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it’s all right,’ said Kitty. ‘I open anything red, fill in the cheques and Mum signs them.’
    Isabel registered his disapproval. She had noticed it on other mothers’ faces when she said that the nanny did the cooking, or that she didn’t know her children’s schoolfriends’ names. It had been apparent on the faces of those who had visited since Laurent’s death when they took in the shambles of the house. Occasionally she had even spotted it in Mary when Isabel had lain in bed and howled instead of helping to get the children to school. That stage, the one at which she had felt half demented, had seen him in passing faces, raged at God for taking him, had passed. But the path out of grief wasn’t any easier.
    Mr Cartwright took up a pen and closed his briefcase. ‘What I have to say will not come as good news.’
    Isabel half wanted to laugh. My husband is dead, she thought. My son is still in shock and won’t speak. My daughter has aged twenty years in nine months and refuses to admit that anything is wrong at all. I have had to give up the one thing I love doing, the one thing I swore I would never do, and you think you can give me bad news?
    ‘Now that some time has passed and the – ah – legal side of things has been sorted out, I have had a comprehensive look at Laurent’s financial affairs, and it seems he was not quite as . . . solid as he may have appeared.’
    ‘Solid?’
    ‘I’m afraid he has not left you as well provided for as you might have expected.’
    That’s not a disaster, she wanted to say. Money has never been important to me. ‘But we have the house. And his life insurance. It can’t be that bad.’
    Mr Cartwright was reviewing the piece of paper in his hand. ‘Here is a summary,’ he said. ‘On the top left are his assets, and on the other side a list of what Mr Delancey owed when he . . . passed over.’
    ‘He died,’ she corrected. ‘I hate that expression,’ she muttered, catching Kitty’s reproachful eye. ‘He – he died. My husband died.’ There was no dressing it up. It should sound as bald, as hard, as it was.
    Mr Cartwright sat in silence as Isabel swallowed the lump in her throat.
    Blushing, she picked up the piece of paper. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said distractedly. ‘I don’t really do figures. Could you possibly explain them to me?’
    ‘Put simply, Mrs Delancey, your husband had borrowed heavily against this house to maintain your lifestyle. He was relying on the value of your property continuing to increase. Now that may happen, in which case your situation might not be so bad. But the biggest problem is that when he extended the mortgage, he did not increase his life insurance to cover the new sum. In fact, he cashed in one of his policies.’
    ‘The new job,’ she said vaguely. ‘He said the new job would bring in big bonuses. I didn’t really understand . . . I never really understood what he did.’ She smiled apologetically. ‘Something about . . . emerging markets?’
    He was looking at her as if everything should be self-explanatory.
    ‘I don’t . . . Could you tell me what it all means for us?’
    ‘The house is not paid for. The level of life-insurance payout means that less than half of the sum owing will be covered, leaving significant mortgage repayments outstanding, repayments that I’m not sure you’ll be able to meet. Until now, the remaining money in your joint and savings accounts has been covering them, but I’m afraid there is little left. You will receive a proportion of your husband’s pension, and perhaps there are some benefits, but you must find some other way of meeting your remaining mortgage payments if you want to keep your house.’
    It was like a crow cawing, an ugly, invasive noise. At some point she had ceased to hear his words and simply heard jargon. Insurance. Payments. Financial decisions. All the things she felt least capable of. She thought she might be getting a headache.
    She took a