Sins of the Fathers (94 page)

I said politely to my father, ‘We shan’t meet again.’

He began to struggle for breath. ‘But Vicky – oh God, Vicky – Vicky, please – you’ve got to listen to me—’

I could see his future so clearly. He would live on alone long after all his friends were dead; he would live on knowing that
I lived too though we might never meet; he would survive to a great age for his punishment was not to be death; he was going
to have to live with the consequences of what he had done.

‘Vicky, you must forgive me, you’ve got to—’

The moment had come. It was time to pass sentence, and as I listened I heard myself say, annihilating him with the words he
had so often used to annihilate others:

‘It’s over. It’s finished. I have nothing else to say.’

[10]

Leaving him among the graves I walked away down the path, and as the church clock chimed the hour I paused in the shadow of
the lych-gate.

With the exception of my father’s black limousine and Sebastian’s red mini all the cars had gone and at first I thought there
was no one in the lane. Then I saw Sebastian. He was some yards away, tugging a sprig of holly from its bush in the hedgerow.

It was only then that I noticed the branches of the wild roses, and suddenly I could see the hedgerow in spring as clearly
as I had seen the cherry tree in the graveyard – I saw the whole lane in full bloom, rose after rose, spots of lights in a
dark incomprehensible universe, ravishing symbols of a triumph over time.

I called Sebastian’s name. He turned, smiled and walked towards me, the sprig of holly glowing in his hand.

The strength flowed back into me. Stretching out my hand I raised the latch of the lych-gate and walked at last, through the
door I had never opened, into the rose-garden.

Susan Howatch

When ambitious, exciting Dinah Slade becomes passionately – and dangerously – involved in the private and public life of American
millionaire Paul Van Zale, it is the beginning of a violent battle over his business empire and a ruthless struggle by two
women to win his heart.

The Rich Are Different
charts the fortunes of Dinah Slade from the boardrooms of Wall Street across the ocean to the Norfolk Broads, from the Roaring
Twenties to the Great Depression and the Second World War. For two decades she stakes everything on winning the fight, in
business and in love – and at any cost …

‘A superb saga, with all the bestselling ingredients – love, hate,
death and murder, and a hell of a lot of passion’
Mirror

‘One of the most original novelists writing today’
Cosmopolitan

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978-0-7515-3822-9

Susan Howatch

‘I was ten years old when I first saw the inheritance and
twenty years old when I first saw Janna Roslyn, but
my reaction
to both was identical. I wanted them.’

When Mark Castallack sees his longed-for-inheritance Penmarric, a gothic mansion on the bleak cliffs of Cornwall, and the
mysterious, mesmerising Janna, he knows that he will make them his and nothing will stand in his way. Yet when Mark realises
his dreams, Penmarric only brings conflict, jealousy, infidelity and betrayal …

Spanning the Victorian era to the Second World War, this gripping story of one man and his two feuding families chronicles
the tempestuous clashes between warring sons, between wives and mistresses, and between a house divided against itself.

‘The work of a mesmerising storyteller’
Daily Telegraph

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Susan Howatch

Below the moors of the rocky Gower peninsula stands Oxmoon, manor house of the Godwins; a place that obsesses and haunts every
member of the family, turning brother against brother, son against father, its changing fortunes inexorably linked to theirs …

Robert, the successful lawyer longing for the Oxmoon – and the sweetheart – of his childhood; Ginevra, beautiful, wilful,
swept up in a glittering London social whirl; John, the younger brother, and his son harry, both dominated by the fantasy
that in owning Oxmoon they will be happy for ever; Kester, dream-filled romantic and heir to Oxmoon, whose obsessions lead
to his mysterious death.

Form passionate joy to unspeakable violence, from triumph to tragedy, madness to death,
The Wheel of Fortune
draws you into its ever-spinning circle, as in the sunlit rooms and dark passages of Oxmoon, and on the deadly rocks of the
Worm’s Head, the Godwins confront each other and the ghosts of their turbulent past.

‘Grippingly readable’
Sunday Times

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978-0-7515-3561-7