The Flitting

About this book

On a wet Saturday in September, Moira Considine, sixty-six, books her own family's removals firm to move her out of her marriage. She pays the deposit like any customer. Her husband Frank founded Considine Removals with one second-hand van and a borrowed trolley, and has carried other people's lives up Glasgow's tenement stairs for thirty-eight years. Now their three grown children must carry hers: Jo, who runs the firm and is hiding an offer to sell it; Declan, who has brought his nine-year-old daughter on the job; and Ailsa, who has known about the new flat longer than anyone. From the third-floor landing in Dennistoun to the last ferry from Wemyss Bay, each of them must decide what to carry, what to leave, and what to finally say. And Frank, who claims he only found out on Thursday, is keeping a secret of his own.