An hour later and she was sitting, legs crossed in the surprisingly comfy space, sorting through a box of old vinyl records. There was a lot of dreck—a lot of bands and singers in strange suits that she did not recognize, and a handful that were promising: Led Zeppelin, Siouxsie Sioux, David Bowie. Her dad’s, no doubt. He’d told her once that when he and her mother had been dating, he had been trying to form his own band; he had been learning the bass guitar, but never quite got the hang of it. Smiling faintly, she put the records to one side, thinking that she would either keep them or put them on eBay, and when she went back to the box, she saw that they had been hiding an old, battered biscuit tin. She levered it out and popped the lid, wrinkling her nose at the dust. Tightly packed inside were two fat bundles of letters, secured with elastic bands.

Each one was addressed to her mother, and the ones in the first bundle looked very old indeed, the envelopes stained and creased, the ink faded to shadows. The ones on the top of the second bundle looked right up to date—she even recognized a recent set of stamps featuring old Doctor Who villains. Unable to resist, Heather pulled out one of the letters from the second bundle and began to read. The correspondent had untidy, expansive writing, and the black inky scrawl stretched from one edge of the paper to the other. The spelling was extremely erratic.

Dear Colleen,

Today has been quiet. So still. I have very little to do here, and when I have done the jobs they ask of me, I feel the emptiness closing in on me on all sides. Its in the yellow lights and the cleen floors, an emptiness that is more than emptiness, it is nothingness. A place that is so sour with man made things has no real life in it so I think of the time we spent together. On the grass and in the feelds thats how we were best. I cant see the grass here, or any trees.

Heather blinked. Without reading further, she plucked another, older letter from its envelope, and recognized the same messy handwriting immediately.

You discribe these places so well. That you would still do this for me after all these years just tells me that I was always rite about you. Your joining us at the commune changed my life.

“Commune?”

Another, to find the same. All of these letters were from the same person. And her mother appeared to have replied to them. The handwriting was not her dad’s, she knew that straight away; he had only ever written in neat, block capitals, a consequence of his construction work and a need to write legible receipts. Who was this person with such strong feelings about her mother?

“You never mentioned a pen friend, Mum.” The words sounded odd and flat in the warm air of the attic, as though they, too, were covered in dust. Because underneath her surprise, and even her slight amusement, a cold feeling was settling in Heather’s gut. “I don’t think I ever heard you talk about writing letters at all.”