Chapter One

      ‘I’m an adult now, the past is dealt with.’

      That was what I told myself as I stood at the desk where my mother had done her household accounts.

      The voice of my subconscious mocked me then.

      ‘The past is never dealt with, Toni. It’s our past that creates us.’

      No sooner did those unwanted words flit into my head than my treacherous memories began to slide back to when I was the teenage Antoinette.

      Antoinette. Just the name filled me with sadness.

      I pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind and opened the desk, the only piece of furniture that remained from the joint home my parents had shared. I found the deeds of the house and put them to one side ready to give to the solicitor. Next came an old leather wallet which, on opening it, I saw contained two hundred pounds in notes of various denominations.

      Underneath them, I found letters yellowed by age and three photographs that must have lain there from before my mother’s death. One was of my mother and me when I was just under a year old, one was of my mother’s parents and there was a head-and-shoulder photograph of my grandmother when she was around thirty years old.

      The letters aroused my curiosity. They were addressed to my mother in an old-fashioned copperplate hand and opening one, I found a simple love letter written by a young man who was separated from his family by war. He was overjoyed by the birth of their baby girl. He had only seen his daughter once when she was just a few weeks old. He had been back to