Part one

The notary read the will in a neutral voice, the voice people use for the weather forecast or train times.

“I, the undersigned, Monique Lambert, being of sound mind and body, leave my house on the rue des Écoles in Seraing and all my bank holdings to my son Olivier. To my daughter Isabelle, I leave the kitchen furniture, since she spent so much time there. Done at Seraing, on 12 March 2026.”

The kitchen furniture.

I looked at my brother. Olivier was sitting beside me in a grey suit, wearing a watch that must have cost as much as my car. He had the decency to lower his eyes. For one second. Then he said:

“Mum knew what she was doing.”

On 12 March 2026, Mum no longer knew my name.

She had had Alzheimer’s for six years. At first it was little things. Her keys in the fridge. The neighbour’s name. A forgotten doctor’s appointment. Then she got lost on the way to the baker’s, the one she had been going to for forty years, and a man drove her home.

I went part-time. Then I stopped working altogether. I lived ten minutes away, in Ougrée. I came every morning, then morning and evening, and in the end I was sleeping at hers, in my old childhood bedroom, with the flowery wallpaper I had hated at fifteen.

I washed her. I dressed her. I cut her nails, her hair, her meat. I answered the question “Where’s Olivier?” four hundred times. Because he was the one she asked for. Always him.

Olivier lived in Brussels. He had “responsibilities”. He came twice a year: at Christmas and for Mum’s birthday, in July. He stayed two hours. He brought chocolates from a grand chocolatier in the Sablon and flowers that were far too expensive, which Mum never looked at. He held her hand, told her about his job, his travels, his children, whom Mum no longer recognised in the photos. And Mum smiled, delighted, and said over and over: “My son. My son is here.”

I was “the lady”. Sometimes “the nurse”. On good days, “my sister”.

I didn’t hold it against her. It was the illness. But Olivier, I held it against him a little.

In the notary’s car park, Olivier caught up with me.

“Isa. Listen. I didn’t know she’d done that. I swear.”

“You didn’t know.”

“No. But it was her wish. We have to respect it. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do: I’m going to put the house on the market quickly, I already have a buyer lined up. You’ve got until next Sunday to collect your things and anything that matters to you. The kitchen furniture is yours, obviously.”

He smiled. Exactly the same smile as Mum. That was the worst of it.

“Next Sunday,” I repeated.

“So I can have the locks changed,” he said. “It’s an insurance thing, you understand.”

So I cleared the house. On my own.

I filled bags for the Red Cross. I sorted Mum’s clothes, her flowery dresses, her woollen cardigans, her blue slippers worn through at the toes. I took down the frames. On almost every photo there was Olivier: Olivier as a baby, Olivier at his First Communion, Olivier in a gown on his graduation day. I was at the edge of the picture, or behind, or holding the camera.

On Wednesday, I tackled the kitchen. My furniture, as the will said.

It was in the bottom drawer, under the tea towels, that I found the recipe book.

I knew it. Everyone in our family knew it. A fat spiral notebook with a red cover, swollen with pasted-in pages, stained with butter and chocolate. Mum had written her recipes in it since her wedding, in 1968. Liège-style meatballs. Rice tart. Christmas waffles. Rabbit with prunes. When I was little, I was allowed to leaf through it on Sundays, sitting on the worktop while she peeled the potatoes.

I opened it to smell it. It smelled of cinnamon and yellowed paper.

The first pages were recipes, in Mum’s beautiful slanting handwriting, the kind they taught at school in the old days. Then, towards the middle of the book, the handwriting changed. It grew larger, more hesitant. The lines sloped downwards. And they were no longer recipes.

“4 February 2020. Today I forgot the neighbour’s name. The doctor said the word. Alzheimer’s. I am writing it here because this is the only book I open every day. I want to remember that I know.”

I had to sit down on the floor, against the fridge.

She had written for months. Short sentences, between a recipe for pea soup and a recipe for Christmas bread. She wrote about what she forgot, about her fear, about her good days. She wrote about me. “Isabelle came. She made soup. She thinks I can’t see how tired she is.” “Isabelle cried in the bathroom. I didn’t dare knock.” My hands shook as I read.

Then, under the date 15 July 2021, her birthday:

“Olivier came. He brought me flowers. Then he asked Isabelle to go and buy bread, and when she had gone, he took out a sheet of paper. He asked me to copy out a letter. He said it was a memory exercise, that the doctor in Brussels recommended it. The letter said I was giving him the house.”

The next page:

“He comes back every time with the same letter. Christmas. July. Christmas. Always the same one. He makes me copy it and he keeps it. He thinks I have forgotten the time before. I have not forgotten. Not yet. I pretend I don’t understand. But I understand perfectly.”

And underneath, in a heavier hand, almost furious:

“So I did two things.”