This Family: 'Deserves to be HUGE' - MARIAN KEYES

Also by Kate Sawyer The Stranding This Family Kate Sawyer www.hodder.co.uk First published in Great Britain in 2023 by Coronet An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton An Hachette UK company Copyright © Kathryn Sawyer 2023 The right of Kathryn Sawyer to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Cover image: INSERT COVER IMAGE CREDIT All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library eBook ISBN 9781529340730 Hardback ISBN 9781529340716 Trade Paperback ISBN 9781529340723 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd Carmelite House 50 Victoria Embankment London EC4Y 0DZ www.hodder.co.uk For my mother, Valerie Sawyer (née Shaw). The days are long, but the years are short Gretchen Rubin Contents One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen Interlude Nineteen Twenty Twenty-one Twenty-two Twenty-three Twenty-four Twenty-five Twenty-six Twenty-seven Twenty-eight Twenty-nine Thirty Thirty-one Thirty-two Thirty-three Thirty-four Thirty-five Epilogue Acknowledgements One Mary steps out of the conservatory down onto the patio. The pips from the radio in the kitchen pierce the heavy air. Midday, five hours until the arrival of the first guest. On the lawn she glances back over her shoulder, then shifts the heavy bundle of tablecloths in her arms and quickens her pace. Sweat is gathering in the crevices of her body. The new slip beneath her dressing gown is already adhering to her flesh, her thighs catching against one another. There is a dampness, even behind her knees. She lets the pile of pressed cloths fall with a thud, then closes her eyes and runs her hand over the table as she walks its length. Almost every flat surface from the house has been tackled outside to create this great, snaking banqueting table. She recognises the textures under her palm, the dips, the changes in height. Even without looking she can identify them. The dining table. Her sewing table. The desk from Rosie’s room. The trestle table that Richard bought specifically for Phoebe’s Scalextric. She is beneath the tree now, under its umbrella of shade. The burn of the sun against the back of her neck, the heat of it on her head eases, and there is the brief relief of feeling markedly cooler. She tips her head back, her hand still on the table, and opens her eyes. It was the tree, or rather the light through its branches, that was the deciding factor for Mary. She had been in the first flush of discovering gardening when they viewed the house and had become increasingly able to name the plants and trees she came across; it was a new-found passion that had arrived thanks to the evenings she’d sat on the sofa pinned beneath Emma, trying to tune out her mother-in-law, dazedly staring at Geoff Hamilton running compost through his fingers. During all those months at Irene’s, she had dreamed of raised beds, of digging borders, planting bulbs. She remembers the details of a daydream into which she would slip when Irene was ticking her off for one misdemeanour or another: an expanse of lawn, a tree casting its shade upon the sward, a greenhouse with Victorian finials at either end, neat rows of vegetables nestled in home-made compost. In the years since, as she’s sat in her conservatory and taken in the garden, she’s considered that, were it not for Irene, she might not have noticed it at all. ‘Look at that tree!’ She leaned forward the better to see it through the windscreen of the new Volvo as the drive crunched under its tyres. Richard grunted, tutting that the gravel would chip the paintwork. The house was too big, he said. The garden would be a chore, they’d have to hire someone. And the village didn’t even have a pub. How long would it take to get an ambulance out if there was an accident? Or a fire? She didn’t much like the house on first impressions either. It was ridiculously large, bigger than they needed for the three of them, and it was so square, the bricks so grey. She had always wanted a red-brick house or, seeing as she’d fetched up in this part of the world, one that she could paint a Suffolk pink. But she couldn’t take her eyes off the tree. It shimmered. An inconstant light glittering along the side of the house as if a disco ball were turning nearby. It was in full leaf, dancing in the late spring breeze. Slender branches waved like elegant fingers playing through long hair, slicing the light that reflected from the pond beneath it and causing this spectacular light-show on the grey brick facade. Mary knew she had to have it. Today, the old willow seems to be as exhausted as the fat ginger cat that is sprawled in its shade. Looking up into the net of tangled branches overhead, Mary can see little of the perfectly blue sky above her, but still she thinks of Emma. Her eldest daughter, hurtling towards this island like an asteroid. She can imagine her, her head tilted to the window, watching the Atlantic glinting in the sun beneath her, her legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles. She can see the soft leather of her shoes: heels – the sort of shoes that only someone like Emma would wear to fly. She can see her shaking her head, raising her palm against the offer of a complimentary glass