The Long Way Home: A moving saga of lost family

by Whitmee, Jeanne

  ‘So you’ll look after Mrs Evans? I don’t think the shock has really sunk in yet. She’ll be needing someone when it does.’

  Hannah nodded. ‘Of course.’

  *

  Leah walked from the station. She had only a small case and it hardly seemed worth waiting for a bus or getting a taxi. At Acacia Grove Hilary opened the door to her. When she saw Leah standing on the doorstep her mouth seemed to set in an uncompromising line. Leah wondered detachedly whether she realised how old it made her look.

  ‘So you’ve come?’ she said superfluously. ‘I’ve prepared your old room. I think you know where it is.’ She walked through to the kitchen and closed the door, leaving Leah to make her own way upstairs.

  She found that her old room had been completely refurnished and redecorated. It was as though they had tried to erase any trace of her. She unpacked the few things she had brought with her, washed and renewed her lipstick, then went downstairs. There seemed to be no one about, so she tapped on the kitchen door and looked in. Hilary was making tea.

  ‘I suppose you’d like a drink,’ she said grudgingly over her shoulder.

  ‘Thank you.’ Leah shut the door and took a seat on one of the breakfast bar stools. ‘Look, I’d like to get one thing straight,’ she said. ‘I came to see Gran before Christmas but I had absolutely nothing to do with any change she may have made to her Will. She has never, at any time, mentioned it to me. Anyway, I’m pretty sure she had no intention of dying for years yet.’

  Hilary made no reply. Pouring a cup of tea, she pushed it towards Leah along the worktop. ‘I’d prefer not to discuss the matter of Kate’s estate until Jack is here,’ she said. ‘I told you we were seeing our solicitor. Jack is with him now.’ She took her green Barbour from behind the door where it always hung and put it on. ‘I’ll leave you with your tea now, if you don’t mind,’ she said, zipping the front with an air of grim determination. ‘I’ve got some work to do in the garden.’

  ‘Aren’t you worried I might ransack the house while you’re gone?’ Leah muttered under her breath as the door closed. It looked like being an uncomfortable few days. In fact, by the look of Hilary it was going to be bloody impossible. Picking up her cup of tea, she made her way back to her room with it.

  When Jack came home he was in a black mood.

  Hilary met him in the hall and held a finger to her lips, nodding towards the stairs.

  ‘She’s arrived. She’s upstairs.’ She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Well — what did he say?’

  Jack drew her into his study and closed the door. ‘It’s no use,’ he said. ‘There isn’t a thing we can do.’

  Hilary’s jaw dropped, her mouth forming a silent oval. ‘But there must be. She isn’t even a real relative.’

  Jack lifted his shoulders. ‘Makes no difference. Mother was entitled to leave her money to whoever she chose. And she chose Leah.’

  ‘Surely we can still contest it, under the circumstances?’

  Jack shook his head, ‘It seems we wouldn’t stand a chance unless we could prove that without Mother’s money we would be seriously deprived financially. I’m sure we don’t want that kind of publicity.’

  Hilary shuddered at the thought. ‘What about her state of mind? Can’t we plead that she didn’t know what she was doing?’

  ‘No. Apparently the Will was drawn up and signed in the presence of her solicitor and witnessed by a member of the office staff. Both were completely satisfied that she was totally compos mentis at the time. And by the way, it seems that it was all done before Leah’s Christmas visit.’

  ‘I see.’ Hilary bit her lip. ‘There can’t be much money, of course, but there’s the bungalow and about half an acre of land. It won’t fetch a great deal, but it annoys me to think of Leah getting it after all her ingratitude and — what she did.’

  Jack gritted his teeth. As a member of the Town Council and chairman of the planning committee, he knew that there was more to his mother’s Will than a clapped out bungalow and a bit of land, but he wasn’t going into that with Hilary now. He’d had enough for one day. ‘Nothing more we can do about it.’ He glanced towards the ceiling. ‘I suggest we encourage her to leave as soon as possible after the funeral.’

  Hilary nodded in agreement. ‘Leave it to me.’ Dinner was a strained affair. No one spoke unless they were obliged to. Jack passed Leah a piece of paper on which he’d written the name of Kate’s solicitors and advised her to visit their offices first thing in the morning.

  ‘And Hilary and I would appreciate your silence on the matter of the Will,’ he added. ‘Thankfully, we managed to keep your last little escapade quiet. We do still have to live here, remember.’

  *

  After coffee Leah excused herself and went gratefully up to her room, glad to escape.

  Kate’s solicitor turned out to be a woman called Jane English. She was the junior partner in an old established firm whose offices were tucked away in a narrow street behind the market place. When Leah was ushered into her office, Jane rose and came round her desk to shake her hand.

  ‘How nice to meet you, Miss Dobson. I’ve heard so much about you from your grandmother.’ She smiled and indicated a chair. ‘Do please have a seat. I’ve ordered some coffee. It’ll be here in a moment.’

  ‘I wasn’t Kate Dobson’s real granddaughter,’ Leah said. ‘Her son and daughter-in-law adopted me when I was seven.’

  Jane smiled. ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m telling you because I’m afraid this Will of hers is causing some bad feeling. I left home a few months ago, you see — after a row. My parents don’t approve of Gran leaving everything to me.’

  Jane nodded. ‘Mrs Dobson senior foresaw that and warned me to make sure everything was tightly sewn up with no loopholes. But her message to you was to take no notice. She said you’d earned it and she was sure that you were well up to sticking it out and fighting for what was rightly yours.’

  Leah’s lips twitched. The words were typical of Kate, she could almost hear her saying them as she signed the document; chuckling to herself, her bright eyes glinting with glee at the mischief she was about to cause. ‘I won’t be living in the bungalow, of course,’ she said. ‘I’d like you to handle the sale of it for me if you would.’

  ‘Just as you wish.’ The coffee arrived and a secretary brought in Kate’s file. When the girl had withdrawn Jane opened the file and took out Kate’s Will. ‘It should be relatively simple,’ she said. ‘As the Will is very straightforward and you are the sole beneficiary, probate should take no longer than a couple of weeks, after which we can begin to dispose of the property on your instructions.’

  She took off her reading glasses and looked at Leah. ‘Now — under normal circumstances the bungalow would not fetch a very great sum. It’s in need of extensive modernisation and is lacking most of the amenities that people take for granted nowadays. But for some time past Wonderbuy, one of the giant supermarket chains, has been trying to buy the small estate on which it stands in order to build a large hypermarket and car park. All the other owner-occupiers have agreed to sell. Your grandmother was the last to hold out.’

  Leah’s eyes opened wide. ‘She never mentioned this to me. What price are they offering? Should I accept? Would you say it was fair?’

  Jane smiled. ‘Oh, more than fair, Miss Dobson — much more.’ The figure she named took Leah’s breath away. She could see now why Jack and Hilary were so annoyed.

  ‘All that — just to pull it down?’

  ‘Ironically, your grandmother’s stubbornness has increased the price,’ Jane told her. ‘But believe me, if they didn’t feel it was worth it they wouldn’t have made the offer. If I were you I’d accept at once before they give up and look for a site elsewhere.’ She opened a drawer and took out an envelope and a labelled key. ‘Your grandmother left you this letter,’ she said. ‘And this is the key to the bungalow. You’ll probably want to go along and sort out her belongings.’ She passed them across the desk. ‘I
can give you the name of a good firm of house clearers if you like. They’ll dispose of the contents for you and forward the money to us to add to the estate.’

  Out in the fresh air Leah felt stunned. She was going to have more money than she’d ever imagined possible. She was actually going to be quite rich. She did a quick sum in her head. If she were to invest the money she could probably live modestly on the interest for the rest of her life without ever doing a stroke of work. But she certainly wasn’t going to do that. She would use it to make something of herself. If she couldn’t have love, then she’d build respect; she’d make people admire and look up to her. She and the money would work together to make a dream come true. And even as the thought occurred to her, Leah knew without any shadow of doubt that it was for this that Kate had left her the money.

  *

  The funeral that Jack Dobson had arranged for his mother appalled Leah. It was ostentatious to say the least and Leah knew that Kate would have hated it. It was well attended, mostly by Jack’s business colleagues, fellow Rotarians and Councillors. Hardly any of them knew Kate personally, and those who did hated and feared the old woman’s outspokenness and the knowing tongue that could blow their pompous pretensions sky high.

  As Leah followed Hilary and Jack into church behind the flower-laden coffin she glanced discreetly around at the dark-clad figures. Tom Clayton stood alone in a pew near the back of the church. He caught her eye and gave her a sly smile. She ignored him. The sooner she could get away from here, the better.

  Sorting through Kate’s meagre possessions the day before had been painful. She’d asked Hilary to go with her, but she’d refused adamantly.

  ‘Nothing to do with me any more,’ she’d said with a sniff.

  ‘But there might be things you’d like to have, if only for sentimental reasons,’ Leah had urged, but both Jack and Hilary stubbornly refused to have anything to do with the bungalow’s clearance, each of them determined to make Leah feel guilty about her inheritance.

  As she worked it had touched her deeply to see how frugally the old lady had lived, especially in comparison to her son’s opulent lifestyle. If she’d sold out to Wonderbuys she could have bought herself a nice little ground-floor flat in the new block by the river. She would have been close to the shops, with central heating and no maintenance worries. She could have had a much needed holiday in the sunshine which would have helped her bad chest, and still had plenty left over. But the reason she hadn’t sold became apparent when Leah read the letter left for her at the solicitor’s office. It was brief and typically to the point, written in the spidery copperplate of Kate’s generation on lined notepaper torn from a shopping list pad.

  My dear girl,

  I’m leaving you everything — it’s what the legal folks call my estate. Sounds grand, don’t it? Maybe it’ll help you make something of your life. That new start you been wanting. Anyway, I know you’ll do your best, my old sugar. I know you won’t want to live in my old place. The lawyer lady will tell you about the offer I had from the grocery people. Jack wanted me to sell to them some time ago and got real mad with me when I wouldn’t. But I’m not daft. He wanted me to sell, bank the money and move into an old folk’s home. Catch me doing that! He was after the cash himself and I’ll be damned if he’ll have it now. That’s when I made up my mind to leave it all to you.

  Take care of yourself. Be a good girl.

  Your loving Gran,

  Kate Dobson (Mrs)

  Sitting in Kate’s old chair, the letter in her hand, Leah could imagine the situation. As chairman of the planning committee Jack would have realised that eventually he stood to gain substantially from the sale of the land and pushed the plans through. How embarrassed and irritated he must have been when Kate refused to sell; even more so now that she — Leah — had been named as sole beneficiary.

  There had been a postscript at the end of the letter that had intrigued her:

  P.S. If you look in my underwear drawer you’ll find some certificates in an envelope. They was given to my Albert by a P.O.W. who worked for him on the railway in the war. He sent them to Albert as a thank you gift after he went back home to Germany after V.E. Day. They might be worth a few bob. Ask the lawyer lady.

  Leah had found the brown envelope tucked away in a drawer under Kate’s fleecy-lined winter underwear. In it was a bundle of share certificates. As Kate said, they were in German and the name of the firm was unfamiliar to Leah, but she left them with Jane English who had promised to pass them on to a broker who would check the value and advise her.

  *

  The vicar intoned his eulogy, creating a picture of Kate, obviously passed on to him by Jack, which seemed to Leah totally inaccurate and hypocritical. It made Kate sound like some upper-class dowager. Part of her wanted to laugh whilst the other half stormed inwardly at a son who clearly neither knew nor wanted to know the worth of the down-to-earth, gritty character who was his own mother.

  At last she rose with the rest of the congregation to sing the final hymn, Abide With Me. Hilary had chosen the hymns and Leah knew that Kate had particularly disliked this dirge-like tune. She would have preferred a quiet ceremony in the village church at Smallfield, attended by a few friends and neighbours, with the sound of the rooks in the elm trees for music; a few of the simple spring flowers she loved instead of the expensive, out of season roses and orchids that smothered her coffin and the waiting hearse. The whole thing was a circus, put on for the benefit of the Dobsons’ social standing. As she mouthed the words of the hymn, Leah’s throat tightened and her eyes stung with tears. Sorry about this, Gran. I’ll do my best not to let you down, she promised. I’m going to miss you so much. As the ceremony came to a close the bearers lifted the coffin and began to make their way out of the church, Jack and Hilary behind, followed by Leah. To her horror, when they reached the back of the church Tom Clayton slipped out of his pew and fell into step beside her.

  ‘How are you, Leah?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘I’m well, thank you.’

  ‘Angela and I have parted. We’re getting divorced.’ He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, trying to assess her reaction.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Come off it. You don’t care any more than I do. I thought we might have dinner while you’re home.’ She turned to glare at him. ‘We’re here to bury my grandmother, not make social arrangements.’

  He shrugged unrepentantly. ‘Maybe later. I’m invited to the house after the interment.’

  So Tom was back in favour? Leah sighed. But of course, he would have to be seen at least still to be a friend of the Dobsons so as not to attract speculation. How much more of this charade could her patience stand?

  At Acacia Grove the funeral tea was waiting. Hilary had engaged a firm of caterers to do it. White-jacketed waiters moved among the so-called mourners with trays of sherry and canapés and Leah reflected that it was more like a cocktail party than a funeral. Tom Clayton cornered her in the hall as she was trying to escape upstairs.

  ‘Hello there.’

  ‘Oh — hello.’

  ‘You weren’t trying to avoid me, were you?’

  ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’

  ‘Don’t be sarcastic, it doesn’t suit you.’

  She turned the full force of her most withering look on him. ‘Get lost, Tom. You’ve caused me enough trouble. I don’t want to see you or have anything to do with you. Right?’

  He reached across her shoulder to lean one hand against the wall, cutting off her escape. ‘You blackmailed me, Leah,’ he said softly. ‘You left me no choice. I had to protect myself. I’m sorry if it made things difficult for you, but you brought it on yourself. Won’t you let me try to make amends?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Listen, I might be selling up shortly, taking early — very early — retirement and going off somewhere warm and sunny to spend the rest of my life in luxury. Doesn’t that appeal to you?’

  ‘Why should it
? Anyway, I thought you were all set for the Mayoral chain.’

  ‘I resigned from the council. Got fed up with it.’

  Leah said nothing. Could it be that Jack had made it impossible for him not to resign after what had happened?

  ‘I daresay you won’t have enough left to live anywhere sunnier than Hunstanton once you’ve given Angela her share,’ she couldn’t resist saying.

  ‘Hunstanton?’ He laughed dryly. ‘Good God, no, I’ve got much more exciting plans than that. Some luscious tax haven — haven’t decided which yet. You see, strictly between ourselves, there’s this big supermarket chain that’s been trying to buy a parcel of land out at Smallfield. I’ve heard on the grapevine that they can’t get it all. I’m going to offer them Clayton’s. I reckon they’ll jump at it. After all, they won’t even have to build. They can have the other shop too if they’re interested. I’m like you, Leah. I’m sick of Nenebridge.’

  ‘I suppose you would be.’ Leah smiled to herself, remembering what Gran had told her about Tom’s come uppance on her last visit. But she knew something that he didn’t. She’d heard just that morning from Jane English that Wonderbuys had clinched the deal for the parcel of land at Smallfield. They’d asked her to call in to sign the contract. Once probate had been granted the money would be hers, but she’d leave Tom to find that out for himself. ‘Well, congratulations,’ she said, ducking under his arm and up the stairs. ‘It all sounds great. I hope it keeps fine for you.’

  *

  Hilary and Jack had already made it clear that she wouldn’t be welcome in the house once the funeral was over but Leah didn’t need prompting. She had no intention of hanging around in Nenebridge once her business there was over. On the other hand she wasn’t ready to go back to London yet either. She decided to go to Cleybourn and stay with Dick at the Mermaid for a few days after she’d made her last visit to the solicitor’s office. Her unhappy memories of the place didn’t seem so important now. She was starting again, wiping the slate clean. There was a lot of thinking to be done, plans to be made, and for that she needed the peace and quiet that only Cleybourn could offer.