The name on the document was Thomas Ashford.
My uncle.
My mother's younger brother. The man who had sat at our dinner table every Christmas until I was fifteen, who had taught me to play chess on a board with a missing knight that we always replaced with a bottle cap, who had left Crestholm sixteen years ago for reasons my mother described as "your uncle needed to find himself" and which I had, as a child, accepted at face value because children accepted things at face value and adults let them.
My uncle Thomas had, eight years ago, sent an email to a private account connected to the debt acquisition network that would eventually reach Eleanor Cole, flagging Ashford Manor specifically. Providing the property records. Providing the debt history. Providing, in organised and clearly format
