The House in the Woods

by Zoe Miller

Genres: Literary Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

When actress Evie Lawrence is injured in a hit-and-run accident, she wants nothing more than to retreat to her woodland home in Wicklow to recover. But when she's forced to admit that she needs help, her grand-niece Amber is volunteered by her mother to move into Heronbrook House for a few weeks to take care of her.
However Evie has been estranged from her sister's family for many years and hopes that Amber's arrival doesn't mean that her dark secrets, or what happened in Heronbrook years ago, will be uncovered.
At first, Amber - preoccupied by turmoil in her professional life and her love life - is happy to be kept at a distance by her great-aunt, but soon becomes very curious about the family rift and why they have never met until now. And when unsettling incidents begin to make Evie's secluded home feel less peaceful and more dangerously isolated, Amber starts to suspect that what happened to Evie wasn't an accident at all - and the person responsible still has Evie in their sights. But can Amber persuade Evie to confront the past and get to the truth before it's too late?

Release date: October 14, 2021

Publisher: Hachette Ireland

Print pages: 400

Sample

The woods are full of secret things. They are alive with the rustle of small animals scurrying through tangled undergrowth, the buzz of insects, the call of birds fluttering through the branches, the soft coo of a wood pigeon. Outside on the lane that comes up from the beach, the sun beats down and white heat shimmers in the air, but under the brown-green shade of the trees, all is cool and secretive. The leafy canopy is dappled with patches of blue where the sky peeps through. Shimmering beams from the slanting sun turn the greenery to iridescent glitter. A gurgling brook runs over a weir onto a bed of ancient stones.

The child is sleeping in the pushchair, lulled into a doze by the heat of the incandescent day and the rhythmic movement of the wheels as she is pushed up the lane and onto the uneven track that leads through the woods and towards Heronbrook, the small house in the glade.

Through the branches of the trees, there is movement, someone coming … two people … flashes of colour piercing through gaps in the shimmering greenery, a pink T-shirt, a white vest, a tanned arm, the glint of blonde hair in a patch of sunlight, murmuring voices, a tinkle of silvery laughter. Unaware they are being watched, they pause, half-hidden by foliage, and they come together in a long, slow kiss.

Then, in the clearing, the curtains close on the bedroom window at the back of Heronbrook, the room with a view of the dazzling brook. Whispered exchanges of love swirl in the warm, trapped air. The couple melt into each other in the muted luminosity, limbs entwined; he lifts his hand to her flushed face, tracing the contours, smiling into her widening eyes and bending to kiss her as the dance between them heightens and intensifies.

The child stretches and flexes her small limbs. She rubs her eyes and opens them slowly. She looks around. She knows where she is. She’s been here before. And she knows how to slide down the straps restraining her arms, how to wiggle clear, how to grasp the side of the pushchair and lever her little body over it so that she is free. She is hungry. She wants her mummy. She sets off, toddling through the woods, pine needles and windfall branches scratching the soft skin of her small chubby legs.

It is a while before anyone notices that she is missing.

I am not dead. Yet.

I am lying on my back. My head is seized in a vice-like grip. Beneath that I am hurtling through time and space, swaying and shifting to the scream of an ambulance siren that cuts through the fog in my brain.

Something clamps my mouth and nose. On the next out-breath, I feel suspended between wavering life and soft darkness and I sink down with increasing rapidness, as though there is less of me to dispose of moment by moment.

A voice comes through a mist of pain.

‘We’re losing her …’

Something pinches my skin, dragging me back from sweet oblivion, preventing me from dissolving further into the void beneath me.

‘Evie, stay with us …’

Shredded thoughts ebb and flow in my consciousness. I have done terrible things. But I have paid the price. The worst that can happen has already occurred. I feel the cold, hard loss of him in my brittle bones. The love of my life, Lucien, is gone.

Was it last week, last month, last year, or even yesterday? My muzzy head can’t recall, but the dark realisation that I had something to do with it pours through my limp capillaries like black ink. I want to surrender and slip into peaceful depths.

The screeching siren jerks me back. I am being propelled along even faster.

Heronbrook. The name rushes through whatever is left of my fragmented consciousness. It never left me. Then again I couldn’t let it go.

I hear a child’s heart-rending sobs. The image of an empty pushchair slams into my head before cracking into smithereens.

My fault. All my fault.

The siren cuts out mid-shriek. All movement stops. There is a metallic clang and a rattle and I am being trundled out to where coolness sweeps across my face. Then the momentum shifts and I am being rushed along to the rhythmic click of wheels, the patter of hurrying footsteps keeping pace.

More voices.

‘Blunt trauma to the head …’

‘Severe concussion …’

‘We almost lost her …’

Another thought-fragment surges, slicing through thick depths as sharp as a scalpel: someone has put me here. Someone wants me dead. Who, though? The knowledge is bobbing around in my head like out-of-reach flotsam.

They have tried already. Tried to kill me. I see myself crawling along a lane, my hip hot with pain, dragging on the pitted surface. It seemed like an accident. At the time.

But I survived. I remember lying in a hospital bed and Jessica visiting me.

I went back home to Heronbrook.

Now I am being pushed around a corner. I hear doors clanging open, then flapping shut. A louder voice, closer to me, ‘Evie, you’re in Accident and Emergency. You’ve sustained a head injury … stay with us …’

Why hadn’t I heeded the warnings? There were warnings and from the way I feel, suspended between my bittersweet existence and a thick, soft darkness, they might just have succeeded in snuffing out my life this time.

Another seed of memory – Amber. She was with me last night, wasn’t she? Was it last night? Or yesterday?

What did happen? Dear God, I need to know if she is safe.

Think, Evie, think.

Don’t go under just yet.

The sound of high heels click-clacking purposefully up the length of the hospital corridor came to an abrupt stop outside Evie’s room. In the sudden silence, a flutter of nerves caused her hand to shake as she reached for the control pad, but she managed to press the button and adjust her bed so that she was sitting upright and feeling less vulnerable by the time Jessica popped her head around the door.

‘Aunt Evie?’

‘Hello, Jessica,’ Evie said, conscious of a wobble in her voice. As her niece walked into the ward, Evie’s heart clenched. To a passer-by, it would look like a normal hospital visit. But in reality, a family silence that stretched back a lifetime of hostile years pulsed like a dark cloud between them. Then, channelling her Evie Lawrence award-winning-actress persona, she pushed that thought aside and smiled apologetically. ‘Thanks for coming. You’re very kind. I’m furious that I’ve been caught short like this. I’m sorry for putting you out and dragging you all the way over here on a Friday afternoon when you should be at work.’

This wasn’t supposed to have happened. Then again, a lot of events that had shaped her life, all seventy-five years of it thus far, hadn’t been in her original blueprint.

‘Not at all,’ Jessica replied. ‘I was due a half day. It sounds like you’ve had a terrifying time. I’m glad you had my number to call.’

Evie breathed out. Jessica sounded as though it was perfectly normal to get an urgent phone call from an aunt who’d found herself stranded in a south Dublin hospital with nothing between her modesty and the world at large but a papery-thin hospital gown. More significantly, a long-alienated aunt, and only for a chance encounter with Jessica in a Wicklow hotel at the start of summer, Evie wouldn’t even have had her contact details.

Jessica placed an M&S carrier bag of new supplies beside the locker before she pulled across a plastic chair and sat down. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, examining Evie’s bruised face and bandaged forearm with concern. ‘Tell me more about what happened.’

‘The bruises and scratches look worse than they feel,’ Evie said. ‘A motorbike came up the lane behind me when I was walking home from the beach. It went out of control and sent me flying. Whatever way I fell, I crashed back down on my hip and fractured it.’ She gave her niece the same details she had given the police earlier that day. The man and woman had looked out of place, darkly robust in their navy uniforms compared with the soft pastel colours worn by the hospital staff. As Evie had answered their questions, the woman had jotted details in a notebook that looked too small to hold anything of significance.

‘The lane is full of potholes,’ Evie said. ‘I’m not surprised the bike went out of control.’

‘You could have been killed,’ Jessica said.

Evie shivered. ‘I’ll live. They fixed my hip as best they could in the operating theatre yesterday afternoon.’

‘How are you feeling now?’ Jessica asked, her oval face wreathed in concern. With a breathtaking pang, Evie caught a glimpse of her own late mother, Ruth, reflected in her niece’s face – a faint impression, latent genes slip-sliding through generations.

‘OK – on mega painkillers, which are a help.’ Evie forced a smile. In time her bruising would fade but the neat dressing on her hip was minuscule compared with the degree of discomfort and immobility it was causing.

‘Do you know who caused the accident?’

Evie grimaced. ‘I don’t.’

‘Didn’t the person give a name when they called the ambulance?’ Jessica frowned.

‘Whoever it was didn’t hang around long enough to call one,’ Evie said.

‘They drove off and left you there? Did you see the registration plate? How did you get help?’

‘It all happened so fast I didn’t see much,’ Evie said. ‘My mobile had fallen out of my pocket and landed further up the lane. I was crawling along to reach it when Tess Talbot, a neighbour who runs the local café, came along and raised the alarm. By then the motorcyclist was long gone. The police will put out an appeal for information, but I can’t see anyone admitting to running me over when they didn’t stop in the first place.’

Jessica shook her head. ‘That’s absolutely appalling. I hope they find the culprit, shame on whoever it was, leaving you like that. Thank God you were found. I think I’ve got all the essentials you asked for.’ She indicated the bag, where Evie spotted a cellophane package containing a packet of rolled-up briefs alongside neatly folded pyjamas, with a rose-coloured washbag tucked in beside them.

‘Thank you for doing that shopping,’ Evie said. ‘I’ll arrange to pay you as soon as I can. My closest friends are away at the moment and there’s no one I could ask to go rooting around unsupervised in my house, never mind my bedroom, so it was an emergency, as you can see.’ She gave a self-deprecating laugh and plucked the short sleeve of her hospital gown. A far cry from the sumptuous crimson cloak she’d once swirled around her shoulders in the role of Lady Macbeth, stalking across a London West End stage at the pinnacle of her career.

Stop. Those bittersweet days were long gone.

‘And you should see the unisex knickers they provided me with,’ Evie ventured.

‘Beautiful bloomers, I bet,’ Jessica said, a hint of a smile in her eyes.

This is what it could have been like between me and Jessica all along, Evie fretted. Warm kinship.

‘So what happens next?’ Jessica asked.

‘I’m here until next Thursday, and then home.’

‘Have you got help planned?’

‘No, but I’ll be well able to cope. They’ve already started my physio.’

‘You’ve had major surgery,’ Jessica pointed out. ‘For the first month or so you mightn’t be able to do much for yourself. Paul’s mother had a similar operation the year before last and she had to stay with us for those early weeks. Could you get help from your friends? When will they be back?’

‘Not for weeks. Lucy and Marian are vising Lucy’s daughter in Texas.’ They weren’t even all that close – her bridge-playing friends, whom she only met once a fortnight.

‘Maybe you should book into a convalescent home. I can do some checking around for you if you like?’

Evie allowed herself to relax in the glow of her niece’s attention before she pulled herself together. Jessica was right, if her first and hopeless attempts at physio were anything to go by. But enlisting her help was out of the question. ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘I’m hoping to go home, but either way, I wouldn’t dream of inflicting my problems on you. You shouldn’t even be here. What on earth would your mother say?’

‘She doesn’t know I’m here and I won’t be telling her,’ Jessica said calmly.

Evie met her eyes but remained silent. How much did Jessica know of the cause of the bitter rift between her mother and Evie? Very little, she guessed, otherwise she wouldn’t be sitting here. Married to Paul Lennox, and with two twenty-something children, Jessica was a fifty-ish, attractive woman with pale, translucent skin, her dark hair a smooth shoulder-length bob. She was wearing a smart black trouser suit and white shirt, and carried an air of crisp efficiency, as though she had a lot on her to-do list and was busy working her way through it. It only seemed like yesterday when Evie’s sister Pippa had announced her pregnancy, and it had been the final straw for Evie at a time when a huge chunk of her life had crumbled in on itself, collapsing into a deep, dark crevasse. Spanning those years was the sad estrangement that lay between herself and Pippa and Pippa’s family, Evie aware, always, of her sister standing silently on the edge of this glacial fracture like an avenging angel.

She blinked and marvelled at the way her niece had no idea how much this visit meant to her. ‘You’ve been so good to look after me,’ Evie said, ‘but that’s as far as the TLC needs to go. I know you’re a busy woman. I can guess how challenging it is, trying to juggle career and home life, never mind being all things to all people.’

‘I’m not a one-woman show,’ Jessica said. ‘There are four of us in the household and I don’t run after anyone. Paul and I have raised Amber and Adam to be well able to cook and clean and empty a dishwasher.’

‘I really appreciate your coming to my rescue,’ Evie said when there was a lull in the conversation and she had the sense that Jessica had other places to be, ‘but I’d be happier if you went home now before the car-park fees are the equivalent of a house deposit, never mind the Friday-afternoon traffic.’

‘I think you have to consider your situation when you’re discharged,’ Jessica said.

‘I’ll sort out something,’ Evie said, anxious to dispatch her niece with as little obligation as possible. The last thing she wanted was to be a burden on anyone, least of all Pippa’s daughter.



‘If I hear that you’ve come near my family … I’ll kill you with my bare hands. Got that? I’ll kill you and I mean it,’ Pippa had screamed at her on a snowy December day when both of their worlds had collapsed. Despite it being over thirty years ago now, they were threats Evie had never forgotten. Living in London, it had been easy to do as Pippa asked, cutting all ties with her and her family, only seeing them on the occasion of a brief visit home to Dublin when their mother had died. By the time she’d moved back to Ireland twelve years ago, it was a rift that had hardened inexorably. Then just three months ago, at the end of May, she’d met Jessica by chance in the function room of a Wicklow hotel and there had been no ignoring her.

Evie had been persuaded out of her quiet retirement to accept an invitation to speak at a fundraiser to support arts and creativity in care homes and centres across the County Wicklow region. Somehow, in the crowded gathering, Evie and Jessica had come face to face during a refreshment break, Evie momentarily blindsided by her sudden recognition – Jessica had Pippa’s height and dark hair and her father’s eyes. But to Evie’s shocked surprise, instead of turning away, Jessica had flashed a tentative smile before introducing herself.

‘I recognised you immediately,’ Evie had said. Despite Pippa’s old threats, Evie had found herself welcoming the opportunity to cross a bridge over the chasm that existed between herself and her niece.

‘I heard about Pippa’s stroke,’ Evie had said. ‘A cousin of ours mentioned it in a Christmas card.’ She’d felt a wave of sadness at the news and the incongruous way she’d been informed.

‘It’s five years ago now,’ Jessica had said. ‘Unfortunately, Mum is living in a world of her own most of the time. She’s in a nursing home in Bray – that’s why I’m here to support the fundraiser.’

‘Will you take my phone number and let me know if anything else happens to her?’ Evie had said.

‘Of course.’ Jessica had smiled. ‘And I’ll give you mine in case you ever want to get in touch.’

Jessica had congratulated Evie on her speech and had gone on to chat about her husband and children, and her brothers Simon and Jamie and Evie’s heart had filled at the way they talked quite naturally. The only awkward moment had occurred when Barry Talbot, one of Evie’s neighbours, had pushed through the crowd, butted in, and introduced himself to Jessica. He’d chastised Evie for keeping such a low profile in her retirement, hoping her appearance today might mean she had decided to become more involved in community activities. She’d been annoyed at the interruption, as well as his proprietorial manner, and after a few minutes Jessica had sidled away, asking Evie to keep in touch.

Back home, over the following weeks, Evie’s spirits had plummeted. Home was Heronbrook, a bungalow in a secluded woodland setting in Wicklow, close to the sea. She’d snapped it up when it came on the market four years previously and had moved there permanently after her retirement two years ago, renting out the apartment in Blackrock she’d been living in. But its usual calm failed to soothe her after the unexpected encounter with Jessica. It had shaken her, bringing home to her just how much rich family life she’d missed out on, thanks to the years of silence.

Being busy all those years had been a great distraction. There had been no time to reflect on past mistakes or wallow in heartbreak, the mask she donned in front of the cameras remaining firmly in place throughout her working years. When she first retired, exhaustion had blanketed her. But meeting Jessica had the effect of ripping a sticking plaster away from an old wound, and in the quiet of the night, her dark conscience echoed remorsefully with memories of the girl she had once been, filled with an unbridled enthusiasm for life; Pippa, with her calculating glance, hovered on the periphery of those memories, reminding her of the careless tragedy that had come between them and slammed into the rest of their lives; and the shadow of Lucien, lugging around the weight of his unfulfilled dreams like a sack of coal on his back. Lucien – it all came back to him, because everything began and ended with him.

Worse, she had begun to feel weary of life, wondering, jadedly, what was the point of it all, finding it impossible to forgive herself for her terrible mistakes. But mindful of Pippa’s harsh words all those years ago, she hadn’t attempted to contact Jessica until she’d found herself stranded in hospital.



‘Let’s get you freshened up,’ Chloe, one of the student nurses, said, breezing into the room after Jessica had left, picking up the bag of supplies.

‘I don’t want to take up too much of your time,’ Evie said, embarrassed by her helplessness.

‘Not at all, that’s what I’m here for.’

With a stout competence surprising for her age – early twenties, Evie guessed – and a gracious regard for Evie’s dignity and incapacity, Chloe helped her to shower and change.

‘Wait till my mum hears I’m looking after Ma Donnelly,’ Chloe said, referring to the character Evie had played in Delphin Terrace, an Irish inner-city-based crime drama. ‘She’s a great fan of yours,’ Chloe went on, as she carefully towelled Evie’s legs dry. ‘I think she’s watched every episode of the show twice or three times. How long were you in it for?’

‘Ten years,’ Evie said. The role of the gritty matriarch of the Donnelly gangland family was something she’d thrown herself into when she’d moved back home after spending most of her working life on the London stage and screen.

Chloe kept up a stream of chatter, finishing by helping Evie into fresh compression socks, velour leggings and a matching top. ‘There you go,’ Chloe said.

‘Thanks so much, I feel a lot better already.’ Jessica couldn’t have chosen better, she realised, feeling a warm glow of appreciation for her niece. The velour outfit was cosy, and perfect for Evie’s needs.

Chloe escorted her back to bed, and Evie closed her eyes and tried to relax against the pillows. But all she could see was the moment of the accident replaying in her mind: the sound of the motorbike growing louder behind her, knowing it was speeding up instead of slowing down. Reaching a bend in the lane, she’d turned to see it bearing down on her, the cyclist’s face obscured by the dark visor of the helmet. Then the world whirled around, her chest tightening in panic as she was flung into the air.

Now a sudden knot of disquiet flared inside her. When she’d decided to retire two years ago, in an attempt to boost the ratings during the summer lull, the producers of Delphin Terrace had inflicted a series of intimidating incidents on Ma Donnelly, culminating in a hit-and-run that had resulted in the demise of her character. Evie glanced out the window to where a shaft of late-August sunshine darted its way into the narrow courtyard, alighting on the glistening leaves of a silver birch tree. Despite the accident, she was as alive as that tree, even if there were times she felt it was a life hardly worth living.

Coincidence? It had to be.

Anything else was terrifying.

JESSICA SWALLOWED BACK A WAVE OF ANXIETY AS she pulled into the driveway of her house in Laurel Lawns, a housing estate in the south Dublin suburb of Templeogue.

The minute she opened the hall door, her gaze darted around, checking for post. Nothing. Which meant nothing had arrived from the bank. Which meant a reprieve for the weekend, at least insofar as she didn’t have to deal with it. She let out her breath, releasing some of the tension in her shoulders. She stepped out of her high heels and slipped off her jacket, hanging it on the newel post. Then she padded down to the kitchen, the floor tiles cold under her stockinged feet.

Her younger brother, Jamie, was sitting on a high stool at the island counter, hunched over his mobile, his leather jacket dangling off the low back of the stool. He looked up and grinned at her, the grin she knew of old: the one that Jamie had used time and time again to get away with mischief. The grin she wasn’t in the humour for today. She’d had a hectic week, topped off by the visit to Evie. She’d no energy left for Jamie.

‘What are you doing here?’ she said.

‘I bumped into Amber in town,’ he said. ‘I came on out on the bus with her.’

Jessica checked the wall clock as she padded across the kitchen. Four thirty. ‘Amber’s home already?’

‘Yep. She’s upstairs. She gave me a beer,’ he said, lifting the bottle and tipping it to his mouth, ‘and she’s invited me for dinner.’

‘Dinner?’ Jessica dropped her handbag on the counter and tried to recalibrate her thoughts. Dinner on Fridays meant a takeout and a bargain-bin bottle of wine. Now Jamie would have to be included as well as Amber, seeing as she was home. Once upon a time it had meant a date night for her and Paul, but those evenings were long gone, as were impromptu weekends away and two foreign holidays a year.

‘Don’t look so startled,’ Jamie said. ‘I thought you’d like me popping in for a catch-up, especially when I haven’t been able to do that in so long.’

‘There’s not much to catch up on with me,’ she said.

‘Isn’t there?’

‘What does that mean?’ she asked. You can’t possibly know, can you? This fresh, new nightmare that’s giving me sleepless nights?

‘You look a bit hassled.’

Jessica filled the kettle. Of course she did. Lately, being hassled was her default position. She thought of her words to her aunt Evie, delivered earlier with the capable veneer she used to face down the world, telling her aunt she wasn’t a one-woman show, she didn’t run after anyone, and Jessica wanted to gag.

Until six weeks ago, the daily grind had been challenging enough, her energies squeezed between her husband and her humdrum marriage, her adult children and her ailing mother, her hectic job as a receptionist in a busy GP practice, and running a home as best she could on shaky finances – the shaky finances being the unstable foundation that coloured everything. Then, suddenly, two things had happened. Her younger brother returned home unexpectedly from New York after over twenty years – or rather, she corrected herself grimly, flung himself back into the bosom of Laurel Lawns like a smouldering grenade, announcing that he’d need a place to stay until he got on his feet, but refraining from explaining why he’d suddenly decided to land home. Then, fresh from the stress of Jamie delivered into a life that was already creaking at the seams, Jessica had stupidly allowed herself to fall victim to a financial phishing scam, which had cost her the guts of five thousand euro, and which she couldn’t bring herself to admit to her husband. She was still waiting to hear from the bank in writing, following their review of the case, hoping against hope that the funds might be recovered.

She took out a mug and shut the kitchen cupboard with more force than was necessary. Calm. Breathe slowly. ‘I’m not hassled, I’m fine.’

‘Hmm. I bet Evie upset you. Amber told me of your mercy mission. I hope you’re not going soft in the head.’

‘It was an emergency. Evie was genuinely stuck. She’s getting on in years and it was nice to be able to do something for her. You’d do it for a stranger, never mind family.’

‘Family? As if she’d give a shite about family. She had a cheek expecting you to come to her rescue.’

‘She’d no one else to ask. I’m glad she felt able to call on family, even if it was out of the blue. What happened to her was terrifying and she could have been killed.’

‘Pity the job wasn’t finished off properly.’

‘Jamie! I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.’

‘OK – sorry,’ he said, raising his hands in surrender. ‘I’m just …’

‘Just what?’ She looked at him keenly, wondering if he was finally going to reveal what had been silently bugging him since his return home – or what might have precipitated that surprise decision.

He shrugged. ‘Never mind.’

‘If you saw Evie, you’d feel nothing but sympathy for her. She’s so petite and delicate, she looks like a child.’

‘Sympathy? Evie? They don’t go together for me.’

The kettle boiled and she popped a teabag in a mug, stirring it before dunking it into the brown-bin caddy. She added a dash of milk and perched on a stool at the other end of the island counter, as far as possible from Jamie and the repressed antagonism she sensed simmering beneath his surface.

Their mother’s youngest and favourite child, Jamie had evolved from a truculent teenager into an angst-ridden adult who’d always been a drain on her energy and who was narcissistic enough to believe that life owed him a living. Shades of her mother; Jamie hadn’t exactly licked it off a stone. Then again, a fatherless Jamie had been stuck at home during those critical teenage years to bear the brunt of their mother’s alcoholism, whereas Jessica had managed to flee the nest before Pippa had become almost impossible to handle, her twin brother, Simon, also bailing out by moving to Hong Kong. No surprise that at the age of twenty-one Jamie had dropped out of college and gone to New York to seek his fortune. She’d visited him every other year when she’d been able to splash the cash, but had always felt a weight lifting off her when it was time to go home. Now in his early forties, Jamie had a huge chip on his shoulder and extra weight around his middle. His jawline had lost definition.

‘You can’t deny that if Evie popped her clogs it would solve a lot of problems, yours included,’ he said. ‘You could leave that busy job and get something part-time.’

‘I don’t have any problems to be solved,’ Jessica said, lying through her teeth, reminding herself that he couldn’t possibly know of her fresh troubles, ‘and that’s an awful thing to say. Anyhow, we have no idea what would happen to Evie’s estate if she died.’

‘Mum is her next of kin – she has to be the main beneficiary. Surely it’s the least Evie could do?’

‘I don’t get you.’

‘Evie owes her. Mum told me more than once that all her problems in life stemmed from her sister. That her life was fucked up because of her and whenever she lifted a glass, it was all Evie’s fault.’

‘We’ve had this conversation before, Jamie, you don’t know if there’s any truth in that.’

‘Mum never elaborated, but it’s clear to me Evie was the cause of her unhappiness, which led to her drinking, which then led to her stroke, and put her where she is today.’

‘You’re jumping to conclusions.’

‘Am I?’ He looked directly at Jessica.

Jessica shook her head. ‘I’m so not going there again.’

‘You have power of attorney over Mum’s affairs,’ Jamie went on, draining his beer. ‘You could sort us all out. An injection of funds might stop the haemorrhage from our inheritance into that bloody nursing home. I don’t know why you agreed to that expensive package in the first place.’

‘What was I supposed to do? Mum needed twenty-four-hour c