CHAPTER 8 – MATTY
LONDONShe was already in there, her pale, freckled hand clasping the neck of the wine glass. When he was small he loved looking at her hands, so pale that they were almost translucent, the purple latticework of veins just visible through the papery skin. She would gently hold him with these hands when he had nightmares and wasn’t able to speak. That was in the days when she still insisted on being called ‘Mother’.
She was sitting at her usual table, stoic and composed, rifling through a glossy brochure filled with photos of new builds, period homes, sixties ‘classics’, mock-Tudor mansions split into flats and any other type of property that most young couples in London would dream of owning, but in reality could never hope to afford.
She was wearing a tight, elegant an
