She was good at thinking carefully. It was 1 of the things she had trained herself to do. Not to react immediately. Not to say the first thing that came to her. To sit with something until she understood its shape.
So what did she actually know?
She knew that her mother’s name was Victoria.
She knew that her mother had once been in a relationship with a man named Simon.
She knew that this man had left when her mother became pregnant.
She knew that her mother had raised her alone and had died when she was 16 without ever telling her the full story.
She knew that her employer’s name was Simon Caleb, that he was the right age, old enough to have been young 30 years ago, that there was a photograph in his study showing a young man named Simon alongside a young woman named Victoria who had the same face as her mother.
She knew that when she had first walked through his front door 3 weeks ago, something had tightened in her chest that she had not been able to explain.
She knew that he had asked for her birth certificate, that he had been alone with it in the kitchen for a long time that morning.