The Four of Us

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• Margaret Pemberton
  
• Dedication
  
• Part One
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• Chapter Eight
  
• Chapter Nine
  
• Chapter Ten
  
• Chapter Eleven
  
• Chapter Twelve
  
• Chapter Thirteen
  
• Chapter Fourteen
  
• Chapter Fifteen
  
• Chapter Sixteen
  
• Chapter Seventeen
  
• Chapter Eighteen
  
• Chapter Nineteen
  
• Part Two
  
• Chapter Twenty
  
• Chapter Twenty-One
  
• Chapter Twenty-Two
  
• Chapter Twenty-Three
  
• Chapter Twenty-Four
  
• Chapter Twenty-Five
  
• Chapter Twenty-Six
  
• Chapter Twenty-Seven
  
• Chapter Twenty-Eight
  
• Chapter Twenty-Nine
  
• Chapter Thirty
  
• Chapter Thirty-One
  
• Chapter Thirty-Two
  

Margaret Pemberton is the bestselling author of over thirty novels in many different genres, some of which are contemporary in setting and some historical.

She has served as Chairman of the Romantic Novelists' Association and has three times served as a committee member of the Crime Writers'Association. Born in Bradford, she is married to a Londoner, has five children and two dogs and lives in Whitstable, Kent. Apart from writing, her passions are tango, travel, English history and the English countryside.

The Four of Us
is about friendship and is dedicated to:

Linda Britter – a lifetime friend whose help and advice on all things literary is much valued.

Kathleen Smith – a childhood friend regained through Friends Reunited.

June Hanchard – a friend who has taught hundreds to dance –

even me.

Christine Morris – a friend who made life such fun in the '60s and makes it fun still.

And last, but by no means least, for Mike – who in over thirty

years of marriage has been the best friend any woman could have.

Seated in the elegant reception area of Marcus Black & Company, Solicitors, Primmie Dove's fingers tightened on the strap of her shabby handbag. She was fifty years old and her only previous experience of solicitors was when her much-loved husband, Ted, had died. That had been three years ago and her sense of loss was still raw.

She took a deep, steadying breath. Now was not the time to be thinking of Ted. All her attention needed to be focused on the letter in her handbag.

Dear Madam
, it read.
I would appreciate it if you would contact me with regard to the estate of Mrs Amelia Surtees, the widow of your father's brother, Gordon Surtees. Yours faithfully, Marcus Black.

Had the childless Amelia, who had exchanged her council house in Redhill for one in Cornwall at about the time of Ted's death, left her a small amount of money? It was the conclusion her twenty-two-year-old daughter, Millie, had come to, but then Millie was ever hopeful where money was concerned. Joanne, thirteen months older than Millie and an office manager at D. P. International, a Mayfair advertising agency, had been more prosaic.

‘You're probably going to be asked to deal with some kind of paperwork. Remember when Dad died? Even though the amount of money he left was negligible, there was still paperwork to deal with.'

She hadn't been able to speak about the letter to her youngest daughter, Lucy, who was back-packing somewhere in Australia and her son, Josh, who never travelled out of London if he could help it, had been equally impossible to contact.

‘Mr Black will see you now,' the woman at the reception desk said, breaking in on her thoughts.

She rose to her feet, fighting down a sudden, irrational feeling of apprehension, and entered the adjoining room.

‘Thank you very much for being able to see me so promptly, Mrs Dove,' Marcus Black said, beaming genially. ‘And my condolences on your aunt's death.'

‘Thank you.' After shaking hands with him and seating herself on the chair at the far side of his desk, she said, not wanting to mislead him in any way, ‘We weren't close. I used to visit her once or twice a year when she lived near London, but since her move to Cornwall we've had no contact apart from exchanging cards at Christmas.'

‘Really? Now that
does
surprise me.' Once more seated behind his desk, he looked down at the slim file that lay open in front of him. ‘I'd assumed you were close, but of course, as she had no other relatives and certainly no
blood
relatives …' He leafed through a couple of pages of close print.

‘Has she asked that I be her executor?'

‘Executor?' He looked up at her, startled. ‘No, indeed. We – Marcus Black & Company – are her executors.' He removed a typed sheet from the file. ‘This is a copy of Amelia Surtees's estate accounts, for your own records, but if you will bear with me, I would like to go through it with you, item by item.' He cleared his throat and donned a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. ‘Assets at date of death, twenty-nine thousand, one hundred and ninety pounds.'

Primmie gasped.

‘Balance at National Westminster Bank, eight thousand seven hundred and forty pounds forty-nine pence. Balance in Abbey National Building Society share account, twenty thousand four hundred and seventy-eight pounds. Jewellery sold, four hundred and two pounds. And now for the debit side of the estate, which is payment of funeral expenses, fee for copy of death certificate, the administrator's expenses, my own costs for the winding up of the estate …'

Vainly Primmie tried to keep a mental running total of how much was still left, but maths had never been her strong point.

‘And now to the residuary estate of twenty-four thousand five hundred and thirty pounds,' Marcus Black said, ‘divisible in equal parts between the following six charities: The Sunshine Children's Home, Birmingham; The Children's Country Holidays Fund; Save the Children Fund; The Seal Sanctuary, Gweek; Redwings Horse Sanctuary, Norfolk; Foal Farm Animal Rescue Centre, Kent.'

He clasped his hands on top of the sheet of paper he had been reading from and looked up at her. ‘Now, Mrs Dove. Is that all understandable?'

Primmie nodded, understanding all too well that she wasn't one of the beneficiaries. As she had never expected to be coming into money, the disappointment wasn't too great, but just for a few minutes, when Marcus Black had announced the surprising amount of her aunt's assets, that she might have been left something had suddenly seemed a possibility.

‘And now,' he said, ‘we come to your aunt's largest asset. The property she was living in at the time of her death.'

Primmie blinked. ‘I'm sorry. I don't understand. My aunt didn't own property. She had a council house at Redhill, which she exchanged for a council house in Cornwall.'

Marcus Black cocked his head to one side and said, ‘Your information is a little at fault, Mrs Dove. True, your aunt-by-marriage had a council home in Redhill. This she vacated in March 1997 when she inherited her father's property – the property she was living in at the time of her death. This property – and its contents – she has bequeathed to you, Mrs Dove, for your lifetime.'

‘I'm sorry?' Primmie said again, feeling as if she was being unutterably stupid. ‘Are you saying that my aunt
owned
her house? And that she's left it to me?'

‘Yes and no. Your aunt most certainly did own her Cornish home, but the property has not been bequeathed to you outright. You are not, for instance, at liberty to sell Ruthven. You are, however, able to live in it, if you so wish, for the rest of your life. At your death, as part of Amelia Surtees's estate, it will be sold, the resultant proceeds being then equally divided between the six charities aforementioned. If you have no desire to live in the property – and if the upkeep of the property proves burdensome – then you can forego it at any time. As part of your aunt's estate it will then be sold and divided between the charities sooner, rather than later.'

Primmie gaped at him. A house in Cornwall.
Cornwall
. A house she could live in, rent free, for the rest of her life if she so wished. It was so out of the blue, so totally unexpected, that she didn't know what to say, or think.

Marcus Black put his glasses back on and removed another sheet of paper from the file lying in front of him. ‘It is only fair to tell you that the property is a little isolated and that some of the outbuildings are, I am told, in a state of disrepair.'

‘Outbuildings?' Primmie said dazedly. ‘It still has an outdoor privy?'

Marcus Black chuckled. ‘No, Mrs Dove. The outbuildings in question are sheds and barns. If you look at the documentation I have given you, you will see that the property is a smallholding – a type of property very common in Cornwall.'

‘And the house?' she asked, too fearful that the house, also, was in a state of disrepair to giggle at her mistake.

‘Sound,' he said reassuringly, passing a thin sheaf of paperwork towards her. ‘And these, Mrs Dove, are the keys of the property in question.' From a desk drawer he withdrew a large envelope and, opening it, tipped a small bunch of keys on to his desktop.

Primmie stared at them, still struggling for a sense of reality.

‘If I could give you some advice, Mrs Dove?'

‘Yes. Of course. Please.'

Aware of her situation – that she was widow of modest means – he said, ‘Don't make any decision about the property until you have not only inspected it, but have familiarized yourself with it. Your present address is Rotherhithe – and life in south-east London is very different to life on a Cornish smallholding. You may find it impossible to adapt. Also, although Mrs Surtees has left you the property for your lifetime, she has not bequeathed to you money with which to maintain it – and maintenance costs may prove to be a heavy burden.'