Mummy's Legs - Kate Bingham

One day Catherine finds a hair in the shower. It is black, forty-two centimetres long and kinked into peculiar curls as though it has been badly ironed. She sellotapes it to a sheet of typing paper, slots into an envelope and hides it at the bottom of her underwear drawer. Later, when her ten-year-old daughter lets herself in after school, the house seems to be empty.

Moving between the cherry-lined avenues of elegant South Kensington and an old farmhouse in the Yorkshire Dales, MUMMY'S LEGS is a haunting, evocative tale of life in the topsy-turvy adult world as seen through a young girl's eyes. A poignant tale of childhood it is also the bitter-sweet story of a daughter's attempt to fix her mother's broken heart.