Molly's Millions

by Victoria Connelly

  Marty shook his head, his eyes narrowed, as if refusing to take all the information in. ‘Look at this,’ he said, pushing the phone bill towards her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘All these calls.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘There are hundreds of them!’

  Carolyn put the TV guide down and reluctantly examined the phone bill. ‘Oh, Marty – they’re to your own sister,’ she said, pushing the bill back to him and returning her eyes to the film listings.

  ‘It would be cheaper to get in a taxi and visit her.’

  Carolyn tutted. Sometimes a tut was the only possible response to Marty.

  ‘What do you two talk about, anyway?’ he asked.

  ‘You, of course!’ Carolyn said, trying to force a little smile out of him, but it didn’t work.

  ‘That isn’t funny. And neither is the cost of this quarter’s bill.’

  ‘Let me see.’ Carolyn pulled the sheets of paper out of his hand. ‘Well, most of this is service charge,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what you’re fussing about. It’s not as if we go out on the town all the time, is it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, we never eat out like other couples. We never go to the theatre or cinema or clubs.’

  ‘You want to go clubbing?’

  ‘No,’ Carolyn sighed, ‘that’s not what I meant. It’s just we don’t exactly spend a fortune on ourselves, do we?’

  Marty’s eyes wrinkled up until they were tiny chinks of brown. ‘Why would we do that?’

  Carolyn stared at him. She sometimes wondered if he was having her on but, more often than not, he was deadly serious. ‘People do occasionally go out, you know.’ She smiled encouragingly. ‘When was the last time we went out? And—’ she raised her hand in the air, ‘you’re not allowed to include going round Old Bailey’s.’

  Marty shook his head and looked down at the bills that had now obscured most of the coffee table.

  ‘Come on!’ Carolyn said. ‘When was it?’

  He shrugged his shoulders in defeat. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Exactly! I think the last social event we attended was our own wedding and my dad paid for that.’

  ‘You don’t have to spend money in order to have fun,’ Marty pointed out.

  ‘I know,’ Carolyn sighed, ‘but we don’t spend any money, do we? And just look at the state of this house! There’s paint flaking off the front door, and these carpets are really disgusting.’

  Marty glowered at her. ‘You want to spend more money?’

  ‘No!’ Carolyn was starting to become exasperated. He wasn’t understanding her at all, was he? ‘I just think we should lighten up in our attitude towards money.’ By we, she did, of course, mean Marty. ‘You know Molly and I get along really well and I don’t think you should make such a big deal about the odd phone call.’ Carolyn could see the words ‘odd phone call’ on the tip of Marty’s tongue but he bit it and nodded instead. ‘After all,’ she continued, ‘we hardly see her.’

  ‘She shouldn’t live in the middle of nowhere,’ Marty said, shaking his head in a manner that was scarily like his grandfather.

  ‘She doesn’t live in the middle of nowhere,’ Carolyn said. ‘Just because you don’t like the countryside, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t visit her now and again.’ Carolyn tried to stop herself from smiling as she thought of the last time they’d visited Molly and had gone out for a walk in the woods. Carolyn had never seen anybody so startled by the sight of mud before. Marty had taken at least ten minutes to leave the safety of the car and had walked through the wood like a flamingo on stilts.

  ‘I visit!’ Marty defended himself. ‘But she seems to take great pleasure in my discomfort. She deliberately winds me up. She’s just like—’ He stopped.

  Carolyn stared at him, his mouth open but refusing to finish the sentence he’d begun. Was he thinking about her-who-shall-remain-unnamed? Was he thinking about his mother – the mysterious Cynthia? Carolyn had guessed, long ago, that Molly must surely take after her mother as there didn’t seem to be an ounce of Bailey in her. But Marty had never confirmed her suspicions either way.

  ‘Molly has a sense of humour, that’s all,’ Carolyn said.

  ‘More like a sense of the ridiculous.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you just sound like the older brother?’ she teased, ruffling his dark hair affectionately.

  ‘Caro!’ he complained, pulling away from her.

  ‘Shut up and give me a kiss,’ she said, undeterred by the monstrous mood he was in. She saw a gentle softening around his eyes as he turned to face her. That, she thought, was the Marty she’d fallen in love with and married, but what had happened to him? Why didn’t she see him so often these days? Why did he hide himself behind a wall of bills and worries?

  ‘Give us a kiss,’ she whispered into his ear. ‘And don’t stop until I tell you.’

  He drew closer to her and she closed her eyes as his mouth reached hers. Several seconds ticked by, slowly turning into minutes.

  ‘Caro?’ Marty said, drawing away for a brief moment.

  Carolyn pulled him back towards her. ‘I said, don’t stop until I tell you!’

  Marty relented and Carolyn held his face in her hands as she kissed him again. Sometimes, she thought, a woman just had to take charge.

  Tom’s arms flailed at the sound of his alarm clock. He’d forgotten to cancel it again. How many Saturday mornings had he been rudely awoken because he’d forgotten to cancel his alarm?

  He sat up and yawned like a cave, and then he felt his head throbbing as if it had been slammed in a door. Not that he’d been drinking. He hadn’t even a bottle of red wine vinegar in the house but he had had rather a restless night; one of those strange, sleepless, dreamless nights when you shut your eyes but the brain doesn’t quite find oblivion.

  He thought briefly about trying to go back to sleep again – he’d just managed about an hour before the alarm had gone off – but he dismissed it when he heard the post arrive. Flinging a housecoat around his body, he padded barefoot downstairs to see what had landed on the doormat.

  One Visa bill, one phone bill, one envelope claiming he’d won some money, and another with something solid inside. He ripped it open. It was a charity begging for money and they’d included a pen to help him fill in their direct debit form. Tom sighed. As bad as he felt about it, he couldn’t afford to make any donations at the moment so he put the form into his recycling bag and popped the pen into his jacket hanging up in the hallway. He was always losing pens.

  Wandering through to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, he thought about the events that had led up to his sleepless night. It had begun on Friday morning. He’d awoken with a great sense of foreboding: he had to go to work. Now, there was nothing unusual about that but, for the first time, he realised it was in his power to change the course of events. After all, if he didn’t do it, nobody else would, would they? Everybody in this life is accountable for himself alone. Nobody else gives a damn – really. Or, that was how Tom was feeling about things at the moment.

  So he’d gone into work with heavy feet and a heavier heart. I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here, he’d chanted, until his head was filled with the noise of his own agitation, and that was when he’d done something about it. He’d got up from his desk, neatly pushing his chair under for what he knew would be the last time, and walked calmly to his boss’s desk.

  ‘Is it ready?’ Bill Matthews asked without looking up from his computer.

  ‘No,’ Tom replied.

  Bill looked up at him. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m leaving.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Good.’

  Bill’s eyebrows had crashed into each other. ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve got another job,’ Tom lied. Well, it was only a half-lie, really.

  Bill’s huge mouth had dropped open. The rest of his colleagues in the open-plan office had, by now, sussed that something int
eresting was happening and had downed tools.

  ‘Since when?’ Bill barked.

  ‘Now.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tom had said, casually stroking his chin, savouring the moment. ‘So I’ll be off then.’ And he’d turned on his heels and simply walked out of the office.

  ‘Tom Mackenzie!’ Bill Matthews shouted after him. ‘You won’t be getting a reference out of me!’

  ‘Don’t need one!’ Tom shouted back.

  ‘You’re in breach of contract!’

  He was also, he thought, in breach of his brains. It had been a mad thing to do. Mad and wonderful. But what now? Was there really any money to be made from this oddball in Cumbria? He picked up his road atlas and opened it up again. His fate now lay in a stranger’s hands.

  In the meantime, his credit card company and the telephone company weren’t going to bend sympathetic ears towards someone who’d jacked in their job on a whim. He had to make some money somehow and, as time was money, he thought he’d better make a move straight away.

  He suddenly felt a wave of vigour coursing through his body, flushing out any niggling doubts or insecurities. Something told him that he could make this work; that his future began here and now.

  Just then, the doorbell went. He tightened the belt on his housecoat, wondering who would call at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning. The post had already been but it could be an oversized parcel.

  He opened the door. It was a parcel all right. In the shape of a little girl holding a candy-coloured suitcase in her hand.

  ‘Hi, Daddy,’ she said in a voice between a whisper and a yawn.

  ‘Flora! What on earth are you doing here?’

  The girl looked up through a thick blonde fringe, her eyes wide and apologetic. ‘Mummy says I’m to spend the summer holidays with you.’

  Chapter Seven

  ‘How did Mummy know I’d be in?’ Tom asked, having made hot chocolate for two instead of strong coffee for one.

  ‘She said you’re always in at the weekends.’

  ‘Oh.’ Tom shook his head as he cleared the clutter away from the kitchen table to make some room for his daughter. Bloody Anise, he thought, always taking advantage of his reliability. But what was he to do now? Where exactly did that leave him with his planned trip? It was one thing taking off at a moment’s notice on your own but taking a ten-year-old along for the ride was a different matter altogether.

  It wasn’t the first time that Anise had dumped their daughter on him last minute either. There was that time when she’d shown up at the office claiming she had roaring toothache and couldn’t cope with Flora. The office had come to a complete standstill: the men staring goggle-eyed at Anise whilst the women clucked and cooed over three-year-old Flora. He’d had to take the rest of the day off work.

  Then there’d been the evening he’d prepared a meal for Samantha, the girl he’d been seeing, on and off, for two months. They’d just been about to embark on dessert when a knock at the door and a seven-year-old in her pyjamas had put paid to that.

  Tom had never hidden the fact that he’d had a daughter: there were photos of her all over the house, but the reality of it had been too much for Samantha so she’d sashayed out of his life for ever.

  ‘She said you never go away on holidays,’ Flora said, bringing her father back into the present. He watched as she blew her hot chocolate into brown waves.

  ‘She did, did she?’

  Flora nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What else did Mummy say?’

  Flora looked pensive. ‘She said you’re always on about not seeing enough of me, and that you can bloody well see plenty of me this summer.’

  Tom frowned. ‘Watch your language!’

  ‘But that’s what she said.’

  ‘I believe you.’

  Flora cupped her hands round the teddy bear mug Tom kept in his cupboard for her. It hadn’t occurred to him that it was the summer holidays. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  ‘The thing is, Flora, I have to work. Surely Mummy knows that?’

  Flora gazed into her mug. ‘She told me she’s going away. She says she’ll be away all summer.’

  ‘All summer?’

  Flora nodded. ‘She’s leaving tomorrow.’

  ‘And I suppose she’s going with Jean-Philippe?’ Tom gritted his teeth as he realised how bitter he sounded. It wasn’t a nice trait in a father, especially at the breakfast table.

  ‘Don’t you or Mummy want me?’ Flora suddenly said.

  ‘Of course we do.’ Tom felt his heart swell. What on earth was he thinking of? He was probably laying the foundations for years of very expensive therapy. ‘I’d do anything for you!’ He gave her little body a huge hug and kissed her cheek with a resounding smack. ‘The only problem is, I’m going away too.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Well, I don’t really know yet. But I’m not sure you’d want to come. It’s a long way, you see.’

  ‘I don’t mind long ways,’ she said enthusiastically, as if she were aware that she had to promote herself.

  Tom sat down opposite her. ‘It’s a long way, it won’t be much fun, and I’ll be working. I’ll be staying in horribly cheap hotels, getting up at the crack of dawn, eating on the hoof, and I’ll probably be in a constant foul mood.’

  ‘So what’s new?’

  Tom laughed. ‘You sound just like your mother sometimes.’

  Flora smiled back at him. ‘So when do we leave?’

  How did the Romans put up with the intense cold of Northumberland? Molly wondered, winding her window up. And how did they manage it in tunics and sandals when she was shivering in jumper and jeans? They must have been awfully homesick. It was a lonely kind of countryside too and, in a way, it was beginning to depress her. Maybe it was time to head south.

  She’d done a lot of thinking over the last few hours. Her trip to the Roman fort of Housesteads had provided her with the opportunity to just sit and think. She shook her head as she remembered how she’d felt sitting on an uncomfortable piece of Roman wall. Surely there was no lonelier place than Housesteads? It was such a strange, sparse landscape occupied by triangular hills and conspiring copses – the sort MacDuff’s army might have moved behind – and the great stretches of Hadrian’s Wall dominated the landscape. Other than those features, there was little else except the wind. It had been the perfect place for contemplation; for thinking about her journey and what lay ahead. She’d even gone as far as getting her notepad out but had only succeeded in doodling a little picture of Fizz.

  Had she really wanted to make a plan? Probably not. Surely that would have taken all the fun out of things. For a moment, she weighed up the pros and cons of planning; thinking, inevitably, of her mother and father.

  She remembered when she’d first noticed the difference between them. At their family home, her father had always been in charge of the front garden and it was the picture of neatness: a narrow brick path leading in a regimentally straight line to the door; the grass permanently mown to billiard table baldness, and two conifers that didn’t dare to grow out of alignment for fear of the shears. The back garden had belonged to her mother. Molly had once asked her how she arranged the flowers and her mother had looked at her as if she was quite mad. ‘Arrange flowers?’ Cynthia had laughed her musical laugh. ‘Molly, my darling, you don’t think I’m the sort to arrange flowers, do you? Heaven forbid! They arrange themselves. Look!’ She’d pointed to the profusion of pinks, blues, whites and mauves which knitted together in a blowsy bounty. It was heavenly.

  Molly could still almost smell the garden as if a naughty wind had caught hold of it from her past and was winging it to her. It was then that she’d decided she wasn’t going to have a plan. She’d got as far as writing one to ten on it: a good, strong plan – her father would have been proud of her. But she was her mother’s daughter. So she’d torn it out neatly and then ripped it up into little pieces, sending the recycled shreds into the wind to disperse a
s freely as her mother’s flowers.

  No, she didn’t want to start timetabling things. It would be no good trying to compartmentalise counties and divide her winnings up into likely numbers of beneficiaries. That would take all the fun out of things.

  No, she was going to suppress her father’s organisational genes and give free rein to her mother’s spontaneous genes instead.

  Chapter Eight

  Tom was running around like a man possessed. He’d almost forgotten Flora was sitting in the front room in his hurry to get things organised.

  ‘The first thing we’ve got to do is pack,’ he said, beating the palm of his left hand with his right as if choreographing a group of invisible dancers.

  Flora picked up her pink suitcase and pointed to it. ‘I’ve packed already – look!’

  ‘Yes. Good,’ Tom said absent-mindedly. ‘Now, what do I need?’

  ‘Clothes?’

  ‘Clothes,’ Tom repeated. ‘Yes,’ he said, as if methodically packing in his brain.

  Flora followed him upstairs and watched as he emptied his worldly goods out onto the bed. It was terrible. It was as if all the rejects from the local charity shop had been dumped onto his duvet.

  ‘There’s a big hole in this one,’ Flora said, picking up an old denim shirt.

  ‘And there’s an even bigger one in this one!’ Tom said.

  Flora giggled as he wiggled his finger through it. ‘Shall we go shopping?’ she suggested, the credit-card-pushing genes of her mother already apparent.

  ‘No. We haven’t time,’ Tom said, not bothering to add that he didn’t have the money either. ‘Chuck these in that sports bag over there,’ he said, selecting six shirts that had seen better days five years ago, ‘and empty that top drawer too.’

  Tom ventured into the ‘everything’ room and began to sift through the mountains of notepads on the floor. How many would he need? All of them? He knelt down to choose.

  ‘Daddy!’ Flora gasped as she poked her head round the door. ‘You really should tidy your room!’