by Anna Jacobs
‘Let’s hope we can help! Now, shall I make us some tea?’
‘That’d be nice. Have you seen Joel?’
‘Not for a while. He’s rushing up and down the country, organising things at the moment. He’s got tunnel vision about making money.’
‘I’ll email him, then.’
‘Shall I do that for you?’
‘No, darling. It’s my bad news, my job to cope.’
Which brought her another hug.
After that they settled down for a quiet natter until Carter came home from work and then they talked about what to do for tea. They didn’t go out to the pub, because Lara didn’t feel like facing happy crowds, so Carter nipped down to the fish and chip shop.
Before they ate, Lara helped give Minnie her bath. It had been a long time since she’d held a baby. She’d forgotten how soft and cuddly they were, how innocently they looked at the world.
She didn’t leave it too late to set off home because her body still wasn’t on UK time and she didn’t want to drive in the dark till she knew the area better. The car was now filled with her old possessions and there were still a few more boxes to come. It’d be good to see some of them again. Ludicrous too. A house full of ratty old furniture and a few pieces of really elegant old silver from her aunt’s estate.
As she started the motor, Darcie ran forward to tap on the window.
‘Carter says you mustn’t be afraid to ask if you’re short of money. I know you’ve been ferociously independent since the divorce, but I am family.’
‘I’ve got enough to manage on for a while with that redundancy payment, but thanks for the offer. It means a lot. I might ask his help about choosing a car, though.’
‘He’ll be happy to do whatever you need. He is such a kind darling!’
That kindness brought tears to Lara’s eyes as she drove off.
What had got into her today? She just about never cried, prided herself on coping stoically with whatever life threw at her.
Well, disasters were bound to affect you, weren’t they? She just had to make sure that they changed her for the better and that she didn’t let herself get bitter. She wanted her family to still enjoy her company.
When her mother had left, Darcie phoned her father and told him about the situation.
‘I’m surprised that Mrs Capable let herself be taken in like that,’ he said in that snarky voice she hated.
‘I met that investment guy. He seemed really nice, so I’m not surprised she was taken in by him. I was too. Don’t be mean, Dad!’
‘Hmm.’
‘Look, I know you two haven’t really got over the divorce angst, but if you won’t do this for Mum, I want you to do it for me.’
‘Do what?’
‘Find her a car, a real bargain, and don’t charge her too much for it.’
A short silence, then, ‘Do you think she’d take one from me? I don’t.’
‘You’ll have to make her, then. Come on, Dad, you could persuade a worm to turn purple if you set your mind to it! We can’t leave her in this mess, we just can’t. I’ve never seen her cry so easily before. She’s shattered by it.’
As he still didn’t speak, she added, ‘Mum hasn’t even got any furniture, you know. She’d have nowhere to sit, no bed to sleep on if the owners of the leisure village hadn’t given her some ratty old stuff they were throwing out – yes, and brought it round to her the very next day. If a stranger can do that for her, you can do something, surely?’
Silence, then, ‘OK. I’ll see what I can do. But it’s for you, princess, not her.’
When she put the phone down, Carter looked across at her. ‘Are you sure this is the right thing to do, love? They’ve been divorced for a long time now.’
‘Yes, I am. Mum needs a car. Dad can easily find her one. It’s not like I’m asking them to get back together again. Or asking him to give her a car.’
‘Good. Because I don’t think they ever could get back together.’
‘Who knows? I’ve seen it happen to others.’
He stared at her, eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t get your hopes up, darling. Your mother is one of the most stubborn people I’ve ever met and she was badly hurt by Guy ditching her.’
‘I know. And she’s badly affected by this, too.’ Darcie reached out and snapped her fingers close to his face. ‘My mother is that far from a breakdown, Carter.’ Another snap. ‘That far.’
He sighed. ‘Yeah. I could tell. But you can’t do much about that.’
‘I’m not sure yet, but there must be some way we can help her. She won’t ask for help unless she’s desperate, but I’ll think of something once I’ve visited her and seen what she’s got.’
‘It’s a job she needs now.’
‘She didn’t sound very optimistic about finding one in her old area after offending the big chief in Australia.’
‘Well, it might do her good to work on something else. It’s early days yet. Come here.’ He pulled her into his arms. ‘We’ll be here for her if she needs help.’
‘You’re a lovely man.’
‘Thank you, lovely lady. I’m rather fond of you too. And if you ever try to leave me, be warned, I’m coming with you.’
It was an old joke between them, but they both meant it.
When Guy Marsham put down the phone, he whistled softly. You read about this sort of thing, con artists stealing hard-won nest eggs from their victims, but he’d never encountered it in a person he knew, and would never in a million years have expected it to happen to someone as capable as Lara.
His ex had said she hated him when they split up. He hadn’t hated her, but he’d hated the travesty of their marriage because after the kids grew old enough to leave home, she’d spent so much time working away and climbing the corporate ladder, as she called it, that he’d not seen much of her. She was, she said, taking advantage of affirmative action initiatives. He hoped it had made her happy.
All he had wanted was a proper married life, with a partner who wasn’t always rushing off to the other side of the world to manage a project. He hadn’t found a good life with Julie either, though, had he? What did a second break-up say about someone? Perhaps he just wasn’t good at relationships. Some people weren’t.
To his surprise, he found himself planning to help Lara and hoping she would accept it. It wouldn’t take much to find her a second-hand car. He could afford to give her one, because his business was thriving, but she wouldn’t take that from him. Or would she? How desperate was she? Had she any money left?
He hadn’t been happy about his second break-up. That’s what you got for hooking up with someone so much younger than yourself who suddenly grew desperate to have children before it was too late, someone who’d said she never wanted children when they first got together. He hadn’t wanted to go through the child-rearing years again, especially the teenage traumas. No way.
He was just glad he and Julie had handled the financial side of the separation amicably. Well, both his wives had. They were strong women, able to stand on their own feet and earn a living for themselves. Except that Julie had remarried rather quickly and was now pregnant.
To his surprise he couldn’t get the thought of Lara’s predicament out of his mind and found himself determined to give her a car. Surely she’d accept the gift if it was a cheap trade-in? Who knew?
The older he got, the only thing he was sure about was that no one could ever understand another human being completely, inside marriage or out. It was hard enough understanding yourself.
That same morning Ross woke after a poor night’s sleep. To his dismay it was nearly ten o’clock and sunny. He must have fallen hard asleep just after dawn turned the world outside grey.
He’d meant to make an early start on clearing his aunt’s house. The sooner he could clear it out, the sooner he could put it up for sale or rent it out. He wasn’t sure which to do yet, would have to work out the costs and benefits.
He didn’t enjoy the accounting side of busi
ness, but it was necessary and he’d become reasonable at it, if he said so himself. He’d need to build up his reserve fund again for the ongoing repairs on this historic house. He’d have to use most of his current funds to pay out Nonie Jayne, damn her.
He paused for a moment or two to beg the fates not to let her appeal against him. Surely the arbitrator was right and she couldn’t win it, even if she did try?
On that thought he decided to contact the PI again and ask him to look further into her finances. If she was as comfortable as Ross suspected, maybe he didn’t even need to pay her so much. In that case, he would be the one making an appeal.
He got ready to go out, switching on the new security system at The Gatehouse which had cost him an arm and a leg, and then driving over to Penny Lake Leisure Village by the scenic route. That always lifted his spirits. Wiltshire was such a beautiful county and spring was the best time of year.
As usual, he felt sad at the sight of the house where his aunt had been so happy for the last ten months of her life. It was near some of her friends and she’d made new ones, including that charming American woman. What was she called? Cindy something or other. She’d been one of the first people to move into the village.
He’d let her know when Iris died and received a charming letter of condolence. Cindy hadn’t been able to come to the funeral, however, because she’d been in America just then.
He’d been having tea with his aunt regularly on the first Monday of the month for several years even before she moved to this house. He was surprised at how much he missed that. Iris had been such a lively woman, not at all old in the head.
The house smelled musty so he opened all the windows and the doors that led out of the living area on to the back patio. Then he looked round in despair. Where did he start? There were so many ornaments and mementoes! Every windowsill, table and shelf was loaded with them. He couldn’t simply throw them away, because whether they were valuable or not, the old lady had had exquisite taste and nearly all of the ornaments, dishes and vases were pretty.
Some were made by names he recognised and some weren’t. He’d had a quick trawl round the Internet and come to the conclusion many of them could be called ‘art pottery’, and some of the silver was well worth selling carefully. Why had he considered handing over the disposal of all this to a man who’d have cheated him? Iris would have thrown a fit.
He started the day by checking through the kitchen cupboards, something he should have done before now, finding some unopened packets of food that were still usable and some opened ones that needed throwing away. He got out a bin liner and made a start, half filling it with risky food items.
He piled the usable goods on a surface. He’d take those home with him. He could almost hear Iris saying, ‘Waste not, want not.’ Like most of her generation, she had despised waste of any sort. The current generations were coming round to the same view these days, only they called it ‘recycling’ or ‘repurposing’ and seemed to think they’d invented the concept.
Smiling at that thought, he went upstairs to his aunt’s bedroom, feeling like an intruder. He shuddered when he was faced for a second time with those drawers full of old-fashioned underwear. He opened them briefly, slamming them quickly shut one by one, not wanting even to touch the contents. It still seemed wrong for a man to paw through an old lady’s most intimate garments. And if he was being oversensitive about the knickers and bras and whatever the other stuff was, too bad. It was how he felt.
His initial look round the house weeks ago had shown him that the drawers in the spare bedroom contained bedding and spare towels. Those should be safe to go through today. He smiled wryly at himself for being so stupid and sensitive, but there you were. Your emotions didn’t always make the best sense. He’d have to ask a woman friend to go through the underwear for him, perhaps his cousin Fiona. She wasn’t related to Iris, came from his mother’s side. If there was anything decent, it could go to a charity shop.
He went across to the big chest of drawers to the right of the spare bedroom window. What did they call these things? Tallboys. This one came up to his shoulder, six drawers in all with a small cupboard across the top whose doors had carving and oval mirrors on them. He’d never really studied it before and was surprised at how pretty it was. Was it worth something too?
The top drawer contained pillow cases, more than his aunt would have ever needed. Some were still in their original packets and looked quite old. Where did they all come from? he wondered. Had she kept on buying them right till the end? And were things like this worth selling individually, maybe at a pop-up market stall? Who knew?
The second drawer contained a layer of towels, underneath which he found rows of little boxes containing what he assumed was costume jewellery. He hunted for hallmarks on the various pieces but found none, so they couldn’t be real gold and silver, let alone real jewels. Not valuable, then. Pretty, though. Far too pretty to throw away.
But what was he going to do with them? Why had she bought them anyway? He’d never seen her wearing brooches and necklaces, apart from a couple that had belonged to her mother.
And why hadn’t he noticed these the first time round? Pete Bromhill didn’t seem to have noticed them, either, when he quoted for clearing out the whole house. Ross paused to frown. No, Pete was too shrewd not to have opened drawers and cupboards. Perhaps he had seen them and kept that secret because they might be moderately valuable? There were so many that even at ten or twenty pounds each, the money would mount up nicely, Ross was sure.
All the lower drawers were the same; towels or sheets covered the contents of each, and underneath were ornaments, boxes – bigger ones in the bottom two drawers. Were the coverings meant to be a precaution against theft? He smiled wryly at the thought. Wouldn’t have worked these days, Iris, my old love.
He turned and went across to the wardrobe, where clothes hung, old-fashioned garments smelling faintly of something spicy – not mothballs, thank goodness, whose stink he loathed. He sniffed again. Possibly sandalwood.
This spare wardrobe was chock-full of clothes. She hadn’t worn any of these, as far as he could remember. Had she kept all her discarded clothes from decades ago? He frowned. They didn’t look at all worn. He was no fashion expert but he knew a bit about history from his work, and these were surely from before Iris was born or at least from when she was a small child, the twenties or thirties perhaps. He’d have to look them up somewhere.
By then his head was aching and he went outside to get a breath of fresh air, waving to Molly Santiago, who’d married the owner last year and now ran the sales office. He knew her and her husband slightly since he’d helped his aunt buy the house. They’d been kind to the old lady, even doing some shopping for her, he’d found out afterwards.
He should have noticed that his aunt needed more help, felt guilty about that, but he’d been trying to deal with the divorce and his increasing feeling of being unwell.
In the end he gave in to the fatigue, closed up the house and went home. He picked up a pizza on the way, realising as he stood in the queue that he hadn’t brought the usable food from his aunt’s house with him. Well, he could pick it up tomorrow.
He ate a couple of slices of pizza before he fell asleep in front of the television.
His last thought was that at least he’d done something useful today.
But not much. He got tired so damned easily.
He’d taken three months’ leave from his work with a heritage architecture practice to deal with everything that was going pear-shaped in his life. No one would wonder at his absence because the group of partners were only loosely tied together for business purposes. They came and went according to the commissions they were working on, specialising in extending period properties. The practice acted as a clearing house and provided secretarial services for them all as needed.
You couldn’t be money-hungry to work like that, but there was immense satisfaction in helping to preserve old buildings or moderni
se their interiors in a way that didn’t destroy the structures. He loved what he did.
Chapter Seven
The following morning, which was Saturday, Lara took Molly’s advice and went out early, having set her alarm to be sure of waking up. She intended to scour the streets for discarded furniture of all sorts. No use being proud. She had a house to furnish.
Anyway, it felt a lot better to be doing something other than sitting around waiting for the police to get back to her. She could answer a phone call wherever she was.
She was amazed to see that the street verges were littered with furniture already, more than she’d expected by a long chalk. Much of it looked broken or no longer fit for purpose, but in the first street she found a small side table going free that she actually liked and put it in the rear of the car. Thank goodness she’d hired a hatchback!
In the next street she found a proper dining table and six matching chairs, old-fashioned and the table had a scuffed top, but she could fix that. The owner wanted £50 for them, which she paid gladly. He pointed out a trailer parked further along the street with a sign on it. ‘Deliveries made, reasonable charges.’
Clearly the locals had this well organised.
When she went along to the trailer, the owner came out and she bargained with him to take whatever she found to the leisure village later that day. She’d phone him up to collect any other things she found and pay extra for that service.
He seemed delighted to be offered a retainer of fifty pounds to act as her carrier and agreed that she could use his front lawn as a dumping ground till then, starting with the small table.
‘You won’t let me down?’ she asked.
His wife had come out to join them and frowned at that. ‘My Fred has never let anyone down in his life, and we live here, so he can hardly run away with anything, can he?’
