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"Yes. And I'm proud of you. But I think you should at least let 'me' read it before you send it out to any more agents."

"What? No!"

"If you won't let me read it, 'why are you sending it out to strangers'?"

"Hanging up now, I'm nearly at the house." I shuffle to the end of the road, where Jenny is sitting on the steps waiting for me.

Mum's house sits miserably at the end of a posh row of terraces, like Halloween attending a garden party. I wave to Jenny as she dusts off her chic skirt and runs a hand through her long black hair. Her fashion sense is impeccable, and I smooth a hand down my voluminous summer dress and reconsider having bought this monstrosity. For some reason, I just seem drawn to dresses that make me look like a Victorian ghost. My pale skin and blond curls only contribute to this impression, so I might as well stop fighting it.

Like Mum, Jenny and I studied art at Central Saint Martins. Her parents moved to London from Hong Kong when Jenny was a baby and are some of the loveliest people you'll ever meet. I'd never tell Mum, but sometimes when I craved a nice stable atmosphere that included a dad and siblings, I'd head to Jenny's after school instead of going home, even when Jenny was at tennis lessons or out somewhere. Her parents would let me sit and do homework and I'd chat with the whole family while the smells of actual home cooking filled my nose.

When Jenny graduated, she landed so firmly on her feet that she's already in dream-job territory. She turned down a job in set design at the Royal Albert Hall to become part of the team that does the window displays at Harrods. She lives for it, and creates masterpieces, especially at Christmas.

"Well," she says, linking her arm through mine, "should we see what your mum's basement has in store for us?"

We both take a moment to stare up at the house. Two sets of grimy bay windows frame the large stone steps leading to the front door. A long time ago the door must have been green, but the paint has been shedding itself in layers over the years, and the wood's a bit warped. I do love it, though. Four stories of whitewashed former grandeur loom upward, and most of the old velvet curtains still shroud the windows. "Thanks for doing this with me," I say. I'm not even sure what I'm thankful for, because this is the house I grew up in. And even though it was just Mum and me, it's always been a happy place to be. I think I'm just grateful that Jenny shows up when I call her, even when the call is just something like,

'Hey, want to clean out an old basement with me?'

"No problem," Jenny replies. "And you already did the hard bit last week, right?"

"Ugh, don't remind me. There were so many boxes and trunks. And the removal men I hired were complete cowboys; they just threw everything into their van. I think I heard glass shatter on a few occasions. But I signed my name on the dotted line and had it all shipped over to Great Aunt Frances's weird mansion in Dorset. I hope she doesn't get too angry when a bunch of her old junk shows up unexpectedly, but Mum is insistent on converting the basement into a studio."

"Frances is the aunt who technically owns this house, right?"

"That's the one."

"Why haven't I heard more about her? Or met her?" Jenny's voice is open, but there's a small hint of a sting to her tone, as if she suspects I've left her out of something important.

"Don't take it personally," I say. "I've never met her either. Apparently she doesn't like London, or traveling. And she's so wealthy that she doesn't bother checking up on this place. I think she even sends Mum a bit of money each week. It's sort of silly and old-fashioned, like a weekly allowance from a parent, but Mum's not too proud to take it. Once I asked Mum why Great Aunt Frances sends money, and she just brushed it off and shrugged."

"Huh," Jenny says, and I can see her chewing on all this new information, not ready to let it go. "This sounds macabre, but what happens when she dies? Does she have kids who'll kick you guys out?"

"Nope, Mum is set to inherit everything." I brace myself for Jenny's reaction, because this is the sort of fact that your best friend of sixteen years should probably already know. And I wasn't keeping it from her; it's just something that honestly never came up. Great Aunt Frances is so distant that my default mentality is that the house really is ours. I forget she exists until I have to do something like sort through all her old stuff.

But Jenny just whistles under her breath. "Family money," she says, rolling her eyes. "I thought the concept was fake, like something that's just in movies."

We push open the stiff front door—unlocked, of course. Mum never locks it; she says if someone's going to choose a house on Tregunter Road to rob, it won't be ours. My eyes sweep over the exposed brick of the hallway, half the plaster still lingering in patches. Mum's right—any burglar would take one look at the layers of peeling wallpaper in here and determine there's nothing worth stealing. They'd be wrong, though, because most of Mum's art is worth an absolute fortune. She'd never sell any of the early work she still has around the house, though; she's far too sentimental about it. "In here!" Mum's voice echoes from the kitchen, which is deep in the back of the house. We tiptoe through two vast rooms that most people would use as sitting rooms but that Mum uses as studio space. Huge canvases lean against the walls, and the floor is covered in paint splatters. Mum gave up using dust sheets for the floors decades ago. The light that comes through the two sets of bay windows is yellow and musty, fighting its way through at least twenty-five years' worth of city grime. Never once in my life do I remember Mum having the windows cleaned, but I'm so used to the light being this way that I think if she did, it would feel too harsh and shiny—like taking your sunglasses off on a bright summer's day.