She picked up the quilt. With two corners pinched between her thumbs and forefingers, she flapped it open. It flowed over the bed, a perfect map of discarded pieces made to look whole, a pretence that worked, a patchwork of mistakes hidden beneath calico – it fitted perfectly.

Epilogue

Epilogue

I’d known this story in potted facts since I was a child – my father was sold to his aunt for five hundred pounds, his mother was mad and awful, he’d had a lucky escape. What I didn’t know, and will never know, were the emotions that went with it. I knew his but not those of Enid or Joan, Sybil or Douglas. None of them were alive when I was born, and although Finetta – Mop, as we knew her – used to make fudge for us, I was too young to think her connected, and never asked her anything, so these, the feelings in this book are my imaginings; a tracing of the facts over my interpretation of their inner lives.

My father gave me access to his archive of letters, court papers, medical reports and photographs, and permission to write this story. He wanted to talk about it, and told me much of what has ended up here – being pulled across the door by his mother when she kidnapped him leaving Nanny Duncan on the other side, playing with his boat when his mother told him Fagus was dead, how on the train back to Eton for his last year of school he’d thought at least I know what I’m worth. I asked him, if his mother were here now, what he’d say to her. He said read my books, and that was the birth of it really, the first clear glimpse into the nature of the hearts who made, and suffered, these decisions. It was the first sign that he cared.