The Teashop on the Corner

by Milly Johnson

  Will hadn’t been really angry for a long time. He’d been roused to a few expletives when Yorkshire Stone Homes said they were making an immediate bank transfer which would save his company, only to find that they’d reneged on the promise and the money never appeared in his account, driving the last nail into his financial coffin; but the anger bubbling through his blood now took fury to another level. He picked up the keys of his new old van and flounced out of the near-naked house, each stride of his long legs powered by pure unadultered rage.

  Nicole’s parents lived in one of the very grand houses at the back of Barnsley park. The Views had a long private drive flanked by romantic stone armless statues every ten yards. Will passed them in a blur of speed. He hoped that Barnaby Whitlaw wouldn’t set the dogs on him – or, worse, his wife Penelope – before he got to Nicole. Then again, the way he felt, he could have taken them all on: wife, parents, Dobermanns, the lot.

  Parked on the large paved circle outside the house were two delivery vans, and men were carrying Will’s furniture out of them and into one of the outbuildings. He slammed on the brake which squealed like a terrified mouse. The blubbery-bodied Barnaby Whitlaw appeared as soon as he spotted his son-in-law springing out of the old white van. He opened his mouth to speak but Will got the first words in.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘If you mean Nicole, then she isn’t in . . .’

  Will had already noticed Nicole’s sports car parked in the open garage. She didn’t walk anywhere, so he knew the likelihood was that she was in the house.

  ‘Unless you want an almighty show in front of the delivery men, Barnaby, I suggest you get her out here now.’

  Penelope Whitlaw came striding out of the front door, smoothing her steel-grey hair away from her face as if she meant business.

  ‘I’m calling the police,’ she said flapping her long bony hands.

  ‘Oh you do just that, Penelope,’ said Will, pushing his sleeves up his arms, ready for a battle. ‘But it won’t be me they’ll be taking away. It will be your darling daughter.’

  Barnaby was aware that the delivery men could hear all this.

  ‘Get inside,’ he barked at Will. ‘Penelope, go and fetch Nicole. Let’s get this over and done with in private.’

  ‘Thank you,’ nodded Will and headed inside, where he stood in their spacious hallway at the bottom of their grand staircase, seeing as no one asked him to go into the lounge, sit down and take tea. Barnaby paced around impatiently, hands behind his back as Penelope trotted upstairs. There was no love lost between Will and his in-laws. The Whitlaws might have admired his bank balance, but never him. He wasn’t ‘their type’. He had a ‘common accent reminiscent of that provincial Southern soap opera’ and would never have been accepted into their social circle. Will hadn’t inherited his money like the Whitlaws; he had worked his nuts off for it. He was a mere barrow boy made good and as such would never have class. He came from impoverished East End stock. His mother and father were kind, lovely people but struggled constantly for money after his dad developed a lung condition and couldn’t work. Will wanted more for himself and his family, and worked as soon as he was old enough to get a job. He ran errands for neighbours, served on markets, laboured for Jimmy McKintosh, one of the famous local builders who quickly realised that his Saturday boy was as lithe as a monkey on roofs. Will was bright, but he hated school as much as he loved working with Jimmy, who took him on officially as an apprentice at sixteen. Will bought his mum and dad and sister a cottage by the sea before his twenty-first birthday. By twenty-five he was an orphan and had moved up north and opened his own roofing firm. But his money would never be clean enough for the Whitlaws senior. It was tainted with sweat and rough hands and labour.

  Nicole still hadn’t arrived after five minutes.

  ‘You better tell her to hurry up,’ growled Will. ‘I’m losing patience.’

  ‘Just wait,’ snapped Barnaby, temporarily halting his rather annoying pacing.

  ‘I’ve waited long enough,’ replied Will, dodging past his father-in-law to take the steps two at a time, blocking out Barnaby’s splutters of protestation. He presumed rightly that she would be in her old room. He burst in through the door, making her mother, who was in there with her, jump; but Nicole was totally composed as she sat at her dressing table straightening her new hair. She didn’t turn around, merely looked at Will in the mirror and carried on smoothing some Russian girls’ glued-in locks with her gold GHDs.

  ‘I thought you might turn up,’ she said.

  ‘You thought right then,’ he replied.

  ‘Mum, leave us for a few minutes, would you?’ asked Nicole.

  ‘I’m not leaving you with this maniac,’ snorted Penelope.

  ‘Maniac?’ Will’s eyebrows shot up. ‘I can assure you that I’ll leave very quietly when I get what I came for, and I will get what I came for.’

  ‘Which is?’ asked Nicole, unplugging the straighteners and setting them down on the dressing table top.

  ‘My family’s jewellery, which you took from the safe. You can have the sofa, the bed, all the bleeding silver forks, the watch you bought me, but you’re not having that.’

  ‘I don’t know where I’ve put it,’ shrugged Nicole, at last turning around to him. ‘I’ll send it on . . .’

  ‘No,’ said Will adamantly, crossing his arms. ‘I’m not leaving without it.’

  As he stared at his soon-to-be-ex wife, he was almost fascinated to find that she looked like a stranger to him. He hadn’t noticed before the small lines at the corners of her mouth, indicating that the natural set of her lips was a scowling downturn; or the fact that there was no light in her eyes; they were dull like a snake’s. And had they always been so small? Temporarily devoid of her false eyelashes and smudged shadow, her irises were mean little circles of black. He wasn’t feeling any love, any attraction, not even a ghost of it for this woman who had only ended their marriage a few days ago. All he felt was anger at her self-serving greed, and yet he wasn’t surprised by it. It was as if he had always known that the glue of their marriage was money rather than love.

  ‘Nicole, are you all right?’ asked Barnaby breathlessly from the doorway. Clearly the effort of clambering up the stairs instead of using his lift had totally knackered him.

  ‘Come on, be on your way. Shoo,’ said Penelope, talking to Will as if he were one of the dogs.

  Nicole just scowled. She wasn’t in control here and that was making her cross.

  The air which hung between Will and Nicole was so icy he could have raised his fist and smashed it.

  ‘Okay, I’ll give you a choice,’ said Will, enjoying the chaos he was causing, enjoying the feeling of having some power again. ‘I’ll go without the jewellery, but I’ll make sure that when we divorce, I will chase you for alimony; and I will get it, because here you are living in a mansion and I’ve got sod all. And I’ll also make a claim on your pension so we will be tied together forever. And I’ll request half the furniture back – so please don’t sell it. I’ll be taking photographs on my way out. If you do sell it, then I’ll take the monetary value, because I’ve still got the receipts for it in my files. And I’ll send the creditors your way. I think they’ll be very interested in your private stashes of off-shore money that you didn’t think I knew about. The banks aren’t stupid, Nicole. They see it all the time, couples pretending to split up so one of them can hide a load of money. I’ll confess to them that was our master plan. Say goodbye to your assets, Nicole.’

  Will turned to go and started to walk out slowly, because he knew he would be called back any moment. Three beats and Nicole yelled, ‘Wait.’

  She tore open the drawer of her dressing table, lifted out the shell box and thrust it in Will’s direction.

  He took it from her hand, opened it and checked everything was there – it was. He overrode his polite reflex to say thank you. He had nothing to thank Nicole for. His entire marriage flashed before his eyes as she pouted at him w
ith her hard Restylane-filled mouth, oozing indignation at not having her own way for once. She had taken from him since day one and – to be fair – he’d been happy to give it, and never asked for anything back, which was lucky, because she never gave anything back. Only on one day had he truly needed something from her – a kind word, support, a hug on the day when Mrs Williams had closed down negotiations with him, and she hadn’t even been able to manage that.

  He turned towards the door again.

  ‘That’s us quits, then, yeah? You won’t be claiming against me in court?’ Nicole called to his back.

  He didn’t answer as he walked away from her and her parents and out to his van. He belted himself in as he watched the canopy of his four-poster bed being carried from the furniture van and he surprised himself with a laugh. He had the clothes in his wardrobe, the food in his cupboard, a couple of thousand quid in cash hidden in the bath panel and a van with old wind-down windows. But at that moment, with the box of his family’s jewellery in his hand and with the certain knowledge that his ex-wife was stamping her feet on the family three-inch shag pile, he felt like the king of the jungle. No, it wasn’t all over for Will Linton. There was still some fire left in the old dog yet.

  Chapter 15

  Carla had made seven tissues soggy by the time Theresa put the cup of coffee down on the table in front of her.

  ‘Right, start from the beginning,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t phone me.’

  ‘And spoil your holiday? What sort of friend would that have made me?’ sniffed Carla.

  ‘I’m so cross with you,’ said Theresa in her very posh accent, whilst fluttering her hand as if to waft away her annoyance. ‘But I’m here now, so tell me. Everything. Don’t leave a single detail out.’

  Carla began at the beginning: Martin going out to the garage to carry in the dressing table, then Carla finding him flat out on the floor after checking why he was taking so long. The ambulance, the hospital, the doctor telling her that Martin had suffered a massive heart attack and would almost certainly have died instantly and not suffered. Then the funeral and Julie. Theresa’s mouth dropped open by more and more degrees with every sentence.

  ‘Have you checked this woman out?’ she asked. ‘You haven’t just accepted that what she says is true?’

  ‘Her solicitor has sent a letter.’

  ‘Right.’ Theresa slapped her hand down on the table. ‘We need to validate both her and this so-called solicitor then. That’s the first thing we have to do. She might have composed that letter herself.’ She took her smartphone out of her handbag and scribbled down reminder notes on the screen. ‘You need your own solicitor. She might be a nutter. Have you given her Martin’s ashes?’

  ‘I haven’t picked them up yet.’

  ‘Jonty knows a solicitor. He’ll come out to the house and see you if you aren’t up to going into town. What about insurance policies?’

  ‘I haven’t looked at them yet.’

  ‘Go and get them now,’ commanded Theresa. ‘Jonty and I will look at them and sort them out for you. Have you checked your bank account? If this woman is who she says she is, she may have access to Martin’s cashpoint card. Don’t tell me – you haven’t checked.’ She growled with upmarket frustration. ‘Go get the policies.’

  Dear Theresa had always been so wonderfully bossy, ever since Carla had met her eighteen years ago when they both worked in the regional office of the DIY chain Just The Job. Theresa, ten years Carla’s senior, had been her section head in Purchasing and the two women had hit it off from day one. Theresa had been the poshest person Carla had ever met, but also the kindest. The friendship had long outlasted the job. Theresa was now a private elocution tutor. Carla fetched her box of paperwork from the cupboard in the dining room and Theresa began pulling documents out and separating them into relevant and irrelevant piles.

  ‘Martin has a life insurance policy, that’s good news. Ooh and it’s rather a fat one. And you’re the sole beneficiary, so we need to claim this asap. I presume you have a death certificate?’

  ‘It’s in the box,’ nodded Carla.

  ‘Where’s the will?’

  ‘He never made one.’

  ‘Bloody marvellous. Joint savings account?’

  ‘Yes, but there’s not much in it. He took most of it out last year to pay for the new fence outside.’

  ‘He used your savings when he was sitting on a fortune?’ Theresa’s lip lifted up in a sneer, then she mumbled a lot of four-letter expletives not very much under her breath. ‘Okay. What about the house? Who owns it?’

  ‘It’s in Martin’s name. We didn’t transfer it to both names because I never asked him to, I didn’t think we needed to. If I died first, he would get everything and if he died first . . .’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ muttered Theresa. ‘Is there a mortgage on the house?’

  ‘No. I don’t want it though. I don’t want to live here any more, Tez.’

  ‘Well you can’t just wave goodbye to your home and your security without a fight. Especially if this other woman is sitting on all that money. Greedy cow.’

  ‘I could quite happily walk away from this house now, as I am, taking nothing.’

  ‘Darling,’ Theresa said, carefully but firmly. ‘You haven’t sustained a recent bang to the head, have you?’

  ‘No. She can have everything. I just don’t care. I really don’t.’

  ‘Well luckily for you, I do,’ huffed Theresa. ‘Now get that kettle on, please. My coffee has gone cold and I can’t concentrate without a hot drink. I’ll get Jonty on to this as soon as I get home.’

  Jonty Pennant was an estate agent with an extensive database of contacts and a knowledge that far exceeded the boundaries of his job. He knew more about law than a lot of solicitors, more about numbers than most accountants and more about everything else than a whole seriesful of University Challenge contestants.

  ‘How was New Zealand?’ asked Carla as she waited for the kettle to boil.

  ‘Good. We’ll talk about it later,’ said Theresa briskly.

  ‘You’re going to live out there, aren’t you?’ said Carla, trying to keep her voice steady.

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Liar.’

  Theresa stopped rifling through the box of papers. ‘I’m not going to leave you whilst you need me,’ she said, swallowing down a lump of emotion in her throat. ‘We haven’t fully decided what we are doing yet.’

  ‘I should think you were a pair of idiots if you stayed here when your son was having a baby.’

  ‘Okay then,’ said Theresa with gruff resignation. ‘Yes, we are going out there. But it won’t be for ages. Now get out any biscuits you have as well. I need carbs to concentrate.’

  Theresa lifted her eyes and smiled at her friend who was reaching for the biscuit tin in the cupboard. How could Martin have done this to lovely Carla? He should have been counting his blessings, not playing away. Theresa had never really liked Martin that much. He wasn’t a catch, looks-wise, and had been very anti-social, barely able to grumble a ‘hello’ if Theresa ever called around at weekends. She’d always thought Carla far too good for him. Carla would have thought the same had she seen herself through my eyes, thought Theresa. Carla thought of herself as very ordinary and a bit plump and Theresa suspected that Martin encouraged her to think that way. She would never have thought of herself as a pretty woman with huge chocolate-brown eyes, a long thick mane of Italian-dark hair, a wide sensuous mouth and cheekbones that could have cut glass. As for her voice – smoky and soft – Theresa had told her on more than one occasion that she should be running a phone-sex line.

  Carla made fresh coffee and tipped out some biscuits onto a plate. This Martin and Julie mess wasn’t going to go away, but at least with Theresa and Jonty on her side she could see a prick of light at the end of the – albeit very long – tunnel ahead.

  Chapter 16

  Sherry made her Tuesday visit to Molly’s house aga
in, bringing two custard slices the size of house bricks this time. It would have taken Molly a year to digest hers had she eaten it all, and given her diabetes if she’d managed the half-inch-thick sticky sugar icing on top. She forced down a little piece, trying not to gag, and said that she would have the rest later for tea.

  ‘Oh, you won’t see me for a couple of weeks,’ said Sherry as a shower of pastry crumbs shot from her mouth. ‘Gram and I are going to our villa. Not sure when we will be back; we’ll ring you, obviously.’

  ‘Oh how lovely,’ said Molly, adding ‘for you’, but meaning, for me.

  ‘Yes. Gram wants a break. He’s working far too hard. We both need some sunshine and stifado. Is there any more tea in that pot, dear? This pastry is making my throat very dry.’

  Molly filled Sherry’s cup up, whilst wishing she would go. She had already mentioned Autumn Grange twice since walking through the door. Apparently they were having an open day and afternoon tea next month and a local celebrity’s aunt had just been admitted. Molly was tempted to tell Sherry that she had been totally won over and would like to move into Autumn Grange as soon as possible, but she was worried that Sherry would have her bags packed before she admitted it was a joke.

  Molly noticed that when Sherry went to the toilet she had taken her cavernous handbag with her. Molly definitely heard the creak of the third bedroom floor whilst she was up there, but wouldn’t have dared to confront her about it. She was scared to tell Margaret that Sherry was snooping around too because she knew her sister would launch straight into accusation and it would cause all sorts of trouble. She foresaw that Sherry would flounce out and persuade Graham never to see his mother again.