Carla put the phone back in her bag. Looking out of the kitchen window at the grey day, she had a sudden longing to be somewhere else. Living a different life to the one she got up every day to exist through. David had never wanted her to work, insisting her job was the family, which when the twins, Ed and Maddy had been young was true. Her life had revolved around their needs, her social life around fundraisers for the PTA, brownies, scouts, ballet, football. You name the club, she had probably baked cakes for it. But these days that was all gone. With the twins away and David busier and busier with the business, she was spending a lot of time alone.

As she put her bag over her shoulder and picked up her keys ready to leave, Carla came to a decision. Once her mum’s affairs were all settled she was going to change her life and start enjoying it again. Just how she would accomplish that she had yet to decide, but one thing was certain, she would insist she and David spent more time together.

*

The days were lengthening and the spring bulbs in the front garden were beginning to flower before No. 29 was finally clean and empty. Carla instructed the local estate agents who arrived to measure up and take photographs, ready for the house to go on the market once probate was finalised.

One evening in early March, Carla sat at her own kitchen table with the last box of her mother’s papers and photos to sort. The previous five boxes had been uninspiring, but this one contained more photographs than paperwork and Carla had saved it for last deliberately. Secretly, she was hoping the photographs would give her a silent insight into the largely unknown history of her maternal French family.

Faded black and white photos of mysterious foreign relatives standing staunchly arm in arm on some mountainside; a Provençal mas; wide-eyed children fastened into cavernous whale-bellied prams. Two laughing little girls holding hands in a hayfield – ‘Amelia et Josette. Juin l950’ faintly pencilled on the back. Two older girls paddling on the beach holding their skirts high above their knees – ‘Amelia et Josette, Juillet l962’. Proof that the twins had once been close.

A wedding photo dated September l964 taken on the steps of an imposing Hotel de Ville, showed her mother and father smiling in a stiff, grown-up wedding pose. Josette standing to one side looking happy. What row in later years could possibly have been serious enough to keep them apart for ever more?

Carla jumped as David appeared at her side with a glass of wine.

‘Anything worth keeping amongst this lot? Or do we burn it all?’ he asked, pushing some of the photos apart.