The Will, page 16
But there would probably be a small amount of money left to him; his mother had mentioned that the house wasn’t the extent of the estate she would leave. It might be enough to get a cottage somewhere nearby. Would it be utterly tragic to move here, anyway? He saw visions of himself walking through the lower fields, along by the river, with a dog. A surprisingly dull fantasy for a man who used to enjoy class-A drugs in warehouse raves. But then wasn’t that what getting older meant?
‘Are you going to open that?’ asked Bryony. Grant looked up, realizing he had been frozen in his pose.
‘Yes, sorry,’ he said. ‘Would you like some?’
‘Yes,’ Bryony said, surprising them both. She rarely drank and couldn’t conceal her distaste for how much the Mordaunts were able to put away.
Grant poured her a glass and then handed it over. ‘I suppose everyone else will be down in a moment.’
‘Yes.’
They stood in an awkward silence, listening to a bumble bee headbutting the sash window.
‘It’s lovely for Willa,’ Grant ventured.
‘Yes,’ said Bryony, raising her eyebrows. ‘I suppose so.’
‘You don’t think so?’
Bryony sipped from her glass and then adopted the expression of concern she used when she was telling parents that their children weren’t keeping up academically at school – when she needed them to remove their child so they didn’t pull the A-level average down but wanted them to think it was because she liked the child and couldn’t bear to see their self-esteem damaged. ‘I just …’ She shook her head. ‘It’s not my place.’
‘Of course it is,’ Grant said. ‘You’re family.’
It was an odd time for Grant to start considering her to be part of the family. Perhaps not getting his own way for the first time in his life had been good for him. ‘I’m just a little worried,’ she said. ‘You know, about Willa’s history, the eating disorder, all that time spent in that centre. Her doctors always said that stress and pressure were the worst things for her, and I can’t help thinking that running a house like this might make her ill again.’
Grant looked at Bryony, trying to decide if she was being genuine. He decided probably not. Bryony had clearly been expecting to get her feet under the table and to be playing lady of the manor by the end of the week. But, despite the fact that it was clearly meant in the most selfish way possible, was it possible that she had a point? Willa was delicate. She always had been. And running Roxborough wasn’t for the faint-hearted. Their mother had made it look easy, but she was more a force of nature than a woman.
‘I just wonder …’ Bryony added conspiratorially. ‘All that business with the letters, everything being so …’ She stopped.
‘So what?’
She shook her head again. ‘I’m sure I’ve just read too many mystery novels. I just can’t help worrying that perhaps it wasn’t a complete accident that the letters were lost and then found. If there might be someone who would benefit from Willa inheriting the house – take advantage of her.’
‘I’m gasping for a drink,’ said Elspeth, interrupting. Grant grabbed for the bottle, feeling guilty, though he wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as if he had said anything about Willa, or the house, or the letters. ‘Little brother?’
Grant handed her a glass. She looked wrong here. She shouldn’t have come. Bryony was right – something he had never thought before in his life. It was more than likely that someone had intervened. But who? He looked across at Angelique, who had arrived into the room with an air of palpable boredom. She loved their life in London so much and had made no effort to hide her lack of interest in living at Roxborough. Could she have switched the letters to make sure she never had to live here? He dismissed the thought. He was being stupid. He considered his sister. Since Elspeth had arrived, things had changed, and not for the better.
‘What?’ she asked. ‘You’re giving me a look.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Grant smiled. ‘It’s just extraordinary. Seeing you here.’
‘Well, don’t get used to it. I’ve got to sign some paperwork and then I’ll be off.’
‘Isn’t it at least a little bit nice to be home?’ Bryony asked.
‘No,’ Elspeth said. ‘Because this isn’t my home.’
The door opened again and this time it was Lucca. ‘Mummy,’ he said, ‘Violet says I can have fish fingers and watch YouTube, but only if you say yes.’
‘Why are you wearing that?’
Lucca had put on his long-sleeved football top. ‘It’s Ronaldo,’ he said proudly.
‘Yes, but we’re having a formal supper. I put some shorts and a shirt on your bed.’
He pulled a face. ‘I want to watch YouTube.’
Bryony smiled and knelt down so she was at Lucca’s height. ‘I know you do, darling, but we all very much want to spend time with you because we love you and we value you.’
Elspeth snorted from the corner, where she was rolling a cigarette.
‘I’m sorry?’ Bryony said in a warning tone.
‘Nice to meet you,’ Elspeth said to Lucca, ignoring her sister-in-law. ‘I’d rather watch YouTube and eat fish fingers too.’
‘This is Auntie Elspeth,’ Bryony said.
‘If you call me auntie, I’ll throw myself off the roof.’
Lucca laughed, deciding that he liked this woman, who his mother obviously found very annoying. ‘Can I sit next to you?’
‘Sure.’
Lizzie and Jonty were down next. Lizzie had chosen a white dress which was pretty much see-through. Bryony considered asking why she couldn’t dress more appropriately, given that she was with her family and obviously not on some kind of pulling mission, but decided against it. Then came David. There was an indentation on his left cheek where he had been holding his mobile phone, and a look of quiet desperation behind his eyes. Bryony’s stomach twisted. Her facade of being relaxed about his financial issues was getting rather heavier to hold up. They would find a way out. Of course they would. She wouldn’t let her little family crumble because poor David had been spoonfeeding his daughters ridiculous amounts of money.
Violet came next, throwing worried glances at Lizzie and Jonty, who were sitting next to each other on the sofa, fractionally too close.
Finally, Willa quietly opened the door. She hadn’t meant to be the last down, and she blushed as soon as she realized that she was. It looked like she was showing off. Everyone turned to look at her as she slipped into the room, willing them not to say anything.
‘I’d like to say a few words,’ Grant said, raising his glass. Willa blushed even more and wished that she had some kind of superpower to leave her body sitting on the edge of the sofa smiling nicely while Grant talked so as not to have to experience the toe-curling embarrassment of whatever he was about to say about her.
‘It’s not an easy thing – the way this house passes down. And we all know, Willa, that you were surprised to find that your life was about to completely change. But my mother was a surprise when she inherited the house, and she’s the reason that Roxborough is what it is today. And Cecily knew what she was doing. She chose you for a reason, and I have no doubt that you’ll do the house proud, and make all of us proud.’ He lifted his glass and everyone else followed suit, Lizzie smiling, cross-legged on the sofa, Elspeth with an unreadable expression in the corner. ‘To Willa,’ Grant said.
‘To Willa,’ David echoed, realizing that he should probably have been the one to make the speech. ‘The new owner of Roxborough.’
Everyone echoed him, and Willa stared at a middle point between her uncle and her father, counting in her head and waiting for the agonizing focus on her to be over.
‘So, will we still be allowed to visit?’ asked Lizzie, breaking the odd silence that fell after the toast.
‘I thought we would do it just like we always have,’ Willa said, looking at the floor. ‘That everyone would come whenever they wanted to, and that we would have Easter and Christmas, maybe the August bank holiday …’
‘See how terrified she looks?’ Bryony murmured to David. ‘Honestly, darling, do you really think your mother would have wanted this for her?’
A knock at the drawing-room door was followed by a small, smiling blonde girl entering the room. She looked to Violet. ‘We’re ready to serve the starter,’ she said.
‘Lovely,’ Violet said. ‘Shall we go through?’
Once again, the dining room had been made beautiful, though with rather less fuss than the night of the entailment, which came as a relief to Willa.
Each place had a name card on it. Willa’s had been on the left side of the table, between Jonty and Lizzie, ever since she had been old enough to sit there. She had sat on that chair – mahogany wood with a rattan seat – since before her feet had been able to touch the floor, when she’d swing them under the table and beg to be allowed pudding even though she hadn’t finished her vegetables. And later, when food was the most terrifying thing in the world, that chair had been one of the places she had just about managed to eat.
Her grandmother had understood. Her generation, notorious in their suffering of ‘mental health issues’, seemed to be full of women who viewed food as the enemy. Cecily herself had been careful to the point of obsession to make sure that her figure stayed the same into her forties, fifties, and beyond. She had once asked Willa for a list of things she could eat, and then, all through that first summer after Willa’s mother had died, when she would run for three hours each morning and try to keep her calories under five hundred a day, Cecily had served her plates of fresh vegetables from the garden, never with any sauce, never with any dressing. She’d waited patiently while Willa worked her way through a plate, never acknowledging that Willa had different food to everyone else. Where her father had bargained, wheedled, begged for her to eat, her grandmother had simply treated her as if she had an inconvenient allergy that must be worked around.
But that was no longer her place at the table. And that wasn’t her life any more. She pulled out the chair at the head of the table, where her grandmother used to sit facing Esmond, seated at the far end, and sat down.
It felt as if something seismic should happen, but nothing did. Everyone else sat down too. Wine was poured, salad brought out. Jonty asked Angelique whether she and Grant were going back to France this summer. Lucca asked Elspeth whether she had any tattoos, and then told her that, when he was eighteen, he was going to get Ronaldo’s shirt number tattooed on his back, and a snake on his arm. Bryony asked Lucca what the most interesting fact was that he had learned that day. David looked out of the window and glanced intermittently at his Apple watch, which kept vibrating with text messages. Lizzie was quizzing Violet about what would be done with Cecily’s vintage clothes. It all seemed almost normal.
‘What’s that noise?’ Lizzie asked, as the salads were cleared away.
‘I can’t hear anything,’ said Jonty.
‘Shh, listen.’
Everyone fell silent and strained their ears. ‘I can hear it!’ said Lucca.
‘Hear what?’ asked Bryony.
‘I think I can too,’ Willa agreed. It was a sort of high-pitched whining, like static.
‘Me too,’ Elspeth said. ‘What on earth is it? It sounds like a badly tuned radio.’
They all strained their ears, trying to work out what it was they were listening to. Lizzie got up, walking around the room like a sleepwalker, slowly listening at each corner.
‘I’m sure it’s nothing,’ said Violet. ‘If we go back to eating, it’ll probably go away.’
‘No,’ Lizzie said. ‘Listen, it’s getting louder.’ She walked towards the huge mahogany side table that dominated the left wall of the dining room. On the top, some of the most-used silver was displayed, and the candlesticks were kept there when not in use. Inside were the linens, various specific knives and forks for fish courses or eating things like artichokes. It had three wide drawers along the top then two huge, square ones. ‘I think it’s coming from in there.’
‘What on earth could be coming from there? That’s where Mum kept the tablecloths, isn’t it?’ Grant asked Violet.
‘Yes,’ Violet said. ‘Perhaps we should leave it—’
But before she could finish her sentence Lizzie had jerked open one of the deep drawers and, within seconds – less than seconds – the noise had risen from a faint humming to a scream. No, it wasn’t the same noise; it was Lizzie screaming – screaming because the room was now filled with hundreds and hundreds of wasps.
‘Shut the drawer!’ Grant shouted. David jumped to his feet and pushed Lizzie out of the way, slamming it closed. But it was far too late for that. The enraged wasps had escaped from the confinement they had clearly been so furious to be kept in, and shutting the nest back in had no effect at all. The air was black in places. David and Grant threw open every window in the dining room.
‘When I say, everyone run out of the door, all right?’ David instructed. He opened the final window as far as it would go, swatting wasps away from his eyes.
‘Fuck!’ shouted Angelique as one of them stabbed her arm with a sting.
Then everyone was on their feet, running for the dining-room door. Once they were all on the other side, David slammed it behind him, ten, maybe twenty, wasps following them. They retreated to the kitchen, hurrying and stumbling down the little flight of stairs in the back hallway. Finally, reaching the kitchen, doors and windows firmly shut, they stopped.
Lizzie had been stung all over her beautiful face. Willa was surprised by how much she wanted to cry, looking at her sister’s beautiful eyes, swollen already, and her cheekbones warped. Her arms were studded with stings. ‘Are you all right?’ Willa asked. ‘Should we take you to hospital?’
‘I’m fine,’ said Lizzie, trying to smile. ‘I just don’t want to see myself in the mirror.’
‘Are you all right?’ Bryony asked, grasping Lucca. ‘Have you been stung?’
Lucca nodded. ‘Yes, but I’m OK, I promise.’
‘I’m going to go to the back kitchen to tell the staff to leave and not to go via the front of the house,’ Violet said. ‘I think everyone else needs a stiff drink.’
Grant hunted and found a bottle of port in one of the kitchen cupboards. They drank it out of the water glasses from the kitchen cabinet, because anything more appropriate was now unreachable. Everyone drank down a shot of it, apart from Lucca, who had been given a packet of chocolate buttons from Violet’s handbag. Then they poured another round and sat around the scrubbed wooden table, everyone wondering the same thing. Eventually, it was Elspeth who broke the silence.
‘I know we’re an unusual family,’ she said, ‘but filling the dining room with thousands of bugs isn’t some strange part of the tradition, right?’
Violet half smiled. ‘No. It’s not.’
‘So how did they get there?’ asked Angelique.
‘Could they have made a nest in the sideboard?’ Lizzie asked Jonty, rolling her glass between two hands.
‘It’s not really my area,’ Jonty said. ‘People don’t generally get the vet involved when they’ve got wasps. But I don’t imagine so. It’s usually the corners of rooms. They like it warm and dry, but mostly attics and barns.’
‘So then how did it get there?’ asked Willa.
No one said anything for a while.
‘Does that mean someone put it there on purpose?’ Willa said, after waiting to see if anyone would say anything.
‘I’m sure they didn’t,’ Violet said. ‘Why would someone do that?’
Willa dropped her gaze to her hands on the table. ‘Maybe because of me getting the house.’
Violet put her hand on Willa’s. ‘Everyone is delighted for you, Willa. No one wants to quibble over you having the house and, even if they did, do you really think any of us is horrible enough to do something like that?’
‘No,’ Willa said, shaking her head. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry.’
‘Is it impossible that it could have been there for a while, Jonty?’ David asked, willing his nephew to give him the kind of response that would put his daughter’s mind at rest.
‘Not impossible,’ Jonty said. Almost impossible. Extremely unlikely, he wanted to add. Basically impossible. But Willa’s horrified expression and Lizzie’s distorted face told him that there would be nothing to gain by throwing further suspicions into the group. They all knew, deep down, that the nest wasn’t there by chance. It was getting late, and they were all covered in wasp stings. No one was hungry any more. It wouldn’t be a benefit to make anyone feel any worse.
‘Another round?’ Grant asked, holding the port bottle.
David called an emergency pest-control company that quoted him an eye-watering sum and said they’d arrive by 7 a.m. the next day. He wondered if he should have asked Willa for her sign-off before saying yes. It was so deeply, deeply strange, the idea that he was now supposed to ask his daughter for permission in a house he had lived in since before there had been any idea of her. Jonty handed out antihistamines to everyone as they went to bed. ‘We’re all going to sleep like logs – better make sure the doors are locked properly.’ One by one, they filed off to bed, taking the back stairs to avoid the front of the house, each silently wondering whose fault the horrors of the evening had been.
‘You were very good tonight,’ Angelique told Grant as she took off her make-up.
‘Really?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘I don’t think I did anything. David was far better with the wasps.’
‘I didn’t mean that. I meant the speech. The way you behaved towards Willa. You were very kind.’
Grant was surprised by how much he enjoyed the compliment. ‘Bryony thinks there was foul play. That Willa wasn’t supposed to have the house.’
