by Ally Blake
Which had the hairs tickling at the back of Ben’s neck.
He’d last spoken to Clancy a month before. Or, thinking back, it might have been closer to two. That was right. It had been her turn to reach out, and she hadn’t. Refusing to chase her up, he’d planned to wait until it was his turn again—the deal they’d put in place after the fallout, and he was a man who lived by his deals—but then...the lawyers had shown up.
For the hundredth time since that morning, he wondered: had Clancy sounded unwell the last time they’d spoken? No. She’d sounded...the same: bolshie, impatient, contrite. Talking ten to the dozen in an effort to cover up any discomfort that might arise between them.
Never once had she mentioned feeling off. Or having a tenant. A girl upstairs.
Why was that? Because she knew he’d have asked why. She’d resisted the idea as long as he’d known her. Was she worried he’d have realised something was wrong?
Or had this person, this girl upstairs, been the one to stop her from telling him? Had she seen in Clancy an elderly woman in need and used it to get free rent? If so, it made sense that she’d be keen to scarper, now a new landlord was on the scene.
“I’m afraid your find has opened up more questions than it answered,” Ben lamented.
“What would you like me to do?” Damon asked. “Get back to the lawyers? To Ms Letterman? I could slide into her DMs. Get the lay of the land.”
Unlike some who found themselves in a position such as his, Ben liked to delegate. The same reason he liked to rotate his assistants. He surrounded himself with self-starters. Go-getters. People who didn’t require gentle handling. People like him. It was why his success rate was so high.
But this wasn’t business. It was personal.
And, incongruently, the thought of anyone sliding into the DMs of the blue-eyed woman curled up on the chair in the sunshine made him feel strangely uncomfortable.
He shook his head. “Good work, though.”
Damon unfolded himself from the chair. “No probs. Wanna keep the tablet? Research purposes.”
Ben thought of those big blue eyes, the cosy set-ups, the artlessness he didn’t believe for a second, and shook the tablet at Damon. “Ms Letterman is neither a job interview nor a blind date.”
“Right.” The kid grinned and nabbed the tablet back, tucking it under his arm before lolloping out of the room.
Leaving Ben to ponder his next move.
Get the lawyers to tell Ms Letterman she could move out at her pleasure, then ask Clancy’s Melbourne firm to have a rental agency let it out? That would mean strangers living with Clancy’s furniture. Her books.
Not ideal. Neither was boarding the place up in order to keep it safe till he could figure out the next right move. Which, if he was at all honest with himself, he’d be happy to put off for a very long time.
While Ben couldn’t deny the frisson of concern sparking in the back of his head, keeping the girl upstairs upstairs might give him time to figure out her angle, while also holding at bay any necessity as to deciding what to do with the house.
For now.
CHAPTER THREE
NORA LAY ON her bed, staring at the ceiling, random songs from musicals playing in her ears, when her phone quieted a beat as it pinged with a notification. Nora pushed herself to sitting and slid her thumb across the screen to find a new email from Hawthorne Consultancy.
“Here we go,” she said, crossing her legs and dragging her laptop onto her lap. Her legs were jiggling by the time she opened the email.
Dear Ms Letterman
Pursuant to your queries regarding your temporary residence at Thornfield Hall, Fitzroy, Victoria, Mr Hawthorne’s responses are as follows:
1. As per the stipulation in Ms Finlayson’s will, no rent is owing, so please do not allow any concern on that matter to colour your decision to stay in Thornfield Hall for the allotted time.
2. Please forward any and all copies of invoices regarding upkeep of the house to this email address so that future accounts are paid from this office forthwith.
3. While Mr Hawthorne is delighted that you’d care to meet in person, he has no immediate plans to return to Australia.
4. No smoking.
5. No pets allowed on the premises.
Regards.
Damon Davidson
pp Bennett J Hawthorne
From the desk of Bennett J Hawthorne, Hawthorne Consultancy
Forensic Accounting, Financial Regulation and Compliance, Insolvency and Restructuring
Nora paused the music she’d kept running in the background, the silence only heightening the fact that her brain had gone into a kind of pfft-cough-splutter mode.
Flinging her hands out to the side, she blurted, “What the heck am I meant to do with that?”
When she’d promised Clancy she’d look after the house till she put the keys into the new owner’s hands she’d meant it. Her intent had been precise, never imagining that the new owner would fob her off onto some lackey, who’d declared the guy might not bother turning up at all!
And as to no pets—did the guy not know his grandmother at all? Not that Pie was a pet so much as a kind of grumpy, temporary house guest who had not warmed to his host at all.
The point being, this house deserved better. This community deserved better. The memory of the woman who’d helped raise him deserved better.
Nora had only a shadow of a memory of her own father, an artist and musician who’d tried to take care of her after her mother had died, but whose own demons had led him to letting her go. But she feared, now that that memory was mostly an amalgamation of the revolving door of grim-faced foster parents who’d taken her in, found her “too spirited, too needy, too much”, and one after another blithely sent her on her way.
She’d have given anything to have a woman like Clancy in her corner. To have that kind of consistency, that support, that love.
Nora’s right knee began to jiggle again. A few slow breaths usually calmed that down, but she didn’t feel like being calm. She felt offended on Clancy’s behalf. That her adopted grandson had grown too selfish or too lazy to take up his family responsibility.
Meaning Nora was caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place: her mission to sprinkle sunshine wherever she went, to be helpful without being a nuisance, without pushing too hard, or being “too much”, and her need to fulfil her promise to Clancy, to repay Clancy for all of her kindnesses so that she could leave this place with not a skerrick of regret.
Both knees now jiggled, and her fingers flicked at the ends of her thumbs, as the solution came to her. Like a big bright light bulb flickering to life overhead.
Clancy’s heir might not yet know it, but she was about to help him in a big way.
Nora was going to charm Bennett Hawthorne into coming home.
Once the decision was made a preternatural calm overcame her. She could do this. It would take finesse, and restraint, and careful choices. But she could do this.
First step: make it past the assistant to the man himself.
She reached for a notebook on the bedside table, grabbed a pen, and opened it up to a fresh page. In her neat, blocky handwriting she jotted down the few random things she could remember people saying about him before Clancy had shut them down.
Then she stretched out her fingers, pressed reply on the email, and began to type.
Dear Damon
So nice of you to get in touch! Though I was rather hoping to connect with Mr Hawthorne himself.
Despite Clancy’s truly gorgeous offer to have me stay in her beautiful home, I am sure Mr Hawthorne is keen to visit the house that has been left to him as soon as possible without some stranger in the way.
The house in which he learned to play “Baby, One More Time” on the trumpet. The rooms Clancy decorated in black wool spiderwebs
the year he decided he wanted to be Spiderman when he grew up. The kitchen where he danced to celebrate the first morning he’d not wet the bed. So many warm, wonderful memories.
Rent is not the issue. I’m happy to go with his wishes either way on that score, as he is the new owner of the property. And I will move on without a fuss the moment he arrives and takes the front door key from my hot little hand.
Perhaps you could mention that to him next time he pops his head out from behind his “desk”?
Cheers!
Nora
She added her mobile number, her Instagram handle, along with several other ways in which he could get in touch. Then, after a beat, she deleted her usual The Girl Upstairs signature footer and added:
From the desk of Nora Letterman, the Girl Upstairs
Lover of Dandelions, Dragonflies and Rainstorms on Summer Afternoons.
Sassy, yes. But she could live with that. Before she could edit, or change her mind, she hit send.
Then, feeling full of energy all of a sudden, she decided to get a head start on the next day’s jobs.
The Ambrosia Café down the street was having a two-for-one coffee promotion that Nora had agreed to hawk all over their social media pages and hers, and, unlike some people out there in the world, Nora did not make a habit of letting people down.
* * *
A dank drizzle had settled over London earlier that week, creating a permanent oppressive gloom, but now the rain was coming down so hard, it pelted against the glass of Ben’s office windows and smudged any effort at a view.
“Mr Hawthorne.”
Bennett blinked, and turned away from the window, to find Damon hovering in the doorway. Again.
“I heard back. From Nora. The girl upst—”
“Yes, I know who she is.” Her face had popped into his mind at the most inconvenient moments over the past day or so. Likely, he figured, because he was wishing for just a smidge of the shard of sunshine that she’d captured so cleverly. “All settled, I hope.”
“Not exactly. She’s still determined to leave.”
“Seriously?” Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. “Is she fishing for something, do you think? A payment? A share?”
Damon blinked, as if it had never occurred to him. “I don’t get that feeling. I think she just wants to speak to you. Directly.”
“Why?”
“Ah...there was mention of your particular connection to the house. Spiderman decorations, Britney Spears and...other things.”
Britney Spears? Bennett reached for his phone as Damon said, “I’ve forwarded it to your personal email as it felt a smidge, well, personal.”
Damon moved into the room, after silently shutting the door. It was becoming a habit.
Bennett scrolled through the personal account he rarely used to find emails from a gym he no longer frequented and juice bar newsletters he didn’t remember subscribing to till he found the one in question.
And read it.
What the ever-loving—?
“I did not wet the bed,” he growled.
Damon held up both hands in surrender. “Know my mum five minutes and she’ll tell you I used to eat dirt and wanted to be a turtle when I grew up. We all have a past.”
Bennett grunted. “You know way too much about me. I may never be able to let you leave this room.”
Damon only grinned. “She’s feisty, though, right?”
“I think the term you are looking for is passive aggressive.”
“Tom-ay-to, tom-ah-to.” A shrug, then, “I like her.”
Those big blue eyes swam back into Bennett’s consciousness, as well as the strange sensation that she could see to the bottom of his clouded, grey soul. Whatever Damon saw on his boss’s face, he lost the grin.
“Okay. So what do we know?”
Bennett refocussed. This was his wheelhouse; he took messy situations, broke them down to their origin, and fixed them.
“She wants out. No one is forcing her to stay. So what’s keeping her there?”
“Perhaps,” said Damon, “you could ask her.”
Dealing with a house on the other side of the world was one thing. Dealing with Clancy no longer living in that house required space in his head he simply couldn’t commit to right now. Except a spanner in the works, by the name of Nora Letterman, was not going to let it be.
“Just saying,” Damon said as he backed out of the office, leaving Bennett to stare at his phone, while running a hand over his mouth as he decided how to approach this.
He took messy situations, broke them down, and fixed them.
The very first question he had every employee ask every client who walked through their door was: who are you, and what do you want? Often times they didn’t know themselves until Bennett had found their pressure points and given them a little squeeze.
Ben felt something was going on with the woman in Clancy’s house, he just couldn’t put his finger on it. But the deeper truth was, he didn’t want to put his finger on it. Not now. Not yet.
So his next step was to find out who Nora Letterman was and what she wanted.
To: Nora Letterman, The Girl Upstairs
From: Bennett J Hawthorne
Dear Ms Letterman
My assistant Damon passed on your details after your recent correspondence.
Please advise your leave date and I’ll call Clancy’s lawyers and have them collect any and all keys at your earliest convenience.
Until then, know how deeply I appreciate the fact that someone Clancy trusts so implicitly is taking care of her home until other provisions are made. As you said yourself, Thornfield Hall was very important to her.
If there is anything you require in order to make your stay more comfortable please let me know.
Sincerely
Bennett Hawthorne
To: Bennett Hawthorne
From: Nora
Dear Bennett—or do people call you Ben? Benji? Benny-Boy?
I’m Nora, by the way. Just Nora. “Ms Letterman” sounds like the admin officer at a strict all girls’ school.
Pleased to finally “meet” you! Though meeting you in person will no doubt be even better. I have so many stories to share about Clancy’s last months: the people she helped, the havoc she caused. Passing those stories on to you will be cathartic—for us both.
If it’s concern over the work to be done—finding, sorting, collating and donating Clancy’s things—which is hindering your immediate return, please let me know if I can help. It must seem such a daunting task.
If you’d prefer me to leave it all be, then of course that’s what I’ll do. I can keep to my little cave upstairs, leaving Clancy’s private corner of the house just for you.
Other than that, there is nothing I need. Easy-peasy is my middle name.
Thank you for asking.
Cheers,
Nora
PS Apologies for the bed-wetting thing. I’m almost sure I was thinking of someone else.
PPS My middle name is actually Betty. I know. I sound like I ought to be Clancy’s grandmother. My dad was a muso and named me after the last two songs he’d heard on a jukebox in the Irish pub in which he was playing the night I was born.
PPS What does the J stand for in Bennett J Hawthorne? John? Jeremiah? Jehoshaphat?
To: Damon Davidson, Hawthorne Consultancy
From: Nora
Damon,
Thanks so much for nudging your boss into connecting. Whatever magic you sprinkled, it worked.
Cheers,
Nora xxx
To: Nora Letterman, The Girl Upstairs
From: Bennett J Hawthorne, Hawthorne Consultancy
Dear Nora
Bennett is fine.
Please do not concern yourself with sorting or collating. It’s not an i
mmediate concern. I am in the midst of a deeply complicated case at work and I simply cannot get away.
As to any concerns, are you satisfied with the security measures? It took some convincing for Clancy to allow me to put in the alarm, but I would be happy to organise security cameras as well. Whatever it takes to make you feel comfortable and safe in the interim.
The J stands for Jude.
Regards
Bennett
To: Bennett
From: Nora
Bennett Jude! Not only do we have Clancy in common, we have musical leanings to our names. I’d love to hear the story of how that came about. Something we can save for when you arrive to take over the house, perhaps.
There’s an alarm? Huh... I had no clue. BRB.
Yep. Found it! Behind a plant in the front hall. Any clue what the code is? Probs best if I don’t guess. Might bring a fleet of those little hatchbacks to the door. Firefighters, on the other hand... ;)
Actually, don’t worry about the code. If I’ve been fine till now I’ll be safe enough during the short time I’m here before you make it back. Anyway, the back door doesn’t exactly lock right; I nudge a chair against the handle at night. That plus a copy of Wolf Hall on top. At six-hundred-odd pages the thing is overwhelming, but as door wedges go, it’s the perfect fit.
Are you a reader like Clancy? If not I’ll make sure to pop it back on the shelves before you come. The thing is seriously intimidating.
Cheers,
Nora
To: Nora
From: Bennett
Nora,
Please pass details of the security company to my assistant, Damon, so that a new password can be organised.
At six foot five inches, feeling intimidated by size is not a concern of mine.
Jude was Clancy’s father’s name.
Regards
Bennett
To: Bennett
From: Nora
Six foot five? Yikes! How on earth did you ever navigate Clancy’s stairs? I have to take care not to trip up the things every day and I have unusually dainty feet.
