The Girl in the Red Dress

by Elaine Chong

  “Don’t be stupid. Of course not!” I scold her. “I want you to close the gallery to the public, but you can stay in the office. There are still orders to make up and phone calls to answer. Just make sure you keep the door locked. And don’t go to the door if anyone knocks,” I add as an afterthought.

  “What about Aysha?” she asks in a trembling voice.

  “Call Aysha and tell her she doesn’t need to come in till I get back.”

  I can hear her breathing heavily at the other end of the line, probably remembering the day she came back from lunch and heard me howling like a lovelorn lunatic. At last she says, “You okay Mrs Crane?”

  I have to close my eyes, hold my breath and count to ten before I can find a calm, quiet voice to answer her. “I’m fine, Connie. Just do what I said.”

  Richard

  Henry Silver, my father’s solicitor, is prompt in getting back to me: a message has been left on my phone to call his office at my earliest convenience. When I ring back, his secretary tells me that he’s free this afternoon and would be happy to meet Julia and me whenever it suits us.

  Julia is shopping in Regent Street when I call her.

  “Can you get to Shenfield by three o’clock?” I ask her. “It’s a short walk to Silver’s office from the station.”

  I press the phone close to my ear to hear her reply because the background noise of traffic muffles her voice. I think she says ‘okay’, but I know she sounds cross, which I find extremely annoying because it was Julia who wanted this meeting. I’m happy to let this half-sister have whatever is legally if not rightfully hers.

  I have to spend the remainder of the morning fielding questions from long-suffering contractors about the progress not yet being made at ‘Hotel Albatross’. Yes, the building work finally began this week, but no we won’t need plumbers or plasterers, electricians or painters and decorators until we actually have a pile of bricks that resembles a hotel. Everyone is unhappy except the client although she’s now dithering over colour schemes and flooring materials. It’s at times like this that I wish I were a pizza chef and not an architectural project manager.

  Thankfully I manage to get away from the office in good time to drive to Shenfield and meet Julia: she’s travelled by train out of Liverpool Street station, so we don’t actually meet up until she walks through the barrier. She has an anxious look about her, but she greets me in her usual perfunctory way. “I hope it isn’t far,” she says waspishly. “I don’t mind walking, but I only bought these boots this morning and they’re a tad too tight. Couldn’t you just drive us?”

  “My car’s parked behind the station already and it’s literally five minutes from here, Julia,” I tell her.

  “Oh, alright then,” she says. She quickly moves the conversation onto Henry Silver. “He must be at least as old Daddy would have been if he hadn’t … you know … In Singapore, most solicitors specialise. How can we be sure he knows what he’s talking about?”

  “For goodness sake, Julia! You haven’t even met him and already you’re questioning his competence.

  “Have you?” she lobs back at me.

  “No, but I’m going to assume that Dad appointed him as his solicitor because he trusted him.”

  In fact, I’m as certain as I possibly can be that our father wouldn’t have appointed anyone to represent his interests either ante or post mortem unless he was completely convinced that he’d do the job with the same attention to detail that my father would have given it, and my father gave his last will and testament the most careful consideration before he signed it. The old bastard, I think to myself angrily, but I keep this thought to myself – Julia doesn’t need to be antagonised.

  We find the offices of Silver, Reid and Bateman in a brightly lit, modern building. The reception area is spacious and uncluttered, tastefully decorated with contemporary furniture and a large, modernist-style canvas on each white painted wall. Henry Silver and his colleagues appear to be doing well for themselves and are not the stuffy, old-fashioned figures Julia probably imagined.

  The receptionist is a young woman and takes her job very seriously. She writes down our names on a notepad, asks us when we made the appointment and double-checks the schedule on her computer screen, all with an unsmiling expression, before she finally rings through to Henry Silver’s secretary. I can see Julia becoming irritated by the unnecessary officiousness of the situation, so I tell her to sit down and rest her aching feet. She clearly doesn’t appreciate the reference to her new boots and tosses me a withering glance over her shoulder as she takes a seat, but she doesn’t argue.

  We’re kept waiting no more than five minutes before Henry Silver strides into reception with his hand already outstretched to greet us. “Mr Oakley … Mrs Crane … It’s a pleasure to meet you. Come through to my office.”

  Henry Silver clearly wasn’t one of my father’s contemporaries when he was appointed as the family solicitor because he doesn’t look a day over fifty. He looks fit and tanned in the way of all people who enjoy outdoor sports, so I’m guessing they met at the country club where our father was a long-standing member.

  “Please sit down. Can I get you tea, coffee?” he offers in a friendly fashion.

  I decline, but Julia says she would like tea with lemon.

  “How exactly can I help you?” he asks.

  Julia jumps straight to the point. “It’s about our father’s will.”

  “Yes … I understand you have some questions regarding the house. I have to tell you straight away,” he quickly continues, “your father was very specific about the provisions of the will. Of course, he had no idea his own life would be cut short in the dreadful way that it was, but he very much wanted your mother to be able to live out her life in the family home, regardless of anything else.”

  “Are you referring to the fact that he left the property to this daughter, Miriam?” I ask.

  “Well, yes.” He hesitates. “I take it you don’t know her?”

  “We had no idea she even existed!” Julia bursts out indignantly.

  “You didn’t know,” I correct her. “Mum obviously found out when the will was read.”

  Julia rounds on me. “That’s what I don’t understand. Why didn’t she contest it?”

  I note that Henry Silver is watching this exchange with sympathetic interest and it makes me warm to him. I say to Julia, “It doesn’t matter now, does it. It’s too late. We have to just accept it.”

  Julia swings her attention back to Henry Silver. “Is too late?”

  All this while he’s been sitting in his chair looking relaxed and unruffled, but he quietly picks up a pen and begins to tap it on the desk. It’s the only visible sign of agitation, but I think he’s suddenly realised that my sister isn’t going to ‘just accept it’. He says in a deliberately neutral-sounding voice, “Under the Inheritance Act of 1975, you have six months from the date of the grant of probate to contest the will and, under certain circumstances, a further four months…”

  “But I didn’t know!” Julia shrills at him. “I would have contested the will if I’d known about it.”

  “I do understand, Mrs Crane, but the time restriction is strict.”

  “There must be a way,” Julia insists angrily.

  “The only way you can contest the will is if it’s invalid and I really don’t think…”

  Julia abruptly leans forward in her chair and fixes Henry Silver with an unwavering glare. “It has to be invalid. He must have been pressured by this girl’s mother to cut us out.”

  I place a cautioning hand on Julia’s arm. “You can’t possibly know that,” I say, but she isn’t listening to me.

  She says to Henry Silver, “If the will’s invalid, then we can contest it, yes?”

  “You could.”

  “On what basis would it be invalid?”

  “Well, if wasn’t executed properly, but I can assure you that it was.”

  “What else would invalidate it?” Julia demands to know. />
  He begins to list the reasons. “If your father lacked the mental capacity to make a will, which in my opinion he did not. (Though I suppose you could check with his doctor at the time.) If he lacked knowledge of the content of the will – obviously he didn’t because he discussed it with me in great detail. If the will was fraudulent or forged – again, it wasn’t, and I know that because I sat here with him in this office, drafted it together with him, was present when it was witnessed, and it’s been kept here ever since. The only way you could contest the will, in my opinion, is if you thought he was under undue influence and I don’t know how you’d prove that now.”

  “Undue influence from the girl’s mother. That’s it!” Julia cries jubilantly. Her face is flushed with the promise of succeeding in getting her hands on her inheritance, where only a moment ago it looked as though all was still lost.

  I don’t want to pour cold water on this happy possibility, but it seems to me that someone needs to state the obvious. “This is madness, Julia. We don’t know where the woman is, and in any case the daughter’s an adult now. She must be … what … twenty-five years old? You can contest the will, but she can also fight to keep what’s hers.”

  “Your brother’s right, Mrs Crane. You could spend an awful lot of money pursuing this and still end up with nothing.”

  Julia’s eyes flash defiance. “I already have nothing.”

  Henry Silver flicks through the file in front of him. When he looks up, I can see his reluctance to share the information he’s just confirmed is in his possession, but I suppose he feels he has to pass it on. He says, “I have an address for her mother in a place called Urk. Her name’s Lena Bartok, in case you didn’t know. Obviously, she might not be living there anymore, but we could try to trace her if she’s not.”

  “Urk.” Julia repeats after him.

  “It’s in The Netherlands. That’s where she was when your father’s accident…” He stops and looks at me. “I do understand why you feel aggrieved, but this is what your father wanted.” He writes down two addresses on a piece of paper and hands it to Julia. “That’s where they were living, Miriam and her mother, when they lived here with your father and that’s the address her mother gave me to contact her after your father died.”

  Julia takes the paper from him, puts it into her purse and immediately rises to her feet. “I’m sure I’ll be speaking to you again soon, Mr Silver,” she says briskly but a tremor in her voice betrays her true emotions. She swiftly moves towards the door. “Are you coming, Richard?”

  “I’ll see you outside,” I say.

  Henry Silver looks relieved when Julia leaves the room. “I wish I could be more helpful,” he says in a low voice, “but your father was quite insistent.”

  “He didn’t mention us at all?” I ask.

  “He did – briefly. I didn’t want to say in front of your sister.” He takes a deep breath and grimaces. “He said that you and your sister had already had the best of him and didn’t need his money, and that your mother would only have what she deserved.”

  I swallow down my anger. “That sounds about right.” I get to my feet and then remember why I wanted to speak to him. “There’s one other thing. There’s a possibility that my mother won’t be able to stay on in the house – she has some problems with her health. I just wondered, if she’d be allowed to rent it out? It was all very well leaving her a house to live in for the rest of her natural life,” I say bitterly, “but he didn’t leave her the means to do it. If she has to move somewhere else, then we have to find a way to fund it.”

  It’s obvious from the pained expression on his face that he knows the answer. He says, “Your father set up a trust, and your mother was made a life-tenant. If she doesn’t want to live in the house, she can rent it out, but my concern is that your sister seems intent on contesting the will. She might even succeed in getting it overturned, however, if she did succeed, Miriam would still be a beneficiary. Nothing’s going to change that, in my opinion. My advice would be to do nothing with the house until the situation with the will has been resolved one way or the other.”

  I nod my assent. I know Julia and she won’t accept what’s happened until she’s explored every avenue to change it.

  As I make to leave, he says, “Have you thought about talking to Miriam face to face? I don’t know if it would help the situation, but it might be worth it. Especially if Mrs Crane succeeds in her challenge,” he adds. “It would help everyone if you were at least on speaking terms.”

  “I wouldn’t know what to say to her,” I tell him.

  “Well, think about it,” he says. “She is your sister.”

  Lenora

  Frankie the physiotherapist has returned today to plague me with polite requests to get out of bed and practise walking with the frame he left behind yesterday.

  “I have a challenge for you, Lenora,” he says as he adjusts the position of my hands on the top of the frame. “I want you to walk to the end of the ward and back again.”

  “What happens if I fall over?”

  “You’re not going to fall over. Firstly, you have this fabulous walking frame to hold on to, and secondly, my job is to make sure that you don’t fall.”

  “What happens if I feel dizzy?”

  “Do you feel dizzy?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, if you feel dizzy at any point between here and the end of the ward, tell me and I’ll fetch a chair for you.”

  We slowly perambulate the length of the corridor and back again. Frankie tells me I’m doing really well – he even manages to say it without sounding patronising.

  I feel feeble and weak and I don’t like it. Even when George was being particularly difficult and I knew I had to tread a fine line between standing up for myself and not antagonising him, I never felt completely powerless, but the situation at home and now this physical infirmity has left me with an overwhelming sense of being vulnerable and unprotected and it scares me. How can I go back there and feel safe?

  Frankie shows me again how to move from the chair to the frame and he makes me repeat the movement while he watches. He says, “As long as you don’t feel dizzy, you can practise walking with the frame; go up and down the corridor like we’ve just done this morning. Nice and slow and keep your head up – look where you’re going.”

  “Where else would I be looking?”

  “You’d be surprised how easy it is to get distracted when it’s busy on the ward. One more day and then we can tackle the stairs.”

  “Super,” I say, and roll my eyes.

  He laughs. “That’s the spirit, Lenora. We’ll soon have you on your way out of here.”

  That isn’t what I wanted to hear, but I have to accept that it’s the inevitable conclusion of my stay in hospital.

  I doze in the chair for a little while and try not to think about returning to Hillcrest, then the cleaner appears. I point out the cobweb to her and she thanks me, but she doesn’t look especially grateful for my contribution to her list of things that need to be dusted and wiped down. She mumbles something about having to get a ladder and goes away again. I haven’t seen a single speck of dust since I’ve been here so I can only conclude that her lack of enthusiasm isn’t reflected in her workmanship.

  Maggie is an excellent cleaner. I remember the day quite clearly when I told her, I didn’t want her to clean Julia’s bedroom anymore. The expression on her face was a mixture of confusion and disappointment. I thought she’d be glad to have one less room to keep clear of dust, but she took some persuading that I was serious.

  “It’s no trouble, Mrs Oakley. It takes five minutes to put the vacuum cleaner round and I only dust every few weeks because the room is not used anymore.”

  “That’s why you don’t need to clean it,” I said.

  “What about the other bedrooms that aren’t used anymore?”

  “I do use them,” I told her. “I like Richard’s room to be kept nice in case he stays over and I use the box room
to store things.”

  “But it seems such a shame,” she said. She very gently put her hand over mine. “It isn’t because of your friend, Agnes, is it?”

  I snatched my hand away. Having Aggie’s name mentioned was the last thing I needed.

  Her hand flew to her chest in an unguarded expression of both surprise and heartfelt apology. “I’m so sorry, Mrs Oakley. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “It’s fine, Maggie. Honestly.”

  “Why don’t I just give the room a quick clean after I’ve done the other rooms upstairs,” she persisted.

  “No!” When I saw the care and concern in her pretty, blue eyes – ironically so much like Aggie’s – I was certain she must be thinking, that I was finally overcome by grief and loss.

  Nothing could have been further from the truth, but I couldn’t explain, for how could I have told her, ‘You can’t clean the room, because Aggie left a message for me written in the dust on the mirror.’

  Je Reviens! I couldn’t believe my eyes but there it was, plainly written across the mirror in large letters. I remember I ran into the en suite bathroom and grabbed a face towel. My hands were shaking when I went back into the bedroom, I could actually see my face reflected in the spaces where the dust had been wiped away and it was as white as the proverbial sheet. I stretched out my arm and swiped at its surface. Microparticles of dust were released into the air along with the letters spelling out my nightmare.

  I kept the mirror free of dust for weeks and weeks then one day I walked into the room with the duster in my hand and some unseen hand had written those two death-defying words across the mirror in bright, red lipstick. Aggie’s lipstick. It was the lipstick we’d chosen together; the lipstick, which perfectly matched Aggie’s red dress.

  Something inside me broke.

  I turned around and walked straight back out. The very next day a locksmith came and while he was fixing the door, I cleaned the mirror. He put the key into my hand and I never went back in there again.