The Dream House

by Rachel Hore

  ‘The school not working out and losing your cousin. You know what they say about some doors closing and others opening.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kate shortly. ‘Maybe I should just agree with

  Simon and throw in the towel. But I can’t.’

  ‘We’re there. I’ve gotta go . . . I’ll ring you again, Pussycat. Lots of love.’

  Kate put the phone down and glanced at the clock. Half past twelve, time for some lunch. She made herself a sandwich and sat eating it slowly, flicking through the pages of Joyce’s lifestyle magazine, trying to empty her whirling mind by taking in other people’s worries from the problem page and studying fetching holiday swimsuits for the older woman. When she had finished the sandwich, she sought the comfort of a chocolate bar from their hiding place in a top cupboard – Sam could eat half a dozen on the trot if they were left in the biscuit tin – and splashed boiling water onto a peppermint teabag. This lasted her all the way through the romantic short story which, with wretched coincidence, was about a woman who started life anew in the country after her divorce. Of course, this woman immediately bumped into a tall dark handsome farmer with a tragic past. If only life were like fiction. Certainly, if fiction were too like life, no one would read it. There would be so many boring bits.

  Kate was ruminating on this point and wondering whether she could make a career of writing women’s magazine stories, like the mother in The Railway Children, when a familiar silver Range Rover squealed to a halt outside the cottage.

  Kate got up from the table and went to the door as masculine footsteps marched up the path and, through the peephole, a distorted view of Max came into view. She opened the door to find herself face to face with a very angry man.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she enquired. ‘You’d better come in.’

  ‘Mmggh,’ he muttered, which might have been ‘thank you’. She showed him into the living room but he refused her offer of a seat.

  ‘I just came to say,’ he managed to impart, his voice strangled with fury, ‘that I’ve just discovered what you’ve done, and I think it’s despicable. Utterly despicable.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know. The will, of course.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Agnes’s will. The house should have been mine. It was always going to be mine.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I imagined. Why, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, it damned well isn’t – as you very well know.’

  ‘Max, I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ Kate stared into his eyes, appalled at the force of his anger. He was almost crying, his sensitive face pinched with white and red blotches, his normally sleeked-back hair falling across his forehead. They stood there, challenging one another for what felt like minutes but was probably seconds. Then she said, ‘I really have not an inkling about what is going on.’

  He considered her words, not taking his eyes from her face, and then, slowly, she saw the passion go out of him to be replaced by frustration and disappointment. ‘You don’t, do you? You really don’t know. Not even with all your sweet talk about not having a proper home and being glad to have found a friend like Aunt Agnes. Well, she’s changed her will, that’s what’s happened, and I’m out of it. And you, little Miss Innocent, are in.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Kate could hardly take it in.

  ‘Seddington House. It looks like it’s yours,’ he said, giving a stagey shrug of his shoulders. ‘It’s complicated. I will get something, but basically, Kate Hutchinson, your wheedling your way into Agnes’s affections all these months has worked very nicely for you.’ He turned away to look out of the window, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his navy trousers.

  Kate sat down on the sofa. ‘That’s not what happened. You can’t mean it,’ she whispered, feeling hot and cold with shock. Seddington House, the dream house, was hers?

  ‘I wish I didn’t,’ he said, pacing the room, looking merely defeated now, ‘but unfortunately, I do. The bloke from Horrocks and Spalding will no doubt be in touch shortly to give you the full rundown.’ He made as though to leave, but Kate broke in.

  ‘Max, this is as big a shock to me as it must be for you. I really don’t know anything about Agnes changing her will. There must be a mistake somewhere.’

  ‘Well, there isn’t.’ He slowly walked back from the door and sank down into one of the armchairs, then took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He looked exhausted.

  ‘It’s not just the house,’ he said, his voice earnest now, ‘though the money from selling it would have been useful. I thought it would be symbolic,’ he added, looking up at Kate. ‘It would show that the rift in the family, whatever it was all about, was finally over. My grandfather never received a penny from Gerald Melton, his and Agnes’s father, you know.’

  A thought struck Kate. She said carefully, ‘I think I might know what it was about. What was your grandmother’s first name?’

  ‘Vanessa,’ he said. ‘Why?’

  Kate was silent for a moment, working it out. Finally she said,

  ‘It was something Agnes mentioned. Vanessa was the name of her stepmother.’

  Max stared at her, a look of distaste growing on his face. ‘My grandmother was . . . my grandfather’s stepmother, is that what you’re saying? That’s ridiculous. Like a soap opera.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘I’m not sure I believe you.’

  Kate explained what Agnes had said about Raven damaging his father’s marriage.

  ‘I can’t take it in,’ breathed Max. ‘But if it’s true, I can see why they never spoke again.’

  ‘Do you have family of your own?’ she asked him after a moment.

  ‘Two girls,’ he answered. ‘They live with their mother just outside Norwich. Grace and Emily are the reasons why I wouldn’t have wanted to keep Seddington House and move over here.’

  Kate nodded, trying to understand.

  ‘Oh,’ he said dully. ‘And the funeral. The vicar can fit it in on Friday, eleven o’clock. He wants to see us about the service. Can you do this evening?’

  Kate said she probably could.

  After she had shown Max out, the shock of everything hit her and she sank onto a kitchen chair in a trance. The grief that she wouldn’t see Agnes in this life again was still there, but a great flood of gratitude, like golden light, was also spreading through her. Her eye fell on the picture on the fridge. The dream house with the dream family. Could Agnes really have granted her this wonderful gift?

  Chapter 25

  ‘She wanted the house to stay with the family, you see. That’s what she told me when she asked me to come to the hospital.’ Raj Nadir, a partner of Horrocks & Spalding, solicitors, was a cheerful, slightly tubby Asian man in his late thirties. Despite the plethora of comfortable leather armchairs in his book-lined room in the Georgian offices in Beccles, he chose to perch on a computer chair behind his desk, rocking it from side to side as he started to explain to Kate, sitting opposite, the contents of her cousin’s will.

  He had telephoned her late on the afternoon of Agnes’s death and arranged an appointment for her to see him the following morning.

  ‘When did she ask you to come?’ Kate said now, taking in the details of the room – the golf clubs in one corner, the photograph of a slightly slimmer Nadir with his arm around a laughing woman in a blue sari, another of two solemn little boys in school blazers.

  ‘Ah, it was soon after they moved her back to Halesworth, about two weeks before the will was finally signed on . . .’ he checked one of the documents in his hand ‘. . . the sixth of June. One of the fastest wills our legal executive has ever drawn up,’ he chuckled. ‘Always snowed under, you see,’ he added anxiously, as though Kate would think he was being unkind.

  Kate realized with a pang that the will had been signed on her birthday. So the gift of the pearls really had been symbolic. She opened the copy of the will that Raj now passed across the desk and quickly looked over it. I
t ran to six pages and on the last she saw that one of the nurses had acted as witness.

  ‘I – I’m sure I’ll want to read it all through myself,’ Kate said, feeling a bit stupid, ‘but if you could just give me an outline of what it all means . . . the legal language looks complicated.’

  ‘Of course. As I was saying, Miss Melton was anxious to change the will because, she said, she felt she had finally met someone of her blood to whom she could entrust the family home. Yes, there’s a letter somewhere . . .’ He reached for a pink folder and drew out an envelope and passed it to her. Kate Hutchinson it read. To be opened on the death of Agnes Lavender Melton.

  The letter was short, written in ballpoint pen in shaky handwriting:

  My dear Kate

  By the time you read this letter I will be reunited with many of the people I have loved most in this world – so do not grieve for me but rejoice that I am with them, at peace in the everlasting arms.

  Kate, Seddington House is yours. I know that you already love the house and I would like to think of you living there with your lovely family, having your own home at last, which, in turn, you can hand on to your children. My nephew, I can read him well, doesn’t understand its importance. He will only want to sell it.

  I have one piece of unfinished business in my life, Kate, and that is that I had a child, but he was taken from me. I have searched and searched for him but have never found him. From the bottom of my heart I plead with you to continue this search. You will need to read the diaries hidden in the safe in the library to understand. Marie Summers has the key.

  Kate, may God’s blessing be upon you. Thank you for your gift of friendship.

  Yours truly,

  Agnes Melton

  Kate read the letter through twice. So Agnes really had given birth to a child – a son, the sealed envelope in the safe had revealed – and had lost him. But not to death, if the phrase ‘taken from me’ was to be read literally. What a terrible thing, even so. How had it happened and why? And how frustrating that Agnes had been so close to sharing her secret with Kate. Once again the young woman cursed herself for not visiting Agnes last week.

  Slowly, she handed the letter over to the lawyer. Raj Nadir read it quickly, nodded, and returned it to her.

  ‘She didn’t tell you about this matter then?’ he asked. ‘She told me nothing more either, I’m afraid. Just how she wished to frame the will.’

  ‘She started to say something the last time I saw her,’ Kate said. The letter indicated that Agnes’s original intention had been for the diaries to be read after her death. She must have changed her mind. And yet so far there had been nothing in the old exercise books about this mysterious child or quite what had caused the split in the Melton family. It was all deeply mysterious.

  Nadir’s voice pulled Kate out of her reverie. ‘Basically, the will leaves the house, its land and its contents to you, Mrs Hutchinson, without condition. You are free to sell the contents in order to raise the money necessary for the upkeep of the property. That is the arrangement enshrined here. But then follows the problem. All Miss Melton’s financial assets – and I should say that these are not inconsiderable – are to transfer free of tax to this unknown person, her missing child. If the child or its heirs are not found living six months after Miss Melton’s death, or if it is discovered before then but is incapable or deceased and without direct heirs, the money automatically passes to Maximilian Charles Jordan. It’s an unusual arrangement, but there is no doubt that Miss Melton was clear in her mind when she directed the will to be drawn up.’

  Nadir scootered his chair over to his computer and tapped the keyboard briskly. ‘Ah yes,’ he said. ‘The previous will . . . It was dated December 1984.’ He manoeuvred the chair back and flipped through some folders in a box behind him, eventually dragging one out. He unfolded the document. ‘On that occasion everything was left to Max’s mother, Elizabeth. She was Agnes’s niece by her brother Raven. Or to Max on the event of Elizabeth’s death. Mmmm, yes, just refreshing myself on the details.’ He peered over the top of the document at Kate. ‘In this old version, if a proven child of Agnes Melton be discovered alive at the time of her death, it could have claimed £200,000 of the estate. So, Sammy must have known about the child. That puts an interesting light on the matter.’

  ‘Who is Sammy?’ asked Kate, wondering whether she had fallen down a rabbit-hole like Alice, she felt so confused and disorientated by the turn of events.

  ‘Samuel Horrocks. Former senior partner here. He oversaw the Melton family’s affairs for forty years – until his death last year, in fact.’

  ‘Why is that significant?’

  ‘Well, it isn’t. Except that if this mysterious child was mentioned in the previous will and is now found, so that Max ends up with nothing, it might be more difficult for him to contest the new will on the basis of his great-aunt being mentally incapacitated. It wasn’t some scheme she just dreamed up in hospital.’

  ‘Do you think he would contest it?’ Kate said. ‘I suppose I could see his point.’

  ‘He might be successful if he could demonstrate that Miss Melton was mentally fragile at the time of drawing up the will, or that it was in some ways blatantly unfair. But I will be able to reassure the authorities that she was as sharp as a tack. Plus Miss Melton assured me that documentation exists in which her father set out his reasons for excluding Raven Melton and his line from inheriting. It might be hard for Max to overturn that. Still, he could try.’

  ‘Is there any information in any of the files about this missing child?’

  Nadir shook his head. ‘I have been through all the papers,’ he said. ‘There is some correspondence between Miss Melton and Mr Horrocks arguing the clauses of the 1984 will. Mr Horrocks was a traditionalist and advised her to leave the house to her brother’s family. He didn’t like this talk of a love-child at all, oh no.’ He laughed. ‘Miss Melton would have had a far harder time persuading him to draw up the new will. Quite a tough cookie, was Sammy. Lucky for her and for you it was me this time!’

  He picked up the copy of the new will. ‘There are minor bequests,’ he said, frowning as he flicked through the pages. ‘Five thousand pounds free of tax for Marie Summers, twenty-five hundred for Daniel Peace, sums to various charities . . . Ah, and the executors. They are to be myself, you and Mr Jordan.’

  ‘That’s going to be a little difficult, isn’t it, with Max? What would happen if he did contest the will?’

  ‘Yes, but Miss Melton insisted on his name appearing. There would have to be some dispensation of his duties in that situation,’ said Nadir. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. There is, also, another possibility . . .’ He stopped. ‘No, it’s not very likely,’ he said.

  ‘What? I think you must tell me,’ Kate said.

  ‘If Agnes’s child or his descendants are found, it might be that they could successfully sue for a bigger part of the estate. But,’ he shrugged, ‘there are too many ifs and buts to worry about that happening. My guess is that it’s going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to track down this heir, dead or alive. There are no clues, you see. The first thing we must do is advertise.’

  ‘You mean “Any who may have an interest in the last Will and Testament of Agnes Melton should contact her solicitor”? Like a Victorian novel.’

  ‘Like a Victorian novel, yes. And, like a Victorian novel, we shall probably receive a number of enquiries from fortune-hunters. Thank goodness for DNA testing!’ And he smiled.

  That afternoon, with an hour to spare before she had to pick up the children, Kate took Bobby out along the winding path she had walked that evening back in April when she had seen Seddington House and its inhabitant for the very first time.

  The air was warm, the path almost dry despite the recent shower, though the hedges glittered with raindrops. But this time, when after twenty minutes she reached the little door in the wall, it was to find it locked against her. Someone had been taking their security duties s
eriously – the same person, presumably, who had locked the front gates. Conrad, she supposed.

  She whistled to Bobby, who was snuffing at some interesting smell wafting under the door, then set off again along the foot-path, which followed the wall, wending gently downhill to the road. There she clipped on Bobby’s lead and walked along the worn verge under the poplar trees until she reached the drive of Seddington House.

  The gates were closed, but today there was no padlock and the latch lifted easily. Bobby dragged her inside, forcing her to drop the lead. He bounded off towards the house and round the corner, out of sight.

  Kate relatched the gates and stood for a moment, looking up at the house. It seemed different, knowing it was hers. Like a lover whose love was finally fully requited, she studied it as it slept in the sun, loving the imperfections – the chipped rooftiles, the ragged gardens sparkling with rain – as much as the graceful sweep of the drive, the elegant dimensions of the building and the Gothic shapes of the diamond-paned windows. Slowly, she walked up the drive to the front door and tapped the knocker lightly in case Conrad was there. But no one came.

  She walked around past the kitchen, across the terrace and down through the Italian garden. Bobby was rolling ecstatically in something over near the little door in the wall, but jumped up and barked when he saw her and tore off in the direction of the rose garden.

  Kate stood by the silent fountain and studied the back of the house, shading her eyes against the light. Funny to think Simon had still never seen it. He had been almost speechless when she had told him her news the previous evening. A little cloud passed across the sun, casting a cold shadow over the garden and she shivered. A sudden movement in an upstairs window caught her eye. She stared but it was gone. It could have been a reflection, she thought. Was that the cry of a peacock? The sun came out from behind the cloud and the moment passed.

  She looked down at the fountain – three scalloped stone bowls, the topmost the smallest, all covered with lichen. A pipe emerged from the ground just by the small basin beneath and Kate wandered over to the battered greenhouse to see if she could find where it went. There she found it joined a network of pipes and taps, which she turned experimentally one by one. After a moment, she heard the fountain pipe bang into life and when she looked up, it was to see the water spluttering out into the bowl. A fierce gush of joy tremored through her.