As featured on the Radio 2 Book Club. Some doors are locked for a reason...Newly married, newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband`s crumbling country estate, The Bridge.With her new servants resentful and the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie only has her husband`s awkward cousin for company. Or so she thinks. For inside her new home lies a locked room, and beyond that door lies a two-hundred-year-old diary and a deeply unsettling painted wooden figure - a Silent Companion - that bears a striking resemblance to Elsie herself...