The Kind Visitor

Joanne Strand clears the houses of the dead, and the shabby villa above Ramsgate harbour should be an easy job: one drowned pensioner, one grateful son in Perth, one endlessly helpful carer who won't take a penny. But Bonnie Cliffe knows how Joanne takes her tea. She knows Tabby's exam timetable. She knows things about Joanne's dying mother that nobody outside that hospital corridor could know. In the loft, four boxes of photographs are waiting — fifteen years of white-haired women, and always the same smiling woman at their elbow.