I wanted more than anything in the world: to be there, in Granddad's place.

And suddenly it was as if something clicked inside me.

I stood up and took a quick look round at the mess I'd made; then I picked up the rubbish and gathered my rucksack into my arms so that the room was back to how it had been before, except for the papers on the table. I went upstairs and put my stuff in one of the bedrooms not the biggest, that was Martin's and if I ignored the musty smell, I could pretend I was here by invitation and this was where I was supposed to be sleeping. The garden below was shadowy and dim, the last fingers of shade creeping past the house. I turned the light on and the room leapt into stage-set brightness. It was amazing that the bulb still worked, but maybe the caretaker had replaced it if there was a caretaker.

I went from room to room, turning the lights on. I worked my way round the bedrooms until I was back where I'd started, standing outside Martin's room, my heart hammering. Then I knocked, feeling stupid, and slowly opened the door.

There was a movement by the window that made me jump, but it was only a curtain swaying in the draught.

I said, 'I'm here. If you want me, I'm here.'

And then I laughed, because I was talking to myself, and switched the light on, and went back downstairs.

And the house felt different. There was a new scent in the air a sweet, musty smell that I couldn't identify and the floorboards creaked as if there was someone moving around upstairs. But it wasn't creepy. If anything, it felt friendly, comforting, like having someone I trusted around.

I went back into the drawing room and started to look through Granddad's papers, while the darkness got bluer and thicker and the reflections in the windows solidified. Most of the stuff wasn't important letters from his mother, my great-grandmother, letters he'd written to her from his boarding school, a couple of brief notes from Martin Am in town, lunch today? Porters' lodge, 1 o'clock, J that I didn't know why he'd kept. I tossed them aside, picked up the exercise book, and opened it at random. There were loads of blank pages. I flipped to the beginning.

It was a diary; which was strange, because Granddad's other diaries were hardback notebooks that he kept in a glass-fronted cabinet in his study.

12th June, Cambridge. Last day of full term lunch with Marian wonderful as always, but couldn't concentrate for thinking about seeing J tomorrow. She was talking about the Crusades . . .