‘I must talk to her.’ Grete rose, still clutching Ezzie’s resignation letter.
‘She’s left,’ he said. Then, because his mother looked so despairing, he hugged her, noticing that her bones seemed nearer the surface now. She wore her years so lightly that he sometimes forgot that she was seventy-two.
Slowly, Grete resumed her seat. Loath to leave her with a frown on her forehead and woe in her eyes, he crossed to the windows and shut out the late afternoon darkness. A coffee machine stood on a small wooden unit, but judging that they’d both benefit from something stronger, he left the room and jogged downstairs. From the kitchen he caught the sound of Alvin’s bubbling laughter and Josefin’s friendly chatter. He turned off the hall to thedining room and the drinks unit, where he mixed two sturdy gin and tonics and added ice from the mini fridge. When he stepped back into the corridor, he caught sight of another thin brown envelope on the doormat.
His heart sank.
He lodged a drink on a convenient lamp table so he could swoop up the envelope. This time ‘Grete Larsson’ was written on the front in a different, untidier hand.
He carried it upstairs to his mother unopened, handing it over with a sigh, an apologetic look and the gin.
Wordlessly, Grete opened it, scanned the contents, then passed it to him. He read:
Dear Grete,
Please accept my resignation as from today.
With kindest regards,
Altheadora Wynter
‘Shit,’ he muttered, feeling as if he’d poked at something and discovered too late that it was a wasps’ nest.
Grete took a gulp of gin. ‘The sisters were adopted – I don’t know if you knew. But I’ve never known any siblings more loyal to each other.’
He shook his head. ‘I didn’t know that, but I’m pretty certain that loyalty is not the full story here. They’re tied together by something they want to hide.’
He didn’t know what, or if it was appropriate for him to know, but he did want to repair any damage he’d done, as well as removing the slump from his mother’s shoulders at the loss of the Wynter sisters.
