by Rachel Hore
Kate picked up Agnes’s letter once more. The answers to questions lay in the diaries, Agnes said, yet those Kate had found hadn’t revealed the core of the secret. There had to be another volume somewhere. But where?
Kate was tired now. She wondered whether she would dream again tonight, dream of the house and the events she’d just read about. She remembered the first time she had dreamed of Seddington House. She had imagined it was something to do with the locket before she saw the picture of the house in her mother’s album. What tricks our minds can play. Anyway, the locket had disappeared. She was sure she had put it in a box in the shed but several searches there had proved fruitless.
She went to her jewel box and riffled through the costume jewellery for the umpteenth time – the pearl necklace was hidden from burglars in a drawer under the bed. Yet again she looked behind the chest of drawers, checked the floorboards for holes but found no clue. She was still puzzling about it when she heard a car draw up outside.
She got up and opened the front door, waiting in her socks on the threshold, her hand on Bobby’s collar, as Simon paid off the taxi driver and wheeled his suitcase down the path.
He dropped his heavy flight bag on the hall floor and kissed her. He tasted unfamiliar – of fast food and whisky – and this, coupled with his face, pale and excited with great shadows under the eyes – gave him the air of a stranger, a refugee.
He pulled off his jacket and tie and ripped open his top button, then rummaged in his flight bag.
‘Bubbly,’ he said, flourishing a bottle. ‘Let’s put it in the freezer for a bit.’ He clattered about in the kitchen, fixing himself a sandwich. Kate sat at the table and watched him. Finally, he sat down opposite her and poured them each some champagne.
‘Congratulations,’ said Kate and took a sip. It was only cool.
‘Christ, I’ve worked my socks off for this promotion,’ said Simon, gulping down his drink as though it were lemonade, then pouring himself some more. ‘But it’s been worth it.’
There was something manic about his expression. Kate shivered.
‘I’m really pleased for you, darling,’ she said, and forced her face into a smile.
‘Are you? Are you really?’ He flung himself back in the chair and stared at her.
‘What do you mean? Of course I am. I know how hard you’ve worked and how much you’ve wanted this.’
Simon seemed mollifed. ‘It’s the first time I feel I’ve really succeeded at something. Something I’ve worked hard at. Even Dad would be pleased with me now.’
‘He would, darling,’ said Kate, allowing him his moment of glory. Simon was studying her. His eyes glittered navy, his hair was ruffled and greasy from travelling. It struck her that he must have had a lot to drink over the evening.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said harshly. ‘You’re thinking Dad’s opinion shouldn’t matter. That the old boy’s dead. But it does matter.’
‘Well,’ she shrugged, ‘I still want my parents to be proud of me. It’s silly, isn’t it, once we get to our age. But I’m really proud of you, too.’ She reached her hand across the table and squeezed his fingers. He didn’t respond.
‘I expect you’re thinking I shouldn’t spend so much time at work though.’
‘You know I think that. But that doesn’t mean I’m not proud of you. Just that there are other things to succeed at in life as well. Things that are even more important. Surely you see that.’ Her eyes drifted across to the fridge and the picture of the dream family.
‘You and the kids,’ he mumbled, watching her. ‘Yes, I know that. But that’s different. That doesn’t give me the same feeling of achievement. The excitement of the office, conflict, getting the deals done, the politics – it feels like living on the edge, urgent, important.’
‘But we’re important, too,’ Kate said wearily.
‘Of course you are. It’s you and the kids I’m doing all this for.’
‘Simon, no it’s not. It’s for you. Don’t get me wrong, I know work is important – for me as well as for you. But not so it takes over your life in the way it’s taking over yours.’
‘It’s only taking over my life because of the travelling. There won’t be so many trips abroad for a while. And if I could cut out the travelling down here . . .’
‘Now we are just going to start going round in circles again.’
‘We’ve got to settle this one. And this house – how much d’you think it’s worth then?’
‘Simon, you must come and see Seddington House tomorrow. And then maybe you’ll see what I mean, why I want us to live there.’
‘Sure. If you like.’
Exhausted, they stared at one another like swimmers through murky water.
Chapter 29
The next morning, Simon looked haggard. He was brisk with the children who, of course, wanted all his attention after his week’s absence, and it was a relief when they could drop them off at a birthday party at the swimming pool.
Then Kate took Simon to see Seddington House. This time, although Marie Summers had given her a key, Conrad was there to let them in. Simon wandered around the rooms, glancing critically at everything, as if he were a prospective buyer who had only deigned to come and look at the insistence of an over-assiduous estate agent.
‘It’s the most extraordinary clutter, isn’t it?’ he said, touching a huge, squat mahogany cabinet inlaid with lapis lazuli, which occupied a space under the windows in the dining room. ‘Who on earth would want it all? I can see that the pictures . . .’ he gestured at a set of delicate watercolours of Suffolk scenes glowing in a dark corner of the room ‘. . . might be of interest, but do people really want this sort of stuff?’ His gesture encompassed the great hulks of furniture, the miscellany of curios, the piles of books that crowded the room.
‘The auctioneers seem to think so,’ said Kate, annoyed at the way he was dismissing her precious inheritance. ‘We’ll know for certain soon.’ There had been a letter in the morning post. Raj had fixed up for Ursula Hollis and her team to arrive on Tuesday week to spend several days valuing the contents of Seddington House.
They went outside.
‘It’s a lovely pile, there’s no mistake,’ Simon said grudgingly, as they strolled around the rose-blown gardens. The lawns were mown but the flowerbeds were overgrown with weeds and many of the shrubs required cutting back. ‘It’s too big for us, though. And it needs a lot of work, Kate. Plus it doesn’t solve my travel problems, does it? We’d be better off selling it lock, stock and barrel, paying off the taxman and buying somewhere sumptuous in London on the proceeds.’ He stood silent for a moment, clearly doing calculations. Then he said, ‘I’ve no idea about the contents, but surely we’d walk away with pretty much three-quarters of a million on the house sale alone. Let’s say that, after tax, you clear five hundred thou and add it to the two hundred we have in the bank. Factor in the contents and we’d be paying cash for a big London house somewhere central.’
‘But that’s just it,’ said Kate stubbornly. ‘I don’t want to live somewhere central, or indeed anywhere in London. I want to live here, in Seddington House.’
‘Kate, think about it, please. We’re going to have to come to some agreement . . .’ Just then the phone in his pocket bleeped and he took it out. He looked at the display. ‘Sorry, gotta take this,’ he said, and walked off through the Italian garden, the mobile clamped to his ear.
Kate watched him go. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but occasionally he laughed, and she wondered what could be funny about high finance.
She walked over to the little door in the wall through which she had once broken into the new world of this magical house. She stood, trying to recapture the wonder of that evening, back in April, but her mind was too crowded with anxieties now. What if she and Simon could not agree on their future? Was there a compromise? To live much nearer London but out in the country – Hertfordshire or Hampshire. She supposed so . . . except she didn’t want to.
She wanted to live here. Anyway, their relationship was too uneasy at the moment to make any firm plans about something as committed as another new life somewhere else.
The argument drifted on until after the weekend. Simon had taken a couple of days off, but he seemed at a loss when it came to finding things to do. He spent hours on the computer, annoying Joyce who couldn’t use the phone, kept taking Bobby off for long walks and didn’t seem at all interested in Kate’s suggestions of visits to Aldeburgh or Norwich.
On Sunday night he quarrelled with his mother after, Kate heard from Joyce later, she tentatively suggested he wasn’t spending enough time with the children. ‘I know, dear, it’s none of my business, but it’s so difficult to say nothing when I can see what’s going on in front of me. Sam particularly wants input from his father. Boys need to do things with their dads, don’t they? They go off the rails so easily these days.’
Secretly, Kate had to agree with her. When she had picked Daisy and Sam up from the swimming party at Saturday lunchtime, she had been concerned to find Sam had been crying. The birthday child’s mother had taken Kate aside and said, ‘I don’t think he’s enjoyed himself very much. He didn’t want to go in the pool and was upset when everyone else did. I’m sorry, but I didn’t know what to do.’
‘What was wrong, Sam? You love swimming,’ Kate had said on the way out to the car, Daisy skipping ahead.
‘He’s just a wuss,’ Daisy said, spinning round to stick her tongue out at her brother.
‘I wanted you and Daddy to have stayed,’ Sam wailed, aiming a kick at Daisy.
This week, Sam had asked Simon on both Monday and Tuesday, ‘Promise to c’llect me?’ Simon had dutifully turned up at the school gates at three o’clock each afternoon, but once he had brought the children home he would vanish back into the study or out by himself, leaving Sam in anguish, searching for him. Simon might have been living on another planet, Kate thought crossly, for all the interest he took in domestic life. And yet it was her job to berate him about it, not Joyce’s.
‘He’s very tetchy at the moment,’ she said to her mother-in-law. ‘He might take it better from me.’ In the end, she didn’t have the courage to start what would undoubtedly end up as another argument, and it was a relief when her husband went back to work on Wednesday morning.
That same Wednesday morning, after Kate had taken the children to school, she drove to Seddington House to help Max start tying up some of the loose ends of Agnes’s life. In the library, there were two big writing bureaux and a filing cabinet full of papers. Upstairs, a preliminary search revealed a dozen dusty cardboard boxes of files, letters and memorabilia in one of the spare bedrooms. The contents of the boxes looked older than the papers in the bureaux, though. It was obviously the bureaux they had to tackle first.
As Max pulled out of the filing cabinet a folder labelled Buildings Insurance in Agnes’s shaky handwriting, Kate asked him the question that had been hovering in her mind ever since her visit to Raj Nadir’s office last week.
‘Max, perhaps I shouldn’t be asking you this, but I need to know how you feel – about the will.’
Max dropped the folder back in the drawer. ‘Am I going to contest it, you mean? I don’t know. I’m taking advice from a colleague.’
‘Do you still think that it’s my fault? Agnes leaving me the house, I mean.’
He sighed, then smiled, a bit sadly. ‘To tell you the truth, no,’ he said. ‘I can see you’re not a fortune-hunter. And various people – Nadir and Dan and Mrs Summers – have taken pains to make me see that it was important to Agnes, leaving this place to you. Having a family here again to bring it back to life.’
‘That’s something then,’ Kate said. But he had not quelled her unsettled feelings. Despite what Raj said about Max not having a strong case, wills did get contested and surprising judgements were sometimes made.
‘I’m sure I’ll get the money she’s left me, though,’ Max continued. ‘This story of a child – it’s got to be a load of codswallop. No one knows anything about it, do they? Unless there’s something in here.’ He tapped the nearest bureau with the toe of his brogue. ‘Still, whatever happens, she was my aunt, and it’s our duty as executors to sort everything out. Perhaps we’ll find something that clarifies matters. Come on.’
They started making piles on the floor of the mishmash of folders and papers, writing a list of the myriad tasks that have to be carried out in the event of a death. Kate opened the top drawer of the second bureau and found it to be full of photographs. She picked out one of a beautiful young man with short black hair sleeked back in the style of the times.
‘Must be my grandfather,’ breathed Max. ‘Raven. He looks like a matinee idol, doesn’t he? It’s been touched up, of course, but my grandmother used to say how good-looking he was.’
‘Oh, did you know Vanessa well?’
‘My grandmother died in nineteen eighty-five, soon after her eightieth birthday.’
‘What was she like? Raven died in nineteen sixty, didn’t he? It was a long time to be a widow.’
‘She was very lovely when she was young. Mum left some photographs. Even at eighty there was something fragile and appealing about her. Dad said she made men want to look after her, made them feel manly and protective. I was only a graceless lout of a teenager, but I could see what he meant.’
‘Did she marry again?’
‘No, but she had lovers.’
Kate laughed suddenly. ‘I can’t believe you were a graceless lout,’ she said, taking in his tall neat form, the blue cashmere sweater perfectly teamed with camel cords and a snow-white open-necked shirt.
‘I used to dress all in black,’ he said, ‘and practise a sneer.’ He gave one now, making Kate giggle.
‘I bet you were the type of guy I was terrified of at uni,’ she said. ‘Impossible to impress and refusing to engage in any conversation that didn’t come back to Post-structuralism.’
‘I was all of that,’ he admitted, ‘but only because I was lonely. University was a bit of a disaster for me. It was only when I started work that I got some confidence. Then I met Claudia – she was a social worker involved peripherally in a case I was working on.’
‘She’s your ex?’
‘Yes. She’s from Norwich originally, and I had been brought up in Cambridge, so when she got pregnant we decided to go back to home ground. Her parents could help with the kids, you see.’
‘What went wrong, then?’
‘She seemed different at home amongst her family. They smothered her. It was “Mum says this,” and “Dad says you shouldn’t do that.” We started to argue a lot. And then she bumped into an old boyfriend from school . . .’ He shrugged, his face impassive.
Kate nodded in sympathy, then busied herself again with the contents of the bureau. She wondered whether she should confide in him about her own relationship problems, then decided it was more restful not to.
Two hours later, papers and files lay in neat piles around the library floor. Max and Kate sat drinking coffee and staring at the mess.
‘It’s like Raj said – most of the financial stuff must be with him or the bank,’ said Max.
‘Or the accountant,’ agreed Kate. ‘Raj said his predecessor wound up everything to do with the old farm estates, and made Agnes put things like the deeds and share certificates in the bank. Can’t think why he didn’t deal with the jewellery, though.’
‘God, jewellery. I suppose we ought to see what’s around the house. It all belongs to you now, of course’
‘Yes, but I know where some of it is. In the safe over there.’ Kate nodded in the direction of the fireplace and picked up her handbag to find the little key Agnes had given her. Then she walked over and started pulling the Domesday volumes off the shelf.
‘A safe. So that’s what you were up to with Dan that afternoon,’ said Max, aggrieved, so Kate explained as she worked.
‘There were some diaries Agnes wanted me to read, you see. To tell me about her
child.’
‘Diaries?’ he said sharply.
‘Yes, but there’s nothing in them about the child,’ she said hastily. ‘Just a letter she wrote to tell him to read the diaries. There might be another volume that I’ve missed. I don’t know, we must see.’ She knew she ought to offer Max the chance to read the exercise books now that Agnes was dead, but she was jealous of them. They were her private bond with Agnes, with the past. And anyway, she wanted to find and read that final volume first – if it existed.
The door of the safe swung open, and Kate removed the top box from the pile of jewel-cases. Max gasped when he saw the exquisite diamonds within. He grabbed at the other half-dozen boxes, opening them one by one, his eyes widening in amazement at the contents. As he pulled out the last box, Kate could see with disappointment that the safe was empty. No more diaries, then.
‘These must be worth thousands,’ Max breathed. ‘They ought to be in the bank.’
‘That’s exactly what Dan said when he saw them—’ Kate stopped, seeing Max’s face change expression. ‘What have you got against Dan?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘Nothing. Just that he always seemed to be hanging around my aunt, that’s all.’
‘I don’t think that was for any sinister reason,’ said Kate gently. ‘Just that she helped him and he was fond of her.’
‘He was very relaxed with her, very close. In a way I could never be.’
Suddenly Kate understood. ‘It’s a shame,’ she whispered. ‘I suppose there was too much baggage. Not your fault.’
‘What do you mean?’
She looked at him, her gaze level, taking in his sensitive face, the nearly black hair, the intense expression.
‘You are Raven’s grandson, that’s the problem. And you look so incredibly like him. Agnes wanted to forget the past, to bury it. And every time she looked at you, she must have been reminded of all her pain.’
By lunchtime, they had sorted through both bureaux and each of them had a long list of tasks. Kate’s included sorting out the buildings and contents insurance and advising a raft of different companies of Agnes’s death. Max’s involved taking the jewellery and the miniatures and a number of other bits and pieces to Agnes’s bank in Halesworth. He turned down Kate’s suggestion of lunch and arranged to meet her again the following week for the start of the auctioneers’ visit. On the way out, they met Conrad parking his bicycle and explained what they were doing with the valuables.
