She pulls out a sheet of thick cream paper and scans it quickly:Īs trustee of the Henry and Martina Lamb Trust created on 12 July 1977, I propose to make the distribution from it to you described in the attached schedule … Libby clears her throat and slides her finger under the flap. It might, as she has always said, be a teapot and a ten-pound note. Or at least she has an idea, though she was never told formally what was in the trust. ‘OK,’ she says to her mother, ‘I’m doing it. Her fingers caress the corner of the envelope and she inhales. She takes the teabag out of the mug and sits down. She feels a little breathless, as she sometimes does when she’s just about to stand up and give a sales presentation at work, like she’s had a strong coffee. Then she says, ‘Shall I stay on the line? While you do it?’ She pictures her mum in her own kitchen, a thousand miles away in Dénia: pristine white units, lime-green colour-coordinated kitchen accessories, sliding glass doors on to a small terrace with a distant view to the Mediterranean, her phone held to her ear in the crystal-studded case that she refers to as her bling. She hears a silence at the other end of the line. She picks up her phone and calls her mother. But now it’s here she’s not sure she can face opening it.

She’s been subconsciously waiting for this envelope. Libby is pretty sure she knows what’s in the envelope. She takes the letter into the kitchen and sits it on the table while she fills the kettle and puts a teabag in a mug. The postal frank says ‘Smithkin Rudd & Royle Solicitors Chelsea Manor Street SW3’. It looks very formal the envelope is cream in colour, made of high-grade paper, and feels as though it might even be lined with tissue. Libby picks the letter up off the doormat. My sister and I had to learn how to survive.Īnd when I was sixteen, and my sister was fourteen, the baby came. They lived with us for more than five years and they turned everything very, very dark. I was nearly eleven when they came, and my sister was nine. It’s only now, with decades of hindsight, that I can see how odd it was. It was far from normal, but it felt normal because it was all I’d known. It would be inaccurate to say that my childhood was normal before they came. This book is dedicated to my readers, with love and gratitude I Found You Then She Was Gone Watching You After the Party The Making of Us Before I Met You The House We Grew Up In The Third Wife The Girls

The family upstairs book