Goodnight Mister Tom

Like, if you've never read the book, think of, think of Carl from Up, right? So he's like grumpy and unpleasant and kind of rude and mean and upset and, you know, dealing with his own grief that he's never really got over, and then he slowly becomes like this responsible man for this young boy and grows to care for him.

Now, I used to get this mixed up with Uncle Tom because before I'd studied any form of American history, because I wasn't brought up in a culture that understood this, I was like, "Why are people being so weird and mean about Mister Tom? Like, wasn't he a good guy in, in the story?" Like, yeah, I, I got those two conflated for fucking years, and it was only when I actually studied history that I went, "Oh.

Oh, I'm the one who's made the mistake here." So yeah.

Yeah, I was a bit embarrassed when I realized that because I was like, "Oh.

And this is important because Veronica Duncan was about to meet a man who was very much of that world.

John Bingham, the future 7th Earl of Lucan.

She was going to marry into an aristocratic family with centuries of history, a title, money and enough accumulated dysfunction to keep several historians employed.

Yeah, and that's even before anyone disappears.