The Girl on the Landing

The novel begins as Michael, a middle-aged man of means, dresses for dinner at a friend's country house in Ireland. As he descends the grand staircase, he spots a small painting of a landing with an old linen press and the white marble statue of an angel. In the background is a woman wearing a dark green dress. During dinner, Michael comments on the painting but his hosts say there is no woman in the picture. Going up to bed later, he sees they are correct. This is the first in a series of incidents leading Michael to question his grip on reality. His wife Elizabeth is unsettled by the changes she sees in a man she married because he was dependable and steady, not because she loved him. Now aware she has never really known Michael, she sees glimpses, as he changes, of someone she could really fall in love with. In the meantime, Michael is disturbed by events at his family's ancestral home in the wilds of Scotland and by a past that he is threatening to destroy, and in the process everything, and everyone, he has ever loved.