‘But you weren’t. After I was released by security and they took everyone out of the room, he and I spoke. I wanted to make sure he knew I hadn’t done what Nigel accused me of. It was important to me that he knew that.’
I nodded.
He smiled. ‘He didn’t believe me. And he said …’ He started laughing again and I couldn’t help but join in. ‘He said, “I don’t like that bitch. Not at all. Not one bit.”’ He could barely get the words out, he was laughing so hard. ‘And then I left,’ he squeaked, forcing the last words out.
I stopped laughing, not finding it funny any more. ‘Who was he talking about?’
He managed to stop laughing for a split second to squeeze the word out, but then collapsed again into wheezy hysterics. ‘You.’
It took me a while to see the funny side and the more I didn’t laugh, the more he laughed, the more hysterical he became and the more contagious his laughter became to me. Pat had to drive around the estate for ten minutes so Adam could compose himself before joining the funeral-goers, and by that time his eyes were red raw from laughter and he looked like he’d been crying.
‘I don’t really get why it’s so funny,’ I said, wiping my eyes as we made our way up the steps to the mansion.
I could hear the rumble of polite reserved conversation inside. It seemed the whole of North Tipperary had turned out, and the Taoiseach’s aide de camp was present; my dad had been right about the Basil family’s connections.
Adam stopped on the stairs and gave me a look, a peculiar look that made my stomach go all funny. He looked as if he was going to say something but the door was pulled open wide and Maureen greeted us with a panicked look.
‘Adam, there are gardaí in the drawing room.’
Adam said he’d called it the bad news room when he was growing up, and the name had stuck with him. The wood-panelled room had been the parlour of the original house, before the building was extended three thousand times in every direction. It was the room in which his mother had learned she had cancer, it was the room she’d died in, and while mourners gathered across the hall to mark Dick Basil’s death, it was the room where Maurice Murphy, husband of Lavinia, was arrested by the guards before being led to a waiting patrol car and driven to the station for questioning, and it was where the family would subsequently learn that he was being charged with eleven counts of theft and eighteen of deception for the sum of fifteen million euro. The remaining five million could not be taken into account as Mr Basil had refused to press charges and now was dead and buried, silenced for ever.
22
How to Solve Will and Inheritance Disputes in Eight Easy Ways
‘I don’t understand why she has to be here,’ Lavinia said, neck tall and chin high as though she had an invisible brace on which prevented her from assuming the posture of a normal human being.
I squirmed in the leather couch. I completely agreed with Lavinia; why I was there was beyond me too. It felt inappropriate to be present at such a private affair – the reading of Dick Basil’s will – but Adam had insisted on me being there and I had gone along with it even though I wasn’t sure why. For all I knew, he was worried he might feel an uncontrollable urge to leap out the window or cut himself with the letter opener or do some damage with the eighteenth-century poker in the fireplace if he didn’t like what he heard when the will was read. I still wasn’t sure what exactly he wanted to hear; I don’t think he was too sure either. All along I’d assumed that the worst thing for Adam would be ending up as CEO of Basil’s, which was why I’d tried to figure out ways to relieve him of that duty. But as soon as Lavinia came into the picture, he suddenly declared he wanted the job. Now he was on a mission to ensure she had nothing to do with the company. It was as if the minute she showed up he realised he cared. It wasn’t only duty, or a sense of rising to the occasion and doing what one must, it went deeper than that. Basil’s was in his heart. It was a part of his make-up as much as his flesh and bones were. It had taken losing it for him to realise that.
‘I should leave,’ I whispered to Adam.
‘You’re staying,’ he said firmly, not bothering to whisper. All heads turned to look at us.
We all sat fidgeting nervously: Adam and me on one brown leather couch, and on the other Lavinia and Maurice, whose lawyers had got him out on bail only an hour or so earlier. He appeared to be on the verge of a coronary; his eyes were red and raw, his face sagged with exhaustion, and his skin was dry and blotchy.
The reason everyone was nervous was because while Adam believed, and had been told, the job would go to him, now that the eldest child, Lavinia, was home she had prior claim. Plus there was no knowing what she might have done to secure her future while her father was on his death bed. So now Adam wanted the job and Lavinia wanted it more than ever.
Arthur May, the lawyer, cleared his throat. A seventy-year-old with long wavy grey hair, slicked with gel and tucked behind his ears, and a beard like a musketeer, he had attended the same boarding school as Dick Basil and was one of the few men that he’d trusted. There was a moment’s silence while he looked around to ensure he had everyone’s attention, then he began reading the will in a clear, crisp, authoritative voice that made it clear here was a man who was not to be argued with. When he reached the part where, in accordance with Richard Basil’s wishes and in compliance with the last will and testament of the late Bartholomew Basil, Adam Richard Bartholomew Basil was to take control of Basil’s and become its CEO, Lavinia jumped up out of the couch and screeched. No words in particular, just a banshee wail, as if she were a woman who’d been accused of witchery and tied to a burning stake.
‘Impossible!’ she spluttered, suddenly coherent again. ‘Arthur, how could this be?’ She turned and pointed an accusing finger at Adam. ‘You tricked him! You tricked a dying old man.’
‘No, Lavinia, that’s what you tried to do,’ Adam said coolly. He was utterly calm. I couldn’t quite believe it; here he was, completely at peace with the decision and the role, when only a week or so earlier he had been threatening to jump off a bridge.
‘This bitch had something to do with it!’ She pointed her manicured nail at me. My heart hammered at suddenly being the centre of attention in another family’s mess.
‘Leave her out of it, Lavinia. It’s got nothing to do with her.’
‘You’ve always been the same, Adam – pussy-whipped by every woman you’ve ever been with. Barbara, Maria, and now this one. Well, I’ve seen your funny little bedroom arrangements and I can guess what’s going on!’ She narrowed her eyes at me and I recoiled. ‘What, she won’t sleep with you until you’re married? She wants your money, Adam. Our money – and she’s not getting it. Don’t think you can fool me, you little bitch.’
‘Lavinia!’ Adam exploded in that terrifying angry voice. He shot up from the couch as if he wanted to rip his sister’s head off and eat it. Lavinia was immediately silenced. ‘The reason Father left the company to me is because you stole five million from him. Remember?’
‘Don’t be so childish!’ Tellingly, she looked away as she said this. ‘He gave it to us to invest.’
‘Oh, it’s us now, is it? Pity Maurice has to face the music on his own, isn’t it, Maurice?’
If Maurice had looked to be a broken man before, he seemed close to disintegration now.
‘That’s right, Lavinia,’ Adam continued, ‘Father gave the money to you to invest – in your villa in Nice, in the extension to your house, in all those fancy soirees you hosted to get your face in magazines and raise money for charities that I’m beginning to wonder even existed.’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Maurice said quietly, shaking his head and looking at the ground as if reading the words from the carpet. ‘It wasn’t like that at all.’
He’d probably been repeating the phrase continuously since the police took him in for questioning. He lifted his eyes to the lawyer, his voice still worryingly subdued. ‘What about the children, Arthur? Did he include them?’
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Arthur cleared his throat, put on his glasses, happy to get back to the point. ‘Portia and Finn are to receive their inheritance of two hundred and fifty thousand apiece on their eighteenth birthdays.’
Lavinia’s ears pricked up. ‘And what about me? His daughter?’ She’d lost out on the big prize of running the company, but what was behind door number two? Perhaps she could save herself yet?
‘He left you the holiday home in Kerry,’ Arthur replied.
Even Adam was stunned. From the expression on his face he was veering between finding it amusing and feeling guilty for his sister who wanted and wanted so much that eventually she’d attracted her fears and lost everything.
‘That house is a shit hole!’ she shouted. ‘A rat wouldn’t holiday there, let alone live in the dump.’
Arthur looked at her as if he’d seen it all before and was tired of the histrionics.
‘And what about this house?’
‘It has been left to Adam,’ he said.
‘This is a fucking disgrace!’ she spat. ‘Granddad’s will is perfectly clear: in the event of Dad’s death, the company falls to me.’
‘If I may explain …’ Arthur May took off his glasses slowly. ‘Your grandfather stated that on your father’s death the company should pass to the eldest sibling, which indeed is you, Lavinia. But there was a clause, of which you may not be aware, stating that if the eldest child were to be convicted of a felony or crime, or declared bankrupt, the company would pass to the next in line.’
Her mouth fell open.
‘And I believe,’ Arthur continued, giving her a long look with dancing blue eyes, which made me think he was rather enjoying this, ‘that, leaving aside the recent criminal charges and whatever other actions may be pending, you have recently declared yourself bankrupt.’
‘Jesus, Lavinia!’ Maurice leapt to his feet, suddenly animated. ‘You said that this would be okay. You said you had a plan. That it would work. I don’t see it bloody working, do you?’
It was obvious from Lavinia’s reaction that this was rare behaviour from him.
‘Okay, darling,’ she said in a calm, measured voice. ‘I understand. I’m surprised too. Daddy gave me his word, but I think now he set me up. He told me to come home. Let’s go somewhere to talk about this. People can hear.’
‘I have spent the entire day, the entire day being harassed and interrogated over and over—’
‘Okay, sweetheart,’ she interrupted nervously.
‘Do you know what they said I could get?’
‘They’re only trying to scare—’
‘Ten years.’ His voice trembled. ‘The average sentence is ten years. TEN YEARS!’ he yelled in her face, as if he didn’t think she’d grasped the importance of what he was telling her.
‘I know, dear.’
‘For a crime I was not alone in—’
‘Okay, darling, okay.’ She smiled nervously, reaching for his arm in an effort to usher him out of the room. ‘Clearly Daddy has tried to have his last laugh.’ Her voice trembled then. ‘But that’s okay, I have a sense of humour too and I’ll have my last laugh. I’ll contest this will,’ she said, composure fully gathered.
‘You don’t have a leg to stand on,’ Adam said. ‘Give it up, Lavinia.’
I barely recognised the man I had seen trembling on the bridge, the man who had been silenced in his father’s presence, who had retreated into his shell as soon as we’d driven through the gates of his home. Nor did Lavinia, evidently, because she was looking at him as if he had been possessed. But it didn’t stop her getting in one last killer insult:
‘You don’t know the first thing about running a business. You fly helicopters, for Christ’s sake. You are utterly inadequate and emotionally incapable of dealing with the pressures of running a business. You will ruin this company, Adam.’ She tried to stare him down, but it didn’t work. In the end she stormed out of the room with Maurice in tow, his energy spent now, shuffling along behind her like a shadow.
‘I’m sorry about that, Arthur,’ Adam said.
‘Not to worry, old chap.’ Arthur got to his feet and started packing up his briefcase. ‘I quite enjoyed it,’ he admitted, a mischievous glint twinkling in his eye.
Adam’s phone rang. A concerned expression came over his face as he looked at the screen, and he excused himself and moved to the corner of the room to take the call.
Arthur leaned across to me and said quietly, ‘I don’t know what you’re doing with this man, but keep doing it – I haven’t seen Lavinia get a talking to like that in a very long time and I can’t recall this young man ever looking quite so self-assured. It rather suits him.’
I smiled, feeling proud of Adam and of how far he’d come, all in a little under two weeks. But at the same time he had a long road ahead of him – and I wasn’t only thinking about Basil’s and the pressures that would bring. The problems Adam had weren’t the kind that would go away overnight, or even in two weeks. I could only hope he was in a better place now, with the tools to help himself. If not, I had failed.
‘Arthur, it looks as though you’re going to be busy for a while,’ Adam said, coming off the phone. ‘That was Nigel. It seems Lavinia had already done a deal with him to merge Bartholomew and Basil and sell the whole lot to Mr Moo.’
‘The ice-cream company?’ Arthur asked, astonished.
Adam nodded. ‘They were working on the fine print and were all set to announce it as soon as Lavinia got control.’
Arthur thought about it, then laughed. ‘Your father certainly led her down the garden path. He took great delight in doing it, too.’ Then he got serious. ‘She acted without any authority whatsoever. Lavinia has no role in Basil, it won’t stand up … unless, of course, you want it to?’
Adam shook his head.
Arthur smiled. ‘Nigel is going to be one very angry boy.’
‘I’m used to angry Basils.’
‘You probably don’t care to hear it, Adam, but your father would be proud of you. He wouldn’t tell you, of course, he’d rather die first – which he has. But take it from me, kid, he’d be proud of you. He told me you didn’t want the company, but –’ he held his hand up to stop Adam explaining – ‘I feel you should know that we worked hard over the last few months, drawing up this will. It was most definitely you he wanted at the helm.’
Adam nodded his gratitude. ‘You’ll miss him, Arthur. Friends for how long?’
‘Sixty-five years.’ Arthur smiled sadly, then he chuckled. ‘Ah, who am I kidding? I’ll be the only one who misses the old bastard.’
I looked at Adam, hands in the pockets of his smart suit, standing by the old fireplace in the mansion, a portrait of his grandfather above the mantelpiece, the resemblance startling. He was delicious. We locked eyes then and my heart began to hammer. My stomach flipped and whirled, I couldn’t take my eyes off him and hoped he couldn’t read how I was feeling.
‘You asked me what I used to do here, when I was all alone as a boy.’
I nodded, happy he had spoken first, not trusting myself to say anything.
‘It’s noon.’ He checked his watch. ‘We have four more hours of light and then we can head back to Dublin. Okay with you?’
I nodded. The longer I had him to myself, the better.
In four hours, I got a taste of what his life had been like at Avalon Manor. We went out on the near-freezing lake in the boat, we ate a picnic that Maureen had prepared for us: cucumber sandwiches and freshly squeezed orange juice, because that’s what he used to have. Then we climbed in a golf buggy and he drove me around the two-thousand-acre estate. We went clay-pigeon shooting, had a go at archery, he showed me where he went fishing … But the longest time was spent sitting in the boatshed, wrapped in blankets, drinking hot whisky from flasks, watching the sun going down on the lake.
He sighed, a heavy weary sigh.
I looked at him.
‘Am I going to be able to do this?’
My mind ran through a
selection of words and phrases from my positive-thinking books, but in the end I stopped myself, settling instead on a simple, ‘Yes.’
‘Everything is possible with you, isn’t it?’
‘Most things are possible.’ Then, more to myself. ‘But not everything.’
‘Like what?’
Like me and you.
23
How to Prepare Yourself for a Goodbye
Late afternoon darkness began to descend and after a magical few hours, feeling as if it was just the two of us alone in the world, I came back to earth with a thud. It was time to return to Dublin. Pat drove us and we travelled in a comfortable silence. There was the occasional attempt at chat, but each time we plummeted into silence again my stomach twisted with knots. The closer we got to Dublin, the nearer his birthday drew, and soon it would be time for us to say goodbye. An intense two weeks, over before we knew it. The most intense two weeks of my life, in fact, finished, just like that. Of course it was possible we’d be able to see each other again, but it would never be the same, it would never be as intimate, as intense. And I should have been happy. I should have been celebrating: when I met him, he wanted his life to end, and now he seemed to be on the right road to finding his way. If I cared about him, the last thing I should want was for him to need me the way he had back then.
Pat turned off the motorway and headed for the city centre.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked, sitting up.
‘I booked a room in the Morrison Hotel,’ Adam explained. ‘It’s nearer City Hall. I thought it would be easier.’
I felt my chest tighten and a light panic setting in. We were separating, parting ways. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. In out, in out. Perhaps it was me who had the separation anxiety and not him.
‘But our time’s not up yet. We have one day left. Adam, if you think you’re getting rid of me before this is done, you’re wrong. I’m sleeping on your couch.’
How to Fall in Love Page 24
