Anna Martin's British Boys Box Set: My Prince - The Impossible Boy - Cricket

by Anna Martin

  “Do you want a fry-up?” she demanded of him.

  “Do I want a what?”

  Fourteen rolled her eyes at him. Her heavily-lined-with-black-eyeliner eyes. “A fried breakfast?”

  Henry’s stomach lurched at the thought. “No, thanks. Do you have avocado toast?”

  No response, but a what-the-fuck expression that was as good as a “no.”

  “Just toast will be fine,” he said warily. “And coffee. Please.”

  There was a sign on the wall, next to the long mahogany bar, which declared that “Breakfast is served from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. daily,” which probably explained Fourteen’s surly attitude. She was working overtime.

  When she returned with his toast and topped off his coffee, he dug his wallet out and sorted through the different coloured notes, then selected a green five and handed it to her.

  She frowned at him.

  “It’s a tip,” he said slowly, wondering if she was possibly a bit slow herself. “Thanks for staying open for me.”

  “Whatever,” she muttered, tucking the five into her bra. Jesus, she was wearing a bra.

  “Leave the pot,” he said as she turned to go again. “It’s fine. I’m nearly done anyway.”

  Fourteen left the pot on a pile of table mats, rolled her eyes again, and left.

  Henry licked his finger and turned the page in his newspaper.

  A few minutes later, the sharp clicks of women’s heels on polished wood announced his next interrupter’s arrival.

  “Oh, thank fuck,” a warm voice said from behind him. “I could murder for a coffee right now.”

  “Help yourself,” Henry said, not meaning it but saying it to be polite. When the woman slid into the chair opposite him, something clicked in his head. “Are you… Shenal Gupta?”

  “You say it like ‘Chanel’,” she offered, correcting his pronunciation while pouring herself a cup of coffee. “My parents have a weird sense of humour. I’m their fifth child.”

  Henry started at her blankly.

  “Like, Chanel Number 5? The perfume?”

  “You’re my lawyer?”

  “No,” Shenal corrected him. “I’m Nell Richardson’s lawyer.”

  Carefully, with the impression that he was being judged, Henry folded his newspaper and took off his glasses. He only needed them for reading anyway.

  Shenal was nothing like what he’d expected when Gareth had mentioned that Nell’s solicitor would meet with him when he arrived in England. Although he’d read the name Shenal Gupta before—he must have; it was familiar in the back of his mind—to his shame, he’d assumed the solicitor would be a man.

  The woman sitting before him gave off an air of calm and coolness and a certain amount of challenge, waiting to see if Henry was going to judge her for being a woman, or an Indian woman, or an Indian woman who wore a sari while working.

  Her dark hair was pulled back in a shiny braid, and gold jewellery decorated her throat and ears. There was a tiny gold hoop in her nose. She wore light makeup but a rich lipstick, and when she lifted the coffee cup to her lips, he noticed that her fingernails were painted a dark-red colour.

  When he declined to comment on her gender or race, Shenal raised an eyebrow, then smiled.

  “Nell wants to meet with you later,” she said, “after lunch. Two o’clock. Sharp. Before then, we can go and see the house if you like, but there’s no rush, really.”

  “Sure,” he said, slightly overwhelmed. He touched his fingers to his lips absently, knowing that the cut at the corner of his mouth had nearly completely healed. It wasn’t obvious anymore, and any other visible physical injuries had healed. Thank God.

  Shenal had a car waiting outside, a bright silver Mini, which turned out to be the perfect size for nipping around the little streets and narrow country lanes.

  “I know you only got here last night,” Shenal said as she drove out deeper into the countryside, “so sorry to spring this on you. But Nell wants to meet you as soon as possible, and I thought it would be best if you went into that meeting as well prepared as you could be.”

  “That’s fine,” Henry said. “I’m only a little jet-lagged.”

  Jet-lagged wasn’t the biggest of his problems, though. Being totally dumbfounded was. When he’d arrived, he didn’t have the inclination to look out of the window and take in the scenery. Now, he could barely tear his eyes away from it.

  Just like Dorothy, he was a long, long way from home.

  He barely noticed that she had stopped the car outside a pair of tall iron gates.

  “So, this is it,” Shenal said. “Stretton House.”

  It helped Henry when he disassociated the thought that this could possibly be his with his initial impressions of the house. Because it was more than a house. It was more like a country manor… a mansion.

  Just inside the gates was a small cottage, which quickly gave way to a long drive lined with old, old trees. The house itself was visible from the gate, although it was immediately obvious that it was in a state of disrepair.

  When Shenal stopped the car again, Henry got out and turned one full circle on the gravel. Then he looked back to her.

  “Okay, so what’s the catch?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Where the fuck is Candid Camera or Punk’d or whatever?”

  Shenal gave a little bark of laughter. “No, I promise you Ashton Kutcher is not hiding in the bushes. At least, I hope he’s not. Do you want to see inside?”

  “Sure,” Henry said, aware of how high-pitched his voice had become. Nerves. He was going to attribute that to nerves. “Sure, okay, whatever.”

  After rifling through her purse, Shenal pulled out a bunch of keys and unlocked the double front door. As she threw the old, creaking doors wide, Henry felt his heart stutter in his chest.

  The house was huge; he’d already established that. But it was beautiful as well.

  Inside, the entrance hall was tiled in terracotta and black squares, stretching away further into the house. Straight ahead was a huge, sweeping staircase that reminded him of the Cinderella story his mother used to read to him at night. It was wide at the bottom and the top and narrower in the middle, the banisters on either side still far enough apart that Henry was sure he could stand with his arms outstretched and his fingers wouldn’t reach both sides.

  There was a door on either side of the hallway, but both were closed, and it seemed that to get to the back of the house it was necessary to walk around the staircase.

  “Nell Richardson lived here?” Henry exclaimed as soon as he found his voice again. “On her own?”

  “God, no,” Shenal said. “She lived in the little gatekeeper’s cottage we passed on the way in. It’s a two-up two-down place. No one’s lived here for at least forty, maybe fifty years. It was turned into a hospital in the Second World War, where they looked after injured soldiers. There’s a military base not far from here. Nell’s father, I believe, lived in the house after the war, but when he died she moved out.”

  “Wow,” Henry said.

  “For the past ten years, at least, she’s had interest from developers who want to turn it into flats. Apartments,” she corrected, for Henry’s benefit. “But she won’t have anyone dividing up the house, which was why she got English Heritage involved.”

  “Those are the people who can decide if it’s of historic importance, right?”

  “Yeah,” Shenal said, looking pleased. “You’ve done your research.”

  “Not really. My father’s lawyer told me.”

  “Well, it’s a long process,” Shenal continued and walked deeper into the house, her shoes echoing on the tiled floor. For lack of anything better to do, Henry followed her. “At the moment, Nell’s being taken care of in a private care home, and it’s expensive. She was worried about some hotshot developer coming in and offering to cover all her bills, and not being able to refuse the money. That’s why there’s trustees involved.”

  “What is the proble
m, then?” he asked.

  She gave him a sad smile. “Time. For everything, really. She doesn’t have much longer to live, and she knows it, and this place needs serious work, or it’s going to become completely irreparable. Her father was a clever man, and he made sure that his investments were in land and property, which he saw as more stable than stocks and shares.”

  “Sounds like a clever man to me.”

  “He was,” Shenal agreed, leading him back through to the main hall. “There are works of art in this place that I’m sure would make money if Nell sent them to auction, but she won’t. This is all she has. It’s her heritage, and she doesn’t want it chopped up and sold off.”

  Henry sat down on the bottom step of the staircase, deciding that he didn’t care about dust, and put his face in his hands. He felt, rather than watched, Shenal sit down next to him.

  “I know this must be a bit overwhelming,” she said, gently laying a hand on his shoulder.

  “A bit?” he said with a laugh, then steeled himself and looked up. “Okay. What’s the deal here, then?”

  “Nell wants to sign the house and all its contents and land, over to you as her heir. The conditions are that you won’t sell the house, or modify the structure of it, or build on the land until after she’s passed away. Of course, she’d prefer it if you didn’t do that at all, but she appreciates that once she’s dead she doesn’t have much of a say in the matter.”

  “Is this about passing the house on to family? Or just getting back at ‘the man’?”

  She chuckled lightly. “I think it’s mostly about her love for this place. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that seeing it sold off or renovated into flats would break her heart.”

  “Shenal, you should probably know that I’m gay.”

  He waited for her reaction. After a moment, she pressed her lips together and turned away.

  “What?” he demanded.

  “I sort of figured that out for myself,” she said, and he could hear the slight tone of laughter on her voice.

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t think Nell will mind, if you want to tell her, but it’s up to you, of course.”

  “I’m just not in a position to offer her lots of children who can inherit the house from me.”

  “I can tell you now, as Nell’s lawyer, that she is not going to legally tie you into something that will insist that you pass the house down to your own children and your children’s children and so on. All she wants is the right to keep her house in her old age so that she can come back here if she ever wants to. She’s not incapable of getting around. She’s just old, Henry.”

  He sighed and looked up. It was something of a mistake. The ceiling, way, way above him, was painted with cherubic images. Like everything else in the house, it was awe-inspiring. Henry hadn’t quite managed to get his head around everything yet. Everything that Shenal was saying felt like all his hopes and all his fears combined. The possibility of starting his life again was hovering, right in front of his nose, and all he had to do was reach out and grab it.

  “Do you want to go meet her?” Shenal asked. “Nell?”

  Henry took a deep breath, considering. “Yeah.”

  Chapter Two

  Nell had been moved to what Shenal described as an assisted living facility, which was a few miles away from Stretton House. Rather than a traditional nursing home, it comprised several small apartments that shared a common area and dining room, so residents could socialise in the evenings or during the day if they wished.

  The attendants were mostly there to assist the residents with day to day activities that had become more difficult for them to do alone: cooking or cleaning, getting dressed, keeping track of medications. Some residents needed more care than others. Some were just lonely.

  As they approached, Henry rapidly readjusted his view of the sort of place Nell was living in. He’d imagined a grisly sort of nursing home, with geriatric patients lined up in wheelchairs, staring blankly at a flickering television. This was not the place of his imagination.

  The visitor’s car park led straight in to a colourful garden, which was dotted with several benches where one could sit, weather permitting, to enjoy the fresh air. The house itself looked like a residential property, but a big one: tall, red brick, with a deep porch and only the name of the house announcing its true purpose.

  They were met at the door by a middle-aged woman wearing jeans (which surprised Henry again) and a button-down shirt. Shenal introduced her as the manager of the home, Sandra, who offered to show them through to the conservatory where Nell was waiting.

  Either through design or luck, Nell was the only person in the bright room with its doors that led out onto more gardens behind the house. She sat regally in a pale green dress, reminding Henry of pictures of the Queen from the royal wedding. Nell was wearing gloves, too—white ones, with little pearl buttons at the wrist. Her hair was styled into tight white curls, and the eyes in her lined face were green. Like his.

  She stood as they approached, struggling a little to get to her feet, and offered her hand for Henry to shake. “Mr. Richardson,” she said. “I’m so pleased to meet you at last.”

  He took her hand, having to lean down (Nell was tiny), and shook it. “Henry, please, Mrs. Richardson. The pleasure is mine, ma’am.”

  Nell laughed and gestured for him to take a seat. “Then I think you should call me Nell. Unless ‘grandmother’ suits me better, do you think?”

  “Great-grandmother.”

  “Oh, no,” she said, waving away his words. “I don’t like that. It makes me sound old.”

  Shenal took the seat next to him on the small sofa, setting her mighty purse on the coffee table.

  “Shenal,” Nell said warmly. “Don’t you look beautiful today. I do think yellow is your colour.”

  “Flattery, my dear Mrs. Richardson, will get you everywhere,” Shenal said, smirking. “Thank you. And thanks for taking the time to see us today.”

  “Oh, nonsense,” Nell said. “You know as well as I do that I wanted to meet the boy. I’ve ordered tea. It should be here in a minute. Did you take him by the house yet?”

  “Yes,” Shenal said. “On our way here, actually.”

  “I’m still recovering,” Henry admitted. “It’s a lot more than what I expected.”

  Nell clucked at him and nodded, her puff of white hair moving with her. “Stretton House is a beauty, I’ll give you that. Or, it used to be. I haven’t been in there in years. I daresay it’s in something of a state of disrepair by now.”

  Shenal nodded. “It’s not in the best condition.”

  Nell clucked again. “Such a shame. Such a shame.”

  They were interrupted by the arrival of the tea tray—a pot with three cups set on saucers and milk in a jug. Shenal took the task of pouring and stirring and adding sugar, handing out a cup at a time until they had all been served. Only then did Nell start up again.

  “You’re probably wondering why you’re here,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Henry said. “Shenal’s told me a bit. But not much.”

  “I’m dying, Henry,” Nell said frankly. “I have pancreatic cancer and it’s rotting me from the inside out. They found it a few months back. I probably don’t have long.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Henry murmured. He felt an undeniable rush of familial affection for this woman, even though they’d only just met.

  “Nothing to be sorry for,” Nell said, once again waving away his words. “Death is an inevitable consequence of life, my dear. I made the decision, after a long conversation with both my doctor and my lawyer, that we wouldn’t fight it. Dr. Morris has prescribed me the most wonderful cocktail of narcotics, which keeps some of the pain away, and I’m living out my days in this beautiful building. There’s not a lot more I could ask for.”

  “There’s no need for you to be in a hospice?” Henry asked.

  “Oh, phooey. Nonsense. I have cancer, not the plague. No one’s going to catch it
from me. I’m an old lady, Henry, not a young thing worth saving. I want to know—” She paused to smooth her hands over her dress, over her knees. “I want to know that the things that are important to me are cared for. I don’t want to see my family home chopped up and sold off to the vultures. I wanted to meet my great-grandson.”

  A soft snort of a laugh escaped from Henry’s lips. “After meeting you, I’m very glad you called me here, ma’am.”

  “You’re polite,” she said, shrewd once more. “I like that. Tell me about yourself.”

  “My parents are good people,” Henry said, feeling now was the time to voice what he’d been hoping he’d have a chance to explain. “I want you to know that they didn’t know about you. My father, when I told him about your call, he didn’t know that you were still alive. I’d like to think that, if they had, they would have been in contact before now.”

  Nell smiled, the action crinkling the lines in her face even further. “That’s nice of you to say,” she said. “Where did you go to school? Did you work, before you came here?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I used to own my own business,” Henry said, feeling the weight of scrutiny on his answers. “I would plan weddings.”

  “Weddings?”

  “Yes,” he said, squirming. He had fallen into the party-planning business almost by accident. All it took was a few birthday parties, an engagement party, then a wedding, and he had a full-time job on his hands that he found he actually enjoyed.

  When the recession hit, though, he’d found himself struggling for the first time in his life. He had never needed to ask for help before, financial or otherwise, having set up the company in his own name, with his own money.

  As things got worse, the buyout became inevitable. He didn’t regret selling—it was the right decision. But he deeply regretted failing.

  Clearing her throat lightly, Shenal set her teacup down on the table and reached for a file from her purse.

  “Do you think we should explain things to Henry in a little more detail?” she said. Nell nodded, gesturing for her to continue, so Shenal drew a stack of papers from her file.