The Red House

Two estranged siblings and their families spend a week together at a rented holiday house on the Welsh border, and the forced proximity strips away the careful distances each person has maintained, exposing old wounds, hidden desires, and private crises. The novel unfolds over eight days, from one Friday to the next, cycling through the perspectives of all eight characters.

Angela, a middle-aged schoolteacher, travels by train with her husband Dominic and their three children to the Red House, a stone house in the remote Olchon Valley near Hay-on-Wye. Her younger brother Richard, a neuroradiologist, has rented the house and invited Angela's family for a week. The siblings have barely spoken in fifteen years. Angela resents Richard for rarely visiting their mother during her years of dementia, even though he paid for her care home, and she accepted the invitation partly because they cannot afford a holiday: Dominic was unemployed for nine months before taking a job at a bookshop.

Angela's children each carry their own burdens. Alex, seventeen, is athletic and self-contained. Daisy, sixteen, converted to Christianity eighteen months earlier after encountering a science teaching assistant named Wendy Rogan and watching an Alpha Course video. She has adopted an ostentatiously plain appearance that frustrates Angela. Benjy, eight, is imaginative and anxious after attending his grandmother's funeral. Angela also harbors a secret grief: She had a fourth child, Karen, who was stillborn due to holoprosencephaly, a genetic condition affecting the structure of the head. The coming Thursday would be Karen's eighteenth birthday, and Angela maintains a private archive of imagined photographs of Karen at various ages.

Richard drives south with his second wife Louisa, who comes from a working-class background, and his sixteen-year-old stepdaughter Melissa, whose biological father is a wealthy builder. Melissa is sharp-tongued and privately embroiled in a bullying scandal: A compromising photograph she took of a classmate has been circulated, and the classmate attempted suicide. Richard is preoccupied with a legal case involving a girl who ended up in a wheelchair after an operation.

The families converge on Friday evening, and tensions surface immediately: Daisy insists on saying grace, Benjy spills sauce on Melissa, and Richard catches Melissa smoking marijuana. That night, a spectral figure identified as Karen enters Daisy's room and places a hand against Daisy's head while she struggles in her sleep.

On Saturday, the group visits Hay-on-Wye. At lunch, Angela confronts Richard about the years she spent visiting their mother weekly. Richard counters that Angela moved in with her friend Juliette's family during adolescence, leaving him alone with their alcoholic mother, whom he regularly cooked for and bathed after their father died of cancer. They call a truce. Later, Angela realizes that certain vivid childhood memories she attributed to her own home actually belong to Juliette's house. That evening, Alex kisses Melissa in the garden; she allows it briefly but then bends his finger back and tells him to stop.

On Sunday, Melissa runs away. Daisy spots her in a café in Hay, buys her coffee and flapjacks, and they begin talking genuinely, forging an unexpected bond. They return to the house together. On Monday, Angela nearly tells Richard about Karen but swerves, asking instead what hospitals do with stillborn babies. He answers clinically, unaware of the personal significance. Dominic reflects on his secret affair with Amy, a woman he met at the bookshop, and resolves not to tell Angela.

Tuesday proves the week's most volatile day. In the early hours, Angela confides in Louisa about Karen. Daisy and Melissa stay behind while the others go canoeing, and the two girls hike up the Cat's Back, a steep ridge. At the summit, overwhelmed by a feeling of connection, Daisy pulls Melissa close and kisses her. Melissa shoves her away, shouting anti-gay slurs and saying the only reason she spent time with Daisy was boredom. Daisy runs in the opposite direction across the moorland, interpreting the kiss as punishment for sinfulness and contemplating suicide before an elderly couple finds her and drives her home. That evening, Angela confides more fully in Louisa about her fear of either seeing Karen everywhere or losing her completely. After dinner, Richard confronts Alex for flirting with Louisa, raising his hand before backing down in horror at his own rage. Louisa confesses to Richard that she slept with numerous men after her ex-husband left. Richard responds coldly, and Louisa accuses him of not understanding love.

Wednesday brings a violent storm. Richard twists his ankle running on the ridge and becomes hypothermic. Alex runs up in driving rain and hail, finds Richard disoriented, and half-carries him home. Daisy's secret emerges through painful conversations: She tells Angela about the kiss, but Angela immediately asks whether the church is connected, provoking an eruption. Daisy later tells Alex, who absorbs the news calmly and mentions he also kissed Melissa without success. That evening, Dominic calls Amy to end the affair; she is devastated. Over dinner, Richard reveals that their father was violent, once beating Angela for being sick in a car. He also reveals that Angela chose not to visit their father in hospital before he died, contradicting her lifelong belief. Late that night, Benjy finds a text on Dominic's phone: "call me I can't bear this any longer amy xxx."

On Thursday, Karen's birthday, the family returns to Hay. Daisy sits in a café observing women and recognizes a feeling that has always been present: a comfort and rightness in the presence of women. Alex covers for Dominic when Benjy mentions the phone message, improvising a cover story. Richard tells Louisa he intends to visit the girl in the wheelchair from his case to express genuine regret, and he suggests visiting Louisa's estranged brothers. He advises Melissa to find something she truly cares about rather than controlling people through fear, and she begins to cry. That evening, Louisa tells Daisy she can see a big knot inside her has come untied. Late that night, Melissa leads Alex to her bedroom, where they begin having sex before she suddenly shoves him away and slaps him. Angela falls asleep by the stove and has a terrifying vision of Karen as a ravaged, barely human figure who forces a kiss upon her. Daisy, Richard, and Louisa struggle to wake Angela. After everyone returns to bed, Angela retrieves a Victorian doll she bought as a symbolic vessel for Karen and burns it in the stove, realizing that her imagined photographs of Karen were actually images of Daisy. The burning feels like an exorcism.

On the final Friday, Alex confronts Dominic about Amy's message. Dominic denies the affair until Alex threatens to tell Angela. Alex grabs his father's shirt and shoves him against the wall, calling him a coward, then lets go, realizing his father stands between him and something vast and cold. Dominic drops his phone into a tin of old paint. The families pack up and say goodbye. Louisa hugs Daisy and promises to visit. Angela shakes Richard's hand and thanks him. Dominic sets up a group photograph with a timer. Just before the shutter clicks, Daisy turns toward something moving on the hill, appearing in the photo as a blur, unreadable but more alive than her frozen family. The house empties. A cleaning woman arrives to prepare for the next guests, while a red kite weaves through the holes in the wind above the valley.