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House, she could go back to where she had begun, she could make it into something that demonstrated incontrovertibly to them that her concept, her comprehension of a particular longing and dream and aspiration in the public, was not just at the heart of Susie Sullivan pottery, but what made it
work.
    ‘You,’ she said out loud to the empty house, ‘are going to show them. You are going to show what I don’t seem able to explain.’ She patted the wall next to the window. ‘You, Parlour House, are my trump card.’

CHAPTER THREE
    D aniel expected to find his father-in-law in his studio. It was a Saturday morning, after all, and his mother-in-law was away in Staffordshire, so Jasper would have made one of his habitual pint mugs of strong tea and be where he was always happiest, down in the lower-ground-floor studio, fiddling about on the keyboard with a new idea for a song, or trying it out on his guitar.
    Daniel had a front-door key to his parents-in-law’s house. Neither Susie nor Jasper had – to Daniel’s initial surprise, and abiding delight – any conventional sense of privacy, or indeed of any formalized generational divide. Their daughters had been brought up very much as their equals and companions, and neither of the parents had the faintest concept of requiring a respectful distance to be kept around their private lives. In consequence, the Victorian family house in which the three girls had done most of their growing up was open to all of them. Cara had simply never surrendered her own keys, and nobody had ever expected her to.
    So, this Saturday morning, armed with two Americano coffees and a bag of croissants, Daniel let himself into Radipole Road, allowing the front door to bang shut behindhim to announce his arrival. Then he called out his father-in-law’s name, expecting to receive no response before opening the sound-proofed door under the stairs and descending to the music studio.
    Instead, from the far end of the hall, Jasper shouted, ‘Kitchen!’
    He was sitting at the kitchen table, in the blue-painted carver chair that had somehow become his, with a newspaper spread out in front of him. He was in his habitual black jeans and black T-shirt, and his longish pepper-and-salt hair was tousled in a way Daniel had at first thought was casually contrived, but had come to realize was just the way it was. He had a mug in front of him, large tortoiseshell-framed spectacles on his nose, and his usual amicable air of being unsurprised to see anyone.
    He took his glasses off and beamed at Daniel. ‘Morning, mate.’
    Daniel put down the cardboard cup-holder and the bag of croissants. There was, as usual, music playing on the stereo system. Jazz this morning, somebody brilliant on a saxophone. ‘Some breakfast, Jas? Are you ready to follow one variety of caffeine with another?’
    ‘Always ready,’ Jasper said. He pushed the newspaper to one side. ‘And I shouldn’t be reading those reviews. All these new kids on the block, with their synthetic music, in their pathetic suits, God help us, all computerized and packaged. Does nothing but get me down, insofar as I let anything get me down.’
    Daniel extracted one coffee cup from its cardboard grip and set it in front of Jasper. ‘That’ll get you up again.’
    ‘But vinyl’s back,’ Jasper said. ‘Kids are collecting vinyl. It’s the same with these ebook things. After a while, people want solid stuff again. They get sick of grasping at air.’
    Daniel sat down at an angle to his father-in-law, ripped open the croissant bag and pushed it across. He said nonchalantly, ‘Susie back today?’
    Jasper took the lid off his coffee. ‘Who knows?’
    ‘Has she rung?’
    ‘Yup.’
    ‘And?’
    Jasper took a gulp of coffee. He said, ‘You’re not getting a reaction out of me that easily, mate.’
    Daniel tore off a piece of croissant. He said, ‘It’s a family matter, Jas. It’s a family decision.’
    Jasper leant back in his chair and said mildly,