Taken in by the Lights

By Lyn Ebdon

Laura and her family love the little cottage in the village from the day they move in and it seems the perfect place for a happy family to grow up. When the lights appear across the field the children have no idea what they are or where they have come from and, despite their foreboding, they are almost forgotten as the years go by.

Then, after Laura has moved out, the lights reappear to her brothers… with devastating effect. Some years later Laura discovers that the cottage is up for sale and, despite the lingering memories of those past events, Laura wants to live there again, so she and her boyfriend, Rob, decide to buy it bringing the happenings of the past full circle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398498815

Lyn Ebdon

Lyn Ebdon was born and brought up in and around the market town of Lymington, on the southern edge of the New Forest in Hampshire. She now lives in a 400-year-old thatched cottage in a small village on the northern edge of the New Forest with her husband, Roger, their adored working cocker spaniel, Daphne and her two ponies. Now retired from running her own, very successful, recruitment agency, Lyn enjoys riding and competing Reilly and Pinocchio (a Connemara and a New Forest pony), playing tennis, walking Daphne and spending time with friends and family. She and Roger love holidays, travelling and also have a property in Normandy. This is her first novel.

Book preview

Laura’s Cottage

The first time I saw the cottage was the day the family moved in. I had been eight years old then, and the sheer delight of having a home of our own at last had excited all the family from the moment my parents had told me and Nigel, my brother, younger by just two years. Nigel and I had had no idea what the cottage would be like, or even where exactly it was, so moving in was a really big adventure. Of course we were a little sad to be leaving our grandparents, but as Jess, our mum, had said, we had very little space to call our own in the tiny annexe of the rambling town house, and it wasn’t far away and could (and would) be visited often. Jess was heavily pregnant when we moved in, although it didn’t stop her from moving pieces of furniture around the rooms once the removals people had placed them where she had initially wanted them. Jack, my dad, tried to keep pace with where Mum was and, with a concerned expression, gently pushed her aside from the heavier pieces so that he could place them wherever she directed, sometimes three or four times before she was happy that the room looked exactly as she wanted. Although we had relatively little furniture, the moving-in process went rather slowly, so Nigel and I, who had both watched the proceedings with interest for some time, soon bored of it and went off to investigate the cottage and its environs.

The cottage was located on one side of the square in the tiny village of Penningford. In keeping with local style, it had a central front door and four windows, two up and two down. The door, which opened directly onto the pavement, had a slightly curved arch above it, and I thought this gave the front of the cottage the appearance of a slightly surprised face. There was a roughly tarmacked pathway to the side of the property which led to a small gate, set between the back corner of the house and a picket fence which bordered the garden. To the left of this pathway was the rear door of the village pub, ‘The Ploughman’. Beyond this, the path widened into a gravelled, rutty drive leading to a gateway onto the farmland behind. The garden was long, and a hedgerow at the rear end had grown straggly and gappy and the ancient oak in the right-hand corner had a couple of branches that bent over to almost touch the ground. There seemed to be nothing in the way of flowerbeds, but an overgrown vegetable patch could be discerned by the remains of several rows of curly kale waving their heads above the weeds. A narrow path led in two directions from the back door, one way to the gate and the other around a corner to a largish tin hut. We soon discovered that this hut contained the cottage toilet. This appeared quite neat, scrubbed and tidy, and the toilet itself had a polished wooden seat and a high cistern with a long pull chain for flushing. There was also a zinc tub, with a handle at each end, hanging from a hook on one wall, all absolutely intriguing for two small children. Running to the end of the garden, I tucked