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2
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life, Samuel Johnson
Once inside, I dump the unbearable load of everything ‘schoolish’ (or ghoulish, in my case) on the kitchen worktop, turn on the kettle and put the solicitor’s envelope on my tiny kitchen table. I don’t wonder why Stephen hardly ever comes here; it’s barely big enough for me and my mountain of books.
In my pyjamas, I make myself a cup of tea. Now I have no excuse not to tackle the letter that’s been burning a hole in my mind. With trembling hands, I curl up on the settee and read it once again.
I have so many questions that have been bubbling inside me all these years, but now that my parents are dead and I’m getting married, it’s suddenly become crucial to know my roots and why we never went back, not even for a brief visit. And I’ll finally get to hear the truth from my grandmother, who will be a treasure chest of answers to all of my questions. Like, why were my parents so cold? Why did they never tell me about my grandparents?
My grandparents can’t have beenthatbad.
What were the reasons for the estrangement? And then a barrage of possibilities flit through my head. Was my mother a female Heathcliff? Was she a Jane Eyre? What memories could she have possibly been escaping from?
I pull out my calendar to count the days. My engagement party day is looming – less than a month away but not so close that it can’t be postponed. I mean, Stephen would understand that my newfound and lost grandfather’s memorial service has priority, right? But the MIL? She’s been planning this for weeks. If she were downright aggressive and mean, I could face her. But Audrey has this pretence that she’s the closest thing I have to a mother and she uses it skilfully by overusing the word ‘dear’.
I’ll admit, having someone fawning over you when you never had anyone can be nice at times. She does things for us that only a mother (except mine) would do. Because my own mother couldn’t be asked, Audrey had initially seemed like a breath of fresh air. The prepped dinners when I had no time to cook, the offer to run an errand when neither Stephen nor I could get away, the advice that made sense. But soon, once she’d secured her claws into what she thought was her new territory, aka my flesh, she became overbearing.
Soon the prepped dinners became mandatory, because it would be wrong to say no as, according to Stephen, she’d done it out of love. And seeing that Stephen was her only child, who else was she supposed to pour this thick molasses of motherly love over, if not on us? And was I so cold as to break such a fragile woman’s heart? In truth, she was far from fragile. She was made of steel and ruled with an iron fist in a beguiling velvet glove. I need to get away from her and the two weeks during which she’ll undoubtedly find a million excuses to invade the wing Stephen uses.
There are still seven weeks to the Christmas break. Maybe I can persuade Stephen to go to Cornwall instead. Writer Dr Samuel Johnson stated that when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.Ithink that when a woman is tired of London, she wants a Cornish cottage.
*
‘This entire deceased grandfather thing – got to be a scam,’ Maisie says over the phone later that evening.
We’ve been talking for over an hour now. That’s what it’s like with us. But even when we don’t talk, we know that something’s going on. Call it telepathy or something, but we’ve got it.
Chirpy, coquettish and veryà la Française, although she’s actually from Grantham, Maisie – or as everyone calls her at school, Mademoiselle Lowry – is the closest thing I have to a family. She’s my best friend and I love her like the sister I never had.
‘I mean, people read obituaries and get all sorts of ideas, you know?’ she insists.
‘But it can’t be. The letter was sent through a legal firm. I checked them out. They’re legit.’
‘Right. What does Stephen think?’
I hesitate. ‘I… haven’t told him yet…’
‘And why is that?’
Here we go again. If Maisie were a judge, she’d have carted Stephen straight off to prison the first time he stood me up for a work thing. But she’s right. I should have told him. He should have been the first to know. But he wasn’t. Perhaps it’s time to remedy that.
‘I’ll call him now,’ I promise.
‘Good girl.’
I ring off and dial Stephen’s mobile. Luckily, it’s on. You’d think that he’d always keep it on in case someone – I – needed him. And after ten o’clock he doesn’t answer at all because he needs to catch up on his paperwork and go to bed early to be up at five.
‘You’re telling me you have grandparents in Cornwall?’ Stephen asks as I pile my papers and shove them into the ‘to be marked’ tray.
‘Looks like it. And my parents never told me.’
‘That’s strange, wouldn’t you say?’ he muses over the tapping of his keyboard.
He’s good at multitasking, better than me. No wonder he’s headmaster and I’m not. Not that I want to be, God forbid.
‘Well, my parents never really cared for anyone.’
At the other end, his tapping speeds up as he snorts. ‘I’ll say, the way they’ve treated you. And judging by the fact that your grandparents couldn’t be bothered to meet you, I’m guessing that they didn’t care much for you, either.’
