1. Now

Tinted BB cream, rose-pink lipstick, a flick of mascara. Maybe a dab of blusher. There. I tuck my golden hair behind my ears and smile at myself in the mirror, take a tissue to blot my lips and smile again, wider, showing my teeth.

Mina, my brother's wife, got veneers last year – she looks amazing. Mine aren't quite as white as they once were.

But smiling releases neuropeptides that help reduce stress and there's nothing really wrong with mine, so smile, smile, smile, Frances.

Not that I'm stressed – just, it's good to remember that life is ten per cent what happens to you and ninety per cent how you react to it.

‘You ready?' my husband calls from the bedroom.

God, it's after seven. I push myself away from the bathroom counter. ‘Ready.'

I find him sitting on our bed, pulling up his socks. As he stands, he smiles at me, his floppy brown hair falling over his kind eyes – you'd think butter wouldn't melt. ‘You look nice,' he says, brushing my arm, and I try not to flinch away.

‘Thanks, you too,' I say as we head out, hoping he doesn't notice my gritted teeth. ‘Is Jenna up?'

‘I've heard movements.'

‘Baby girl! Breakfast!' I shout up the stairs. I wait for a response but get none. My baby: always lost in her own little world.

Okay, I'll admit she's sixteen. But she'll always be my baby.

I rub at a tiny point of pain beside my eye and catch myself in the glass of a picture of our little town, Port Emblyn, boats bobbing inside the harbour walls. My reflection is a reminder to smile again. We reach the bottom and push through the connecting door to my brother Tristan's side of the house.

Shorthorn Lodge is a Georgian farmhouse of warm, honey-coloured granite. Six bedrooms, five bathrooms, an office and three reception rooms. And a library. And the rest: rooms no one uses, doors unopened for decades. We, the Beaufort-Bradleys, have lived here for four generations.

Although, Jenna, Dan and I live in the Victorian red-brick extension, and my parents live about twenty metres away in a converted barn. One big happy family.

Our foyer brings us into Tristan's laundry room, the judder of a full load a sign his housekeeper has already been busy today. We walk up the corridor and hear voices. Dan turns and gives me a comic grimace – we're late. My father insists on family breakfasts every day and family dinners on Friday nights. It's a nice tradition.

We enter the kitchen and greet everyone while Mother fusses slices of toast into the rack. At the table, Father sips coffee from an antique cup, watching Ash and Ava – my brother and Mina's twins – scroll through their phones across from him. Mina attends to Tristan's tie as he stands behind them in the bay window, talking on his phone. The pink, puckered patch of skin on his left cheek catches the morning light: a silver kiss.

My father clears his throat and Ash and Ava slide their phones under the table. Mother sets down a rattling tray of jams. Her hair is set in large curls and she wears plum-coloured lipstick to match her necklace. Dan and I take our seats.

‘Dot,' says Father. His skin is loose at the neck now; dry red patches mar his bald head.

‘Yes, dear?' Mother reaches for her necklace.

‘Come, sit down,' he says.

‘Oh.' She takes her place beside him.

‘Got to go.' says Tristan. He hangs up. Mina pats his chest and they sit.

‘Well, we're all here,' Father says, looking over at the empty chair beside me.

‘Jenna's coming,' I say.

‘Shall we wait?'

‘Sorry, David,' says Dan. ‘She has a drama rehearsal and she's making sure everything's okay with her costume.'

My father's eyebrows rise on his bald head. It isn't the best excuse. She should've sorted it out last night. Except she did have it sorted, until I got involved.

The black and purple dress she'd picked out – she's some sort of witch, I think – had looked unfinished and so long and dowdy, and I'd been halfway through rehemming it, pins in my mouth, watching TV, when Jenna burst in and started shouting.

‘What are you doing?' Her dark eyes grew darker.

I took the pins from my mouth one by one. ‘Rehemming your dress,' I said.

‘But why?' Her face went red and I realised she was about to cry.

My stomach churned. ‘Jenna, there's no need?—'

‘You want me to look like a prostitute?'

‘Well, I don't think?—'

She cut me off and launched into a whole speech. More than I'd got out of her in months. Apparently, shorter isn't always better these days. And she had told me already. And why hadn't I listened? And something about implicit consent and feminism and how victim-blaming was still a thing.

It all seemed very unlike her.

‘Father, please don't wait,' I say.

He sighs.

‘I'm starving,' says Ash.

‘Very well,' says Father, and he clasps his hands in front of him so he can say grace and we can start eating.

‘You know I have to run, right?' Dan asks me as we help ourselves to breakfast.

I nod. A day of meetings in Exeter.

‘Are you busy today?' Dan asks.

‘Two private viewings, a festival meeting, someone who wants their entire collection reframed,' I lie, which I notice is getting easier. I pick at my muesli while Dan layers peanut butter and jam on toast. I wonder if I should go check on my baby before she gets in real trouble for missing breakfast, but I don't want to nag.

I listen distractedly to my father, teasing my mother for forgetting, again, that he likes his porridge cooked with water, not milk, as he always has, every day of his breakfast-eating life.

It's mildly irritating how the corners of Mother's mouth turn down, like he's being mean, when really, how on earth does she forget every morning?

‘I'm sorry,' she says. ‘I didn't think.'

Everyone falls silent. Cutlery stops midway to mouth. Mother's fingers run through the beads of her necklace like it's a rosary.

As I turn to see what everyone is gaping at, Jenna walks past me, to the fridge, her back to the family.

I catch my breath.

It's Tristan who speaks first. ‘Very chic,' he says.

All of her hair.

All of my daughter's beautiful, long, chestnut hair – it's gone.