The Will, page 21
The countryside outside the bus window was gloriously wide and open. In London, she’d never been able to see more than a few metres without obstruction. Here, she could see for miles. What was she doing? She was twenty-six. Not a kid any more. Running home to her parents wasn’t a silly teenage thing. It was proof that she wasn’t able to make it alone. She hoped that her mother wouldn’t ask about work, that she wouldn’t have to explain that she had been let go from her job at the gallery because Ralph had got drunk at an exhibition and knocked two paintings off the wall.
The bus dropped her outside Norwich, and she waited half an hour for the number forty-nine bus, shivering and wishing that she’d brought a proper winter coat instead of her leather jacket. Eventually, the bus arrived, and she wedged herself into a seat, warming her feet on the little heater on the floor. She’d taken this bus into town almost every day in the school holidays, to go to the record shops and read magazines without buying them. She knew every movement and every bump of the journey.
It stopped at the top of the lane where Roxborough sat, hidden by the trees. She tramped down the drive, trying to convince herself that it would all be fine, that no one would mind her turning up unannounced with a bruised face.
Elspeth had never had a house key to Roxborough. Whenever she came back for weekends or the school holidays, there would be a half-dozen staff inside the house, and Violet was almost always here. She’d occasionally had to sit on the steps waiting for someone to come home and let her in, but that was rare.
Now, she reached the front door and considered whether she should ring the doorbell. But that might make rather more of her arrival than needed to be made. So, she pushed the door open and put her stuff down quietly in the hall. Then she kicked her shoes off and went to the bathroom to adjust her make-up. She looked a state, she was completely aware of that. But maybe that was better. Her mother might be more understanding about her arrival if she realized quite how desperate Elspeth was.
Either way, all that mattered was that she was home. There would be something to eat, and then Elspeth could have a long, hot bath and try to wash every last vestige of Ralph off her body. Tomorrow, she could wash her clothes and call some friends and find somewhere to stay, call the temping agency and see if they could get her a slot on reception for some poncy company who would overpay her because she had a nice accent. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be better than what she had had before. It would be a start.
‘Hello,’ she said quietly, pushing the kitchen door open. It smelled warm and there was a jug of winter roses on the scrubbed wooden table. The cats were sleeping in baskets in front of the Aga and a dog was curled up on the armchair under the window.
Violet looked up from where she was chopping an onion and dropped her knife. ‘Elspeth,’ she said. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
‘I needed to get out of London,’ she said.
‘What happened to your face?’ Violet wiped her hands on her apron and then came to inspect the damage, reaching into a drawer for some arnica. ‘What happened?’
‘Ralph.’
Violet said nothing, but her expression made her opinion very clear.
‘I’ve left him,’ Elspeth said. It felt strange to say it out loud.
‘Good. Listen, why don’t you go upstairs and lie down, and I’ll bring you some supper?’
‘It’s fine, I can help. I’ll stay down here. Can I have a drink? It’s been a long day. Where’s Mum?’
‘I think she might prefer it if you popped upstairs and she came to see you later. She’s had a long day herself and—’
Violet’s uncharacteristically quick chatter was interrupted when the kitchen door swung open and in walked Cecily. Elspeth looked at her mother, whose hair had grown rather longer and whose cheeks were pink. ‘I tried to pick the rosemary but everything’s dead. I think it’ll be spring before we get any herbs—’ She stopped. ‘Elspeth?’
Elspeth panned her vision down her mother’s body, trying to understand what she was seeing. Below the pink cheeks, in the middle of her body, was an enormous protrusion. A swelling. Something that looked extraordinarily like a baby bump. Cecily put her basket down on the kitchen table and then went to sit down. ‘Oh dear,’ she said mildly. ‘It looks like the cat’s rather out of the bag.’
They sat at the table. Elspeth drank a bottle of red wine, smoked her way through a packet of Marlboro Red and asked question after question. Who was the father? How did this happen? And then, eventually: ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
Cecily sighed. ‘Because I’m not keeping the baby.’
‘What?’
‘I’m not keeping it. I didn’t want it. I can’t do all of that again. I wasn’t much good at it in the first place – you remember. And if I wasn’t any good in my twenties, just imagine how much worse I’ll be now. I’ve got no patience. No, far better that someone else raises the baby.’
‘Someone else? You’re giving it away?’
‘To Luella and Grant. She can’t have children, you see. It all works out rather well, actually. They’re delighted. And we won’t tell the child. It’ll just grow up thinking it’s a nice, normal adopted baby.’
Elspeth shook her head and looked at her mother. ‘If you weren’t going to have it, why didn’t you have an abortion?’
Her mother did at least have the good grace to look embarrassed. ‘I tried to, darling, but it wasn’t very early, and once I found someone who would go through with it, I just couldn’t. I didn’t feel it was right.’
Getting to her feet, Elspeth searched for the right words. ‘I didn’t feel it was “right” either, Mum. I wanted mine.’
‘Well,’ Cecily said, also getting to her feet, though with rather more trouble thanks to her enormous bump. ‘Not enough to give up all of this.’
Elspeth fixed her mother with a hard stare. ‘What?’
‘Oh, darling, let’s be reasonable. If you had wanted the baby, you would have had it. It was all very well to pretend back then, but you’re an adult now. We made the right choice. You needed someone to blame, and I was very happy for that to be me, but let’s not pretend you didn’t know what was really happening. Now, do you want Violet and me to make you some extra soup, or are you going straight to bed?’
Elspeth got to her feet. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Actually, I’m leaving.’
‘Leaving? Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘I’m not.’ She picked up her bags. ‘This place is awful. You’re awful. What you’re doing with that baby is awful. I don’t want anything to do with any of it. I’m gone.’
15
‘Jonty isn’t our cousin.’
‘No.’
‘And he’s not adopted.’
Elspeth looked grim. ‘Well. He is adopted. He just wasn’t adopted from some teenage girl who got into trouble, or whatever my mother claimed the story was.’
Willa tried to process all of the information, but it wasn’t settling on her brain. She could usually digest information with incredible speed; it made her brilliant at her job. And yet now, she sat dumbly on the floor of the library, moving her head from side to side, trying to understand what was happening.
‘Granny is Jonty’s mother.’
‘Was.’
‘And Grant and Luella …’
‘Adopted him.’
‘So, he’s my uncle. Not my adopted cousin.’
‘Yes.’
‘And he’s Lizzie’s uncle too.’
‘Yes.’
‘Does my dad know?’
‘No. At least, I don’t think so. Mum wouldn’t have wanted him to know. She didn’t want me to know. Though that was probably for other reasons.’
‘What other reasons?’
Elspeth looked up at the ceiling. This was exactly why she hadn’t wanted to come home. She couldn’t have imagined that her niece would turn out to be sleeping with her uncle. But she had known that no good would come of being back in this place. It had held no happiness for her as a child and it held none now. She sighed. ‘I got pregnant when I was sixteen. I had a boyfriend at school; we were serious about each other. I was going to drop out of school and get a job, take my A levels part-time, all of that. And then I told Cecily. She told me I was having an abortion whether I wanted one or not.’
‘Surely she couldn’t make you?’
‘She said there would be no money, no university – nothing – if I didn’t do it. And I know what you’re thinking – I should have done it on my own if I really wanted to, but you don’t know what Cecily was like with her own children. She wasn’t the sweet little granny the three of you remember. She had a way of making you feel like everything you said and did was wrong. She told me I couldn’t do it on my own without her money, and I believed her. So, she made me an appointment. Or rather, Violet made the appointment. My mother didn’t like getting her hands dirty. They told me it was just a scan, and when I got there the doctor lied, he told me that the baby was ill, that I had to have an abortion. They didn’t use anaesthetic at the place she sent me. I was screaming. And then Violet drove me home, and Cecily put me on the pill and told me not to be so silly in the future.’
Willa looked at the floor, trying to decide what to say to such an agonizingly personal story from someone she shared twenty-five per cent of her DNA with but who she knew almost not at all.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘So, you ran away?’
‘No,’ Elspeth said. ‘I was too much of a coward for that. I stayed. And eventually I left university and got shacked up, and then that went to shit. So I came home because I had nowhere else to go. And when I got here, I found Cecily. Massively pregnant.’
‘Where was Grandpa?’
Elspeth looked sympathetic. ‘Oh, my love, they had been separated for years. He would come home for Easter and Christmas and that sort of thing, any time we were at home. But he lived in London and had affairs with various Russian teenagers. And Mum lived here.’
‘With Violet? I thought that was only after Grandpa died?’
Elspeth laughed. ‘Mum never waited for anything. She wanted Violet and Dad. So, she had her cake and ate it too, for years.’
Willa got up. ‘We have to tell everyone.’
Elspeth shrugged. ‘You can try. Violet will try to stop you. She’ll probably lie about it.’
‘Why?’
‘That woman is a vault. Whenever my mother wanted something kept secret, Violet made sure it happened.’
‘Violet’s not like that.’
‘Isn’t she? Did she know about Lizzie and Jonty?’
‘I think so.’
‘Then she watched your sister sleep with her uncle for half her life and she didn’t clue her in. Doesn’t that tell you exactly who she cared about and who she didn’t?’
‘She’s not like that, she just loved Granny, she wanted to make sure that no one found out anything that hurt them … I at least have to tell Lizzie. She thinks she and Jonty can be together. She’s talking about telling the family, about moving in together and making a proper go of it. I can’t let her do that.’
‘No,’ Elspeth agreed. ‘You can’t. You’ll have to stop her. And I suppose Jonty has a right to know who his parents are. Just promise me you’ll watch out for Violet.’
Willa got to her feet. ‘OK. Jesus. What a fucking mess this family is.’
‘The entail was supposed to make things fairer and better. But all it’s ever done is make this family more complicated. Trust me, the best thing you could do, if they verify your letter, is get rid of the whole stupid, sick tradition.’
Violet put a Le Creuset dish on to the table. She had made quiche for the last night everyone would be staying. Or, at least in theory, the last night they would all be staying.
‘This smells lovely, Violet,’ Angelique said.
‘And that’s from a fussy French woman.’ Grant laughed.
‘There is no such thing as an unfussy French woman,’ Angelique retorted.
Everyone piled their plates with salad. ‘I should probably explain,’ Violet said, ‘that the legal team have been in touch about what will happen tomorrow.’
Everyone seemed to shift slightly in their seats, trying to look casual and as if this conversation was of little to no interest to them. Violet went on. ‘They will bring a team to the house tomorrow morning. Rihan gave them all the information we had, and they have assessed all the paperwork that they currently have. Next, they will read the letters, and perhaps take them away to glean further evidence. They will wish to talk to you, Willa, and they may wish to talk to some of the others. They said they will want to speak to me. Then, if things are clear enough, they will make a ruling. Otherwise, they will recommend that the will is officially contested. Does that make sense?’
Everyone nodded and agreed that it did indeed make sense, and then there was much discussion about who wanted more wine and if everyone had been served the vegetables. Willa looked across the table to where Jonty and Lizzie sat next to each other. It looked as if his hand might be brushing her leg under the table. Her heart buckled under the weight of knowing what she was going to have to do. She had stolen the one thing her sister had ever wanted, and now she was going to break her heart. But she had no choice. Just as Elspeth had said, Jonty had a right to know. And while adopted cousin might have been just enough to ignore, blood uncle certainly wasn’t. She couldn’t allow them to go through the pain of telling the family about their relationship, only for Grant to have to tell the man he raised as his son why he couldn’t be with Lizzie.
Much later, after they had talked and laughed and drunk enough wine to forget what was going to happen the next day, Lizzie and Willa headed to bed. Willa washed her face in the nursery sink, moisturized, took out her contact lenses and brushed her hair. Lizzie brushed her teeth and then threw herself into her bed, which was still unmade from that morning. They turned out the lights and lay in the darkness, both looking up at the fuzzy blue ceiling.
‘I’ve been thinking about what you said today,’ Willa said.
‘I said lots of things today.’
Willa threw a cushion across the room to where her sister’s bed stood. ‘You’re so annoying.’
‘I know.’ Lizzie laughed.
‘Seriously.’
‘Do we have to be serious?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK, fine. What?’
‘I think you should wait a while to tell the others.’
She could almost hear her sister thinking. ‘Why?’
‘The house, the letters – who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow.’
‘They’ll find that yours is real, and you’ll keep the house.’
Willa thought this was a bit rich coming from Lizzie, given that Lizzie hadn’t been able to resist voting to have the letters validated. But this wasn’t the time to start an argument with her sister. ‘We don’t know that. Someone might have switched the letters.’ Her heart ran a little faster as she said it. ‘All that other weird stuff happened. Like Bryony said.’
‘If you quote Bryony, I’m going to push you out of the window.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘So, you think we should wait until all the house stuff is sorted?’
‘Yes.’
Lizzie considered it. It wasn’t as if she had been relishing the prospect of telling her father and Jonty’s father that she and Jonty were sleeping together. And Jonty had suggested they wait a while before they bit the bullet anyway. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘That makes sense. I’m glad you know, though.’
‘Me too,’ Willa lied.
Lizzie got to her feet and crossed the room. ‘See you in the morning.’
‘Don’t go,’ Willa said.
‘What?’
‘Stay.’
‘Why?’
Willa searched for a reason. ‘I just want you to.’
The silence told Willa that Lizzie was torn. ‘I never ask you for anything,’ Willa said. Which was entirely true. She listened with relief as Lizzie got back into her own bed.
‘What bedroom are you going to have when it’s your house?’ Lizzie said.
‘That’s a good question,’ Willa replied, awash with relief that she had managed to prevent her sister from going next door to unknowingly bed their uncle.
16
Jonty woke the next morning feeling a mixture of sadness and relief. He had enjoyed waking up with Lizzie’s sweet-scented hair strewn over his face, her tanned limbs taking up most of the bed. His body ached for her, but there was something mixed with the ache. A note of relief that for once he wasn’t going to spend the day trying to rid himself of the guilt that always came from a night spent with Lizzie, a sense that, while he was doing something that he wanted desperately, and that she wanted equally, he was doing something wrong.
He put his trainers on and went quietly downstairs, hoping not to have to speak to anyone. To his relief, he found his way to the drive without having to speak to another soul and began to pound his feet against the pavement, breathing in the scent of the early-morning air and relishing the movement in his muscles and the burn in his lungs. He had neglected his exercise while he had been at Roxborough, drinking too much and occasionally stealing one of Lizzie’s cigarettes.
He wondered how long it would take Willa to escape the idea that Roxborough was a place for a holiday, a place where the rules didn’t apply and it was perfectly reasonable to live from whim to whim. He had always told himself that Lizzie was just like the alcohol and cigarettes he consumed there as an adult, like the endless TV and sweets they were allowed when they stayed as children. The trappings of a wonderful holiday, but not real life.
But then, from what Lizzie had said recently, it seemed that she no longer wanted things to be confined to the walls of Roxborough. And, of course, he didn’t want them to be either. She was the most brilliant, funny, alive person he had ever known. If he’d met her in a pub, he would have married her on the spot. But despite everything he had said to her before, he couldn’t help asking himself the questions that Lizzie refused to answer. What would they tell their friends about how they met? Their colleagues? Would their family ever be able to see them as a real couple? What if they had children of their own? Could a relationship forged in secrecy and cultivated in the shadows ever really work? Could he and Lizzie really make each other happy when they were lying on the sofa watching television, instead of finding each other’s bodies in the darkened bedrooms of a stately home?
