The Legacy
Trouble Comes Disguised As Family
T. A. Belshaw
Authors Reach
Copyright © 2021 T.A.Belshaw
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-8382204-5-7
Edited by Maureen Vincent-Northam
Cover design by: J. D. Smith Design
http://www.jdsmith-design.com
Authors Reach 2021
For my editor, Maureen Vincent-Northam who has been with me from the start
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
About The Author
Praise For Author
Books By This Author
Chapter 1
Jessica Griffiths opened the door of her little Toyota and climbed out onto the asphalt drive. She pushed the door shut and stepped slowly towards the front door of the old farmhouse. She hesitated on the step, holding the key tightly in her right hand. It was the first time she had been back to the house since Alice, her great grandmother, mentor and soul mate had died.
Taking a deep breath, Jess shoved the key into the yale, twisted it and pushed the door open. She stooped to pick up a small pile of mail, mostly junk by the looks of it, and stepped inside closing the door behind her.
The air seemed thick and clung like a shroud; the silence was absolute, even the bane of Alice’s life, the big old clock on the wall, had stopped ticking. Her heels echoed eerily as they clicked across the solid timber floor. She turned towards the lounge and stood in the doorway for a moment as she remembered those last few moments she had spent with Alice. The chair she had died in was in the same place, the lion’s foot coffee table was at the far end of the room where the paramedics had moved it to give them space to work. Her hospital style bed had been made; Gwen, her carer must have been back to see to that.
Jess dropped her bag on the floor, next to the chair she had sat in to listen to Alice relate the story of her troubled, abuse ridden past, the chair she had sat in to read the memoirs that Alice had asked her to bring down from the attic. There were more volumes up there when she felt ready to retrieve them, it wouldn’t be today.
Jess slumped down and stared across at Alice’s empty seat and her thoughts immediately returned to that dreadful day. She could see herself kneeling at Alice’s side as the old woman stared fixedly at the big clock, she saw herself stroking the back of her hand, telling her that everything was going to be fine, that she shouldn’t take any guilt with her as she passed over, that her actions had been totally justified. Alice had responded, moving the nail of her index finger against Jess’s hand, letting her know that she had heard and had understood. Then she breathed her last.
The paramedics had arrived shortly after but there was nothing they could do. Jess stood in the kitchen with Gwen, while they performed a perfunctory assessment of her body before zipping it inside a bag and carrying it away. There would be no post mortem, Alice’s ninety-nine-year-old body had finally given out, that’s all there was to it.
When the emergency services had gone, Gwen made tea and she sat on the sofa with Jess, holding hands and sobbing until there were no tears left.
‘Alice gave me a letter for you,’ she said eventually. She walked through to the kitchen and returned with a white envelope in her hands. ‘She said you weren’t to have this until she had gone.’
Gwen picked up her coat, bent forward and gave Jess a kiss on the forehead. ‘I’ll leave you to read your letter in peace. I’ll come back later to tidy things up.’
Jess turned the letter over in her hands and read the front of the envelope. To Jessica.
She waited until she heard Gwen close the front door before carefully easing it open. Inside, written in Alice’s familiar, neat handwriting was a one-page letter, and a folded bank cheque.
My darling Jessica,
Well, that’s it, my dear, I’ve moved on to wherever it is I’ve moved on to. Don’t cry too much for me, I’ve lived a long, interesting life that has been full of love, lies, recriminations and revenge. It’s been a good life, on the whole, made better by you being a big part of it. You already know all about my altercations with my daughters and granddaughter. I sometimes wonder if they were ever really part of me at all. Then I think of you and our remarkable similarities, you think like me, you act like me, you laugh at the things I laugh at, and you look, pretty much like I did at your age, had we been together in the same room back then, people would have taken us for twins.
I hope you won’t feel too ill of me when you read the final chapters of my 1938 memoir, my dear. There was little else to be done and I’d do it again tomorrow, if I was forced to. I hope you understand why I did what I did.
Soon, you will be contacted by a firm of solicitors who are administering my affairs. You might remember their name from my old notebooks. You are the main beneficiary of my estate, but I have put conditions in place. I won’t go into them here but please believe me, my love, they are there to protect you as much as the house and the money.
Regarding my funeral.
I’d like you to organise this Jessica as you are the only person I can trust to do as I ask. If you don’t feel up to it, please let my solicitors know and they will arrange everything.
I’m not expecting great crowds to turn up to see me off, you’ll be lucky to see half a dozen people if I’m honest and I don’t really care anyway. I don’t want a religious service, though I know they’ll still sing a couple of hymns and the vicar will wax lyrical about the afterlife. I’d like to be cremated. I don’t see the point in me taking up space on the earth when my consciousness has long left it. I’d be happy if you could sprinkle my ashes somewhere close to my mum and dad’s graves though. If the powers that be won’t let you do that, then just chuck them around what’s left of the farm, though I’d appreciate it if you didn’t dump me anywhere in the vicinity of the old milking parlour foundations.
I’m sure I only lasted as long as I did because of the love you showed me, Jessica. Our bo
nd is sincere and secure and nothing, not even death, can break it. Please don’t worry when your own end is in sight and you begin to see the misty light, emanating from the tunnel in your dreams. When you arrive, you’ll find me waiting to take you inside. This I promise.
Goodbye, my darling. I wish you luck and happiness every day for the rest of your life. We both know it won’t be like that, it never is, but I wish it for you nonetheless. I also hope that before too long you’ll see what a louse Calvin is. Please be careful, Jessica, that man is dangerous.
I also wish you good luck in your future choice of men, though as you are pretty much a clone of me, I’m not going to hold what little breath is left inside of me. We can’t really help ourselves, we are attracted to ‘bad boys’, they fascinate us, we have to know if we can tame them. Well, we can’t. I finally gave up trying and I’ve no doubt that one day, you will too. Until then, just be as careful as you can, enjoy the fun times but don’t allow the bad times to get out of hand. One slap is one slap too many. Don’t fear being lonely, Jessica. Solitude has its benefits.
Sending you all my love from this life and the next (if there is one).
Your loving great grandmother,
Alice.
Jess read the letter twice before opening the envelope to slip it back inside. Stuck in the bottom of the envelope was a cheque for two thousand pounds, made out to Gwen. On the back of the cheque Alice had written a note.
Don’t dare refuse to take this money you silly, wonderful woman. You deserve every penny, and more. I don’t know what I’d have done without you. Love, Alice.
Jess dragged the coffee table back to its usual spot, laid the cheque in the centre and sat her empty mug on top of it so that Gwen would easily find it when she came back to clean up.
She was about to leave when she remembered the, as yet unread, 1939 memoir that Alice had slipped into the drawer of her bedside cabinet. She pulled it out, held it to her chest and spoke aloud.
‘I wonder what other secrets you have for me to discover… what was it that Amy called you… Alice, Hussy?’
Jess dropped the letter and notebook into her bag and left the house.
The funeral passed off as well as could be expected. The autumn weather was glorious and no one needed to wear a top coat. As she walked into the crematorium chapel, Jess thought back to Alice’s memoir, where she had described the day of her father’s funeral…
It was the perfect day for a funeral, if you can have such a thing. In the films and in books, a funeral is always held in foul, wet, windy, weather, as though the deceased was playing a final practical joke on the mourners. My father, it seemed, had ordered wall to wall sunshine for his funeral. This made me happy for two reasons. One, I wouldn’t have to stand around, shivering while water dripped down my neck from the branches of the old oak, and two, the blue sky gave me the crazy idea that the sun was celebrating his reunification with the love of his life. This thought cheered me, and I clung on to it all the way through the service.
‘You ordered up some beautiful weather for your big day too, Nana. I hope you’re reunified with your mum and dad now,’ Jess whispered.
Alice was remarkably correct in her prediction of the number of people that would attend. There were six, including the man holding the service.
Gwen sat on the front row with Jess while Alice’s daughters, Martha and Marjorie, sat at the back along with Jess’s mum, Nicola who slipped in just as the service was getting underway.
They sang along to the same hymn that had been sung at Alice’s father’s funeral all those years before. Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam and All Things Bright and Beautiful, which Jess had chosen, knowing Alice wouldn’t have minded. The funeral celebrant, conducting the service, kept God out of it in the main, but he did slip in a prayer for Alice after Jess read out the eulogy that she had written herself. She did hear Martha and Nicola splutter when she waxed lyrical about Alice’s generosity.
At the end of the service, the curtains closed in front of the coffin and Jess whispered her final goodbye. She left the chapel with Gwen, to find Martha, Marjorie and her own mother waiting for her.
‘Jessica, firstly I’d like to thank you for organising the funeral, though I think it should really have had a proper vicar leading it.’ Martha looked around the empty car park. ‘I thought there might be a few more here to see her off, but then again, she wasn’t the most popular of people.’
‘She outlived all those who would have wanted to be here, Grandma,’ replied Jess.
‘I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,’ Martha replied. ‘Now, listen, Jessica. We need to have a talk about the future. I’ve had a letter from a firm of solicitors representing my mother and it seems there is something for both myself and Marjorie in her will. I have to admit I’m quite surprised by this news, but I sort of knew she’d see sense in the end.’
‘She’s seen sense,’ echoed Marjorie, who had been under Martha’s spell from the day she was born.
‘I haven’t seen a letter, but then again, I haven’t been back to my flat since Nana died. There might be something waiting for me there.’
‘There might not be, Jessica, don’t be disappointed if there isn’t, maybe my mother did the decent thing after all.’ She narrowed her eyes and looked hard at Jess. ‘Let me know if you do get one though. We can all go to the solicitor’s together.’
With that she turned tail and strode purposefully across the car park to Nicola’s battered old Ford. Marjorie trotted along behind.
‘Don’t forget. Let me know straight away if you receive a letter.’ Martha slid into the back seat of the car and slammed the door behind her.
‘Well, I’m surprised at that, Jessica,’ Gwen looked puzzled, ‘Alice always said that her daughters would never see a penny.’
‘I don’t mind, Gwen,’ Jess replied. ‘It’s only money, though what my grandma would do with it at her age is anyone’s guess.’ She walked across to her Toyota and opened the passenger door for Gwen. ‘I think she just likes to be in control of everything. She’ll be thinking she’s the head of the family now.’
‘I just think it’s sad to see families split over money.’ Gwen slipped inside and shut the door behind her. She fastened her seatbelt as Jess climbed in alongside. ‘When do you get her ashes and what are you going to do with them?’ she asked.
‘I should have them in a couple of days, Gwen. As for what I’ll do…’ she smiled and tapped the side of her nose. ‘I’ve got a cunning plan,’ she said.
Chapter 2
Jessica stepped through the lychgate and strode purposefully along the grey-slabbed path that divided the graves at the front of the Norman church. She nodded to an old couple who were sitting on one of the memorial benches that lined the path and made her way down the side of the church to the even larger collection of graves at the rear. She smiled as the warm October sun peeked out from behind a patchy cloud, it was a perfect day for a second funeral.
Jessica flicked her head so that her dark, shoulder length, chestnut curls fell away from her face, and strolled amongst the mostly, ancient gravestones until she reached a set of two, set side by side under a huge oak branch that hung over the stone boundary wall. Jessica looked over her shoulder to ensure she wasn’t being watched, then knelt between the two graves and pulled an oblong, cedar box from inside the hessian bag she had carried carefully into the churchyard.
‘Here we are, Nana,’ she whispered, looking over her shoulder again. ‘I won’t tell if you don’t.’
Jessica put her hand into the bag, pulled out a small, gardening trowel and dug a neat hole about a foot deep in the centre of the gap between the graves. She opened the box and took out a plastic bag containing the cremated remains of Alice Mollison, her great grandmother. Jessica took a metal nail file from her handbag, pierced the bag, then dragged the file across to open up one end. Picking up the bag carefully, she tipped the contents into the hole and laid the empty bag on top of the ashes.
‘I hope you met your mum and dad again, Nana, but just in case you didn’t, I’m putting you in here so that you’re reunited, on earth at least.’
Jessica fished around in her bag until she found a silver locket that Alice had given her as an eighteenth birthday present. It contained what on a casual inspection, was two photographs of the same young woman, but if one was to look a little closer the differences, though slight, were distinctive.
‘And here’s the both of us together, forever, Nana.’
Jessica dropped the locket on top of the ashes and backfilled it with the trowel, then she stamped the newly dug earth down and stood for a few minutes thinking about Alice. Not the dreadful events in her life that she had described so vividly in her memoirs, but the happy times, the weekend sleepovers, the birthday surprises and the loving, sage advice that she had passed on.
‘Bye Bye, Nana. Sleep softly,’ she whispered as she stowed away the garden trowel and stepped away from the grave. ‘I’ll pop back now and again. I hope you’re happy, wherever you are.’
Wiping away a tear, Jess retraced her steps and walked back through the lychgate, onto the main road. As she reached her little Toyota car, her phone rang. The number wasn’t listed on her contacts.
‘Hello.’
A deep male voice with an educated accent, replied.
‘Hello. I’m trying to contact Ms Jessica Griffiths.’
‘You’ve found her,’ said Jess, wondering if she was about to receive a scam call.
‘Ah, that’s good,’ said the man. ‘My name is Bradley Wilson of Wilson and Beanney Associates. We are a firm of solicitors. We sent out a letter a couple of weeks ago but we haven’t had a reply as yet. Your mobile number was listed as next of kin in the case file. I wonder if we could make an appointment?’
The Legacy: Trouble Comes Disguised As Family (Unspoken Book 2) Page 1
