The Family Game by Catherine Steadman (95)

You stir in the clear bassinet beside my hospital bed as I shift into a more comfortable position.

Beyond the windows of Mount Sinai, the sky is blue. You are a summer baby; you arrived a little later than everyone expected, but you survived that night in the snow seven months ago. We both did.

We stood in the cold, the remaining Holbecks and I, and we watched The Hydes burn to the ground. The new wing would be all that would remain. A wing rising from the ashes. They say the rebuild will be completed by next spring, to Eleanor’s minimalist specifications.

In the hospital corridors beyond my private room the ward buzzes with life, but you sleep on peacefully after the storm of hours before. I watch your tiny chest rise and fall—the life inside me now outside.

The last Christmas I spent with your father will always be burned into my memories and into my skin: the flesh of my hands, my calves, warped forever; my lungs scarred. I’ll never run a marathon, but I was strong enough to keep us both alive.

They cut you from my abdomen in the early hours of this morning. Not because there was a problem, but because there wasn’t. You just didn’t want to leave; you were happy, too content nestled safe inside me.

But the world was waiting to see you. So they shucked me open, like an oyster, and popped you out, my pearl. My little Iris.

Granddad Robert paid for this room. He paid for everything, and he always will. He chose Mummy, you see, for a very important task: he saw something in me, a strength or a usefulness—whichever you prefer. Granddad knew one day we would do something amazing, you and I, that we would save him, that we would save the whole family. You won’t hear it from me, but you will from them. You see, Mummy won a game—an old Christmas game. But we don’t play that game anymore.

That last year we played, everyone got their presents—Mummy insisted. Auntie Fiona got a trust for her boys; Uncle Oliver got a company stake for them; Uncle Stuart got to take over Oliver’s position in the company; and Mummy got a new family. And lest we forget, Granny and Granddad got you.

They found a gas leak at The Hydes; it could have killed us all. And while the insurance company would not pay out, the lawyers and investigators found enough evidence to close the case. An unforeseeable accident. Of course, we wish there was someone to blame for the deaths of three dearly loved people, but life takes as often as it gives. The temperatures reached in the main building meant only DNA could be recovered. Uncle Oliver, Auntie Fiona, and your father, all lost.

Sam, Tristan, and Billy became orphans that night, like Mummy. But you still have me.

I will not tell you how they moved their parents, how the scene was set, how the men that came in the early hours made everything go away. Your grandfather set wheels in motion. Money, power, leverage make the world go around. Sometimes knowing the right people for the job means knowing the wrong people.

But my hope is you never have to find that out.

Though, know this, if you ever need me to, my love, I will move the world for you. But no more than once. I have seen how chasing one mistake with another can become a habit.

They stayed up late, you see, after the rest of us went to bed. They must have fallen asleep in front of the fire, the rug caught and wooden doors warped with the heat. The smoke would have gotten them while they slept, and the fire did the rest. If it hadn’t been for you, keeping me awake at night, I might not have noticed the heat, the smoke. I might not have been able to save those that I did.

I want you to know, Iris, my love, that Mummy tried to save Daddy. I mean that in the truest and the realest sense, but it was too late. And though he is no longer here, the man I met that one magical night, the man I fell in love with—he will live on in you. You are the best of him and he would have loved you so much. And while Daddy might be gone, you will have so many people who love you.

And when you are older, I will tell you the story of the family I lost, and the family I gained. The favor Granddad asked of me and the price he paid for it. The son he lost and the daughter he gained. My story might not be a perfect rendition of the facts, but sometimes it’s easier to understand the truth of our lives through stories. Sometimes stories cut to the heart of things straighter, truer.

I know a mystery surrounds us, but the global interest in us, in my latest book, will be long gone by the time you are old enough to understand. They say the book is too close to life for comfort. That to write a thriller based on a real-life tragedy is distasteful in the extreme, but we all cope with what life throws at us in different ways. And people love a mystery.

Better fictional horror than the real sort, as your granddad would say.

Years from now you will inherit it all. The Holbeck fortune, the empire, the history, because you are the firstborn’s first child. You take your father’s mantle. Granddad and Uncle Stuart will hold down the fort until you are ready—if you want to be ready.

The family name is a heavy crown to bear if you overthink it. But I promise you, things will be different for you, my love. I will be here for you every step of the way—if you need me to be. You can choose the life you want to live, because you are not a Holbeck, not really. You’re a Reed, and us Reeds—we have no history to live up to at all.

We only have our future.





I dedicate this book to my readers, with thanks and huge gratitude.





Acknowledgments



Thank you to my wonderful editors: Kara Cesare at Penguin Random House in the United States and Bethan Jones at Simon & Schuster in the United Kingdom, who both added so many layers to this story with their invaluable thoughts, questions, and nudges. Huge thanks for making the editing process on this, and on every book, so creatively engaging and fun! I’m incredibly lucky to have you.