An Unwanted Inheritance, page 4
Caroline tried hard not to resent Tony’s dismissive attitude to Max’s work. It wasn’t glamourous being the regional manager of a stationery supplier, but it was a good and steady job, which Max carried out diligently, as he did most things.
‘All good,’ Max replied. ‘We’re busy. Customers are buying.’
‘The paperless office just a pipe dream then?’ asked Tony, and Max nodded.
‘Seems so. For now, at least.’
Tony never asked about Caroline’s work and Ellie didn’t have a job, so the attention fell on Nathan. Seemingly aware of it, he shuffled in his seat.
‘What’s new in website design, Nath?’ Tony asked, and Nathan shrugged.
‘You know, same old, same old,’ he replied, but Caroline noticed that he didn’t meet his dad’s eye. Nathan had always been private. Even as a little boy he had hidden what he was playing with when they stumbled across him in the house, as if the bigger kids would try to take it from him, although they never had done. Caroline had sometimes felt sorry for him, leading his solitary life when she and Ellie were always together, but if ever she’d tried to join in his games Ellie had pulled her away, telling her to leave him to it, that he preferred it that way.
‘But now you’ve got other irons in your fire, eh, son? That’s good,’ said Tony with a quick raise of his eyebrows. Nathan gave a single nod but Caroline noticed that Tony’s eyes lingered on his son’s face for a moment longer. She wondered what he was referring to but there were no more clues to follow.
It was time to go, she decided. She made a show of looking at her watch and then yawned widely. ‘Well, Max, I think it’s time we took those boys home, don’t you?’
Max nodded and got to his feet at once.
‘Thank you, Tony,’ she said graciously. ‘It’s been lovely as ever.’
Tony stood up too, pulling down the jacket of his Father Christmas outfit, which he hadn’t got round to taking off.
‘No, no,’ he replied, shaking his head emphatically. ‘Thanks go to you and Ellie. You do all the hard work. I just provide the venue.’
It was on the tip of Caroline’s tongue to suggest a change might be good, but she swallowed the thought down. This wasn’t the time.
‘Oh, you’re welcome,’ she said instead. ‘Now, we’ve left you some turkey and stuffing and some of the leftover cheese in your fridge. There’s some of the trifle too. I hope that’s okay.’
‘Oh, that’s most kind,’ Tony replied, as if this wasn’t the way things went every year. ‘Save me venturing out to the shops for a while.’
Caroline and Ellie gathered the children and anything that hadn’t been caught in the first sweep for scattered belongings, and then they all stood in the hallway to say their goodbyes.
‘Anyone want a lift?’ asked Nathan.
Caroline tried to do a quick mental calculation of how much he’d had to drink and when, but gave up. They were close enough to their house to walk so there was no need to trouble herself with the details. The children looked up at their respective parents hopefully, but Max shook his head.
‘We’re fine, mate. Shank’s pony works for us. I’ll come back and pick the car up tomorrow, Dad.’
Howls of protest followed from Olivia and Lucy at the prospect that they might have to walk home, which Ellie tried to smother.
‘Ellie?’ Nathan asked.
Ellie paused for a moment. ‘Well, if you don’t mind, Nath, a lift for me and the girls would be very welcome. You can walk, can’t you, James? I’m not sure there’s enough room . . .’
The girls made little fist-pumping gestures, which Alex and Theo studiously ignored.
Finally, they all set off, leaving the glowing reindeer still grazing on the damp grass.
7
FOUR MONTHS EARLIER
Ellie was curled in an armchair in the conservatory, her legs tucked underneath her, perusing cookery books. It was her favourite spot, especially when, as now, the girls were at school and she had some time to herself. The weak January sun was streaming through the glass and even though she could see the frost on the tips of the lawn beyond, she could almost imagine that it was summer. Having the central heating on so high was probably contributing more to the warmth than the sun’s feeble rays, but she couldn’t be expected to sit in here in the winter without it on. It was freezing.
She flicked over page after page of fussy, complicated-looking recipes, but she didn’t fancy any of them. It was too cold to be messing around with dainty little dishes. What they needed was a hearty casserole and some stout jacket potatoes. It was only Max, Caroline and the boys coming for supper and they were always so easy to please. There was no need to go overboard – just something tasty and simple. Her girls wouldn’t eat anything that they couldn’t immediately identify anyway.
She toyed briefly with the idea of feeding the four children first and getting them out of the way. Max and Caro liked to eat with their boys, she knew, whereas she and James generally had dinner after Olivia and Lucy had gone to bed. She wasn’t sure which she would prefer. Exclusively adult conversation had its benefits, of course, but if the girls weren’t at the table then she wouldn’t have the chance to show them off. She was so proud of them and now that they were growing up a little they were such great company with their funny little turns of phrase and righteous indignation about things that mattered to them.
With a little nod to herself she made the decision. They would all eat together. It was good table manners practice if nothing else, and the kids could always slope off after the main course and have ice cream in the playroom, leaving the adults to their chat.
She shut the recipe book with a satisfying snap. Best to stick to something she knew the girls liked to avoid any drama. She would do her mother’s coq au vin recipe. Everyone enjoyed that.
Thinking of her mother made Ellie reach for her phone. They had barely seen each other since she’d got home from her Christmas cruise and Ellie knew that if she didn’t make the effort to get in touch then the time would just extend. She dialled her number.
Her mother answered on the fifth ring, sounding a little out of breath and slightly annoyed to have been interrupted.
‘Hi, Ellie. It’s not a great moment. Can I ring you back?’
Valerie was always busy. Since she had left Tony it was as if she had been granted a whole new lease of life. She had taken up various hobbies – bridge, pottery, Zumba, Nordic walking, creative writing, ballroom dancing, golf. Not all of these had lasted much longer than a couple of weeks, mere flurries of excitement at her newly found freedom, but she was still playing bridge and doing the Nordic walking in the park twice a week. Ironically, it had turned out she was quite good at golf and would have been able to play with Tony had she had a go earlier. She had lost some weight, had a haircut and dyed her grey hair, and now she looked at least ten years younger. Ellie was pleased she had turned her life around so beautifully, but that didn’t stop her missing the old version of her mum who could always be found in the kitchen with the kettle poised and the biscuits open.
She sometimes wondered what had caused the transformation. There had been no warning that her mother was unhappy, and Ellie had just assumed that her parents would see out their golden years together. So when Valerie announced that she had left their father just after Nathan went to university it had come as a shock. Whenever Ellie had tried to get to the bottom of what had gone wrong, her mum had always clammed up. Something had happened to force the decision, Ellie was sure of it, but what it was remained a mystery.
‘Of course,’ said Ellie now, trying to disguise her disappointment but not altogether succeeding.
‘It wasn’t anything important?’ her mother added.
‘No, no. Nothing important. It was just . . . but it doesn’t matter. I’ll catch up with you . . .’
But her mother had gone.
Reluctantly, Ellie uncurled her legs and gathered her book, notepad and pen together. She was expected at the tennis club for the Ladies’ Ladder Committee Meeting in half an hour, and then she would just have time to nip to Waitrose before she had to be at the school to pick up the girls. Life was non-stop.
8
Saturday rolled round. The coq au vin was bubbling away on the stove, filling the house with its delicious aroma, and the potatoes were crisping up nicely. All Ellie needed to do was put the veg on to steam at the last minute. Satisfied that all was in hand with the supper, she left the kitchen to go and get herself ready.
‘The boys will be here in half an hour,’ she called to her daughters as she passed the playroom. ‘Please make sure it’s tidy in there. Remember, if there’s anything that you don’t want to get broken then hide it away in your rooms.’
Caro’s boys weren’t destructive on purpose, Ellie knew, but they were more boisterous than the girls and things did tend to get trodden on or taken apart or lost when they were around.
Hearing the low hum of James’s voice on the phone, she paused to put her head round the door into his office. He worked so hard. Rarely did a day go by when he wasn’t in there doing something or other. Ellie had tried to tell him that not allowing himself any time off would do him no good in the long run, but James had shaken his head at her.
‘You want all this, Ellie,’ he said, gesturing at the space, ‘then I have to keep at it. I can’t afford to take my eye off the ball. I might miss the next big deal and then where would we be?’
She knew he didn’t mean to, but James had a way of making her feel a little bit stupid and naive, when she wasn’t either. It was true that she had never run a business like he did, but she had had an important job before she gave it all up to have the girls. And nobody was so indispensable that they needed to be available seven days a week, no matter how important they thought they were. But it was true. She did enjoy their lifestyle, so she kept her concerns about James’s working hours to herself from then on.
‘Caro and Max will be here in twenty minutes,’ she whispered.
James was standing with his back to the door, mobile phone pressed firmly to his ear.
‘Yes, I know that. Don’t worry. It’s all under control,’ he said testily to whoever was on the other end. The atmosphere suggested that it was a difficult call, so Ellie retreated. She wasn’t sure he had even realised that she’d been there, let alone heard what she’d said. Whoever it was clearly had no qualms about working weekends either.
She reached their bedroom and closed the door behind her. This was her sanctuary. When they had moved into the house, a new build that James had had built for them on the edge of one of his upmarket housing developments, he had given her carte blanche to decorate the space as she wished. The en suite and dressing rooms had come with the highest specification fittings, but Ellie had made the bedroom her own with delicate shades of pale pink, pearl grey and silver.
‘Do you think it’s too girly?’ she’d asked when she showed him the mood board that the interior designer had put together.
James had barely looked at it. ‘Doesn’t worry me,’ he said. ‘I’ll just be sleeping in there. And . . .’ He grinned at her lasciviously. ‘You know . . .’
Ellie giggled at his insinuation.
‘And I doubt I’ll be looking at the wallpaper then,’ he added with a twitch of his eyebrows.
‘And I’m all right choosing this fabric for the curtains?’ Ellie had pressed on, running her finger over the burrs in the swatch of pale-grey silk. ‘I mean, there are cheaper options.’
‘Whatever you want you can have,’ he’d said. ‘All I want is to make you happy.’
So she had taken him at his word, cut no corners, spared no expense, and now the room made her smile every time she set foot in it.
She nipped into her dressing room to get a clean blouse. Her jeans would be fine, she decided. There was no need to try too hard. Max would be dressed in what he’d been wearing all day and Caro wouldn’t mind if Ellie turned up in her pyjamas. Her blouses were all hanging on cedar hangers in colour-coded order at one end of the rail and she selected a boat-necked one in a fifties-inspired print that she thought brought out the blue of her eyes. She would wear her Christmas bracelet as well. She didn’t have many opportunities to show it off. It was too beautiful to wear every day and she didn’t always think it was appropriate to be quite so ostentatious. But this was dinner with Max and Caro and they had already seen it and wouldn’t care about how much it had cost.
She opened her jewellery drawer with the little key that she kept under her make-up bag. It wasn’t the safest place to hide the key, but the house had a state-of-the-art security system and a burglar would have to get past a lot more hurdles before he made it up here. The drawer was more to keep the girls from playing with her more expensive pieces than anything else, but having things under lock and key kept the insurance company happy and meant she didn’t have to go trailing off to the bank every time she wanted to wear something.
The box for the bracelet was on the top but when she opened it the bracelet wasn’t there. She lifted the insert to see if it had slipped underneath but it wasn’t there either. That was odd. She was certain she’d put it back the last time she’d worn it. When would that have been? she wondered. There had been the AGM of the tennis club in the middle of the month. She had definitely had it then, but she couldn’t be sure about after that. Well, it must be here somewhere.
She picked all the boxes out of the drawer one by one, opening them and peering inside. She really did have some lovely things. James might not have much imagination, but what he lacked in creativity he more than made up for in money spent on her. The bracelet, however, wasn’t in any of them. She had hoped that it might have slipped between two boxes but now she was at the bottom of the drawer and she still hadn’t found it. Well, where could it be? It wasn’t as if it could be stolen. Everything else was still here, and anyway no one came up here except the cleaners, whom she trusted implicitly. Either the girls had found the key or she had put it down somewhere when she got back from the AGM and forgotten to put it away.
Ellie had been a little bit tipsy that night, but she distinctly remembered having the bracelet on when she got home because James had wanted her to wear it, and her underwear, when they made love. She had objected, worried that the bracelet would dig in, but had gone along with it and then . . . That was it. She remembered now. She had slipped the bracelet off when they were in the throes. It must have fallen off the bedside table and rolled under the bed somewhere. There wasn’t time to start crawling around now, however. She made a mental note to check later.
She could hear voices floating up the stairs. The Frost contingent must have arrived. Ellie checked her reflection in the mirror and then flew down to greet them. Caro and Max were standing in the hallway chatting animatedly to Oliva and Lucy, Alex and Theo hanging back and shoving into one another so they lost their balance. There was no sign of James. He must still be on his call, Ellie thought. It didn’t really matter that he wasn’t here to meet their guests when it was only Max and Caro, but she was still irritated that he was working on a Saturday evening in the first place.
‘Hi, you lot,’ she said as she reached the bottom of the stairs. ‘Come in, come in. Is it still freezing outside? Girls, can you take the coats and hang them in the cloakroom, please? Boys, would you like a drink? There’s all the usual stuff in the drinks cupboard. Can you sort them out please, Liv?’
They were settled in the lounge with drinks and the log burner blazing before James finally appeared. Ellie thought he looked tired and a little careworn. Maybe she would talk to him about overdoing things again in the morning, but for now she handed him a bottle of lager, which he took with a grateful smile. She watched as he took a sip, appeared to mentally recentre himself and then grin broadly at their guests. The transformation took less than a couple of seconds, but Ellie had clocked it. It was as if he was morphing from James the businessman to James the host. By the time he spoke, all signs of exhaustion had lifted from his face.
‘So, what’s new in the Frost household?’ he asked cheerfully.
Max shook his head. ‘Same old, same old. Chasing the corporate dollar as ever.’
‘I’ve told you before, Max mate,’ James replied. ‘You should work for yourself. No pandering to demanding bosses or grafting to make someone else rich. What I make goes straight into our pockets. No one else takes a slice.’
‘Except the tax man, of course,’ Caroline said with a smile. There was such an innocence about Caroline sometimes. Whilst James always paid his tax eventually, it was occasionally a little closer to the wire than Ellie would have liked and he was always looking at some avoidance scheme or other. But this would never have occurred to Caroline. In her binary world, tax was due and therefore should be paid. Ellie imagined that this approach to life would be very straightforward.
‘The tax man has no complaints,’ James said, and winked at Caroline.
‘I’m all about the simple life,’ said Max. ‘I know what’s expected of me. I turn up and do the job, and they pay me enough every month for our needs. I don’t need any more complications.’
Max had always been the steady one in the family, Ellie thought. He wasn’t ambitious, but he wasn’t a shirker either. He just got on with whatever needed doing competently and with little complaint. Their father had always tried to get him to strive harder, to better his position, but his words fell on stony ground. Max just wasn’t interested. He was no entrepreneur, and no amount of cajoling would change that. Ellie had often thought that the reason she had married James was because he reminded her of her dad. The two of them had hit it off right from the beginning, Tony recognising a kindred spirit in James that he hadn’t found amongst his own children.
‘You’ll never make any serious money, though,’ said James knowingly. ‘And don’t you ever yearn for something more? Let’s imagine that money was no object. What would you buy? Go on, Max, name it. There must be something.’
