Drake's second move arrived on a Tuesday, eleven days after she'd come home.
It did not come in the form of a person.
It came in the form of a letter.
She found it in the post — an ordinary envelope, her name on the front in handwriting that was neither her mother's nor anyone else she recognized, a Harrowfield postmark that meant it had been sent locally, which meant someone had been in town. The envelope was good paper — thick, cream-coloured, the kind you chose deliberately. Her name was written with a fountain pen, in a hand that was careful and slightly archaic, the hand of someone who had learned to write in a different era.
She stood in the hallway with it and felt — not fear, not yet. Something more like the sensation of having been seen. The specific discomfort of that.
She b
