His father, once a somewhat shady businessman, has a mild stroke and Martina, wanting to play Lady Bountiful, begins inviting people to stay. First off there’s Henry Lamb, the twelve-year-old son of Martina and Harry who’s looking forward to his new school when everything changes. The story flips between Libby and two other characters. It’s a lot to take in and the house itself creeps her out – it’s dilapidated, and there are signs someone’s been camping out upstairs, and what are those noises? And before the bodies were found, somebody looked after the baby, then disappeared. The other thing she doesn’t expect is to discover that her parents, Harry and Martina Lamb, and an unidentified male died in a suicide pact when she was 10 months old. It’s a shock for a girl who works for a kitchen design company and financially is just getting by. What she doesn’t expect is to inherit a large house in Chelsea, worth millions. Libby has always known she was adopted and is prepared for some news of her provenance the day of her birthday and maybe, with luck, a few hundred pounds. The Family Upstairs starts happily enough with twenty-five-year-old Libby Jones coming into an inheritance. Who knows what goes on behind closed doors? That could be the subtitle of many a Lisa Jewell novel.
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