7,19 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Serie: Lake District Mysteries
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
Winter has arrived in the town of Windermere, and has bought with it the death of Frances Henderson, the best friend of Persimmon 'Simmy' Brown's mother. Having known the Henderson family all of her life, Simmy must cope with the loss of an important figure from her childhood, as well as the confusion at being bequeathed something in Frances's will. When Frances's husband is violently murdered in his home, Simmy must face the fact that the family she was once so close to as a child, holds some dark and sinister secrets.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Seitenzahl: 414
Ähnliche
The Bowness Bequest
REBECCA TOPE
Another one dedicated to Sue,
even if she never reads them
Contents
Author’s Note
The towns and villages in this story are real, but the auction house has been invented.
Prologue
As funerals went, this was a low-key one, in Simmy’s view. The family had lost a wife and mother, and were accordingly bereft and bemused, but they had not been flamboyant in the manner of her send-off. It had been a sad and shocking death from pancreatic cancer. ‘The one they have no clue how to cure,’ said Simmy’s mother sourly. ‘Or prevent,’ she added for good measure.
A formulaic cremation, followed by tea and cake in a modest hall in Bowness, had been all the family could manage. There were perhaps sixty people assembled, including Simmy’s parents. Frances Henderson had been sixty-three; an ordinary woman struck down by a fast-working cancer. Friends, colleagues and offspring were seated around the formica tables. The average age appeared to be below fifty, which perhaps made the occasion unusual, but in every other respect it offered little worthy of note.
Simmy carried her little plate of cakes around, in search of a seat. The one she had left to collect her food had quickly been nabbed by a man who looked eager to talk to Angie, Simmy’s mother. There was a table containing three women of roughly Simmy’s own age, and she diffidently joined them.
‘Hi, I’m Simmy,’ she said. ‘My mother was one of Frances’s oldest friends.’
‘June, Cheryl and Hannah,’ said one of the women, pointing to each in turn.
‘Oh – Hannah! Of course, it’s you. What a fool I am.’ Simmy was deeply embarrassed. ‘I only saw the back of your head at the crematorium. What is it – twenty years since we last met? But you haven’t changed.’
She paused, her mind full of memories of a shared childhood with the five Hendersons and their parents. A series of flashbacks had been assailing her for the past hour, and still had her in their thrall. The three boys, each with his own individual habits and preferences, arguing with the two younger sisters, ignoring their parents on the sporadic occasions when there was an attempt at discipline. Simmy, with her mum and dad, trying to join in, and mostly failing. And now, here they all were, so oddly different from their adolescent selves, with their mother dead and their father cocooned in an invisible wrapping of shock. He had spoken a few words to Angie, nodded at Russell and frowned at Simmy as if unsure of who she was.
But Hannah was remarkably the same, with her cloud of thick hair framing small features. There was no possibility of failing to recognise her, face-to-face. ‘Simmy,’ she said now. ‘That’s okay. You’ve changed a lot. Were you always so tall?’
Simmy laughed. ‘Pretty much, I think.’ She took a seat next to the woman introduced as Cheryl. ‘Have I met you before as well?’
‘No, I don’t think so, although I know who you are. We live just over the road – I think we know everybody here. Neighbours, workmates, family.’ She looked around the room, not appearing to take any pleasure in her social knowledge. ‘I’ve known the Hendersons for ages. I worked with Kit in the carpet warehouse. It was my first job from school. June too, for a bit. She knows everybody as well.’
Simmy focused on the other woman. ‘Hello, June,’ she said.
‘Hiya,’ said June listlessly.
Cheryl was a colourless creature, wearing a bulky dark-blue coat. Plump, pale and clearly not very interested in Persimmon Brown. Her friend was prettier, with long bleached hair and a full mouth. Both looked to be in their early forties.
‘A man stole my seat,’ said Simmy, waving a hand at the other table.
‘That’s my husband,’ said Cheryl. ‘Malcolm. He insisted on coming, but I don’t think he knows anyone, really. He doesn’t like me to go anywhere on my own.’ She preened slightly at this, as if it were a source of pride. ‘You not married?’ she added carelessly.
‘Divorced. Your husband’s chatting to my mother as if he knows her,’ Simmy observed.
‘He does that. We were in the row behind you at the crem, and he recognised your mum. He’ll be checking it out. I told you we know everybody, just about.’
‘I remember your mum very well,’ said Hannah. ‘She was always great on our seaside holidays. Full of all those stories about the swinging sixties. I loved all that. I was sorry when everybody got too old for them and we all drifted apart.’
‘Where’s Lynn?’ Simmy asked. ‘I only saw the back of her head as well. You two were always so alike.’
‘Still are, according to most people. She’s doing the tea, in the kitchen. Can’t let anybody get on with their job without interfering. She’s still furious with George for bunking off right after the cremation. Says he has a duty to be here.’
‘Poor old George. He’d hate all this, wouldn’t he?’
‘Time he grew up and got over himself,’ said the man’s unfeeling sister. ‘But, if anything, he just gets worse.’
‘Oh, well,’ said Simmy, still immersed in early memories of the Henderson family. ‘Eddie makes up for it.’
‘Not to mention Christopher,’ said Hannah. ‘Three brothers, all as different from each other as anyone could imagine.’
Simmy nodded in agreement and sipped her tea.
Chapter One
The shop door pinged huskily at two o’clock on the Monday afternoon following the Friday funeral. Must see what’s the matter with it, thought Simmy. It wasn’t electronic, but a simple old-fashioned bell above the door. Perhaps there was some fluff caught in the works.
An unmistakably familiar man was walking through the shop towards her. Brown eyes, hair with a hint of auburn in it. Tall, with big hands and a hesitant smile, he combined features from both his parents. Something quick in his movements conjured his father, while the big head and long chin were from his mother’s side.
‘Christopher,’ she smiled, mentally running through potential reasons for his being there. Yet again, the sight of him revived sweet memories of sand and salt and fried fish, combined with an easy intimacy that had existed from her earliest days.
‘Have you got a minute?’ He met her eyes with a look she had seen on men countless times before. A look that said, Just how well do we really know each other? She wondered whether a grown-up brother would have asked a similar question, if she had ever had one.
She spread her hands to indicate the empty shop. Early November had to be one of the quietest points in the year as far as a florist’s business was concerned. ‘Very much so,’ she said.
‘I thought it would be better to come in person. Much better than a letter from a solicitor.’
‘Pardon?’
‘My mother left you something in her will. I thought you might know about it already.’
She was bemused. ‘No, I had no idea.’
‘Well, our families have been friends forever. She approved of your new life. It’s not so surprising, is it?’ He seemed impatient, even mildly irritated.
‘But …’ The dead woman had five children, and had not been wealthy. The modest bungalow in Bowness had always needed painting or pointing or roof tiles replaced. A widower remained there with his memories. His offspring were all still in the area, three of them married.
‘She was fond of you,’ he repeated.
‘Yes. And I almost never went to see her, since coming here. She was my mother’s friend much more than mine. Did she leave Mum anything?’
‘You’ll have to ask her,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘It’s supposed to be confidential.’
‘Are you an executor?’ Simmy was very hazy about the way such things worked, but she was under the impression that people’s wills became common knowledge once the person had died. Her parents had never yet discussed their own end-of-life affairs with her, but she had a suspicion that they might get around to it before much longer. When they did – if they did – then being an only child would presumably make everything nice and simple.
‘Oh, yes,’ he sighed. ‘Eldest son, and all that. It’s us three boys, actually. Lynn and Hannah are sulking about being left out, but they’ll soon realise they’ve had a lucky escape.’
‘Sounds complicated. I can’t imagine that George will be very useful.’
‘George is a law unto himself, as always. He’s going to take a while to settle down, after losing Mum. But actually, the business side of things is all fine. Eddie and I are cracking on with it quite happily so far. And Dad’s okay with it all. He only wants to be left to get on with everything the same as always. He hasn’t really taken on board that he’s on his own now.’ He sighed. ‘He’s really not in very good shape mentally. I hadn’t realised just how far he’s sunk. He’ll need somebody to watch out for him from now on. And everybody seems to think it’ll be me.’
‘I like your dad,’ she said, with a degree of exaggeration. ‘I always did.’ In truth, she had seldom been able to feel anything for the man. She couldn’t get closer than liking the idea of him, rather than the reality. He had been a detached sort of father to his large family, but basically harmless, as far as she knew. He maintained a steady income and never hit anybody.
‘You’ll have to visit him, then. He’d be thrilled if you did.’
Simmy entertained another rapid kaleidoscope of childhood memories in which the Straw and Henderson families had holidayed together, year after year, in North Wales. Christopher and she had always been good mates, swimming together and pootling in the rock pools. They had been born on the same day in the same hospital, which explained the friendship. The two new mothers had become welded together, despite the subsequent move of the Hendersons to Cumbria when the children were in their teens. Ten years later, Angie and Russell Straw had followed them, and ten years after that, Simmy too had moved north.
‘So what have I inherited?’ she asked again.
‘Come down to the house, and I’ll show you.’
The Hendersons lived at the southern end of Bowness. It would take twenty minutes to walk each way from Simmy’s shop in the middle of Windermere. Longer coming back, in fact, due to the uphill climb. Perhaps she’d take the van and save the time. ‘After work,’ she nodded. ‘Is that okay?’
He looked uneasy. ‘I suppose so. Can’t you come now?’ He glanced around the shop, evidently searching for a deputy.
‘Sorry. Bonnie isn’t in today. She takes Mondays off, in lieu of Saturdays. I can’t just close up for an hour or more, can I? Shouldn’t you be at work yourself?’
Christopher’s career had always been a source of fascination to the Straws. He had gone to university for a year and then dropped out, spending the next two years working on an organic farm and fighting against a variety of perceived ecological threats. At twenty-two, he then switched track again and took part in an epic voyage on a sailing ship, down to the Straits of Magellan and up the western side of the Americas. None of his friends or relations saw him again until he hit twenty-five, got married and settled in Solihull working for a stonemason. At no stage did he have any reliable income; a fact that his wife eventually found intolerable. She wanted children and an easy life. ‘Why in the world did she ever marry him?’ Angie Straw repeatedly demanded.
‘Because she loved him,’ said Frances, his mother. ‘Obviously.’
Christopher was unarguably lovable. Women melted under his charm. The past ten years had seen him mostly based in Cumbria, albeit with regular absences. The stonemasonry fizzled out, and he took another swerve into antique dealing. Here he finally found his niche. After dabbling in china and glass, then stamps and postcards, he settled into a post as second in command at a thriving auction house, gaining a reputation for straight dealing and bottomless knowledge. He did most of the high-profile work as auctioneer, while his boss sat in a small room and offered valuations and expert identifications of a vast range of objects.
‘Mondays are quiet for me, too,’ he said. ‘We had a big sale on Saturday, so I’ve earned a day off, same as your Bonnie. The girls are always crotchety on the Monday after a sale. People forget to collect their purchases, and then phone in a panic. The staff have to keep their wits about them, in case anyone tries to claim the wrong things, accidentally on purpose. And it’s all got to go on the website. I’m best out of their way.’
‘Is it an antique, then? My bequest?’ Her curiosity was starting to blossom, after the initial surprise.
‘Wait and see,’ he insisted with the first proper smile since he came in. ‘I’ll be there if you come at five or soon after. Dad’s going to want to talk to you as well.’
He left awkwardly, his brow furrowed as if burdened with a long list of tasks to complete. Other people to inform about an inheritance, perhaps. Simmy watched him thoughtfully, her head full of questions. Had Frances left anything to Angie, Simmy’s mother? Did anyone in the family resent this apparent generosity to an outsider? At the funeral, the widower had held himself straight and stiff and nodded randomly at anyone who approached him. He was seventy-four, in good physical health. Angie Straw had reported that Kit was wearing rather better than her own husband, afflicted with an abrupt decline into a type of paranoid neurosis. The two wives had enjoyed regular sessions, in which they appeared to fortify each other through the disappointments and tedium of stale old marriages. Angie would pass on a few snippets to her daughter, generally along the lines that she might not be missing a great deal by being single again.
But then everything collapsed with Frances’s cancer and Angie lost her highly valued friend. From diagnosis to death had been five weeks. ‘And that’s a lot more than some people get,’ said the visiting Macmillan nurse.
Mr Henderson was another Christopher, but was known to everyone as Kit. Frances had a sister named Christine, shortened to Chris, which meant that the firstborn son was always referred to by his full name. ‘Why in the world didn’t you think of something else for him?’ Angie had demanded, on the very day the child was born. ‘It’s a family thing,’ Frances had replied. ‘There’s no ducking it.’
Angie had been almost as scathing about all her friend’s subsequent children’s names. ‘So dull,’ she said. Simmy always winced, with her own exotic ‘Persimmon’ more burdensome than she liked. Hannah or Lynn would have suited her very nicely.
The afternoon drifted by, with a single customer searching for an African violet that would be guaranteed not to die. Simmy was the soul of patience, explaining the plant’s preference for water from beneath the pot, as well as adequate warmth and light. ‘The clue’s in the name,’ she smiled. ‘They’re from Africa, where conditions are very different from here.’ She hoped, by the end, that at least a few of her hints had taken root. So many people seemed to be unaware that plants were living things, with all the same needs for nourishment as any other creature.
Accustomed to spells of quiet in the shop, she occupied herself with ordering new stock, and making plans for the Christmas display that Bonnie was due to create in a month’s time. The girl had a flair for design and colour, already dismissing any notions of wreaths or poinsettias, suggesting all kinds of alternatives that would catch the eye of anyone passing their window. She intended to make liberal use of gold paint and glass baubles, she warned her employer.
‘It’ll be amazing,’ Ben Harkness had approved. He and Bonnie were a closely entwined couple, bonded by each being seen as unusual, if not downright bizarre, by the world at large. Ben was just eighteen, Bonnie a few months younger. He was studying for a clutch of A levels, and she had abandoned any further attempt at passing exams, having had an interrupted school career that left her with a pathetically meagre set of GCSEs. Nobody doubted that she would make a success of life, regardless of formal qualifications.
Simmy had been running her Windermere flower shop for a year and a half, slowly learning her way around the Lakes, and discovering the different characters of the various small towns: Ambleside with its confusing streets and legions of hotels and guesthouses; Coniston with its Old Man lowering protectively just behind the houses; Hawkshead, with its timeless little huddle of odd-shaped buildings. She loved them all, as well as the fells that surrounded them. Windermere and Bowness were both a lot less distinctive, on lower ground, with the fells away in the distance. The water lapped gently at the edges of Bowness, and a patch of tame woodland sheltered Windermere from the worst ravages of the winter weather. ‘Soft,’ people said of these two settlements. You were safe and warm, down here – unlike on the unpredictable heights of Kirkstone or Grasmere.
And although Simmy found the wilder regions thrilling and beautiful, she had to admit she spent almost all her time in the lower reaches. Her home in Troutbeck might sit on rising land, closer to the fells than it was to the lake, but it was very nearly as hospitable as Windermere for much of the year. Troutbeck, she had concluded, was as remote and adventurous as she was ever going to feel comfortable with.
The first few months after moving north had been devoted to establishing the shop, a process involving mountains of paperwork and rapid learning. By the end of the summer of the previous year, she had everything in place and a growing stream of people wanting her flowers. Assisted by Melanie Todd, a local girl of considerable ability, she had supplied weddings, funerals, birthdays and other momentous life events with suitable floral embellishment. And along the way – at a wedding, then a birthday and after that three other commissions – people had been violently killed. Simmy had been drawn into investigations and personal danger, merely by virtue of delivering flowers. The first occasion was just over a year ago now, and she profoundly hoped that the anniversary would mark a change of fortune, leaving the whole business of murder far behind her.
The fact of an unexpected bequest seemed to add weight to this hope. It had never happened to her before. Even when her grandparents had died, they had left their meagre savings to the generation above Simmy. Not so much as a silver candlestick had come her way.
Visions of jewellery, or a picture, or a handsome piece of china filled her head. Something that Frances had kept tucked out of sight – because Simmy could not remember ever seeing anything of the kind on display in the house. One thing she was sure of: it would not be money. How could it be, when the family had always been struggling to find cash for holidays or a new car, or a replacement television? Kit Henderson had worked as a carpet fitter for most of his life, earning little more than the basic retainer during the big recession nearly ten years earlier, without the added commission for jobs done, since few people saw a new carpet as a high priority. Although the situation improved, he had seemed glad to retire on a very modest pension at seventy, leaving his wife to keep them afloat with what she earned as an administrator in Barrow Hospital. ‘I’m really just an office clerk,’ she would say, ‘but everyone calls themselves administrators these days.’
The hours finally passed until five, at which point Simmy hastily locked the shop and went to the van parked on a tiny paved area behind the shop. Her car was somewhere out on the eastern side of Windermere, where parking was free and unrestricted. She would leave it every morning, and have to try to recall exactly where in the afternoon. When she got back from Bowness, she would have to locate it in the dark, damp streets where all the cars looked the same.
Eagerly, she turned the opposite way from usual, and headed southwards towards Bowness. I’ve got a beque-e-est, she sang softly to herself. It made her feel oddly blessed, as if an angel had brushed her with its wings. Within a very few minutes, she would discover exactly what it was that Frances Henderson had left her.
Chapter Two
Bowness was a linear little town, following the eastern edge of Lake Windermere for a mile or so. It had opted very early on for a particular brand of tourist appeal that had been sustained for well over a century. It boasted a promenade, manicured gardens, large and handsome hotels, and many more shops and restaurants than Windermere could offer. Boats could be hired and small lake cruises embarked upon. Just south of the town was the ferry across the lake. South again was Newby Bridge and a whole different kind of landscape.
Traffic was comparatively light, but it was never a smooth business to drive through Bowness. Simmy’s destination lay past the promenade with its swans and kiosks and to the right into Glebe Road. A road that had been steadily colonised with a variety of houses over the years, it looped past a cemetery and a small park, and back into central Bowness. The Hendersons had probably the least attractive property in the street, deprived of a view of the lake and suffering all the noise and disruption of the substantial tourist trade, being close to the Ship Inn.
‘It was all they could afford,’ Angie had said. ‘And you have to admit they’ve made the most of it.’ The house was kept tidy outside, the woodwork painted regularly and the garden forbidden from escaping human control; with a large lawn, frequently mowed, and easy shrubs, which flowered on schedule. Simmy glanced all around, sighing at what she felt was a false image, created entirely to placate neighbours and town councillors. There was a soullessness to it that a florist could not fail to notice.
Christopher had evidently been watching out for her, and was standing in the doorway as she approached. ‘Good timing,’ he said.
She followed him into the small shadowy hallway, then through to the sitting room at the back, which had been chosen as the quietest and lightest room, by a small margin. It looked south-west, where tiny glimpses of water could be had between buildings and trees. To Simmy’s great surprise there were three people sitting there, all obviously waiting for her.
She had seen them all only three days previously. She had spoken to them, and eaten cake with them, after Frances Henderson’s cremation. It felt strangely unsettling to see them again so soon. It had been as if the funeral of their wife and mother, with the release of tension that came after it, was the end of the story. Even though she knew that life had to go on, she had not expected to be part of it right away, if ever. She looked to Christopher for an explanation.
‘We’ve been going over the will this morning, you see,’ he said. ‘We knew what was in it – nothing very complicated – so now the funeral’s out of the way, we have to deal with the details. George and Eddie know what we’re doing. Hannah and Lynn came over this afternoon to help us get clothes and a few other things sorted.’
‘I see,’ said Simmy uncertainly. ‘Well, hello, everybody. Kit …’ she faltered. What did one say to a man still numb from the death of his wife? Could you even assume he was numb? Anything was possible. He could even be planning a Mediterranean cruise, for all she knew.
‘Simmy,’ he nodded, not even making a token effort to get up from his chair. There was none of the old-fashioned gentleman to Kit Henderson, and never had been. In that respect, he was altogether different from Russell Straw. But Kit didn’t need to make courteous gestures for a woman to see the twinkle in his eye. He had something roguish about him, with brown eyes and a skin tone darker than most Cumbrians. Once or twice Angie had likened him to a gypsy. Always a slight man, with thin limbs, he also had something of the monkey about him. He moved quickly, and it was easy to imagine him crawling across newly carpeted floors, nailing down the edges and ensuring all was neat. Frances had, since Kit’s retirement, complained that he was impossible to live with, telling Angie Straw how unreasonable and demanding he had become. ‘Expects me to wait on him hand and foot,’ was a recurrent theme. ‘And I swear his wits are going. He asks me the same question a hundred times.’
The two sisters were together on a shabby sofa. With only fifteen months between them, they had frequently been taken for twins. Now in their early thirties, they had gone their separate ways, and Simmy had little idea of the pattern of their lives. It had been twenty years or more since she last saw them. Pausing to take proper note of their expressions, she found them to be singularly unfriendly.
Again she turned to Christopher for reassurance. He gave her a weak smile, but said nothing.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, slightly too loudly. ‘I’ve got no idea why Frances should have left me anything. If it’s a problem for you, I’ll be happy to give it back – whatever it is.’
‘Huh!’ snorted Hannah. She had bushy straw-coloured hair that dwarfed her face, which had similar small features to her father’s, creating a resemblance despite the very different colouring.
‘Wait till you see what it is,’ added Lynn. As if to break away from the likeness to her sister, she had cropped hair that sat springily on her skull like a reluctant wig. It was of a texture more often found in Africa, the colour of both it and her skin somehow wrong. She seemed less inclined towards hostility than Hannah, perhaps remembering how Simmy had babied her in the past, helping her with sandcastles and shell collections. There had been a close bond between them in those early years when Lynn had been little more than a toddler.
‘So tell me,’ Simmy begged. ‘The suspense is awful.’
‘Come and see for yourself. It’s on the table,’ said Christopher. ‘It’s easier than trying to explain. I’m not even sure that any of us quite understands it, anyway.’
There was a small round table in a corner of the room, covered with a cloth that someone had embroidered flowers on, many decades previously. An empty ashtray and a pair of woolly gloves shared it with a large book. ‘There,’ said Christopher.
She was tempted to lighten the mood by pretending to think her legacy was the frayed gloves, but she restrained herself. The book was plainly the object in question. ‘This?’ she said, touching it lightly.
‘Right,’ said Christopher. He gave a deep sigh. ‘And I of all people ought to know if there’s something special about it. I can see it’s been carefully made by hand, but that doesn’t make it valuable. Look inside,’ he urged her.
She picked it up and opened it at random. It was a substantial case-bound volume, quite heavy. The paper was far thicker than the pages of a normal book, and they were all interleaved with fine tissue. ‘It’s gorgeous,’ she breathed. ‘Where did Frances get it from?’
‘Her mother did it,’ came Kit’s smoky old man’s voice. ‘She always kept it in the bottom of the wardrobe. I’ve only seen it once.’
‘There’s a letter with it,’ said Hannah, her tone still sulky. ‘Inside the front cover.’
Balancing the book on her left forearm, Simmy extracted an envelope. Awkwardly, she put her new possession back on the table and opened the letter.
‘Are you sure you want to read it now – with all of us here?’ Christopher cautioned her.
She frowned. ‘Why not? It can’t possibly be secret, can it? Even if it is, I wouldn’t keep it from you. You’re her family. I’m not important. I can’t think why …’ But she could, of course. The moment she had opened the book, she understood why it had been given to her. Because it was full of watercolour paintings of flowers, and flowers were her thing. The execution was competent rather than brilliant, the colours not quite natural. But she had already fallen in love with it, three seconds after realising what it was.
Dear Simmy, the letter ran,
I wanted you to have this because you understand and appreciate flowers. My mother made this when she was expecting me, in the 1950s, and a friend of hers bound it for her. She said it was to pass down the female line of the family, as long as there was a daughter to inherit it. And yes, I know I have two daughters, neither of them you. But they don’t care about this sort of thing, and quite honestly, Simmy, you’re the daughter I always wished I had. Awful thing to say, I know, but in my situation, it feels dangerous to avoid the truth. As if I might bring yet more calamity down on myself.
So keep it nice, and get it out now and then and spare a thought for me, just as I did for my mother. And be nice to Christopher.
With very much love, Frances
‘Well?’ demanded Hannah. ‘What does it say?’
‘Leave her alone, will you,’ snapped Christopher.
‘She said it couldn’t possibly be secret. So why not read it out to us?’
Simmy barely heard her. Tears were threatening, along with a burning wish to escape. ‘Sorry,’ she sniffed. ‘It’s rather personal. Listen – I’ll have to go. Thank you – all of you. I will come and see you, Kit, if you’d like me to. And my mum and dad will ask you over there when they’re not too busy with the B&B people.’
She gathered up the beloved book, and turned to leave. Christopher stood in her way. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘Oh yes,’ she assured him. ‘Don’t worry about me. You’re the ones who’ve lost a wife and mother. I’m just sorry this has all been a bit awkward.’ She felt desperate to escape and give herself time to process what had just happened. From feeling unexpectedly blessed, she was now consumed by a strange sense of guilty embarrassment. A woman she had only known as a child, who had no reason to think of her at all, had snubbed her own daughters by favouring Simmy. It felt more aggressive than generous, as she cast a last look at Hannah’s face. Its expression remained hostile and suspicious. ‘Thanks, everybody,’ she blurted. ‘I’ll be sure to take very good care of it.’ She held up the book, and then hugged it to her chest.
Not even Christopher went with her to the door. She drove back through the town, heading for the only person she knew who might make sense of what had just happened.
‘P’simmon! I didn’t expect you this evening.’ Angie Straw was carrying a mug in one hand as she opened the front door to her daughter. She waved it expressively. ‘We haven’t got very much for supper,’ she said.
‘Never mind. I can have an apple or something, if you’ve got it.’
‘Why are you here? Your father’s going to think it’s Wednesday. He’ll be all confused for the rest of the week now.’
Simmy had developed the habit of calling in after work, midweek and again on Saturday afternoons. In the past few months, she had found herself being called upon to help with the B&B work, much more than before. Where Russell had changed duvet covers, loaded and unloaded the dishwasher, gone shopping for the large quantities of food required, he now made little more than a token effort to share the load. The regularity of Simmy’s visits seemed to work best with her father, despite Angie’s dislike of predictable routines.
‘I’ve just come from the Hendersons’ house. Did you know Frances had left me this?’ She stepped into the hallway, pushed the door closed with a foot, and proffered the book. ‘Have you seen it before? And did she leave you anything?’
Angie blinked, and headed for the kitchen. ‘Come and sit down, and tell me properly,’ she said.
Russell was sitting by the Aga, his dog between his knees as always. ‘Good evening, daughter,’ he said solemnly, with a slow nod. ‘The nights are drawing in. Dark at five. Every year, I wonder how we bear it. But we do, of course.’
‘Pity the poor Icelanders,’ said Simmy. ‘It’s dark all day there.’
‘They should emigrate south,’ he said.
‘I think most of them did, didn’t they? A few centuries ago.’
‘Perhaps so. You might recall that I was reading a book by Halldór Laxness last week. I learnt a good deal about how the poor wretches lived until not so long ago.’
‘I do remember,’ said Simmy. ‘That’s why I mentioned Iceland just now.’
‘Of course it was,’ he said, nodding with satisfaction. ‘Good girl.’
‘P’simmon has come to show us something,’ said Angie. ‘It’s not her usual day.’
The elderly man shrugged. ‘Who cares?’ he said crossly.
Angie turned away from him. ‘Let’s see it, then,’ she invited Simmy, who laid the book on the table, which barely had space for it. Piles of crockery occupied most of it.
‘What are all these plates and things doing here?’ she asked.
‘I’m checking them for chips and cracks. I thought I could try and get to the auction up in Keswick at the weekend and get some replacements. You can get lovely stuff for almost nothing. Christopher gave me the idea, when I was chatting to him at the funeral.’
‘It’s a long way,’ said Simmy doubtfully. ‘Would you have time?’
‘Probably not,’ said Angie with a frustrated sigh.
‘Anyway – have a look at this. Have you ever seen it before?’
Angie leant over the book and turned a few pages. ‘No – never. Flowers,’ she murmured. ‘Who did them?’
‘Her mother, in the 1950s. Isn’t it gorgeous!’
‘All hand done. Even the binding. So why have you got it? I don’t understand.’
‘She left it to me. There’s a letter. She said I was a more suitable person to have it than Hannah or Lynn. They’re not very pleased about it, understandably. So you didn’t know anything about it?’
Angie shook her head. ‘She never talked about that sort of thing. I kept trying to make her say how she felt about everything – dying so young and all that. But she wouldn’t. And no, she hasn’t left me anything, as far as I know.’
‘I’m not surprised she wouldn’t talk about dying. You are awful, Mum. From what I heard, Fran was actually very grown-up about it. She wrote that letter to me, for a start. She might have done them for everybody, for all we know. What did you expect her to say, anyway?’
‘I’m not awful at all. I was trying to help. Poor Kit didn’t know how to talk to her, so I thought I could make it easier for them both. All she would say was she’d had a good life and wasn’t scared at all.’
‘Well, what else was there to say, then? Doesn’t that cover it?’
‘Your mother likes to wallow,’ said Russell, unexpectedly. ‘She likes everything talked into submission. I’m sure you’ve noticed.’
Simmy laughed. ‘Poor Frances. Look what she’s left me, Dad.’
He barely glanced at the book. ‘I never felt I knew the woman very well,’ he said. ‘She was your mother’s friend, not mine. She didn’t really like me. They didn’t like each other’s husbands much at all. Perhaps that was a good thing – at least there was never any temptation to indulge in wife-swapping on all those infernal beach holidays.’ He chuckled happily. ‘Not like some people we knew, back in the bad old days.’
‘That’s rubbish!’ Angie snapped. ‘Total fantasy.’
‘Oh well, it doesn’t matter. She’s dead now. And that wretched husband of hers is having the last laugh.’ He gave his wife a very direct look. ‘I did hear you two, you know – bemoaning your witless menfolk. As if we were old dogs that couldn’t remember the rules any more.’
Simmy flinched at this attack. Where her mother had always prided herself on straight talking and facing facts squarely, her father had been open and honest, but far less confrontational. Now the roles were reversed, Angie had to be feeling the ground shift beneath her. Her skin was considerably thinner than most people realised – perhaps including her husband. Angie seldom considered anybody’s sensibilities, but her own were as vulnerable as anyone else’s, when it came down to it.
And Frances? She was the spark that had set this in motion, the hovering ghost who needed to be exorcised. ‘She wrote me a letter,’ said Simmy again. ‘About the book. Do you want to see it?’
Angie took a steadying breath. ‘If you like.’ She took it and read it quickly. ‘No wonder the girls are upset. She always vowed she would treat them exactly the same as the boys – and now she’s gone back on it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When she adopted them – she made a great song and dance about them being completely the same as her biological children. So did Kit, in his way.’
Simmy’s head started to hum. ‘Adopted? Did you say adopted?’ She tried to think back to those seaside holidays, the big noisy family, the three boys and the two smaller sisters. ‘How old was I then?’
‘Six or seven. She had George when you were almost five, and wasn’t willing to risk any more boys. So they adopted the two girls, sisters, fifteen months apart in age. Hannah was two and a half and Lynn just over a year. They were terribly sweet, with all that frizzy hair.’
‘But they look so like Kit. Everybody must assume they’re his.’ She paused, trying to absorb the sudden revision of old assumptions. ‘So it was a secret? Is that why nobody ever told me?’
‘They don’t really look like him. And no, it was never a secret at all. You were too young to understand. And there was no sense in making an issue of it. You never asked, so we never bothered to explain. You were very incurious as a child, you know. Suddenly, from one year to the next, there were two new Hendersons, and you just took it as normal. We thought Christopher might talk to you about it, but apparently he never did.’
‘I don’t remember,’ said Simmy, with a flash of desperation. ‘I should be able to, and I don’t. As far as I’m concerned, the girls were always there. I must have thought that was how it was in families – babies just turned up, even though never in ours. I do remember wishing we could have one or two. I wanted to be a big sister.’
‘Don’t start on that,’ warned Angie. ‘You got plenty of contact with other children. Not just the Hendersons, either. You were always having little friends coming to the house.’
It was true. Other little girls had taken well to the way Simmy’s mother welcomed them in with a casual goodwill. She fed them, gave them full rein in house and garden, and dismissed any phobias or allergies with robust scepticism. If they fell over, she swabbed the mud and grit off and set them back on their feet. Living in Worcestershire at the time, there were tamer patches of countryside to explore than out here in the wilder north-west. Simmy shuddered at the sudden image of small friends tumbling into rushing becks or getting irrevocably lost on the fells, if they had been living in Cumbria.
Angie went on, ‘And Frances always wished you were hers. She was madly jealous in the hospital, when I got a girl and she got Christopher. She’d assumed all along hers was a girl, you see.’
‘I know.’ That much of the story at least was familiar. ‘Which must be why she’s left me this,’ she summarised.
‘And the flowers. You being a florist,’ said Angie drily. ‘And her girls being utterly unartistic, and liable to try to sell it.’
‘I won’t do that.’ She gently stroked the page which lay open in front of her. ‘Look at this honeysuckle. She’s made it seem really alive. I can almost smell it.’
‘It’s not desperately good, though, is it? Not like those famous flower pictures you see on birthday cards and calendars and whatnot. I don’t think Fran’s mother was ever a proper artist.’
‘It’s good enough for me,’ Simmy defended. ‘I’ll always treasure it.’
‘Well, there you are, then,’ said Angie vaguely. ‘Everybody’s happy.’
‘They’re not, though. Kit wasn’t terribly friendly, and the girls were almost hostile. It was all quite awkward. Christopher was the only one who was nice to me.’
‘You and he were always meant for each other, you know. We arranged it the day you were born. It was very perverse of you not to co-operate better than you did.’
‘Hush, woman!’ said Russell from his warm chair. ‘You sound like an idiot, saying things like that.’
Simmy merely smiled. It was an old joke, which she and Christopher had long since grown used to – although she had eventually realised how nearly it had prevented the two of them from developing a bond that went beyond the fraternal. They had known each other too well, so that when they had suspected themselves to be in love, confusion overwhelmed them. And then she had married Tony and Christopher had married Sophie. Simmy’s marriage had outlasted Christopher’s by several years, but both were over now.
‘Christopher and Sophie!’ Angie had mocked. ‘What a mouthful.’
Sophie had been of mixed race, a loud and impatient woman, who had wasted no time after the divorce in finding a man more compliant with her wishes. She had three children in four years, and nobody really blamed her.
‘I’m terribly hungry,’ Simmy realised. ‘The Hendersons didn’t give me so much as a cup of tea.’
‘You always come here and take our food,’ said Russell. ‘What do you think we are?’
She looked at him, unsure as to his tone. ‘I think you’re my parents,’ she said quietly.
‘There’s a bit of beef stew left over,’ said Angie. ‘Put it in the microwave. I’ll be glad to get it finished. Your father doesn’t eat as well as he used to. Miserable little helpings he has these days.’
Simmy’s concern about Russell had mutated some time ago into a mixture of acceptance and low-level impatience. She had to perpetually remind herself – and her mother – that he couldn’t help the way he was, that there was nothing calculated or deliberate in the things he said. The shift in personality was mostly a matter of degree. He had always spoken his mind, just as his wife did, but his mind had generally been benign. He was a fount of knowledge when it came to local history, and a stickler for correct grammar. Now the sense that something was awry made him irritable and suspicious. He would flare into sudden panic, convinced that burglars or arsonists were out to get him. A good deal of this paranoia was rooted in actual events over the past year, where Simmy and he himself had found themselves under threat, and even direct attack.
‘I don’t get hungry any more,’ he said. ‘It’s something I regret.’
Simmy ate the stew quickly, and took her leave. There was a lot to think about, she concluded, as she drove up the hill to her home in Troutbeck.
Chapter Three
Bonnie arrived in the shop bright and early the next morning, despite the November gloom. Clouds sat heavily on the fells, shutting out the light, and damp dripped from the bare branches. There was no colour in the gardens on the road into Windermere. But the girl was like a beacon in a vivid outfit of red and blue. Pale-skinned and light-haired herself, she should have been swamped by the flamboyant clothes, but the force of her personality won through. Her eyes sparkled and she almost bounced with energy.
‘What’s come over you?’ asked Simmy, feeling middle-aged and lethargic by comparison.
‘Oh, nothing. Christmas. Ben. Spike. Everything seems so … happy.’ She sighed and then smiled. ‘Am I tempting fate, do you think?’
‘Probably. But maybe not. It’s nice to see such a cheery face on a day like this.’
‘Did I miss anything yesterday?’
‘Not really. Hardly any customers.’
‘Well, here’s one now, look. And it’s only ten past nine.’
Simmy did a double take at the man coming into the shop. It was almost a rerun of the previous afternoon, but not quite. This was a younger, chubbier version of Christopher Henderson. The middle brother, Eddie, who had never entirely come into focus for Simmy, being so much more ordinary than his siblings. She felt a strong inclination to take a step back, and if possible escape through the back room and into the little yard outside.
‘Not exactly a customer, I fear,’ she murmured to Bonnie. Then, louder, ‘Hello, Eddie. What is it now?’
He managed to look reproachful and exasperated all at the same time. His large face and wide-spaced eyes were very much like his mother, as was the colourless hair, kept rather long. ‘That’s not very welcoming,’ he said. ‘I gather I missed you yesterday.’
‘I thought you’d gone back to … wherever it is. If this is about that book—’
‘It’s not. My mother was free to leave anything she liked to anybody she wanted. None of us could be trusted with the thing, anyway. My kids would wreck it within minutes. George would just lose it, and the girls didn’t even know it existed.’
Which just leaves Christopher, thought Simmy. And he’s too unsettled to be saddled with something like that.
‘So?’ she prompted.
He glanced at Bonnie, clearly wanting to speak privately. She stood her ground like a protective terrier. ‘I had a phone call from Dad last night. Everybody had gone off and left him on his own, and he was going over everything in his mind, the way he does. He’s coped amazingly well with Mum dying, but the change to his life is a lot to get to grips with. I can’t see him managing, to be honest.’
So? she wanted to scream at him. What does this have to do with me? But she waited quietly for enlightenment.
‘The thing is,’ he went on, clasping his hands together, almost wringing them in his embarrassment. ‘The thing is, I wondered whether your mother could keep an eye on him a bit more. I know she’s got your dad to keep her busy, and the guesthouse and everything. But if she could drop in every few days for a chat about old times, I know he’d appreciate it.’
‘Why don’t you ask her? Why me?’
‘He’s scared of her,’ said Bonnie, shamelessly getting involved. ‘Like most people.’
‘Not at all,’ he snapped at her. ‘But it seemed sensible to run it past Simmy first. And I wasn’t sure what would be a good time – or how to go about it. Phone? In person?’
‘Text. Email,’ added Bonnie with naked sarcasm.
He gave her a stern adult-to-child look, which made no impact on her at all. He was barely old enough to be her father, Simmy reflected. And he looked even younger than his thirty-six years.
‘Quite honestly, I can’t see it working,’ said Simmy. ‘She really does have her hands full already. And she’s not a very good carer at the best of times.’
‘He doesn’t need a carer, for the love of Mike. He just needs a bit of company, someone who’s known him most of his life and could have a good chat with him.’
‘All the same, it really isn’t her thing. As my father said, it was her and Fran who were the friends. The husbands were almost incidental.’ She thought again of the wife-swapping
