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On the wall of the back staircase hung an oil sketch of a nude by Laura Knight.

It was breathtaking, and I had a hunch that it featured the same woman, Ella Naper, who had appeared in Knight’s groundbreaking self-portrait.

Knight’s work had been a passion of my father’s.

Had he seen this? Grief hit and I almost doubled over with it.

It didn’t feel like he was gone, yet he was.

The grief was followed by a flood of intense anger.

This surprised me but I’d been left with a mess.

Why was I having to fix this? I couldn’t even fix myself.

I needed to grow up and get a grip. No one prepared you for this.

Maybe it wasn’t possible. I was a head-in-the-sand – or in my case, a head-in-the-research – type of person, ignoring the world and all its problems. But that wasn’t possible now.

I loved my mother and wanted to help her.

It was only a matter of working out how to.

My phone vibrated. Paul. Tash was right. This was distracting. Right now I had a raft of problems, including Stephen. I shoved the phone back into my pocket and walked into the kitchen. Tash handed me a mug of tea and a biscuit. ‘I think the bookcase in the study is another Chippendale piece.’

‘Really?’ I dunked the biscuit.

‘Ye of little faith.’

I flinched.

‘Sorry, Ren.’ She reached out to me, but I pulled back. ‘I didn’t mean that. Furniture isn’t your thing and paintings are.’

‘Well I don’t do too well with those either.’

‘Hogwash.’

‘Tash.’ I looked at the ceiling, seeing discoloration where water or damp must have come through at one point. It had been repainted, but it couldn’t completely cover the mark. That was me. I tried to move past my error and yet I kept seeing it no matter what I covered it with.

‘We all make mistakes.’

I laughed bitterly. ‘Not ones that cost so much.’

‘True.’

‘It took years to fix too.’ I looked around. Why was I here?

Tash threw an arm across my shoulder. ‘You were young.’

‘I was stupid.’

‘Cautious.’

I drew a deep breath. ‘I know, but . . .’

‘It’s history. As they say, let it go.’ She waved her arms dramatically.

‘Ha, easier said than done.’

Bastard appeared, then darted off. I jumped, and bumped into the wall, disturbing a painting.

Tash righted it. ‘I love Sheba’s work, and I’m not into modern stuff.’

I laughed. ‘Yes, you always preferred the photographic type of art.’

‘I do like me a bit of Monet too!’ She placed her hands on her hips.

‘Ah yes, the poster of the water lilies in your uni house.’

‘Don’t say I don’t do culture.’ She grabbed a biscuit.

‘Never!’ We had always disagreed on art, and on books too.

She liked fantasy and I preferred a good old romance.

But I supposed both of us liked to be swept away somewhere else.

What saddened me was that I no longer knew what she was reading.

Or if she read at all. Annabelle was coming up to seven.

Tash had said in the early years that sleep was rare and concentration was harder.

I had commiserated, but part of me was jealous.

Children were not on Paul’s agenda. He’d said we would wait until I could look after myself.

I’d been devastated at the time, but he was right and he’d only been thinking of me.

When all of this was done, I would talk to him about it again.

Neither of us was getting any younger. I was thirty and he was forty-five.

My phone vibrated and I smiled. He must have sensed I was thinking of him. His text said he loved me. Tash shook her head.

‘I’m going to take a look at this bookcase,’ I said.

‘Don’t believe me?’ She stared at me all wide-eyed and innocent.

I laughed. ‘I don’t believe even I would have missed a Chippendale bookcase.’

‘Fair,’ she said, grabbing another biscuit.

Bastard was waiting for me by the main stairs.

She kept close to my side as I stopped to view the portrait again.

Together Tash and I should be able to take it off the wall and see if the reverse of the canvas would reveal its origin.

But in the meantime, if there was a Chippendale in the study I needed to know, and if Tash could recognise it why hadn’t my uncle?

I flicked the light on. The switch was an old Bakelite one.

So much of this house was in a time warp, including the electrics.

The only modern things were the later works of art, and Bastard.

When I was in this room before, I’d been drawn to the desk.

Tash had tidied all the paperwork into neat piles.

With a clear view of the bookcase, I could see she was on to something.

If it wasn’t an original, then it was a damn fine copy.

The piece was painted in what was called japanned decoration.

The shelf height was adjustable, and what looked like doors on the bottom was actually a drawer.

Pulling this open, I found it stuffed with notebooks and piles of letters.

It was chaos. Had the women left it this way, or had someone been looking for something?

There was a great deal of paperwork to be sorted.

‘Am I right or am I right?’ Tash leaned against the door frame with her arms crossed.

‘I suspect you’re right.’

‘I know I am, because I saw its twin at the V&A two months ago.’

I raised an eyebrow.

‘School trip.’

‘Long way.’ She hadn’t let me know she was in London.

‘We were there overnight and took in the V&A and the Science Museum.’

I looked at the piece, blinking. It stung that she hadn’t been in touch.

‘I messaged you.’

I turned to her, seeing a challenge in her eyes. ‘I didn’t receive it.’

‘It said read. Both Annabelle and I were upset. I think she still is.’

‘I would never hurt her.’

‘I didn’t think so, but she so wanted to see you.’

I pulled out my phone and scrolled through Tash’s messages. ‘When was the trip?’

‘October.’

I kept going through until September. Nothing. I handed her my phone.

She scrolled and shook her head, then pulled out her own. She found the text in seconds.

Hi Ren, Chick and I are in London for two days with school and we’d both love to see you.

There were two blue ticks. I shook my head.

‘I don’t know what happened.’ I hadn’t read it, that much I knew.

A sinking thought occurred that perhaps Paul had and hadn’t told me.

If he’d seen it first, he could have deleted it.

But he wouldn’t do that, even though he didn’t like Tash. There must be another explanation.

‘I’m sorry.’ I looked her directly in the eyes. ‘I will make it up to Annabelle.’

Tash nodded. I needed to be more engaged with the world.

My life had become too small and I relied too much on Paul.

We lived in his circle of academics, with only the crew of Fake or Fabulous for light relief.

But by missing the text, I had failed Annabelle, and that cut through everything else.

It was why I hadn’t had a letter or a postcard from her.

‘Apology accepted. But you’ll have to negotiate with Annabelle yourself.’

‘I will.’

‘Good, now this.’ She tapped the bookcase.

‘It appears we may have two Chippendale pieces, and that means that this is not simply a small house clearance.’

‘Did you think it was?’

I shrugged. Truthfully, I didn’t know what to think. My father’s notes were minimal, but he wouldn’t have missed the Chippendales, let alone the Laura Knight. Something was odd here, and it wasn’t simply my uncle’s behaviour.

‘What do you know about these two artists?’ I asked.

‘Me?’ Tash pursed her mouth. ‘You’re the expert.’

‘I wasn’t living here when they died.’

‘You don’t need to remind me of that.’ She played with the paperwork on the desk. ‘It made the local papers, of course. Two women dead for at least two weeks.’ She picked up a page and scanned its contents. ‘Poetry, eh?’

‘Yes,’ I said, then it clicked. Simon Forster. There was the signed book of his work upstairs. Maybe they had kept in touch.

Tash went on. ‘The gardener found them, which must have been horrific, but at least it was December.’ Though even in the cold weather, bodies lying around that long couldn’t have been pleasant. ‘Oh, and Dad mentioned that because of the fire at Jim Fine’s old place, they couldn’t find the wills.’

‘So there were wills.’

‘Absolutely, he remembered filing them when he was a clerk there during his training.’

‘But no copies?’

She held her hands out.

It was odd, but I wasn’t here to solve the mystery of their deaths. I was here to value and sell the contents of the house. The only real puzzle was that of the painting in the hallway.

‘Can you give me a hand with the portrait? I need to have a look at the back of it.’

Tash nodded and led the way to the stairs. ‘We’ll need a ladder.’ She stood under the painting.

‘I’ll look through the outbuildings.’

Bastard followed me and sat patiently while I unlocked the back door.

Outside the air smelled briny and of something sweet I couldn’t quite pinpoint.

A clump of daffodils with white petals and bright orange centres grew out of an old granite trough.

One sniff told me they were responsible for the fragrance.

I hadn’t noticed a ladder in Sheba’s studio but there must be one in Vivian’s.

Many of her pieces were large. Bastard sat in front of the studio door.

It took three goes to find the correct key, then the cat nosed the door open.

Light flooded in from the skylights and illuminated a draped object on the left-hand side of the space.

Overcome with curiosity, I pulled the dust cloth off and gasped.

It was a sculpture worked in wood, not unlike the one that stood in the centre of the room.

But this one was much larger, and it was complete.

The piece of elm was old and the grain twisted like the sinuous shape of a dancer, picked out by dark threads running through it. It was spectacular.