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dinner. She saw to the organization of everything in the house, even overseeing the post each day, making sure Grandad had given her all the letters he wanted to post and also going over anything that arrived at Milthorpe House. She used to sit at the table in the dining room before Grandad came down to breakfast and sort the mail into two piles: one for him and one for herself. Then there werethe things she tore up. Lou was shocked when she saw it happening for the first time.
    â€˜Why are you tearing those letters up, Granny?’ she’d asked.
    â€˜Please call me Constance, dear … I do hate
Granny.’
    â€˜Sorry,’ Lou apologized, not feeling a bit sorry. She’d overheard her own mother calling this hatred of any variation on Granny ‘an affectation’ and while she had no idea what one of those was, she thought it couldn’t be very nice and so decided to agree with her mother. ‘But why are you?’
    â€˜They’re not proper letters,’ Constance explained. ‘They’re – well, they’re rubbish, really. You’d think people would have better things to do.’
    Lou had believed Constance then, but realized now that the things she’d been destroying were most probably Grandad’s. She’d never tear up a message addressed to herself. What could they have been? God, what a bloody cheek that woman had, she thought. How did she dare tear up someone else’s letters?
    Lou recalled the roll-top desk in Grandad’s study. Constance got rid of that as soon as he died. I’d have liked that desk, Lou reflected, but no one consulted me. Briefly she wondered who had it now. The desk had pigeon-holes filled with pieces of paper, quite neatly arranged. Lou never saw her grandfather writing anything. He usually sat in the armchair under the window. This was covered in faded gold-coloured velvet, and even when he wasn’t in it, the cushions held his shape. She used to sit on the big hard chair at his desk and they chatted about everything. She would moan to him about her parents, about Nessa and Justin, about school teachers and school friends – she told him everything. He gave her books to read: Hans Andersen’s fairy tales,
Alice in Wonderland, What Katy Did
 … all sorts of things. He introduced her to Shakespeare, helping her when they started reading
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
at school, showing her how scary and terrific
Macbeth
was by acting out some of the best scenes with her. What fun it was being all three witches and Lady Macbeth as well! He read her bits and pieces that he thought might amuse her from the newspaper and, towards the end of his life when his eyesight had faded a little, she returned the favour and read him book reviews and leaders, and news stories which generally made him harrumphand sigh and close his eyes. Occasionally, she asked him things. He wasn’t as voluble then. It was as though, Lou thought now, he was trying to forget about his childhood. He was, for instance, vague about his mother.
    â€˜Do you mean Rosemary,’ he asked, ‘or my real mother?’
    Lou had never met her father’s grandmother, Rosemary, but she’d seen pictures of her in the family albums: a stout, square woman with tightly permed white hair, wearing a twin-set and pearls.
    â€˜Wasn’t Granny Rosemary your real mother?’
    Grandad smiled. ‘Well, she was. To all intents and purposes.’
    â€˜What does that mean?’ Lou wanted to know.
    â€˜I was very young when my real mother died.’
    â€˜What was her name? Your real mother?’
    This was a ritual they often went through. Lou knew what her grandfather’s mother was called, but he smiled and answered her once more. ‘She was called Louise. You’re named after her. You know that very well.’
    â€˜But she died. What happened to you then, Grandad?’
    â€˜I was fortunate. Rosemary –