The Dream House (34 page)

‘And in me. And now everything will change.’ Kate’s voice broke. ‘The house will go to Max and he’ll sell it I expect, and there’ll be strangers living there and all the lovely things will go.’ Dan nodded. ‘And in a silly way I feel it’s part of my history. I suppose it’s the first time there’s really been a place in my life that feels like a link with the past, like home.’

‘I know what you mean.’ Dan looked round the tiny, untidy room. ‘This has always been home for me,’ he said. ‘I know it’s small, but it always seemed just right and I can’t imagine living anywhere else. Dad inherited it from his parents – they died before I was born. I think that’s why he didn’t want to move after Mum died – there were other memories that held him here.’

‘Dan,’ Kate remembered suddenly, ‘Marie doesn’t know yet. We’ve got to tell her.’

‘I’ll do that now, if you like. Maybe you’d make us some coffee.’

While Dan was on the phone comforting Mrs Summers, Kate went into the little kitchen, boiled the kettle and found the mugs and the coffee powder. The kitchen was clean and modern, but when Kate peeped into the second reception room, obviously used as a breakfast-room-cum-study, with a computer in one corner, it was in the same cheerful mess as the front room.

Through the window she could see the back garden, a pretty square of grass bordered by flowering shrubs. There was a climbing frame on the lawn and a sandpit in one corner. Various plastic tricycles and a scooter lay scattered about. At the bottom of the garden was a large shed with a garage behind. The Dormervan and a motorbike were parked just by.

It looked a perfect house for a couple and a small child.

In the hall, Dan hung up the phone to Marie Summers. ‘She’s very upset, of course,’ he said. ‘She wants to know when you hear about the funeral.’

‘I will ring you both as soon as I’ve spoken to Max this afternoon,’ she promised.

Kate couldn’t settle to doing anything for the rest of the day. When she got home it was late morning. Simon hadn’t called despite the urgency of her message – she supposed he was now getting on a plane. She immediately rang her parents to tell them about Agnes. Her mother answered the phone.

‘Oh, that’s sad,’ she said. ‘A link with the past. Still she’d reached a great age. It must be very lonely living so long, seeing all your friends and family die before you.’

Barbara didn’t know if they would be able to come to the funeral. ‘It’s a bit far,’ she said, ‘and Ringo isn’t too good at the moment. I can’t really leave him with anybody and of course he wouldn’t like the journey. He came with us to Sevenoaks on Thursday and he wasn’t very happy.’

Which brought Kate on to ask, ‘How was Thursday? I’m sorry I didn’t get to speak to you.’

‘Oh, it was fine. The weather wasn’t too bad. The rosebush your father planted is blooming nicely, though we had to have a word with the groundsman about the weeds.’

‘I suppose it doesn’t get any easier, going?’ Kate asked, feeling she was entering uncharted waters.

‘No,’ admitted her mother. ‘But it’s the only thing we can do for her, isn’t it?’

‘We could, I don’t know, talk about Nicky more, remember her. We never talk about her.’

‘It’s your father – he finds it all hard,’ said her mother in a too-brisk voice.

That’s what Dad says about you, Kate thought to herself, but she couldn’t say it out loud.

‘Well, I hope it’s a nice service,’ said Barbara. ‘I wonder if my cousin Marion will go. Her sister Frances is up in Newcastle now, so maybe she’ll think it a bit far.’

‘I’ll ring Marion anyway, Mum,’ said Kate.

Cousin Marion wasn’t in when Kate called the number Joyce had given her so she left a message, then tried Simon’s mobile again but it passed her on to voicemail. She put the receiver down and was halfway into the sitting room when the phone rang.

‘Simon?’ she said, when she scooped up the receiver.

‘Darling, it’s Liz,’ said her friend. ‘I’m in a taxi. Just thought I’d see how you are. I’m sorry I haven’t rung before. Tony’s being such a pain about the figures . . .’

‘And there’s a new nanny, I gather?’

‘Oh, don’t mention nannies. I had to stay at home on Monday to show her the ropes. She’s already burned the bottom out of a saucepan and bumped the car – only ever used an automatic, she says now. Listen, I can’t talk for too long, just hoped you were OK.’

Kate quickly told her about Agnes’s death and gave an edited version of how things were with Simon. When she explained about him wanting to move back to London, Liz’s tone turned glacial. ‘I don’t believe it! After he’s made you drop everything and dragged you all out to the sticks. What did you say? I know what the hell I’d say.’

‘I don’t know what to do, Liz, I just don’t know. I can’t sort out how I feel about anything at the moment. It’s all too fresh, him and Meredith. And there are so many other problems here at the moment. I don’t want to keep ripping up roots and going off at a moment’s notice any more.’ Kate explained about her friendship with Agnes and the situation with the school.

‘In a way, it could be the time to make the move, then,’ Liz said.

‘The school not working out and losing your cousin. You know what they say about some doors closing and others opening.’

‘Yes,’ said Kate shortly. ‘Maybe I should just agree with

Simon and throw in the towel. But I can’t.’

‘We’re there. I’ve gotta go . . . I’ll ring you again, Pussycat. Lots of love.’

Kate put the phone down and glanced at the clock. Half past twelve, time for some lunch. She made herself a sandwich and sat eating it slowly, flicking through the pages of Joyce’s lifestyle magazine, trying to empty her whirling mind by taking in other people’s worries from the problem page and studying fetching holiday swimsuits for the older woman. When she had finished the sandwich, she sought the comfort of a chocolate bar from their hiding place in a top cupboard – Sam could eat half a dozen on the trot if they were left in the biscuit tin – and splashed boiling water onto a peppermint teabag. This lasted her all the way through the romantic short story which, with wretched coincidence, was about a woman who started life anew in the country after her divorce. Of course, this woman immediately bumped into a tall dark handsome farmer with a tragic past. If only life were like fiction. Certainly, if fiction were too like life, no one would read it. There would be so many boring bits.

Kate was ruminating on this point and wondering whether she could make a career of writing women’s magazine stories, like the mother in
The Railway Children
, when a familiar silver Range Rover squealed to a halt outside the cottage.

Kate got up from the table and went to the door as masculine footsteps marched up the path and, through the peephole, a distorted view of Max came into view. She opened the door to find herself face to face with a very angry man.

‘What’s the matter?’ she enquired. ‘You’d better come in.’

‘Mmggh,’ he muttered, which might have been ‘thank you’. She showed him into the living room but he refused her offer of a seat.

‘I just came to say,’ he managed to impart, his voice strangled with fury, ‘that I’ve just discovered what you’ve done, and I think it’s despicable. Utterly despicable.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Don’t pretend you don’t know. The will, of course.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Agnes’s will. The house should have been mine. It was always going to be mine.’

‘Yes, that’s what I imagined. Why, isn’t it?’

‘No, it damned well isn’t –
as you very well know
.’

‘Max, I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ Kate stared into his eyes, appalled at the force of his anger. He was almost crying, his sensitive face pinched with white and red blotches, his normally sleeked-back hair falling across his forehead. They stood there, challenging one another for what felt like minutes but was probably seconds. Then she said, ‘I really have not an inkling about what is going on.’

He considered her words, not taking his eyes from her face, and then, slowly, she saw the passion go out of him to be replaced by frustration and disappointment. ‘You don’t, do you? You really don’t know. Not even with all your sweet talk about not having a proper home and being glad to have found a friend like Aunt Agnes. Well, she’s changed her will, that’s what’s happened, and I’m out of it. And you, little Miss Innocent, are in.’

‘What do you mean?’ Kate could hardly take it in.

‘Seddington House. It looks like it’s yours,’ he said, giving a stagey shrug of his shoulders. ‘It’s complicated. I will get something, but basically, Kate Hutchinson, your wheedling your way into Agnes’s affections all these months has worked very nicely for you.’ He turned away to look out of the window, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his navy trousers.

Kate sat down on the sofa. ‘That’s not what happened. You can’t mean it,’ she whispered, feeling hot and cold with shock. Seddington House, the dream house, was hers?

‘I wish I didn’t,’ he said, pacing the room, looking merely defeated now, ‘but unfortunately, I do. The bloke from Horrocks and Spalding will no doubt be in touch shortly to give you the full rundown.’ He made as though to leave, but Kate broke in.

‘Max, this is as big a shock to me as it must be for you. I really
don’t
know anything about Agnes changing her will. There must be a mistake somewhere.’

‘Well, there isn’t.’ He slowly walked back from the door and sank down into one of the armchairs, then took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He looked exhausted.

‘It’s not just the house,’ he said, his voice earnest now, ‘though the money from selling it would have been useful. I thought it would be symbolic,’ he added, looking up at Kate. ‘It would show that the rift in the family, whatever it was all about, was finally over. My grandfather never received a penny from Gerald Melton, his and Agnes’s father, you know.’

A thought struck Kate. She said carefully, ‘I think I might know what it was about. What was your grandmother’s first name?’

‘Vanessa,’ he said. ‘Why?’

Kate was silent for a moment, working it out. Finally she said,

‘It was something Agnes mentioned. Vanessa was the name of her stepmother.’

Max stared at her, a look of distaste growing on his face. ‘My grandmother was . . . my grandfather’s stepmother, is that what you’re saying? That’s ridiculous. Like a soap opera.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘I’m not sure I believe you.’

Kate explained what Agnes had said about Raven damaging his father’s marriage.

‘I can’t take it in,’ breathed Max. ‘But if it’s true, I can see why they never spoke again.’

‘Do you have family of your own?’ she asked him after a moment.

‘Two girls,’ he answered. ‘They live with their mother just outside Norwich. Grace and Emily are the reasons why I wouldn’t have wanted to keep Seddington House and move over here.’

Kate nodded, trying to understand.

‘Oh,’ he said dully. ‘And the funeral. The vicar can fit it in on Friday, eleven o’clock. He wants to see us about the service. Can you do this evening?’

Kate said she probably could.

After she had shown Max out, the shock of everything hit her and she sank onto a kitchen chair in a trance. The grief that she wouldn’t see Agnes in this life again was still there, but a great flood of gratitude, like golden light, was also spreading through her. Her eye fell on the picture on the fridge. The dream house with the dream family. Could Agnes really have granted her this wonderful gift?

‘She wanted the house to stay with the family, you see. That’s what she told me when she asked me to come to the hospital.’ Raj Nadir, a partner of Horrocks & Spalding, solicitors, was a cheerful, slightly tubby Asian man in his late thirties. Despite the plethora of comfortable leather armchairs in his book-lined room in the Georgian offices in Beccles, he chose to perch on a computer chair behind his desk, rocking it from side to side as he started to explain to Kate, sitting opposite, the contents of her cousin’s will.

He had telephoned her late on the afternoon of Agnes’s death and arranged an appointment for her to see him the following morning.

‘When did she ask you to come?’ Kate said now, taking in the details of the room – the golf clubs in one corner, the photograph of a slightly slimmer Nadir with his arm around a laughing woman in a blue sari, another of two solemn little boys in school blazers.

‘Ah, it was soon after they moved her back to Halesworth, about two weeks before the will was finally signed on . . .’ he checked one of the documents in his hand ‘. . . the sixth of June. One of the fastest wills our legal executive has ever drawn up,’ he chuckled. ‘Always snowed under, you see,’ he added anxiously, as though Kate would think he was being unkind.

Kate realized with a pang that the will had been signed on her birthday. So the gift of the pearls really
had
been symbolic. She opened the copy of the will that Raj now passed across the desk and quickly looked over it. It ran to six pages and on the last she saw that one of the nurses had acted as witness.

‘I – I’m sure I’ll want to read it all through myself,’ Kate said, feeling a bit stupid, ‘but if you could just give me an outline of what it all means . . . the legal language looks complicated.’

‘Of course. As I was saying, Miss Melton was anxious to change the will because, she said, she felt she had finally met someone of her blood to whom she could entrust the family home. Yes, there’s a letter somewhere . . .’ He reached for a pink folder and drew out an envelope and passed it to her.
Kate Hutchinson
it read.
To be opened on the death of Agnes Lavender Melton
.

The letter was short, written in ballpoint pen in shaky handwriting: