Audrey’s explanation dissolved as Mia and Phoebe collapsed into fits of laughter. “What is it? What’s funny? I don’t understand.”

Her head felt foggy as she watched the girls laughing, tears in their eyes.

“Oh, Gran, I’m sorry. We shouldn’t laugh really. It’s sweet of you. Please don’t think we don’t appreciate it.” Phoebe glanced at Mia and they both started laughing again.

“I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

And then she saw the look exchanged between them: a look of knowledge and recognition, of friendship and intimacy, and all at once she understood. And as the realization spread, it was as if someone had placed a hot-water bottle in the center of her chest that was warming her from the inside out. “What . . . ? When . . . ? How did it happen?”

Questions scrambled from her lips, and then Mia and Phoebe were answering, their sentences leapfrogging one another, picking up a part of the story the other had missed: a tale told by two voices that could have been one. The story of how, two years previously, Phoebe had tracked down Mia on Facebook, sent her a message, and begun a correspondence. How, soon after, they had begun meeting in secret, after school or on Saturday mornings. How they had seen each other every week since, a clandestine friendship that had soon become closer than any other, transcending the family politics they had never understood but which had kept them apart for years.

“You’re not angry with us, are you, Granny? We honestly did think about telling you—didn’t we, Phoebe?—but we thought if you knew, you might have felt you had to tell our mums and it just seemed easier this way. We never meant to lie to you, really we didn’t.”

Audrey took each girl by the hand, holding them with all she wanted to say but couldn’t find the words to express, hoping they might understand just a fraction of how happy they had made her.

And then all three of them were laughing. Standing in the center of the Turbine Hall, there was a split second when Audrey looked outside their unexpected trio, catching the glances of passersby, and it took her a few seconds to interpret their curious expressions. But as she turned back to her granddaughters, she understood what people were staring at: the sight of these two beautiful young women whose similarities were so striking they could easily be mistaken for twins. As she held on tight to their hands, her heart swelled with pride and relief but most of all with love.

Chapter 22

Audrey

“Right, if I can have everyone’s attention, please.”

Audrey’s head turned, along with dozens of others, to where Ben was leaning on the upright piano, his assistant by his side. She caught Phoebe’s eye and they exchanged a wry smile. It was just over an hour since they’d left Mia at Tate Modern and it felt to Audrey as though the three of them were now linked by the knowledge that, even amid familial chaos, something good and unexpected could emerge from the rubble.