Tarnished (35 page)

‘Everything to Dad?’ Peg said, a little stunned. ‘Is that really fair on Aunty Jean?’

‘I’m afraid it’s what Mrs Thwaites wanted,’ Mr Archer said, smiling kindly and handing the will to Peg. ‘It says it quite clearly here.’ He pointed to the relevant clause, closed his eyes, his eyeballs flickering behind their lids, as if to picture the scene as it had happened. ‘If I remember correctly, there was some discussion about this point at the time, between Raymond and your grandparents. I believe your aunt has some health problems?’

‘You could say that.’

He closed his eyes again and summoned the scene once more before opening them and speaking. ‘I believe the consensus even back then was that she needed to be cared for and was not really capable of making her own decisions. It was put to your grandparents that, as a successful businessman, a man of the world, if you will, your father would be in a far better position to deal with the administration of the estate. He and myself are named here as executors.’

‘And Nan owned the bungalow? Aunty Jean doesn’t have any stake in it?’

‘No. I’m afraid not. It all passes to your father.’

So Jean was about to have everything – her home, her future, her autonomy – handed over to a brother who despised her. It seemed horribly cruel, so unlike Doll, to have decided that for the daughter she doted on.

Peg wondered what sort of pressure Ray had exerted on her.

‘And what about Paulie?’ Peg said.

‘Paulie?’

‘Her other grandson. Dad’s new child. She never met him.’

‘That’ll be up to your father,’ Mr Archer said. ‘As I said, this will was drawn up a long time ago. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then.’

‘Does it say what she wants the funeral arrangements to be?’

‘She wishes to be buried.’

‘But Gramps was cremated. I thought they’d both have wanted the same.’

‘The will states they both wished to be buried.’

‘But he was cremated,’ Peg said. ‘And scattered at sea.’

Mr Archer closed his eyes again. ‘Yes. I remember now. Your grandmother was quite adamant that, despite what it says here, he wanted to be cremated. Since he’d moved to the coast, that had been his wish. She was most insistent.’

Peg frowned. ‘Is it possible to change someone’s will after they die?’

Mr Archer smiled and put his fingertips together. ‘Nothing, my dear, is impossible in this world.

‘Now then. Do you want us to take care of the funeral arrangements?’ he asked, his voice less formal.

Peg thought of the white-satin-lined coffin. ‘No. I’d like to do that myself, if that’s OK.’

‘Your father has instructed me to let you do what you want, so long as you adhere to Mrs Thwaites’s wishes, as stated in her will.’

‘Can’t you ask him to come?’ Peg said. ‘She would have so wanted him to come.’

‘I’m afraid, my dear, in most respects, your father is very much his own man. He will only do what he sees fit. And there are – ah – logistical challenges to be met regarding his re-entry to the UK.’

Peg looked gloomily down at the brown carpet. It had seen better days.

‘It means a lot to you, doesn’t it, my dear? His coming to the funeral.’

Peg nodded, her eyes still tracking the stains on the carpet.

Archer leaned forward on his desk and tried to catch her eye. ‘Don’t be downhearted, Margaret. I’ll do my best to persuade him. How does that sound?’

Peg looked up. ‘What about the logistical challenges, though?’

‘Like I said, my dear. Nothing is impossible. Which brings me to the final item for our meeting.’

Archer moved the will to one side of his desk, revealing a large manila envelope, which he picked up and handed to Peg. ‘Your father has instructed me to hand you this. If you have any questions about it –’ he gestured to the envelope – ‘or any other matter, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. I am at your disposal.’

He smiled at her, then stood and opened the door to his office. Accepting this dismissal, Peg stood too, clutching the envelope to her chest. At the doorway, Archer shook her hand and passed her over to his secretary.

‘Could you see Miss Thwaites out, Miss Lunt?’

‘Certainly Mr Archer.’ Looking at Peg with pursed lips and raised eyebrows, Miss Lunt rose again, opened the front door to the office and let her out.

Peg took the stairs two by two until she was at ground level.

The package Archer had given her burning a hole in her hands, she went into the first Starbucks she came across, ordered a green tea, then sat and ripped the envelope open.

Dear Margaret,

The letter inside said.

I no I haven’t been the best Dad to you.

& You was right. Im sorry I never saw Mum before she dyed.

You no now what the will says. I’m going to put yr aunt in a home, she sucked Mum dry & Im not going to let her do that to you.

Archer will deal with it all, so you dont have to do nothing.

In the envelope is my gift, Margaret. Its all in your name. Archers keeping the deeds for you. The agent has the keys and is waiting for you to pick them up.

Peg pulled out a smaller envelope. Inside were two pieces of paper. The first was a Bermondsey Street estate agent’s description of a two-bedroom converted warehouse flat right by London Bridge Station, asking price seven hundred thousand pounds. The second was a copy of a direct debit instruction for three thousand pounds to go, from Raymond, into Peg’s bank account every month.

Peg put all three pieces of paper down and grasped the edge of the table to steady herself. She closed her eyes as the crowded coffee shop whirled around her.

This was not what she wanted.

All she wanted, she realised, was for everything to be back to how it was before she had found out about her father, before Loz had got the scent of a real crime drama in her nostrils, before Doll had died. She wanted just to be happy with Loz, in their little flat, getting on with their lives.

Living their own lives.

But it couldn’t be like that any more, could it? Here was the possibility of a new life for a new, harder Peg. And it was being handed to her on a plate, should she choose to take it.

But it was blood money. She was being paid to forget: to forget about how her mother died, to forget about all the lies that she had been told, and not to think about those two girls and how they might have gone missing.

She was being bought.

‘Is anyone sitting here?’ a Japanese girl asked her politely of the seat opposite her.

‘No,’ Peg said, her voice shaking. ‘I was just leaving, anyway.’

She got up and stuffed the papers back into the envelope. Then she dipped out of Starbucks and down into the Tube station where, after just a moment’s hesitation, she decided to head to Victoria, to catch the train back to Whitstable.

Let that estate agent hold on to the bloody keys.

Thirty-Six

‘I’ve got to be there,’ Jean said, her voice baggy through her tears. ‘It’ll kill me if I can’t say goodbye to Mummy.’

Peg had handled Jean very carefully since she had discovered Raymond’s plans for her. Her aunt was lost in a haze of grief, so the question of the future could wait until after Doll’s funeral. While she knew that being moved out of the bungalow and into a home would be the end of Jean’s world, Peg was relieved that the decision was out of her hands – something she couldn’t be held to blame for.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Peg said at last, squeezing Jean’s doughy fingers between her own hands.

‘But I can’t even get out of bed,’ Jean wailed. ‘How am I going to get to the cemetery?’

Peg eyed her. She shocked herself at how glad she felt about washing her hands of her.

When did she become so callous?

Back at the library, Peg managed to locate a specialist company running ambulances built for obese patients. For a price, the company would take Jean from her bed to Doll’s funeral, and, ‘using a range of bariatric devices with our own trained, compassionate staff’, transport her in a specially constructed wheelchair from the ambulance to the chapel and thence to the burial plot.

It had to be the first time Jean had gone outside for over ten years. Unless, of course, her levels of deception extended to that, too. From witnessing the agility with which her aunt scooted herself down her bed when she had thought no one was looking, Peg wouldn’t have been terribly surprised if she had been sneaking out for regular strolls along The Slopes.

Peg reported back to Jean, to be met with more tears about not having anything suitable to wear and the shame of having to be transported by a specialist company. ‘What’ll the neighbours think? You might as well put me on a flatbed truck, Meggy,’ she said, easing grey Marlboro smoke out through the gaps in her teeth. ‘With a crane.’

Peg didn’t tell her that, crane apart, this had been an early consideration before she had done her research.

She found a local dressmaker through a card placed in the newsagent’s and asked her to make a black smock for Jean in a good wool crêpe, using one of the tent dresses Doll had made as a template.

‘Better make it about half a metre bigger all round,’ Peg said to the woman, who was barely able to conceal her astonishment at the amount of material she was going to have to use.

‘Do you want a collar or anything?’ the dressmaker asked.

‘Let’s keep it plain at the neckline,’ Peg said, thinking of folds of flesh straining and spilling over fabric. ‘Perhaps you can make a matching scarf or something?’

Peg spent the rest of the time leading up to the day liaising with Archer and the funeral directors over invitations, bills, and details. It appeared there would be quite a few elderly members of Frank’s Masonic Lodge attending, and some distant cousins on Doll’s side who Peg hadn’t known about, let alone met.

The guest list extended to nearly forty, so Peg decided to hold a reception in The Worthington, a mock-Tudor hotel with good wide disabled access, within walking distance from the cemetery. Because of its position, the place was well versed in dealing with wakes, to the extent that the brassy landlady proudly showed Peg their three top funeral reception packages. Peg went for the ‘Gold’, which included teas and coffees, all drinks at the bar, ten assorted savoury canapés and five sweets. Because it had so roundly cornered the post-funeral market, The Worthington saw little other business, so was able to accommodate them at short notice even for an event just three days before Christmas.

‘Sadly, people don’t consider us when planning their seasonal festivities,’ the landlady said, wrinkling her foundation into a wry smile as Peg paid the fifty per cent deposit. ‘But we must be thankful that death goes on, regardless of the date.’

Peg was glad she didn’t have to think about the cost of things before she agreed to them. She was beginning to see how money greased even the most challenging situations. Viewed in this light, the
fait accompli
Raymond had handed her with the flat and the income didn’t seem quite so distasteful.

Since she didn’t now have the ulterior motive of channelling it Doll’s way, her initial plan had been to tell him he could shove it where the sun didn’t shine. She had even drafted the message she was going to send him telling him to piss off, but had decided to sleep on it before going down to the library to send it. Three days later it was still waiting in her notebook, and her mind had been slowly changing.

Liberated from the binds of duty, she began to imagine what removing the need to make a living could do for her – and for Loz. She could go to university, as her father wanted her to. Or – a far more attractive prospect – she could help Loz get her restaurant off the ground. Money made all this possible, and the thought of a brighter future – albeit lodged firmly at the back of her mind until the funeral was out of the way – put a lightness in her step that otherwise would have been absent.

All she would owe Raymond was a promise not to mention the past.

How difficult could that be?

But still a sour taste stuck to her mouth, like she had eaten a curry and forgotten her toothbrush.

After careful thought, she took one of Doll’s pinnies to the funeral parlour. The pinnies were the clothing she most closely associated with her grandmother, and she found the idea of her going into the ground dressed like that greatly comforting. The funeral director looked a little surprised as he took the powder-blue garment from her and held it up.

‘Are you sure this is what you want?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

He formed his lips into a small, mouth-closed smile that verged on a smirk. ‘It’s quite plain, isn’t it? Almost the same as my attendant wears.’

‘Is it?’ Peg said.

The new, hardened Peg.

Not returning his smile.

The night before the funeral, Loz came to stay. After a serious campaign of working double shifts, she had bagged two begrudgingly allowed days off.

She arrived with a suit carrier and a wheeled suitcase containing four bottles of champagne, a series of plastic containers full of Seed’s vegan antipasti selection, a large chunk of nut pâté and some good bread.

‘For our own private ceremony when all the cronies have trundled back to where they were hiding when she was alive,’ she said, stacking the champagne in the fridge. She turned to Peg. ‘Is he coming then?’

Peg shut the kitchen door. She’d rather Jean couldn’t listen in on this conversation.

Even with her personal ambivalence towards Raymond, some deep-seated moral conviction made her feel that she should do everything she could to persuade him to come to his mother’s funeral – for his own sake as well as Doll’s. He had said in the note about the flat that he was sorry he hadn’t seen his mother before she died. And she remembered his voice when she phoned him with the news of Doll’s death. He had been touched. He was not emotionally uninvolved. He needed to say goodbye.