A slight disappointment after reading other books by this author. In this, Grace and her grown up son, Ralph, move to a big house in the village where Grace grew up, although she had left the village many years ago, and where an old friend of hers called Betty still lives. It soon becomes clear that Grace and her friend are both afraid of an old woman, Mrs Goodchild, the mother of a deceased boy. Mrs Goodchild's son Tom had had some kind of unspecified mental disability and had obsessed over the two girls. He had then died in circumstances that the villagers are reluctant to speak about even so many years later.

Grace had moved away and married a wealthy man who is absent on business a lot, and does not actually appear in the book. She and her son are viewed by the villagers as 'posh' and privileged, but gradually they start to interact with some individuals, especially Betty's son, Joe. Ralph loves to stir things up and poke fun at the villagers' superstitions and their fear of Mrs Goodchild. As the story begins, Joe and a girl called Jenny are an item, but they are driven apart because of Joe's sudden passion for Diana, another village girl, who is rather theatrical and has a 'reputation'. The situation becomes more complex when an attraction begins to develop between Joe and Grace, who is still an attractive woman.

The style is almost stream of consciousness at times. There are some lovely evocations of atmosphere, of hot weather, and the general mystery surrounding Tom and the seeming guilt complex suffered by Grace and Betty which seems to cause their fear of his mother. However, the continual viewpoint switching between characters within a scene is a style of writing not in fashion these days (the book was published in 1976) and can occasionally cause confusion. The main difficulty for me, however, was in the layout of the village - it was never clear where the river and bridge were in relation to the village green and the church and churchyard, and the big house itself, plus the hill behind the big house. Where these places are and how far away people can see them is quite important especially at the end of the book, so this created a problem. ( )