Heiress On Fire

by Kellie McCourt

  ‘Oh he left,’ she said, taking my hand and walking me towards the revolving door. ‘Patricia couldn’t convince him to drink more than a few sips. And he said rules prevented him from taking a doughnut basket with him. I can’t imagine that’s really true. Anyway Patricia sent Esmerelda after him with a take-away bottle of blood orange and a box of doughnuts. It’s very hot today you know.’

  I nodded. I had noticed that standing in the sun in 38 degree heat. And I also noticed when an old man exited, and the seal was broken on the other side of the revolving door, that the air coming from inside the bank seemed blissfully fresh, dry and cool. It also smelt of tedium and granite polish, but I didn’t care.

  ‘Yes. Very hot,’ I said. ‘Shall we?’

  She smiled, took my hand and we stepped together into the revolving doors and disappeared inside the bank.

  We were immediately greeted by a small brunette woman who, I am ashamed to admit, I instantly judged to be a relation of the leprechaun. She wore a jade raw silk pencil skirt with a matching three-quarter sleeve, two-button jacket over a sleeveless, white satin, high-neck shirt tied at the throat. Either she had the whitest legs in the world or she was wearing pale stockings along with squat green leather pumps with architectural block heels. Maybe we were at the end of the rainbow.

  ‘Cat Jones!’ she said smiling up at my mother. I was 90 per cent sure that was an Irish accent. Although it sounded a tiny bit Scottish. Maybe she was just part Scottish. ‘I had no idea you were a customer! How exciting! Cat Jones! We don’t get too many celebrities here! None actually!’

  The woman turned and looked at me blankly. Well, there was at least one person out of a billion who was apparently still reading monthly fashion magazines but not consuming social media.

  She extended her hand to me. ‘Hello! I’m Fiona, lovely to meet you Miss …?’

  Not only did she not know my name, she did not know I was married! Wait. Was I still married? Are widows still married? I suppose to be fair if she did not know me, she might not know I was married. And since I was not even sure I was still married I should probably be magnanimous.

  Plus, I had no ring. I looked down at my hand. Blank. My emerald-cut engagement ring was still missing. Having jewellery cleaned was like renovations. Nothing but hitherto unknown problems causing unforeseen costly delays. The jewellers at Cartier were so particular.

  ‘Jones,’ I said, shaking her tiny Gaelic hand. ‘Miss Jones.’

  Her eyes widened and her jaw slowly opened. ‘Oh my God! You’re Cat’s wee kitt—’

  ‘Don’t say it!’ I abruptly cut her off.

  She stopped short and just pumped my hand up and down. ‘How exciting!’

  I was normally violently indignant upon hearing that unwanted childhood nickname, but this woman’s permanent state of excitement was like a force field powered by emotional exhaustion. Did boring banks with overexcited green greeters serve Champagne?

  ‘I have a key,’ Mother said moving on quickly. The key appeared elegantly in her hand. No fishing around in the bottom of a handbag for Cat Jones. It was like magic. Voilà. And my empty champagne flute? Gone. She was good. Not even her daughter’s used glassware could challenge her unending polish.

  ‘Oh!’ said Little Miss Happy examining the key. ‘That’s a good one! Fancy isn’t it!’

  Mother and I looked at the key. I could not see how it was ‘fancy’.

  ‘Yes,’ Mother smiled, always finding something kind to say. ‘It’s a very pretty colour.’

  ‘Pretty? Eh? I’ll say! They’re made of platinum you know, the lockbox keys! Weigh over three times more than regular brass keys! That’s why they’re so heavy!’

  An expression crossed Mother’s face. She weighed the key in her hand.

  ‘You’re right. It is quite heavy.’

  ‘It’s a high security lockbox key that one! Mind you, everything here’s high security!’ Fiona-the-ever-excited giggled.

  I glanced around. Festive Fiona was right. The place was like a fortress. It was all taupe granite and steel, airlocks and solemn armed guards, bulletproof glass (I am guessing) and humourless tellers in taupe suits. The ceiling was so high not even Tom Cruise’s great-grandchildren in Mission: Impossible 2050 could make the drop. Fiona was the only happy thing in here. And why was this bank even open? It was Sunday.

  I was so busy being both daunted and impressed by the bank’s security that I did not even realise I had been following Fiona, until our little train stopped abruptly, and I found myself on the other side of the room, facing the wall. Fiona was a leprechaun and a Pied Piper. Which made me a child or a rat or a treasure hunter. I was not sure which was worse.

  Fiona took the key from Mother’s hand and swiped the solid, silver disc from the keychain across a small square carved in the granite wall. The square was etched at the perfect height for her. I guessed it would have been almost the right height for Richard. I would have to bend to reach it, Mother would have had to crane.

  I was expecting the wall to slide open to reveal a secret door, but instead a small green light went off and a glass door appeared about 3 metres to our right. The door was cleverly camouflaged by colour-change glass and when it went from taupe to white it instantly became visible.

  Little Miss Happy motioned us towards the door. Mother stood in front of it, I stood beside her. We waited. Fiona arrived and stood beside me. It was like three Russian nesting dolls standing side by side.

  ‘Boy, I can’t believe I’m here with Cat Jones!’ Fiona said to me.

  I looked down at her. She smiled up at me. Mother nudged me.

  ‘Are we missing something?’ I asked her.

  ‘No, no!’ she said happily and rocked back on her heels.

  More silence.

  This woman was a couple of fries short of a Happy Meal. This whole taupe bank was starting to give me the creeps. I noticed there were no names or logos on the walls just large silver circles like the one on the key ring. I swallowed down something rising in my throat.

  Fiona put her hand to her ear and muttered something. I looked urgently up at Mother who was looking down at Fiona with a tilted head and an expression of questioning thought.

  ‘Is she talking to herself?’ I whispered.

  Mother knitted her eyebrows and shrugged. She then stopped shrugging and began nodding.

  ‘Ah yes!’ Fiona said, hand still to ear. ‘It’s all good! Wonderful!’ she said reassuringly. ‘Just confirming Mr Bombberg left one of you as the trustee to the key!’

  So now she knew we had Richard’s key? How did she know that?

  ‘Yes! Excellent! He left it to you Mrs Bombberg, that is, Miss Jones!’ And she placed the heavy silver key and the keyring in the palm of my hand.

  ‘How did you know this was Richard’s key?’ I said astounded.

  ‘They’re really expensive! And we don’t have that many! And not that many of our clients get flambéed by their wives! I’m sorry I didn’t recognise you straight away, but my air conditioner shorted out my wi-fi! I haven’t even seen the YouTube video yet!’

  I narrowed my eyes at her and hissed, ‘That fire was an accident!’

  ‘I’m sure it was!’ she said and winked at me. ‘In you go, ladies! May the road rise up to meet you!’

  CHAPTER 22

  BANK ON IT

  The door slid open revealing a tidy Scandinavian-styled office. On our left a pale wood desk and chair with a thin silver laptop, to the right a fainting couch, its padded seat and armrests covered in pale blue silk.

  Beside the desk was a well-stocked, glass-fronted minibar. Implanted in the wall dead ahead was an A4-sized, silver rectangle with a keyhole in the centre. The Box.

  Mother was helping herself to a cold drink by the time I stepped over the threshold. When I looked back, the door had already swished silently closed. Fiona, like all good leprechauns, had disappeared without handing over a single piece of gold.

  Mother handed me a small green glass bottle of
carbonated water. It felt lovely and cool. I stared at her. ‘No glasses?’

  ‘Darling, we’re in a safety deposit room at a bank,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sweetie, just drink out of the bottle.’

  Sure. Now she wants me to swig like a sailor. But at my eighth birthday party I couldn’t drink Fanta out of its bottle. Well, that ship had sailed, I was too well trained. I’d had enough change of late and I was not at all sure I was at a place in my life where I was ready to start drinking straight from the bottle.

  I put the water down on the desk and wiped the sweat and condensation off my hands onto my feather-light weave, midnight blue Hermès pants. This got a deeply disapproving look and a shake of the head from Mother, who had just seated herself at the desk. I breathed deeply and pushed the urge to scream deep down into my Weitzmans.

  I stepped forward a few paces and found myself face to face with the stainless steel box.

  I raised the key to the lock and looked to Mother for reassurance. She nodded eagerly in encouragement.

  She had found a straw somewhere and was saved from the degrading task of swigging her mineral water from the bottle. She sipped and looked like a Vogue Coca-Cola ad.

  ‘Where did you get that from?’

  ‘What?’ she said, blue eyes innocent.

  ‘That! The straw!’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said and looked about on the desk and her lap as if another straw might appear.

  ‘I would actually like a water if there is a straw,’ I fake-muttered, hand still on the key.

  She looked at me, then at the key, which was inches from the lock with my hand on it, then back to me. ‘Sincerely?’ She was dumbfounded and shook her head in disbelief. ‘A straw?’

  Okay, that might have been remotely fair. Possibly a straw was not the most important thing right now.

  I cleared my throat, straightened my back and placed the platinum key into the lock. I tried to turn it clockwise. It would not budge. I turned it counter clockwise. It moved. From 12 o’clock to 9 o’clock, to 6 o’clock, to 3 o’clock. At 3 o’clock the lock clicked softly and the key locked into place. This was it. My mouth was sand as I pulled left to open the door. Nothing. Okay, maybe it opened to the right. I pulled right. Nothing. Maybe it opened down, like an oven (while I had never used an oven, I loved buying them). Zip. It was stuck. Now what.

  Mother stared up at me, her teeth clenched in sympathy.

  ‘It’s stuck,’ I said defensively.

  ‘Maybe there’s something else to it,’ she said, her long tanned legs flowing over the dwarfed Nordic chair.

  ‘Like what?’ I said, my eyes searching the transparent minibar for a bottle of wine.

  ‘Maybe it’s voice activated. Maybe you have to say your name.’

  I rolled my eyes and said to the lockbox, ‘My name is Indigo-Daisy-Violet-Amber Hasluck-Royce-Jones-Bombberg.’

  It really sounded bad when you said it out loud. I suddenly felt appreciative of Searing, who always said all four surnames. Searing. Hammocks. Turquoise lagoons. Cupcakes. Skin. Heat.

  Hand waving, ‘Hello, Indie?’

  I snapped back and tried the names again. Nothing. Unless you count embarrassment. I shrugged in defeat. Outsmarted by a faux leprechaun.

  ‘Maybe it’s rectum-num scan!’ suggested Mother excitedly, getting to her feet.

  ‘Pardon?’

  She pointed to her eye and then to a tennis ball-sized glass circle embedded in the wall about a metre above the box. ‘A rectum-num scan.’

  I had to think about it for a moment.

  ‘A retina scan?’ I asked. ‘An eye scan?’

  ‘Exactly!’

  I looked up at the glass circle. Even standing on my tippy toes I was not tall enough to put my eye to it. I looked around the room. The desk chair.

  It was so light that we easily picked it up with one hand each and placed it on the floor under the glass disc. My shame knew no bounds as I climbed up onto the chair, my heels sliding dangerously along the polished wood surface of the seat. I steadied myself and placed my eyeball to the glass. I could not see anything. The glass, which was larger than a golf ball, but, on closer inspection, slightly smaller than a tennis ball, was covered in a silver, reflective surface.

  I blinked. Nothing. Looked left and right. Nothing. I said my name again, nothing.

  I looked down at Mother. She was examining the box and the key. She pulled the key, which was firmly stuck in the lock, out, directly towards her, like a filing cabinet or a desk drawer. The box slid easily out.

  Of course.

  I was suddenly aware I was a woman in four-inch heels, standing on a chair, in a bank, with my eye pressed to a glass sphere, shouting her own name. And what was equally embarrassing was that from where I stood peering down into the drawer, it was empty. Also, the retina scan might have been a camera.

  On the upside, in the battle of ethereal creatures my supermodel beat their leprechaun hands down.

  I climbed off the chair with all the grace of a foal standing for the first time. At least I was a thoroughbred foal.

  The two of us peered down into the silver safety deposit box which was hanging out of the wall like an overgrown jewellery box drawer. An empty jewellery box drawer.

  I have to say I was a little disappointed it wasn’t full of gold bars. Given the whole leprechaun thing. Even diamonds would have been fine. At this stage a Happy Meal would have been acceptable.

  Mother exhaled heavily. ‘Damn.’

  ‘Is there any sauvignon blanc in that fridge?’ I asked.

  She glanced sideways at me. ‘Yes, but there are no glasses and no corkscrews.’ She paused. ‘I think it’s a twist top.’

  I slumped my head in defeat. I must have looked pathetic because she leant down and retrieved not only the bottle, but also a silver package of some sort. Cashews I suspected. I laughed. Richard had a deadly allergy to them. In solidarity I had given up cashews. In reality however cashews—especially the honey roasted ones—were delicious and I was not allergic to them so I had an emergency packet in my safe, and another spare one duct-taped to the bottom of my underwear drawer.

  I wondered. I looked under the drawer. Nothing.

  Sometimes I taped them to the back of my underwear drawer. I tried to reach my hand down the back of the drawer, but the space between the inside ceiling of the hole and the back of the drawer was too narrow. I tried pulling the drawer all the way out. It refused to leave its moorings. I yanked it again, this time I wedged one heeled foot against the wall and braced the other foot on the floor. I grabbed the drawer in a head lock and pulled. I could feel something. I put all my fury and embarrassment into it and before I knew it the drawer gave way. I stumbled back, the drawer under my arm and fell backwards into the minibar. The heavy metal drawer flew from my arms and smashed through the glass-fronted minibar, cracking glass bottles of water and juice, Japanese beer and soft drink. I was awash with a rainbow of wet colours and a small flood began to make its way from my corner across the room.

  I gazed down at the drawer, and there, stuck on the back with thick black tape, was a packet of honey roasted cashews.

  ‘Indie! Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’

  Mother looked at the square foil package in her hand, and then the identical package taped to the drawer. She looked confused. ‘Wasn’t Richard allergic to nuts?’ The fridge mess seemed to have escaped her.

  I nodded. ‘Could you please help me up?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course sweetie,’ she said, helping me to my feet. I was soaked in, well, everything. Miraculously I did not have a single cut. She unwrapped a Fendi scarf that she had wrapped around her tiny waist as a belt and used it to try to pat me dry. It was sheer and had limited drying capacity.

  My hands were still damp. I shook them to get rid of as much wet as possible. What the heck. I was already going to hell. I wiped the remaining wet drinks off me and onto the couch. No repri
mand from Mother.

  I peeled the package off the back of the safe deposit box and took refuge on the mostly dry lounge to open it. Mother sat down next to me, offering the twist top sauvignon blanc with her straw in it. Desperate times.

  I took a deep sip of the wonderful wine, swallowed and tore the foil pack open. It was full of honey roasted cashews. I emptied the cashews into my hand. At the very bottom of the pack was a USB.

  ‘It’s a computer thing,’ Mother said pointing to it.

  I nodded.

  Ignoring the mess we dragged the couch across the room to the desk and sat in front of it, side by side. After several attempts into what might have been incorrect slots I successfully plugged the USB into the laptop.

  If this computer had a password I was going to scream. No password. Thank you, God. I clicked the mouse on the file box and opened the E drive. There was one folder on the USB. It was labelled: Mediterranean Men’s Club. I had never heard of it. I looked at Mother. She shook her head, no. I clicked the folder open.

  A list of about thirty other folders appeared inside the opened Mediterranean Men’s Club folder. Each folder was labelled with a name. They all appeared to be men’s names, and not-particularly-Mediterranean-sounding men’s names: Jeff, Harry, David, Rex, Mathew, Henry, William, Sheldon, Ainsley.

  ‘Click on one,’ Mother said, shuffling closer.

  I clicked on the folder labelled Jeff. There was a Word document inside. I opened it. It was a surgical report. There were ‘before’ and ‘after’ photographs of a man who was, in the first photograph, the owner of a very distinctly hooked Roman nose, but in the second photograph, no longer in possession of said nose. It was a distinct improvement. The man also appeared to have had hair implants, which was strange because Richard did not do those. His teeth had been given broad white veneers and I was pretty sure he had had his chin altered and his eyebrows lifted. As well as appearing years younger, he looked very different.

  There were scarce medical details: name, height, weight, blood type, allergies, current diseases and disorders. That was it. No information about the procedures. No dates. No contact information. No next of kin. I scrolled down.