Every time my brother-in-law drove me home, I would black out and wake up sore. My husband just laughed and said I was out of shape. After the fourth trip, I hid a voice recorder in my purse — and that night I heard a phone call that made me realize the blackouts had never been accidents.

Eleven days. If I had bought that recorder after the fifth drive instead of the fourth, there would be no story here and I would still be in that flat.

And my sister’s forty per cent has not been touched. It was never going to be.

Because Carmen reads things. Carmen rings people. Carmen is, by universal agreement in that family, extremely difficult — and she has been extremely difficult since about 1996.

They came for mine because mine was the one that would go quietly.

I have had to sit with that sentence for eleven weeks and it is worse than the water.
PART 4

And now the part that is mine, which is the reason I am writing any of this down at all.

Because I am a senior accountant. Sixteen years in, fully qualified, with eleven people reporting to me.

And I would very much like somebody to explain to me how a woman like that signs away her own father’s company four times without noticing.