The Telegram

I never met my father in law - he died when my husband was just a teenager - but I was always intrigued by the stories of his life.  A novelist, he wrote over thirty novels, while working for the civil service. He had served in the Great War, and then worked for the British Government for a decade in China in the 1920s.  After I married my husband in the 1980s I gradually learned odd snippets about his father and slowly various secrets emerged about his life. His private life was intriguing - a failed first marriage, a lost daughter, a reluctance to reveal much about his work life.  But then, long after he had died, my husband discovered something about his father from his aunt that literally turned his world upside down.  It was that secret - told to him on her deathbed - that is at the heart of this novel.