11 The Teashop on the Corner (36 page)

Harvey took a deep breath and prepared to meet with his ex-stepson. He was strangely excited. His illness had made him warrior-fearless. There was only one enemy he intended to fall prey to
– the last one. He heard Sherry twittering shrilly like a budgie on speed and saw Graham’s giant bulk pass the window and the room darkened as if there had been a solar eclipse.

The colour had drained from Molly’s face. She felt shaky and panicky. Graham had a loud and scary shouting voice and a clever way of running rings around her verbally. Molly caught a
glimpse of his face through the window and he looked furious – and extra-purple. Graham charged into the room, his jacket, bought at a time when he could close it in the middle, was now open
and framing his swollen gut like a pair of pin-stripe curtains. He halted and Sherry, unable to stop her momentum at such short notice, barged into his back, which inflamed him even more.

‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘If it isn’t you, Ronald bloody Biggs.’

‘Graham,’ coughed Harvey, straightening his back. ‘You haven’t changed a bit. Alas.’

Graham’s head swivelled around to Molly. ‘Mother, what do you think you are doing having
him
in your house? Have you completely lost your mind? Can’t you remember what
happened last time you had anything to do with him? You nearly had a nervous breakdown. I had to pick up the pieces.’

A picture flashed through Molly’s mind of Graham’s arms around her, his voice soft in her ear:
Don’t worry, Mother. I’ll look after you
and she was momentarily
weakened by it.

‘That was a long time ago, Graham,’ said Harvey. ‘Things have changed.’

‘You haven’t changed,’ screamed Graham. ‘Look at him, Mother. I bet he hasn’t got a penny to his name and he’s wormed his way back into your house. Why do you
think that is, Mother? Hmm? Hmm?’

‘He’s after your money, Molly dear,’ said Sherry, her voice a soft, reasonable antidote to her husband’s fury. Good cop, bad cop.

‘I most certainly am not. Absolutely no use for it at all,’ replied Harvey.

‘You don’t fool us,’ Sherry hissed. ‘Once a liar, always a liar. Once a thief, always a thief.’

Harvey let loose a trill of laughter. ‘I went to prison once and that was ten years before I even met Molly and I never went back. Now if we are talking about thieves, I suggest we discuss
why you, dear lady, were picking at your mother-in-law’s desk lock.’

Sherry’s voice rose in volume. ‘Oh, don’t you divert attention away from yourself. You’re the only thief in this room and you know it.’

‘What were you doing in my bedroom, Sherry?’ Molly heard her own voice and couldn’t believe she had been brave enough to speak out.

‘I . . . I noticed you didn’t have a key. I was going to have one made for you. As a surprise,’ Sherry said confidently, as if it was a pre-rehearsed answer.

Molly’s counter-parry was delivered in a calm, confident voice totally at odds with the tremors claiming her whole body. ‘How do you know I didn’t have a key? You must have
been in that room before to notice there wasn’t one in the lock.’

‘Of course I went into the room before. I do check around to make sure everything is okay, you know.
I
wouldn’t run off with your jewellery.’ She purposefully narrowed
her eyes at Harvey.

‘I do have a key. I keep it safe out of the way of intruders.’ Molly’s voice was packed with unsaid accusation.

‘Don’t you dare imply that my wife has anything but your best interest at heart,’ said Graham, advancing with his finger extended.

Harvey pushed Molly behind him to a position of safety.

‘How’s business, Graham? Doing well, are you?’

Graham froze and his eyes widened to their maximum. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Selling up a lot of assets, I hear. This house would be worth a pretty penny to you. What’s the plan? To shove your mother in an old people’s home and bleed her bank account
dry?’

Graham had grown so purple now that his head looked in danger of exploding like a giant grape. ‘How . . . how bloody dare you suggest that . . . that . . .’

He was rattled. Harvey had hit the nail on the head. He could read Graham like an open large-print book. But then, he always could.

‘Oh, don’t tell me that you’re terrified your mother might be manipulated into leaving me everything she has, instead of you?’ Harvey opened his arms as if he meant to
put them around all that Molly owned. ‘That’s the real reason you’re so furious, isn’t it? You’re not defending your mother, you’re safeguarding your
inheritance. Well please don’t worry, dear boy. I’m dying, as it happens. And I can’t take Molly’s money with me, even if she stuffed my shroud full of it.’

Sherry was silent for a moment, then she nodded slowly as if she had worked out what Harvey was up to.

‘Yes, of course you are. So that’s how you managed to get around Mother. The old sympathy card. Very clever.’

Graham was so angry he couldn’t talk. Instead, he let loose a series of half words, gasps, and unintelligible sounds.

Harvey turned to Molly. Something was buzzing around his head and wouldn’t stop. ‘What did she mean just then by: “
I
wouldn’t run off with your jewellery”?
and then making the point of looking at me?’

‘You know bloody well what I meant, you thieving scumbag,’ snarled Sherry.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Molly. ‘It was a long time ago. I’ve forgotten it.’

Harvey’s interest spiked. Sherry’s words had obviously been more loaded than he initially thought.

‘Molly, what did she mean?’

Sherry opened her mouth and Harvey raised his finger to her. ‘You be quiet. I want to hear from Molly.’

‘It doesn’t matter, Harvey. I think I understand.’

He wanted to hurt her by taking her jewellery, punish her for rejecting him. It was never his prime concern to gamble it away, she knew now. He wouldn’t have crushed her like that.
That’s why he tried to make himself believe he hadn’t done it.

Harvey’s brow pleated with puzzlement. ‘Molly, I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.’

Sherry started to applaud his confusion. ‘Oh don’t tell me you’re going to blame an early stage of dementia for forgetting.’

‘Leave it, Sherry,’ snapped Graham. ‘We’ll see what Auntie Margaret has to say about all this.’ He took hold of his wife’s sleeve and attempted to tug her
out.

‘Whoa. You’ll wait there until I get my answer,’ said Harvey. ‘Molly?’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ Sherry gave a dry snicker. ‘We know all about it. Not only did you walk out on this poor woman but you took all her most precious possessions
with you as well.’

Graham pulled harder at Sherry’s arm, but her feet appeared glued to the floor.

Hearing it said aloud, especially from the sneering mouth of Sherry, Molly winced.

‘What jewellery?’ Harvey looked genuinely mystified. ‘Molly? What jewellery?’

Molly couldn’t look at him. She didn’t want to witness Graham and Sherry’s enjoyment at his shame.

‘Her wedding ring, her engagement ring, presents from the Brandywines . . .’ Sherry’s mouth formed into a triumphant crescent: she was relishing this.

‘What?’ It was Harvey’s turn to be on the back foot. ‘You think I would steal from Molly?’

‘Ha.’ Sherry laughed. ‘Once thieving scum, always thieving scum.’

Harvey’s hands came out to either side of Molly’s face and he forced her to look into his eyes. ‘Molly, I swear that when I left, I put my wedding ring in the box with yours. I
wasn’t worthy to own it. I never took a penny from you.’ He laughed soundlessly. ‘Please tell me that you haven’t believed all these years that I would or could do that to
you?’

Molly could barely see him through the mist of tears. She didn’t know what to believe. But what was true was that Harvey had walked out of her life without laying claim to anything he had
a legal right to, something that had always puzzled her. But if he didn’t take the jewellery, who did? No one had been in the house but Margaret and Bernard and she trusted them with her
life.

No, no. It couldn’t be. Surely, no.

She remembered Graham’s visit the day Harvey had left and the concern her son had shown.

She recalled Graham directing her attention to the empty jewellery box and insisting that there was only one conclusion to be drawn.

‘No, no, not that,’ Molly cried out. Hurt and disappointment and guilt rose like a huge wave inside her, engulfing her stomach, making her nauseous.

‘What is it, my love?’ asked Harvey tenderly as Molly’s features went through a metamorphosis in front of him. The water in her eyes cleared, her lips narrowed, her jaw
hardened. Molly’s head swivelled on a smooth slow arc to her son and she said, ‘It was you, wasn’t it, Graham? You took my jewellery that day.’

‘You’re deranged, Mother. Get a grip.’ He couldn’t meet his mother’s eyes. ‘Come on Sherry, we’re going. She won’t listen to us.’

‘My own son,’ Molly could see it in his twitching features, guilt flicking at his eyelids, making them blink madly. He always did that as a little boy when he lied.

The hurt inside her flipped to a raging torrent of anger. She picked up the nearest thing to hand – a cushion from the sofa – and launched it at her son where it hit him squarely in
his face. He tottered backwards, and Sherry reached for his arm to steady him.

‘Get out! Get out of my house,’ Molly yelled with a ferocity in her voice than no one in that room had heard from her before.

‘You attacked your own son,’ Sherry growled. ‘If that isn’t an indication that you need some help then I don’t know what is.’

‘Oh yes, I am mad, very mad indeed,’ screamed Molly, picking up another cushion and taking a step towards Sherry with it. ‘I’m so mad I could be murderous.’

Graham towed Sherry quickly down the hallway and out of the door. Molly strode behind them, roaring at them.

‘How could you, Graham? You let me think that Harvey took it, but
you
did. You stole it from me and let me believe . . . all those years . . . my own boy!’

Graham threw open the car door and swung his great mass inside. Molly rammed on the glass with her fist, not caring that it hurt, wishing she had the strength to break it and reach in and force
him to look at her and tell her it wasn’t true.

‘How could you? How could you?’

The car started to reverse at a wild speed down the drive and out onto the road. Graham was driving before he had even fastened his safety belt on, he was so eager to escape. Molly stared after
the car and she felt something in her die, choked by betrayal. She felt Harvey’s arm around her and she turned to him and sobbed on his shoulder.

‘Come on, love. I’m so sorry. I’d have let you think it was me to spare you this upset if I’d known.’

‘No, no. I’m glad I finally realised what happened.’

But Molly didn’t know if what she said was true. Her heart was breaking. For so long she had thought the thief was Harvey and she had learned to live with it. It was as if she had just
found her treasures gone all over again.

She thought of the Royal Doulton statue. She knew what had happened now without a shadow of a doubt. Sherry had taken it, and her pen and the silver compact too and God knows what else had gone
missing. In the midst of her anger, Molly felt a warm gentle rush of relief. She hadn’t been going daft after all. No doubt the Beardsalls would have let her think she’d been going
doolally too. All the easier to shoe-horn her into Autumn Grange.

‘Let’s go and get a coffee at the Teashop on the Corner,’ she said. ‘I need to get out of the house.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ said Harvey, lifting up her dear hand and kissing it.

When Mr Singh came into the teashop he was carrying a bag which looked very much as if it contained a book.

‘Good morning, Leni, where is young Ryan?’ he asked.

‘Stuffing his face in the back,’ replied Leni and called him. Ryan emerged with a worried expression on his face as if he had been summoned to account for some misdemeanour.

‘Don’t look so worried,’ laughed Mr Singh. ‘Ryan, I have brought you a present.’ And he held out the bag. ‘Go on, take it.’

‘What is it?’ asked Ryan.

‘If you open it, you’ll find out.’

Ryan stepped forward and took it. He opened it carefully and pulled out the book inside.

‘It’s my favourite novel of all time –
Nineteen Eighty-Four
,’ grinned Ryan.

‘Not only that, but a first edition, first impression, dated 1949.’

‘Mr Singh,’ gasped Leni. ‘That’s worth a lot of money.’

‘Alas, not as much as if it had been signed by Mr Orwell, who was sadly hospitalised with tuberculosis just after the book was published and never came home again. But, I suggest that you
keep it safely and sell it when you need some funds for university.’

Ryan was stunned into a temporary silence.

‘I won’t sell it,’ he said eventually, holding it like the precious thing it was.

‘You have my permission to do so, though,’ replied the old surgeon.

‘Thanks loads,’ said Ryan, almost breathless with joy. ‘It’s fabulous. Can I keep it here, Leni?’

‘My safe is going to be full of your stuff,’ Leni winked at him. ‘Course you can.’

Ryan almost skipped into the back room.

‘That was a kind gesture, Mr Singh,’ said Leni. ‘Whatever you want today is on the house.’

Mr Singh pulled out his favourite chair. ‘You will never make any money, Leni, giving your cakes away.’

‘I’m sure that letting you have a slice of cake and a pot of tea today won’t bankrupt me,’ she smiled at him. ‘Now, what’s it to be? St Clements or clotted
cream mousse pie?’

He was tucking into the pie when Harvey and Molly arrived.

‘So lovely to see you,’ he greeted them. ‘You look well, Harvey.’

‘I haven’t felt this good in years,’ replied Harvey, looking over to check that Molly was all right. She had been quiet in the car, still shell-shocked, he imagined. He
wondered when the next instalment of trouble would be. He had no doubt that Graham and Sherry would be out mixing things up with Margaret as soon as she returned. He had that hurdle to cross
yet.