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‘And maybe if you’d pulled your weight as a parent and I didn’t have to be both mother and father to our children. Maybe if you’d pulled your weight as a son and hadn’t buried me under all the responsibilities you couldn’t be bothered to carry. Maybe if you’d been more of a husband, I’d have had more time to be a wife.’
That stunned him, she knew, but she hadn’t finished, not by a long chalk. ‘You know, Bruce, everything good that’s happened in this marriage is because of me. I decorated this house, I chose the furniture, I painted the walls. I picked the holidays, I bought the clothes, I packed the suitcases, I organised parties, outings, booked meals, weekends away, stuck the photos in the family albums. I put the Christmas decorations up, I wrote the cards, I bought all the children’s presents, I wrapped them and then I stuck them under the tree that I’d put up by myself. And we both have allowed you to believe that it was all a joint effort.’
A combustible silence followed, waiting for a match, but Bruce, this time, had no rejoinder. He just stared at her for so long after her last word that she wondered if he was in fact anticipating an apology.
‘Well, that’s been sitting waiting inside you to come out, hasn’t it?’ he said eventually, more breath than voice.
She didn’t answer, because she hadn’t known she’d hadall those words inside her either. But she stood by them, every one of them.
Bruce dropped his eyes as if the sight of her burnt him. ‘Well,’ he said again. Shay imagined inside his head a legion of small soldiers battling back the absorption of her words before they could be digested and were converted into shame.
He got up, scraped his clotty meal into the bin and then without anything further being spoken, he went upstairs, his feet a slow, heavy rhythm of indignation.
Shay put her head in her hands and just breathed to steady herself. No tears came because she was dried out, she felt empty, hollow. She wished Tanya were here, with her wisdom and her softness. Les would have said, ‘Just follow him upstairs, have a shag and it’ll be forgotten by the morning’, her standard mantra. Tanya would have made her some tea to wet her overworked throat and then forbade her from starting the self-recriminations, because it was all true and should have been let out long ago.
But was she over-protective, as Bruce had levelled at her? Didn’t all parents want to gift their children the wisdom they’d built up, a guide to avoid mistakes they’d made and garnered experience from? The trouble was, those mistakes formed you, made you wise, you had to live them to learn. Maybe she had wanted more safety for Sunny and Courtney than some parents, she would admit that Bruce was probably right about that. Maybe her own neuroses had pressed Sunny flat and made Courtney rebel. Maybe she had generated the very things for them that she feared: a self-fulfilling prophecy. Then again, maybe all this was just natural; kids ignoring parents, isn’t that why she’d scoffed at her mother at the church door, sure she knew better? It was the hardestpart of raising children, standing back and letting them run their own show, play to their own script, ignoring the more cautious and sensible one you had written for them.
A wave of weariness claimed her. The day had been interminable and she needed to plug herself into the mains of oblivion. She turned the lights off and climbed the stairs. Their bed was still made from the morning; Bruce was back in the spare room, it seemed. Had she really expected anything less?
Chapter 21
Bruce was gone to work by the time Shay’s eyes fluttered open. She didn’t think she would sleep, but she had. She thought she would dream of her mother, but she didn’t; there was nothing. Her sleep was a blanket of warm, deep black and she awoke with the feeling that she had slept for days, not hours.
Paula’s Merc was already parked in Roberta’s drive by the time she got there. It had a personalised reg with a black screw cap strategically placed between two ‘1’s to make an H and it made Shay think about Courtney’s observation in the limo. Was that really only yesterday? Time had warped.
Paula had come early to snoop around, Shay guessed. She could imagine her sister opening drawers, looking for her mum’s jewellery, bundles of cash, like a grey-haired, greedy magpie. As soon as she stepped inside it, Shay felt the unaccustomed chill of the unheated house. Gone were all the familiar scents that usually rushed at her like an old friend whenever she walked in: sometimes fabric conditioner from clothes drying on an airer, at other times toast, or the oil in Roberta’s rose reed diffuser that Dagmara hadbought for her birthday. Its absence pierced her heart more than its dear presence would. She steeled herself against caving in to emotion, because she needed to be strong. In fact, she needed to beverystrong today.
‘In here,’ said Paula, calling from the kitchen.
She was sitting at the table with the old will in front of her that she’d taken from the drawer and a notepad. ‘Kettle’s just boiled. Make yourself a drink if you want one but there’s no milk.’
Shay made herself a black coffee, quite aware that this might end up over her face within five minutes. Good job she’d worn a black top.
She put the concertina file she’d brought with her on the work surface; it contained some jewellery she’d located behind the bath panel and the incendiary new will.
‘No doubt we’ll have to go through the probate process so we should really start that ball rolling. I’ve had a word with my solicitor and he’ll sort that out for us. Oh and someone put a letter through the door, saying they want to buy the house. Andrew Balls. That’ll save us putting it up with an estate agent and incurring fees.’
Shay stirred her coffee slowly.
‘You think I’d sell Mum’s house to those two next door?’
Paula made a small ‘hmm’ noise. ‘Yes, I see what you mean, but does it really matter now who it’s sold to? Plus that’s for both of us to decide, not just you,’ she said, pasting on a smile, albeit the sort of smile a boa constrictor might give a small animal before it coiled around its body and began to squeeze.
‘Actually, Paula,’ Shay began, stalled, swallowed. Oh God, she really was dreading this. ‘Actually it is for me to decide. Mum made me her executor, and she wanted me totake sole charge of her estate.’ She flipped open the file and pulled out the folded papers in the first pocket; The Last Will and Testament of Roberta May Corrigan, dated three years previously.
Paula snatched it out of her hands, read it silently. Shay watched her sister’s eyes moving manically from side to side like the carriage of a typewriter as they swept up the words. The way she turned the pages illustrated perfectly the extent of her annoyance.
David Charles the solicitor and Roberta had crossed all the T’s, dotted all the I’s, made it watertight and bombproof. Roberta had appointed her younger daughter as sole executor unless she was unable or unwilling to be. Her duties consisted of orchestrating the funeral, organising the selling of her house, distributing gifts to family, friends and neighbours as listed, the disposal of her furnishings and possessions as she alone saw fit.
Paula threw the will down on the table and said in her best scoffing voice, ‘Well if that isn’t clear evidence of her dementia, what is?’
‘She was totally compos mentis when she wrote it.’
Shay could see the muscle working in Paula’s jaw; her brain must have been going ten to the dozen to work out how to negate this new will in favour of the old.
‘Why would she write another will so obviously in your favour?’ Paula looked at her sister through narrowed eyes. ‘This is your doing, why she hasn’t split everything down the middle, isn’t it?’
Shay’s mouth was bone dry. Paula could be as terrifying as a cobra when riled.
