A Voss and Pike Casefile
Section 8: The Family Story
"Dad's people were Marcher gentry," said Imogen, warming to a story she'd clearly heard a thousand times. "Our ceremonial sash is a hundred and fifty years old. It's in a case upstairs."
Jonah, who had a sharp eye for a label, had already checked the case on the landing. "The sash has a tag. It says 'Heritage Supplies Ltd, 1983'."
Imogen laughed, then stopped. "That's ridiculous."
"Traditions get invented," you said gently. "Ask anyone in Scotland about kilts. The point is somebody handed you a past and you believed it, because it came from the people you trusted most. That's primary socialisation. It's not lying, exactly. It's how a family builds its own reality."
She was quiet a moment. "He never talked about his parents. He said they died young."
She played you a voicemail from two nights ago. Edwin's voice, warm and low. "Immy? Listen, tomorrow I'm going to say something you won't like. Helena won't like it either. Whatever happens, love, I'm still your dad. Eddie from Dockside, if it comes to that." Halfway through, his vowels had cracked open and let the docks in, flat and salt-wet, like a dropped plate showing what it had been glued from.
Two nights before he died, Sir Edwin left his daughter a message: tomorrow he would say something "Helena won't like", and his polished accent slipped into a dock accent as he called himself "Eddie from Dockside".