Alison Quotes

“Isabel O’Sullivan and her cousin Alison sat in the small station café drinking cups of tea and eating jammy buns. Both girls were waiting for the train that would take them back to St Clare’s after the holidays.”

“For the past week his mother, Alison, and he had been hunting them in earnest, setting out the traps around the apartment at night, shaking out the catch come morning, like a pair of trappers tending their line.”

″‘How is the bellyache, then?’ Gwyn stuck his head round the door. Alison sat in the iron bed with brass knobs. Porcelain columns showed the Infant Bacchus and there was a lump of slate under one leg because the floor dipped.”

“Bring one down, and we’ll wash it.′ Alison say Gwyn lift a plate from the top of the nearest pile, and then he lurched, and nearly put his foot through the ceiling between the joists.”

“It all begins with the scratching in the ceiling. From the moment Alison discovers the dinner service in the attic, with its curious pattern of floral owls, a chain of events is set in progress that is to effect everybody’s lives.”

Alison, her stepbrother Roger, her mother and stepfather are holidaying in a gorgeous, isolated valley in Wales, a few hours away from Aberystwyth, staying in an old house Alison inherited from her late father.