Sublime

Anne wore an old heather mixture tweed suit—it was a good suit, but old enough to have lost its lines and become baggy. With her chestnut brown hair, russet cheeks and heather mixture tweed she looked almost part of the landscape, an appropriate sturdy figure, strong and competent. When Colonel St Cyres saw her, he said, “Thank God.” He always did

Lucy wonders now if she’s spent her entire life distracting herself from the reality that there were too many gaps in the story of her family. A hollowness where the truth ought to be.

‘You’re on another planet!’ Mrs Baker would cry as she turned off the gas or saved the bath from overflowing. ‘God only knows what you did before I came.’ ‘Well,’ Astrid would say, ‘I had Charlie, and before Charlie I lived in squalor.’