[louise's daughter]

[In the evenings, the house is silent but for the crackling fire. Miss Lingham always had the stove in the kitchen going, and Elise does the same.

There is a photograph album in the bookshelf, filled with old pictures: picnics in black and white, starched families outside small colonial homesteads, unfamiliar women in a dusty road.

None of them is Miss Lingham.

There are countless stories in the house, but they’re hidden in the walls, the layers of paint, that broken door-lock, this repaired light shade, the chip in the milk jug and the cracked blue vase. Each flaw tells its own story. Each scar has its own secrets.

At nights, Elise may look around the room, eyes on the freshly-dusted picture rail as if that might be where the story of her great aunt is hiding.

But Miss Lingham is nowhere to be found.

And yet she’s everywhere. From the compost heap to the old plate serving spoon in the kitchen drawer, Miss Lingham is entirely present. Elise can feel it. Miss Lingham’s footfall doesn’t pause in the corridor; the bean frames stand silent without her chatter among them.

Is the chip in the milk jug a sad story or a happy one? Perhaps it’s no more than an innocent accident, unremarkable. There is no way of knowing.

Elise is a nobody, identified in Miss Lingham’s will only as "Louise’s daughter".

She doesn’t have parents now, and she didn’t know Miss Lingham.

She doesn’t know why she's here.]