Granny smiled. “To be frank, I don’t think there was that much to leave. She hadn’t earned any money for years, besides her pension, and our mother didn’t leave anything to either of us other than this house. They lost all their money, you know, in the Great Crash of ’29. Apparently my father invested in American stocks and lost everything.”

“Oh dear. Our family doesn’t seem to have been too lucky, does it?” Caroline said.

“I suppose my father was doing what he thought was best for us. He was wounded in the First World War, you know, and never quite well again afterward. He probably put all his hopes on making money on the stock market.”

“So do you know what Aunt Lettie actually left me?” Caroline asked. “If there is any money, I’m handing it over to you.”

“I do happen to know, as a matter of fact. She made me her executor. She had a savings account with about a thousand pounds in it. But apart from that, not much more than her clothes and a couple of pieces of jewellery inherited from our mother. Nothing of great value. However, there is a box in her wardrobe with your name on it. She was most insistent that you have that.”

Caroline looked up. “A box. That was one of the things she tried to say. A box. Up there.”

Granny nodded. “She mentioned it the other day, when she talked about no extraordinary measures—as if she knew she was going to die. ‘Make sure Caroline gets it, won’t you,’ she said. I don’t know what’s in it. She never told me.”

“I don’t want to go in there now to get it. It seems disrespectful,” Caroline said. A box with her name on it. Maybe a piece of jewellery Lettie had never told her sister about, money she’d been stashing away . . .

“Aunt Lettie won’t mind,” Granny replied with a smile. “She’s not even there anymore, only a body she no longer needs. I expect she’s looking down on us and smiling. And she was so insistent that I made sure you had the box.”

Caroline hesitated. Then she got up, went to Aunt Lettie’s door and tiptoed into her bedroom again, glancing across at the bed as if she still expected the old woman to open her eyes and turn to see her. She opened a wardrobe that smelled of mothballs and a hint of perfume. Je Reviens. That had been Aunt Lettie’s favourite. There was a hatbox on the top shelf, but it contained several outdated hats. Then she found a simple old cardboard box in one corner and lifted it down carefully. A label was affixed to the top: For Caroline Grant after my death. Please make sure she gets it.

Caroline could almost swear she heard a small sigh of contentment coming from the bed as she left the room, carrying the box. She set it down on the table, across from her grandmother.