The Keeper of Lost Things

It is Christmas. Laura invites Freddy along with Sunshine and her parents to a festive dinner at Padua. Amid the festivities and the preparations for the dinner, Laura is bothered by phenomena she cannot explain. There is a ghostly figure she thinks she sees in the rose garden at night, and the Al Bowlly record keeps playing on the downstairs gramophone. Most bizarre, the upstairs bedroom that Therese and Anthony shared before her death has somehow been locked from the inside. Sunshine, in tune with the paranormal, matter-of-factly explains that Therese is behind these occurrences and that the dead woman is still upset, although Sunshine does not know why. The holiday dinner is perfect—the food is plentiful, the conversation is convivial, and Padua provides a “fairy-tale setting” (164). At the end of the evening, swept up by the magic, Laura and Freddy kiss under the mistletoe. When they do, Therese’s framed photograph shatters into splinters.

We return to the story of Eunice. By 1989, five years into his father’s diagnosis, Bomber struggles to handle his father’s deteriorating mental state. Godfrey, hospitalized now, only occasionally recognizes him when he visits. Bomber’s sister is particularly upset, confronting something her vast trust fund inheritance cannot repair.