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Prologue

       London, 2016

      The ornate marble fireplace glowed from the fire that hissed and danced within it, as though in celebration of what was to come for Daphné Le Marche and, as she watched the flames, she imagined her final descent into hell.

      Was it Mark Twain who said that you should go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company?

      Daphné would always take the excellent company over a sunny day; besides, the state of the weather had never bothered her. She lived so much in her head that she often failed to notice the black clouds building on the horizon.

      That was often the problem in her eighty years on Earth, she mused, as she watched the cremation dance in the distance of her bedroom.

      The nurse had said it was too warm for a fire in this mild July summer, and the doctor said the smoke wasn’t good for her heart, but he had said it half-heartedly, she thought, and she smiled at her own pun.

      What did they know about her frozen bones and broken heart? What did they know about being housed in an eighty-year-old body with a thirty-year-old mind?

      Of course, the fire was lit as requested, and a new nurse was employed; one who didn’t sigh, and blow her fringe up with her breath when she entered Daphné’s bedroom.

      She looked around her bedroom with her tired eyes. It was splendid; everything in her world was splendid. Her bedroom was perfectly appointed in every way, from the pale apricot silk curtains to the antique furniture, but the only items that gave her pleasure at that moment were her mother’s linen sheets which she lay upon, given to her on her wedding day sixty years ago.

      How she wished for her mother now, tears burning her tired eyes, as the heavy oak door to her bedroom opened.

      Edward Badger entered the room, standing awkwardly in the entrance, holding a leather satchel and an iPad.

      ‘Madame Le Marche,’ he said in a deferential yet somewhat embarrassed tone. He had probably never seen her so vulnerable and looking so old, she thought, and she took a little pleasure in still making those around her feel uncomfortable. She liked people to not feel too familiar with her. Just because they knew the stories, they didn’t know the woman, she often told those nearby, a boastful warning of who they were dealing with.

      For twelve years, Edward had worked for Daphné Le Marche as her personal solicitor, starting as a junior and then working his way to her side. He was the most loyal person she had ever known, or the most stupid—she could never quite decide—but at least he stayed when everyone else had left.

      ‘Edward, please, sit.’ She motioned to the uncomfortable Queen Anne style chair, placed by her bedside for visitors. She had deliberately asked for this chair to be used, discouraging long stays.

      Not that any of the visitors who had sat by her failing side had offered her any comfort. Who could offer her comfort now, besides the doctor and his heavy leather bag of medicines?

      Edward looked handsome with the fire behind him, and Daphné wondered if he had left a woman’s bed to be in another woman’s bedroom at nearly midnight. Edward never spoke of his love life, although she was sure he wasn’t gay. Perhaps if she were younger, she might have helped him in some way to find his lover or she might have kept him for herself. She smiled to herself at the thought of her younger self in seduction mode.

      ‘I have decided,’ she said finally, feeling her heart beat in random triplets.

      Edward nodded and sat down as she instructed. He then opened the satchel and took out a thick sheaf of papers.

      ‘Do you believe in heaven and hell?’ she asked.

      To his credit, Edward didn’t seem perturbed by her question even though Madame Le Marche had never really engaged in small talk with him, but then again conversations about the afterlife could not be construed as small talk.

      ‘No,’ he answered as he shuffled the papers, finding the one page he needed to record her final wishes.

      ‘You seem so sure, have you already had a preview of what’s to come?’ She laughed a little.

      He looked up at the old woman and smiled. ‘I deal in facts and there isn’t any evidence to suggest that such places exist outside this life.’

      His eyes were kind and his voice steady and she wondered if he was as good to his own mother as he was to her.

      ‘Are you suggesting there exists a place within this life? That heaven is here on earth?’

      Edward raised his broad shoulders and shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’

      Daphné felt a rare stir of interest. Age makes you not only weary but also bored, she often said.

      ‘Go on,’ she demanded.

      Edward smiled, almost to himself, she noticed. ‘Do you know those days that are perfect? Where everything makes sense and who you are with, or your own company, feels like destiny, when everything is flowing your way, that is heavenly, isn’t it?’

      ‘Perhaps,’ she said, slightly imitating him.

      He went on, ignoring her dusting of scorn. ‘And those days or nights, yes it’s usually night-time, when you wonder how it all could have gone so incredibly wrong, why the person you love is in pain, or how can a baby have cancer? How can people suffer so much? I think that is hell. It’s usually between the hours of two and four in the morning that the worst of those thoughts occur.’

      ‘Hell has a schedule? A timetable?’ She laughed again, but it sounded hollow to her ears.

      She knew those hours. She knew that hell.

      Edward was silent, as though he had said too much, but she didn’t have time for his guilt. She had her own to deal with.

      She paused, as her long, thin fingers clutched the edge of the sheets.

      She remembered her mother tucking her into bed when she was sick, the smell of lavender on the sheets, the sound of a fire in the bedroom lulling her to sleep.

      When I die, I will go downstairs and my mother will be upstairs, she thought, and at that moment Daphné regretted the choices she had made in life, for only her mother was enough to cause a woman like Daphné Le Marche penitence.

      Edward waited patiently for her decision to be revealed.

      ‘Is the formula safe?’ she asked, and Edward nodded.

      ‘It’s in the bank vault,’ he said.

      ‘And the journals?’

      ‘Locked in the drawer in London,’ he answered.

      Daphné sighed. There was no point postponing it any longer. She knew what she had to do.

      ‘The girls, I leave it all to the girls,’ she said finally.

      Edward blinked a few times, as though trying to process her ruling.

      ‘And Robert?’ He asked of her only surviving child.

      ‘He made his decision years ago,’ she said and Edward was silent.

      The Le Marche family history was enough to fill scandal sheets for years to come, but he knew her decision to overlook her only son and heir was not made lightly.

      ‘They must be here in London; they must work at Le Marche for a year before they can sell and they must always have two signatures on every decision. They are each other’s conscience.’

      Edward wrote notes on the iPad as she spoke, her hands now running along the edging of the top sheet. Back and forth, like practising scales on the piano as a child.

      She thought of her business and she wished she could stay. Nothing was as good as working, she once

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