Copyright © 2016 Harriet Evans

The right of Harriet Evans to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

This ebook edition published by HEADLINE REVIEW

An imprint of HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP in 2023

Extract from Mary Poppins reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
© 1934, P.L. Travers

All characters – apart from the obvious historical ones – in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

eISBN: 978 1 4722 2135 3

Cover Illustration © Laura Barrett @ The Artworks

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About Harriet Evans

Harriet Evans has sold over a million copies of her books. She is the author of thirteen bestselling novels, including the Richard and Judy Book Club selection, The Beloved Girls, the Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller The Garden of Lost and Found, which won Good Housekeeping Book of the Year, The Wildflowers and The Stargazers. She used to work in publishing and now writes full time, when she is not being distracted by her children, other books, crafting projects, puzzles, gardening, and her much-loved collection of jumpsuits. She lives in Bath, Somerset.

Readers love The Butterfly Summer

‘This brilliantly written portrait of a fascinating family in crisis is an emotionally intelligent, thoughtful and engaging read’ Daily Mail

‘The Butterfly Summer is an amazing achievement; heart-stopping and wonderful. It’s an epic, sweeping, romantic story told brilliantly’ Sophie Kinsella

‘Harriet Evans is a master at creating characters you feel like you know inside out’ Heat

‘Superior . . . with utterly true to life characters’ Sunday Mirror

‘Secrets and lies in a gorgeous idyllic setting’ Prima

‘Multi-layered, heart-breaking and as beautiful as a butterfly wing’ Veronica Henry

‘A delightfully engrossing read’ Red

About the Book

It begins and ends with Keepsake, the house that holds its shadows too tightly.

Two things happen when you are a Parr girl: when you are ten, you are told about your future role. The second thing that a Parr girl at some point must learn is harder to tell of. It is a dark work indeed, the business of this house, hidden from the world.

Nina Parr’s mother has lied to her for most of her life. But when Nina inherits Keepsake, a long-forgotten house in Cornwall, she realises it holds the truth about her family – and a chance to put everything right at last.

Keepsake is a place full of wonder . . . and danger. Locked inside the crumbling elegance of its walls lies the story of the Butterfly Summer, a story you’ve been waiting all your life to hear.

By Harriet Evans

Going Home

A Hopeless Romantic

The Love of Her Life

I Remember You

Love Always

Happily Ever After

Not Without You

A Place for Us

The Butterfly Summer

The Wildflowers

The Garden of Lost and Found

The Beloved Girls

The Stargazers

A Winterfold Christmas (e-short)

Rules for Dating a Romantic Hero (Quick Read)

It must not be supposed that every caterpillar which hatches thus attains to perfection. From the egg onwards relentless and watchful enemies are ever on the lookout for its destruction.

H. Eltringham, Butterfly Lore

Mary Poppins stared from him to Jane in silence. Then she sniffed. ‘I’ll stay till the wind changes,’ she said shortly, and she blew out her candle and got into bed.

P. L. Travers, Mary Poppins

Nina Parr, locked herself in, Charlotte the Bastard, daughter of a king,

Nina Two, mother of Rupert the Vandal, Nina the Painter, mother of a scandal.

Mad Nina that was, then Frederick the Vicar, then Lonely Anne, then Alexandra the Fly-catcher,

Then Charlotte the Sad, and then comes me,

Little old Teddy, the last girl you see.

All of them butterflies, and then only me.

All of them butterflies, and then only me.

Part One

Chapter One

London, 2011

The kind of books I like usually begin by telling you about the family you’re going to meet. ‘The Fossil sisters lived in the Cromwell Road.’ ‘They were not railway children to begin with.’ They have each other, that’s what the author wants you to know.

I like stories about families. They’re like fairy tales to me: I never knew my father and Mum is . . . not really like mothers in books. The people who really looked after me, who did the boring things necessary to sustain a child (teeth, zebra crossings, shoes that fit), are Malc, my stepfather, and Mrs Poll, the old lady upstairs – and I was wrong about them. Oh, I was wrong about all of it! And it’s still such a muddle, the story of what happened, that summer everything changed. It jumps in and out of years and months like Max in Where the Wild Things Are: we never really escape our childhoods, do we?

But if you want a beginning, I suppose that day in April is where it began to unravel, and it was a tiny thing which started it all off: the zip on a new pair of boots.

Malc, my stepfather, says there are no coincidences, that everything happens for a reason. I would always have met her, he says; I went to the library most lunchtimes. But I still believe something else was at work that day. Some kind of old magic, the sort that’s still at work when you need it, lurking just out of sight, hidden along dark corridors, up tall towers, and in long-forgotten corners of dusty old houses.

The reason I know the exact date is because 15th April was a dreaded day for me, marking two years since I had started at Gorings and two years since my divorce was finalised. It’s strange, being twenty-five and able to say that: ‘My divorce.’ (‘Ooh. That’s one to chalk up on the experience board,’ one of my new colleagues said admiringly, as though I’d done it to be able to show off about having made a disastrous teenage marriage.)

The 15th of April 2011 was one of those spring days where even though the daffodils are bobbing bravely about, it might still be winter because it’s so bitingly cold. My daily lunchtime walk from the office on Hanover Street to the London Library was eleven minutes, long enough to work out whether a pair of new boots is comfortable or not. I’d bought them the day before, at lunchtime, to cheer myself up. I put them on when 1 p.m. arrived, a sort of act of defiance against the date. ‘Hey! I’ve got new boots on! You can’t say my life’s rubbish! ’

And yet, less than a minute after I’d left Gorings and was striding towards Piccadilly, I realised these boots had a zip at the back which ran from the base of the heel up to the calf and which rubbed, little teeth nipping at that tender skin above the heel bone. By the time I reached the library, my socks were worn through, each soaked in blood. This was a determined zip: the Achilles-heel-locator of zips. The London Library is definitely not the kind of place where one peels off one’s bloodstained socks in the lobby and I hurried upstairs as fast as I could, hiding myself away so I could examine my gory feet in relative privacy.

There are over a million books in dark metal shelves known as the Stacks that rise up for four storeys in this unassuming corner of St James’s. The library smells of things I love: mildewy dust, old leather and polish. I come here to be alone, away from ringing phones and typing and people calling out for a cup of coffee, away from chatter about husbands or the relative merits of different IKEA kitchen units. I hide amongst books all waiting to be picked, some unopened for forty, fifty years. There are shelf-marks with labels like:

Human Sacrifice

Nubian Philology

Papier Mâché

Snuffboxes

My father bought me life membership to the London Library before he went away. Mum doesn’t like me coming here every day; I think she believes it makes me wonder about him.

When I was little, Mrs Poll and I would play a game where we’d pretend my father had come back. She’d move her kitchen table against the wall, set the two orange-covered dining chairs upside down upon it and fetch the tablecloth, under which I would crawl, feeling my way through the humid, tangled, grasping undergrowth of the Amazon where he was last seen, and I’d pretend to be escaping from a tiger who wanted to eat me, shouting:

‘No! I will serve you these ten years now as your slave, if only you will not eat me, for I must return to my wife and child in London, a great city far across the sea!’ – brushing leaves and other jungle detritus from my shoulders and backing away, as Mrs Poll roared convincingly, eyes huge, mouth bared in a terrifying rictus grin, and then she’d stop and hold out a paw for me to take.

Then we’d pretend I was home again. ‘Delilah, my darling,’ I’d say, quickly – because Mrs Poll always hurried through this part – ‘I have returned. Where is my dear child, Nina? Here are some emeralds to match your beautiful eyes, now bring me an egg and ham sandwich, for I have not eaten anything but leaves and marmalade these last ten years past.’

‘That’s enough now, Nina,’ Mrs Poll would say, gently, and the world I’d conjured up would recede, like cardboard figures on a toy stage sliding away, and it’d be me and her again, in the warm little kitchen. ‘Time to go back downstairs. Your mum’ll be waiting for you.’

That was a bigger lie than the rest of it: Mum was never waiting, we both knew that. Mum was often barely there at all, or she’d be lying under a blanket weeping, or shouting at someone down the phone – usually the Council. But I couldn’t stay with Mrs Poll all the time, much as I’d have liked to, so I’d trundle down the stairs, feet scratching on the splintered wood that stuck up through the worn carpet, back to our flat.

Later, I realised Mrs Poll was trying to make me understand you couldn’t keep hacking away at the same make-believe game and one day expect things to change. When I was about twelve, and a know-it-all, I was ashamed of having played that game with her, mainly because there are no tigers in rainforests. But a little part of me still wondered about him.

I’m twenty-five now. Don’t worry, I’m not stupid – I know he’s not coming back.

After I’d stuffed as much lavatory paper as I could into my boots, I collected the book I’d set aside on the Saved Books Shelf and limped to a desk. I began to read, but the words meant nothing, and I stared out of the window, trying to buck myself up a bit and quell the rising tide of thoughts that seemed, at that time, to crash over me out of nowhere, leaving me limp, bedraggled, struggling to see anything clearly.

At that very moment someone tapped me on the shoulder. I screamed, jerking back in my seat.

‘Lunch break’s over. Get back to work,’ the voice behind me whispered.

I turned around, slowly.

‘Sebastian? Oh my God. You gave me a fright.’

Sebastian crouched down beside me and kissed my cheek.

‘Sorry. The British Library didn’t have what I wanted. I should have texted you to let you know I was coming. We could have had a sandwich.’

Sebastian is a teaching fellow in English Literature at UCL – it’s where we met, seven years ago. He looked down at the book I was reading.

‘Children’s Literature and British Identity – wow, Nins, don’t you just sometimes want to have a sandwich and look at rubbish on your phone? Like normal people?’

‘I’m not like normal people. You know that.’ There was a short, tense pause. I said, sort of jokingly, ‘Anyway, my phone—’

He looked sadly down at my cracked, ancient, barely-smartphone. ‘She’s like a museum piece, ladies and gentlemens . . .’

He raised his voice and the old lady at the table next to mine, some two metres away, looked up crossly at us and then stared, open-mouthed, as though horrified at what she saw.

‘. . . Yes, Nina Parr. Roll up, roll up. It wasn’t until after we were married I discovered she had twelve copies of The Secret Garden in her childhood bedroom. Yes, twelve copies, m’lud.’

Sebastian’s voice carried and I flushed. ‘Shh,’ I said. ‘Don’t be funny about it. Not today, especially.’

‘Today?’

‘Our divorce.’

‘What about it?’

I looked at his smiling face. He didn’t remember. I wondered why I did, why I hadn’t just allowed myself to forget about it too. ‘Two years ago today. The decree absolute, I mean.’

‘Oh.’ He looked down at me, contrite, as I shifted in my chair, the atmosphere deteriorating still further. ‘I didn’t remember. I’m sorry.’

The trouble with being friends with your ex-husband – whom you married, to the horror of your respective families, aged nineteen and ‘out of hand’, as they say in Georgette Heyer novels – is that you can often forget you were ever married, and that’s a fatal mistake. You can be ever such good mates, like us: we liked each other enough to marry one another, after all. And it’s all lovely until one remembers how awful it became. The rows, the heartbreak, the final showdown, the division of mess . . .

We should never have married in the first place, that’s the trouble. We were a year-long university relationship, a first-love thing, and we should have burned out by finals time, instead of creating this storm of drama. I think other people were more wound up about it than we were – his parents, especially. It was ugly, and perhaps it was a terrible mistake, but the strange thing to both of us is we got through it. We’re friends, close friends. His parents don’t like that much, either.

Attempting to sound more jovial, I said, ‘All is forgiven. And listen, on The Secret Garden, can I just say for the umpteenth time it’s my favourite book? And it’s not weird to own a few copies of your favourite book.’

‘Not weird!’ He gave a cheery laugh, and ran his hands through his scruffy hair. ‘Nothing you do is weird, Nina. One man’s psycho-intensity is another man’s charming idiosyncrasy.’

‘Oh, you patronising git,’ I said, pushing him gently, but we were smiling.

‘Agreed. Let’s move on. Shake on it—’

And then, from the table next to us, came a harsh whisper:

‘Would you, both of you, please keep the noise down!’

The old woman along the way was still glaring at us, and her huge eyes were dark with fury. I released my hand from Sebastian’s and, turning to her, I said hurriedly, ‘I’m so sorry.’

She stared at me. ‘You—!’ she hissed.

‘Yes,’ I said, pushing at Sebastian’s bulky form and hoping he’d sort of melt away – he is, for such a thoughtful person, utterly blind to other people’s moods. I, an only child, have spent most of my life studying people, watching carefully to see the impact of what they say. ‘I’ll call you later,’ I hissed at him, almost desperately, because he showed no signs of seeing the old lady was probably going to explode.

‘When, Nins?’

More to get rid of him than anything else, I said, ‘Don’t know. Let’s have a drink sometime, shall we?’

‘Drinks?’ said Sebastian, faux-serious. ‘Just you and me?’

‘Why not?’

As soon as the words were out of my mouth we glanced at each other, nervously, smiling at what we both knew to be true: we didn’t do drinks. We spoke on the phone, we had lunch every other week, he dropped over to our house all the time – Mum and Malc still adored him. We texted about silly things, but we didn’t plan things, nor set aside time to meet in the evening. No, we didn’t have drinks, just the two of us.

‘Well, that’d be lovely, Nins.’

‘Would you please keep your voice down!’ The woman next to us actually waggled a finger at Sebastian.

Hastily, I said, ‘Well, or with some of the others . . . Elizabeth . . . or when Leah’s back from Mexico . . . you know. Just go, I’ll call you later.’

‘OK. Or, just you and me. Be nice. All right, I’m going, ma’am,’ he said, to the old woman. ‘She dies, you know,’ he said, gesturing at her copy of Wuthering Heights. ‘They both do. Rubbish book, if you want my opinion.’

The old woman was shaking with a kind of stupefied rage, her bobbed hair shuddering around her head.

‘Do I know you too?’ she said, glaring at him. ‘I think I know you.’

‘Um—’ Sebastian looked slightly apprehensive then, because his family knows absolutely everyone. ‘No, I don’t think so. Sorry.’

‘Hmm.’ She looked at him again, beadily. ‘Well, listen, whoever you are, I don’t want your opinion. If you don’t leave immediately—’

‘OK, OK,’ Sebastian said, admitting defeat. ‘Goodbye, Nina.’ He waved at me. ‘I’m . . . it was . . . it was nice to see you. Really nice.’ And he was gone.

‘Sorry again,’ I said, softly. I half nodded and gave a smile-grimace to my furious neighbour, which I hoped encompassed contrition and a distancing of myself from Sebastian. I knew I’d have to head back to the office in a moment too: as office manager, I was supposed to reopen the phone lines promptly at 2 p.m. But some kind of pride made me sit there, reclaiming my own ground. I started scribbling messily in my notebook, imitating someone glad to get back to the very important work she’d been doing. I wrote:

I don’t want to go back after lunch.

I don’t care about Becky’s kitchen extension or Sue’s Easter egg hunt.

I hate making tea ten times a day. I hate being called ‘Hey, you!’.

I shouldn’t be having a drink with Sebastian. I should be going on exciting dates with people I’ve been set up with, or met on the internet, or something.

I don’t want to do this any more. I don’t want to feel like this any more.

I was writing so furiously I didn’t hear the old woman come up behind me, and when she jabbed my arm with her pencil, I really did jump, properly scared out of my wits.

‘I think you owe me a little more than that, my dear,’ she said.

It was then I felt the atmosphere change. She was staring at me in fascinated horror, almost panic: I’d never seen an expression like that before.

‘I’ve said I’m sorry – and I really am, if we disturbed you.’

‘Are you? Are you?’ She shook her head. ‘Yes. Look at you.’

She was dressed almost entirely in black. The only note of colour was her tomato-red tights. Close up, I could see her face was lined, criss-crossed with age, her shingled hair white. Her eyes were entirely black and on her sack-like dress she wore a big jet brooch. The stones winked lazily in the hazy dusk of the Stacks.

‘There isn’t anything else I can do, other than apologise again,’ I said, watching her curiously. ‘He’s very loud—’

‘You could stop lying and tell me the truth.’

I thought she was a bit crackers. Slightly coldly, I said, ‘You know, the Reading Room downstairs might be a better place for you in future, if you want peace and quiet.’

She stared at me in complete silence, scanning my face. Then she laughed, throatily, with a wild kind of freedom.

‘Oh, that’s good. That’s very good. My dear Miss Parr.’

I stiffened, then I glanced down and saw Nina Parr scrawled on my notebook, and relaxed, but only a little.

She followed my gaze. ‘Then I’m right,’ she said softly. ‘I’m right.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘Oh, goodness!’

I didn’t know what else to do so I sat back down. I heard a rustle as she pushed my bag aside with her foot, and grunted. I stared at my notebook again, pretending she wasn’t there. I could hear her breathing – sharp, shallow – and then after almost a minute of silence she said:

‘You really are just like your father, you know, Nina.’

I felt my scalp tighten, my skin prickle again: half anger, half fear. I didn’t know how to respond.

‘Did you hear me? You are very like him.’

As a stray beam of sunshine caught her I looked down at her glinting brooch and saw it was in the shape of a butterfly. And I was scared then. Because butterflies are what killed him, and I sort of hate them.

‘Look, Miss — I don’t know your name. I’m sorry, but my father’s dead.’ Then, because she wasn’t saying anything, I added, ‘I don’t remember anything about him. He died when I was six months old. All right?’

She barely spoke above a whisper:

‘So that’s what they told you, is it? Of course they did.’

I had twisted around to look at her, and I could see now that she was upset. Her face sort of crumpled and the dark, beady eyes were shining with tears. She brushed her hand away.

‘They didn’t tell me anything,’ I said, sure she must be able to hear my heart, thumping in my chest. ‘I don’t know what you mean. My father’s dead.’

‘What about Keepsake? Is she still there?’

I shook my head. Keepsake. For a second, I thought I knew that name. ‘What’s Keepsake? Who’s still there?’ She didn’t reply. ‘Who’s still there?’ I said, angrily.

‘Perhaps it’s not you.’ She blinked, as though she was suddenly confused. ‘I was so sure. You’re like her, too. You’re very like her.’

‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ I said, but she was backing away. ‘My father’s dead,’ I said again, in case she needed confirmation. ‘Miss—?’

‘Travers,’ she said, staring at the floor. ‘My name’s Travers. I have to leave now. She’s coming. I have to leave.’ And she turned, and disappeared.

‘Miss Travers!’ I called out after her, louder than before, and my voice echoed, bouncing off the metal shelves and into the gloom. ‘What do you mean? How do you know my father?’

But she’d gone. And though, after a few seconds, I stood up and followed her into the labyrinthine darkness of the Stacks, I could find no trace of her. She’d vanished.

Chapter Two

‘Doing anything tonight, Sue?’

‘I’m going to try and finish the scarf. Then I’ll start on some nice socks.’

‘Gosh, Sue. No rest for the wicked!’

‘Tell me about it! How about you, Becky?’

‘Thought I’d go to Westfield to look for a present for Sean, it’s his birthday next week. He likes aftershave. I want to get him the new Gucci one.’

‘Oh, very nice, Becky. I love a trip to Westfield. That Waitrose is marvellous. It’s massive.’

‘Isn’t it . . .?’ There was a slight pause. Becky said, ‘How about you, Nina? Got any plans?’

I pushed aside the pile of invoices I was working on and sat up straight. ‘Oh. Not really. The usual.’

‘Right.’ Becky gave me a friendly smile. ‘I’m starting to miss Downton Abbey, aren’t you? I can’t wait for the second series.’

‘It was good, wasn’t it?’ Sue swivelled her chair around, eyes alight with eagerness, as though they’d literally never discussed Downton Abbey until this moment. ‘I did love it. Lady Mary! And that Turkish gentleman!’ She chortled.

‘Sue, you are naughty!’ said Becky. ‘How about you, Nina?’

‘I didn’t really see much of it,’ I said, quelling my inner desire to scream: If you two start talking about Downton Abbey again, I will actually condemn myself to death by a thousand papercuts using only these invoices!

‘Didn’t you?’ said Sue. ‘Really? Oh. Well, it’s awfully good. What I like about it is seeing the servants’ world, not just the lords and ladies upstairs. Carson’s my favourite! I hope he and Mrs Hughes—’

No! I wanted to shout. Stop it. Stop going on about bloody Downton Abbey. Every day since October. But they were well away. I scribbled SEND HELP on a Post-it note and briefly considered holding it up to the window, which made me feel a little better, if nothing else.

‘You’d really have enjoyed it, Nina,’ said Becky, eventually, taking out her hairbrush and vigorously brushing her long, thin hair. I looked at the clock on the wall: 4.48 p.m. ‘It’s right up your street, you loving history and old stories and everything. Trust me.’

‘I watched some of it,’ I said. ‘But all those rich people and their stupid non-existent problems were silly. I just didn’t believe it. Plus the servants were like cartoon characters. Something like The Shooting Party’s much better. Or Gosford Park at the very least.’

I’m getting better at knowing when I’m about to say something ‘Nina-ish’. Sebastian used to slap his face with his hands and groan when I’d do it. To my credit, I recognised immediately that this was pretty Nina-ish. Becky shrank back into her chair and I cursed my sharp tongue. Normally I don’t mind Becky and Sue, they’re nice people. Sue was kind to me when I first joined Gorings and she found me crying in the loo about something silly. She made me a cup of tea and gave me a ginger nut. No, it’s my fault, not theirs. It’s just that they want to chat and be friendly, and it’s always about nothing important – stupid, whiling-away-time chat – and I’m no good at that. I never was.

Becky tried another tack.

‘Did you see Hello! this week? About the secrets of Kate’s dress? Apparently, it’s definitely going to be designed by Armani.’

‘They’d never go Armani. It has to be a British designer, Becky,’ said Sue, authoritatively. ‘That reminds me,’ she added, as an afterthought. ‘I must order the ribs tonight.’

‘Ribs?’

‘For the street party. I’m making a hundred sweet and sour ribs. What are you doing for yours?’

‘Bunting,’ said Becky, succinctly. ‘Fifty metres of it, can you believe it? What am I like! What about you, Nina?’

I took a deep breath. Come on, Nina. ‘We’re not having a street party. But I am going to watch it. My stepfather’s making Coronation Chicken and he’s calling it Royal Wedding Chicken instead.’

Sue and Becky smiled, happily, and we chatted for a while. Or rather they did, and I nodded and pretended to listen while periodically my eyes stole to the clock on the wall (fake teak and brass, ordered by me at Bryan’s request to match the fixtures and fittings in the rest of the office): 4.53 p.m. 4.55 p.m.

For the hundredth time since lunch I wondered, with a thrill of fear and panic, about the woman in the red tights. Was she still at the library? Would she be there tomorrow when I went back, at the same place? Was she mad? Was I ?

She had to be mad. I’ve seen the newspaper reports of his death: I wished I’d said that instead. Ask my mother, left with no money and a six-month-old baby. He’s dead, trust me.

Sue had segued from the situation with the ribs to the latest rumours in today’s Daily Mail about Carole Middleton’s hat when Bryan Robson (my boss and one of the partners – ‘not the footballer!’ as he introduced himself to everyone) appeared with a dictation tape.

‘Hey, Nina, can you type these up before you go home?’

‘Sure. How many?’

‘Five, but one’s a little bit complicated. Is that OK, my dear?’

‘Of course,’ I said, gratefully, grabbing the tape and sliding it into the Dictaphone, putting in my earpieces, mouthing apologies to Sue.

I liked Bryan because he loved talking about books – he was a big fan of Dickens – but mostly because he was a nice man. He’d handled my divorce, and I’d applied for the job here after he mentioned it to me during our first meeting. Six months after I’d joined Gorings and realised it was a terrible mistake but that I couldn’t leave without somewhere to go (and I had nowhere to go, no job prospects at all, nothing except an abandoned PhD), Bryan had found me crying at my curved reception desk, which stood at the front of the second-floor offices. I think this was around the time Sue found me crying in the loo. I suppose I cried a bit after the divorce.

Bryan hadn’t said anything – he didn’t need to talk all the bloody time, unlike some people. He had patted my shoulder and handed me a large cotton handkerchief.

‘What’s up?’ he’d said, conversationally.

‘Everything,’ I’d said, melodramatically. And then, after wiping my eyes and blowing my nose heartily on his handkerchief I’d half handed it back to him, and we’d both laughed. ‘I’ll wash this. I’ll bring it back tomorrow.’

‘Like Mrs Tiggy-Winkle. Don’t you worry. I must say, I’ve no idea why a girl like you is working here,’ he’d said enigmatically, patting my shoulder again. ‘But I’m very glad, anyway.’

A girl like you – it didn’t sound like a compliment, that’s the trouble. Bryan had three children and lived in Alperton and was a cricket umpire at the Ealing Cricket Club on the weekends. Sue lived in Ealing, next to the Chinese school, helped out at her family’s restaurant specialising in Hunan cuisine in Ealing Common in the evenings, and was a grandmother of five, all of whom lived nearby. Even Becky, who was only a year older than me, was married and pregnant and had just moved to Acton from Hanwell where she’d grown up. They each loved their West London lives, hurrying out of the city back to quiet, straight, leafy streets. Becky had told me she couldn’t wait to move further out and have a proper garden.

‘Who wants to live in London?’ she’d said. ‘All that noise. All those people. Wouldn’t it be lovely to feel like you’re in the English countryside?’

But I knew nothing about the English countryside, except what I’d gleaned from books. I’d never really been anywhere outside London – apart from holidays to various beaches when I was little, which were invariably a disaster, as my East Coast American mother didn’t really understand British holidays, along with many other things about life in this country. We’d sit on a mingy towel smuggled out from our B&B, in the freezing cold, on a thin strip of damp sand, watching families play ball, put up windbreaks, eat complicated picnics, listen to the Radio 1 Roadshow, a cacophony of noise and fun all around, and then us, huddled together like shipwreck survivors. I couldn’t wait to get back to London.

I had always loved the city, how it kept its best side secret, how the more you examined it the more it rewarded you. I loved the little alleyways through Soho, the old enamel signs on long-established hardware shops, the adverts for relief of pox painted on the side of Bloomsbury houses. The vast, beautiful caryatids holding up the apse of the St Pancras New Church on the Euston Road, the wooden tortoise and frog on the stairs in Liberty, the ancient Westbourne river flowing in a boxed-in, man-made tunnel over Sloane Square tube platform. The secret lanes and town houses rippling out of Clerkenwell Green like ribbons from a maypole, the chunks missing from the Victoria and Albert Museum, bombed during the war . . . I felt safe here, amidst the drama and bustle and excitement of life. In a city this big you’re not that important. Your problems are minuscule. London reminds you of that daily.

At five thirty, Becky, Sue and I switched off our computers and put on our coats. Business at Gorings finished promptly for us, while the others – the actual solicitors – stayed later. I said bye to Becky and Sue as chirpily as I could. They scurried off happily together, calling goodnight. Left alone in the warm, cramped reception I walked slowly around, checking the switches, my head singing with tiredness. On my way out, I dropped the letters I’d typed off at Bryan’s office for him to sign.

‘Thank you,’ he said, looking them over. ‘Um . . . right, then. Yup. Yup . . . oh dear. Oh . . . oh. No. No.’ He handed the letters back to me. ‘Nina, you’ve spelled “client” as “clinet”. Three times. And there are two “there”s instead of “their”. And you haven’t put the address on this one.’

I tried to say sorry but my throat had closed up, for some idiotic reason. I took the letters back, wordlessly, hanging my head.

‘Do them tomorrow. They’re not urgent. Um . . . everything all right today, Nina?’ Bryan said, watching me, his hands resting lightly on the desk, fingertips touching.

‘Sure,’ I said.

‘Fine, then. Just one more. You’ve put “Dear Miss Bags”. Her name’s Bahr. Miss Bahr. I mean, that’s really quite different, Nina—’

‘Mr Robson,’ I said, suddenly, swallowing hard. ‘Can I ask you something?’

He nodded. ‘Of course, my dear.’

I wasn’t even sure how to frame the question. ‘If you thought someone who was supposed to be dead actually wasn’t, could you find out if they weren’t?’

Bryan Robson didn’t flinch, to his eternal credit. ‘If you’d previously been told they were dead?’

‘Yes.’

He put his fingers together. ‘Regarding the death itself. When and where are we talking?’

‘Oh. Um . . . the Amazon jungle,’ I said. I knew I must sound completely mad. ‘March, 1986.’

‘I see. Well, that makes it a little harder, but I’m sure one could . . .’ He looked at me carefully. ‘Look, Nina—’

I interrupted. ‘I mean maybe there’s a register you can check, if someone was from here and died abroad?’

‘Not really. The death certificate, if one was issued – do you know?’

I shook my head.

‘Was there a death notice?’

‘Sort of. A newspaper article. In The Times.’

‘Well, The Times isn’t usually wrong, Nina.’ He gave a small laugh. ‘Didn’t use to be, anyway.’

‘Yep.’ I stood on one foot, then the other, and realised he was waiting to go home. ‘Look, never mind. It’s probably not important.’

‘Anything I can help you with?’

Good, kind Mr Robson. He’d bought himself a putter for his eighteenth birthday, and when he first moved from Jamaica to Bristol, the local golf club hadn’t let him in, because of the colour of his skin, so he’d taken the putter back and bought some books instead. He didn’t know anyone then, so he just stayed at home most evenings, reading. Then eventually he reasoned if he was going to stay in, he might as well be learning something. So he did a law degree through the Open University. He was twenty-two.

I thought of the old lady’s dark flashing eyes, the utter intensity with which she’d stared at me. ‘You . . .’

‘I think I’m going crazy,’ I said. ‘Forget it. It’s nothing.’

‘Doesn’t sound like nothing,’ he said, quietly. His voice was so kind, it sort of felled me a bit.

‘Thanks.’ I muttered something about being late for my mum – there’s a phrase that’s the sign of a well-adjusted adult, if ever there was one – and made my escape down the worn linoleum stairs, tears stinging my eyes.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, you see, that’s why Bryan Robson is sad about me. He’s seen my CV. He thinks I should be a professor by now, or be given a grant to go and study at Yale. I have the curse of the Clever People.

I was offered a place to read English at Brasenose, where my father went. But I chose University College London instead because I could stay at home – isn’t that pathetic? I was going to be a teacher. At least, that’s what I wanted to be. An English teacher. But everyone else around me had other ideas. ‘Yes, of course,’ my headmistress had said. ‘One should have a plan in place. But in your case, my dear, one should also vigorously aim as high as one can.’

Oh, how disappointed in me she must be. I got my first in English Literature. I did an MA in Children’s Literature. I was going to do a PhD: I’d been given a grant by a foundation and I was all set. Still keen to ensure I didn’t take my big brain off to Oxbridge or, worse still, America, UCL had assured me I was doctorate material; I even had my mentor, Professor Angell, take me to one side and tell me that, if I liked, I could apply for the D’Souza Fellowship: only awarded once every five years to exceptional students, but in this case, etc. But my marriage was falling apart by then, and the whole mess of it all meant . . . well . . . anyway, I didn’t do the PhD.

Though I was the one who left him, Sebastian seemed to emerge from the breakdown of our marriage more energetic than ever. He just shook it off and went on to great things – his own doctorate on Conrad (I mean, good grief), co-authoring a book, lecturing around the world. And I haven’t done anything, really, other than this job. I missed the chance to apply for teacher training college two years in a row, and then I applied and didn’t get in. So I’m really lucky Gorings took me on. But my job could be done (and done better) by almost anyone: someone who remembers to order new pens and fixes the printer when labels get jammed. Becky’s a trainee solicitor, for all that she spends her whole life booking nail appointments and flicking through Mothercare catalogues. Sue is a qualified bookkeeper – she does the books for her restaurant in the evenings. These people have qualifications – vocations, even – and then they go back west and have whole other lives, too.

I’m glad to have this job, though. And I should be grateful for this quiet, small life. But I’m not. I hate it. I like studying. I like reading. I’m happiest when I’m imagining some world other than the real one, and that’s why it’s hard to explain to people like Bryan Robson, or my teachers at school, or the special counsellor I was given at fifteen – the ones who help ‘gifted children’ not to turn into crazy psychopathic loners – that I’m not that clever. Because I know I’m not. I’m just unusually intense. If I’m interested in something – funerary architecture, or Tutankhamun, or children’s literature, or that brief summer I spent being obsessed with musicals, after Jonas, my best friend from school, got his first role at seventeen in a touring production of Calamity Jane – I’m really interested. I suck the lifeblood out of it, a mosquito draining all facts and interest out of it, then I move on.

Mum once said I get it from my father. She never talks about him, so I remember this as with every nugget of information about him: like sieving for gold. I had been reprimanded at school for correcting a teacher and she’d been called in to talk about me. I’d overheard her telling Mrs Poll what they’d said that evening.

‘She just told Mrs Cousins she was wrong, that it was Austen, not Brontë. Turns out she was right, of course, but . . . oh dear, the way she went about it – I’m afraid she’s even more intense than her father.’

I had been coming down the stairs, and the two of them were having this conversation in the kitchen over a glass of sherry. I’d stood behind the door and watched through the gap. Mrs Poll was sitting at our kitchen table, and I saw her, glancing over, making sure I wasn’t there. ‘How do you mean “intense”, darling?’ she asked, in her comfortable voice.

‘I’m trying to think of how best to describe him,’ Mum said. ‘He was something of a misfit, her father. Oh, hugely charming, such a big brain. But absolutely crazy to deal with. Yes. A misfit.’

‘A misfit?’ Mrs Poll had appeared to take this information and muse over it. ‘I see. Such a satisfying word, don’t you think?’

Which meant, I knew: that explains a lot.

Limping in my boots towards the tube, the evenings newly light, I looked up at the faintly blue sky, veiled with white drifts of wispy cloud. It was getting colder, and I shivered: two years since the divorce, six months since I’d moved home again. These last few months, usually, at this point in the afternoon, I’d feel some sense of achievement. Another day nearly over, one more to mark off on the calendar. The thing is, though, I had no idea why I was marking days off, or what I was counting down towards.