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5
Stephen Leather was nothing if not punctual. By eleven o’clock they were all sitting down, Nola and Iris on one side of the dining room table, Georgie on the other and Stephen at the head, in what Iris couldn’t help thinking of as her mother’s seat. After she’d died, they’d stopped using this room, apart from a couple of Christmases when they pretended to celebrate with forced seasonal cheer. This thought prompted something in Iris that for so long she’d worked hard to ignore. What had Christmas been like for her father all these years since? Suddenly flooded with guilt, she knew that, sitting here now, waiting for his will to be read, she had let him down in a way that she couldn’t ever put right.
‘Well, then, I suppose we’d better get started.’ Stephen checked his watch against the chime of the grandfather clock across the hall. He opened up the sealed envelopes with an air of ceremony that was almost reverent, then he looked at all three of them, as if checking that they were ready for what lay ahead.
The will began with various small gifts and instructions their father had made to acknowledge people like Mary, his housekeeper, and her predecessor, as well as the secretary who’d worked at the distillery for almost forty years and retired a year earlier and, of course, a small bequest to the local tidy towns association, who volunteered for everything from cleaning old people’s gardens to maintaining the church grounds.
‘And so, we move onto the bulk of the estate,’ Stephen was saying, and Iris tuned back in. ‘The remaining estate, such as it is, is made up of the main residence, Soldier Hill House, and all of its contents: the farm – almost two hundred acres, running from the house and including all outbuildings and machinery currently held, and the Delahaye Distillery.’
Stephen stopped for a moment and looked from one to the other of them again. It was clear to Iris that there was no fair way of dividing things up equally without selling everything off and splitting the money received from them. Suddenly, that seemed an unbearable thought. This house was their last connection with their mother, and now with their father too. It was irrational, she knew, but even though she’d hardly set foot in the place for years when her father was alive, somehow she couldn’t bear the idea of being parted from it.
Stephen was still speaking, measuring out her father’s wishes in gentle tones.Three daughters, each loved equally. To be shared in equal parts, but one request… the estate to remain in testate until this request is fulfilled… six months… this house… Georgie, Iris and Nola…It all faded together like an old record playing on long after the partygoers had stopped listening. Iris’s thoughts drifted far away, beyond the rattling windowpanes, out across the expanse of land that rolled off green and empty in the distance. It was only when Nola gasped next to her that she was jolted back to the present moment. On the other side of the table, Georgie’s cheeks had that flushed appearance she’d always got when she thought the world needed to be put right again.
‘I’m sorry,’ Nola said shortly. ‘I don’t understand. How are we going to receive the value of our inheritance if we can’t actually sell it? I mean, he can’t have thought this through. Does he mean to leave one part to one of us and another to the other? There’s a huge disparity between the value of the farm and the value of the distillery, surely?’
‘Your father’s will is quite unusual.’ Stephen pushed his glasses back up over the bridge of his nose. ‘In the plainest of English, Gerald’s wish is that you girls all come together and stay in the house for six months, and that, at the end of it, you are all agreed on how the estate is to be divided between you.’
‘Oh my God.’ A sharp pain seared across Iris’s forehead. ‘And if we don’t?’
‘Haven’t you been listening at all?’ Georgie said shortly, an irritated edge to her voice. ‘Basically, we have six weeks to straighten out our lives in London and then he wants us to come back here and live together, in this house, for six months. If after that time we still—’ she rolled her eyes theatrically ‘—want to sell the place and all the other assets, we can do that and divide it three ways. If we can’t agree what to do with it, it all goes into a trust, managed by the executor.’ She nodded towards Stephen.
‘Well, not me exactly, it’s my firm – well, my son’s firm at this point.’ Stephen pushed his chair back a little from the table, raised his hands as if to ward off their anger. ‘I did try to explain to your father that it’s most irregular, but his request was within his rights.’
‘Well, I can’t just throw away my career in London to come back here and play at being a farmer or a distiller or whatever other crazy idea he had in mind for me,’ Georgie said crossly.
‘But what if we can’t come back?’ Nola asked in a small voice. And of course, Iris assumed, she was thinking of that screen test. Nola couldn’t turn her back on a part in a sitcom – it could bethepart. She wouldn’t do it, not for every blade of grass in Ireland. And nor should she be expected to.
‘Oh, yes, that’s right, Nola, so you’re the only one here with a career and a life you want to get back to,’ Georgie said sarcastically.
‘Actually, maybe yes.’ Nola met her sisters’ eyes and Iris could feel the tension in the room expand between them. ‘Certainly more than sitting it out in this God-forgotten place with—’ She stopped herself, just in time before saying something she might regret. ‘I’m not sure a share in anything is worth that.’ She looked as if she was fit to cry.
‘Ladies, ladies.’ Stephen calmly broke the stand-off. ‘I understand it’s not what you expected. I did try to explain to your father, but he was adamant. He wanted what he always wanted: for you to put your quarrels behind you and be a proper family, and even though he was quite sure that in the end you’d all return to London, he wanted to give you a final chance to reconcile and move forward with a clean slate.’
‘Hah,’ Nola snorted, but for all her angry words and her skilful make-up the colour had drained from her cheeks. Of course, Iris realised, she may have been depending in some way on some sort of immediate windfall from the estate.
‘Look, it would be the easiest thing in the world for me to appoint an estate agent and put the whole place on the market, for all of you to pack your bags and take a photograph or a clock to remember him by, but really, I think there may have been far more wisdom to his thinking than I realised at first—’
‘Surely, if we all agree, we can overturn this stupid will?’ Georgie cut him off.
‘The estate will be held in trust indefinitely, tied up until your grandchildren’s grandchildren can come together and reunite the family.’ It was an exaggeration, but Iris knew that no-one – least of all their father – would want it to go that route. ‘In my experience, you may well win the case, but ultimately, you’ll effectively lose up to half the value of the estate, maybe more, if you can’t agree between yourselves.’ He smiled at Iris kindly, but it was clear that he was indeed her father’s friend, and wanted them to comply with his last wishes.
‘And if one of us decides not to join in this silly charade?’ Nola looked up from examining the empty table before her.
‘Then you are automatically throwing up any claim you have on the estate,’ Stephen said simply. They all sat for a moment, digesting this stark alternative. It would be, when all was said and done, a sizeable fortune to run away from.
‘So, what about you, Iris?’ Nola turned to her expectantly and of course, what she meant was, ‘What about Myles?’ Her mind – and heart – started to race. Her sisters knew all too well that she would hate leaving Myles for five minutes, much less contemplate six months without him, if they were still together. But they weren’t together anymore and now no-one would miss her in London if she never went back. The truth of how alone she was turned over in her stomach like a knife, wielding its worst. And of course, it would be almost impossible to avoid telling her sisters about Myles leaving her, if she agreed to stay.
‘I…’ Iris sighed. There was no choice. Myles did not want her as she was, but with the Delahaye legacy in her bank account, child or no child, she knew him well enough to know that he would think again. The very fact of it made her feel nauseous. She wasn’t sure if she was sickened more by the fact that she still wanted him back so badly, or at the idea of having to pay such a heavy price to win him over. She shifted uncomfortably under the excruciating gaze of their sets of questioning eyes. ‘These are our father’s wishes. I think we need to respect them.’ She cleared her throat. She needed to stay calm. Whatever else, there was no way she was letting either Nola or Georgie know that she had so much riding on this whole shambolic exercise. ‘Can we have a copy of the will? I think a lot of it has gone over my head.’ She managed to smile at Stephen. ‘Late night, father’s gin.’ She shook her head and wondered if she was the only one sitting at this table who felt as if the world had been whipped from beneath her yet again.
*
‘He can’t have really meant we were to come back here and live for six months, can he?’ Nola asked once Stephen finally closed up his briefcase and headed out the door. She was so pale, she looked in danger of fainting. ‘I mean, I kept expecting him to jump up and shoutSurprise! This can’t be right, can it?’
‘I’m afraid it’s no joke; it’s all laid out exactly as Father wanted it,’ Iris said softly, and Georgie wondered if her sister wasn’t in shock, considering she was taking the news so calmly. Perhaps she and Myles really needed the money, Georgie thought. Iris was still working in that little dental practice and Myles was never going to make much of a living – that had been obvious from the get-go.
‘But… what about my job, my auditions, my flat…’ Nola’s hand flew up to cover her mouth, as if she’d said too much, and Georgie thought she looked like she might burst into tears. ‘How could he do something like this to us?’ She looked from one sister to the other.
‘He wasn’t trying to punish us,’ Iris said with utter certainty as she pushed her chair back and walked towards the bay window that overlooked the front avenue of the house. ‘He’s given us a gift of sorts, or at least that’s what he believed he was doing. Come on, this is our father – all he wanted was for us to be happy.’
