Les frères Turner, Tome 2.5 : Out of the Frying Pan

Parford Manor, Somerset. Late September, 1843.

Richard Dalrymple was determined to be civil.

He didn’t think he could ever shake the bone-deep envy that he felt, coming up the drive to his former family home. This place was imprinted on his memory: He’d played at soldiering with the stable-boy in that copse of trees. He’d caught his first fish on the far bank of that river, fallen off a horse for the first time there, and used that fence rail to get back on. The deeply familiar smell of autumn crept to him. A thread of rubbish fire on the wind mixed with earth and damp. Nowhere else in the world smelled like Parford Manor in autumn.

No matter how Richard prepared himself, no matter how often he told himself that he didn’t want it anymore, the nostalgia took him every time.

This could have been mine. But no. That was the illusion his childhood had foisted on him.