Molly's Millions

by Victoria Connelly

  Molly’s Millions

  VICTORIA CONNELLY

  Acknowledgements

  To Bridget and Hsin-Yi for reading the early drafts of this book and providing such wonderful feedback.

  To Margaret James and all at the RNA London/SE Chapter. Special thanks to Sue Haasler, Jean Fullerton, Janet Gover, Caroline Praed, Jenny Haddon, Rachel Summerson and Pat Walsh.

  To Doreen and Martin at The Monument for their time, enthusiasm and insight, and to Clare Donovan for taking part in the Molly experiment at the top!

  To Katie Fforde, Liz Young, Deborah Wright, Mags Wheeler, Stephanie Polak, Heather Clark, Louise Nelson, Margaret Connelly, Clare Punchard, Siobhan Curham, Margaret Fotheringham, June Martin, Pat Maud, Yvette Verner and Linda Gillard for encouragement and support. Also to Cam and Kate Boden who always support their local artists!

  Special thanks to Susanne O’Leary for her dare! And thanks to my wonderful writing girls: Henriette Gyland, Pia Tapper Fenton, Catriona Robb and Giselle Green for sharing the highs and lows along the way.

  Thanks to Louise Watson and all at Allison & Busby.

  And my own special Molly for making each day a delight and for taking me away from the keyboard at least twice a day!

  Most of all, thank you to my family – my mother, father and brother. And, as ever, to my husband, Roy.

  To my husband, Roy,

  and my mother, father and dear brother, Allan.

  With love.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  ‘That’s twenty-six fifty,’ the cashier said, looking up expectantly and forgetting to smile in the process.

  Molly Bailey opened her purse, her eyes sweeping its depths, knowing there wasn’t enough to pay. She bit her lip and took a deep breath.

  ‘I’m ever so sorry. I’m afraid I’m going to have to put something back.’

  The cashier’s eyes took on a look of the Medusa before she was about to turn some poor soul into stone.

  Molly looked at the goods she’d piled into four carrier bags. Something had to go. She knew she shouldn’t have bought the wine but it was on special offer and she hadn’t had a treat for months.

  As she made her decision, she heard a woman behind her groan loudly.

  ‘Maybe if I put this back.’ Molly tried to smile as she returned the bottle of wine to the cashier, doing her best to ignore the other people in the queue as her face flushed scarlet.

  ‘Twenty-one fifty-one,’ the cashier said, refusing to return Molly’s smile.

  She still didn’t have enough. ‘Well, I guess I don’t really need this,’ Molly said, trying to ignore the woman behind her who’d started up a tutting competition within the queue. ‘Far too heavy for me to carry anyway,’ she said, making a desperate stab at humour.

  The cashier took the four-pack of orange juice back. ‘Nineteen seventy-one,’ she said, lips barely moving, face devoid of sympathy.

  ‘Great!’ Molly pulled out her two crumpled ten-pound notes and handed them over.

  ‘Thank goodness for that,’ the tutting woman whispered audibly from behind. Molly could ignore her no longer. She turned round and looked at the woman, who had hyphens for eyes and a mouth to match, and gave her a dazzling smile.

  ‘Thank you so much for being so patient,’ Molly said, trying her best to sound unfazed by the whole experience and, collecting her change, she beamed at the cashier before heading out into the car park.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d come out without enough money. Plus her maths wasn’t the best in the world. She really should carry a calculator around with her, she thought.

  Placing her groceries on the floor of the car, she got into the driver’s seat and started the engine, noticing she was short on petrol. She’d have cycled to the supermarket if she hadn’t already had to sell her bike.

  She sighed. It wasn’t that she had aspirations to be rich or anything, it would just be nice not to have to worry so much. She often thought about buying a lottery ticket, but the odds just weren’t good enough for her to risk a whole pound coin.

  As her Volkswagen Beetle, affectionately known as ‘Old Faithful’, spluttered out onto the main road, a shaft of brilliant sunlight filled the car. Molly smiled as though it had been sent down from the heavens just for her.

  It was as if she knew she was just four hours away from becoming a millionaire.

  Once home, she dumped her shopping bags and released a sigh of pure contentment. She might occasionally be short of change but she certainly wasn’t short on flowers. Her florist’s, aptly named The Bloom Room, was small but perfectly formed. The overpowering smell, which no perfume could ever capture, seeped into her entire body, filling her with a rosy warmth. The olfactory collision of lilies and roses, and the delicacy of freesias, seemed to run through her bloodstream. It saturated her clothes and seeped up through the floorboards into her flat above so that she never needed to buy air fresheners.

  She’d never known heaven could come in two hundred square feet. When she’d first moved in, it was nothing but a dusty shell squashed between the baker’s and the grocer’s, but a couple of weeks of tender loving care, and a few cans of yellow paint, had jollified the place up no end. Or rather ‘Mollyfied’ the place, as Marty, her brother, loved to say.

  Yes, looking round the shop, she could see that it had definitely been Mollyfied. The warm sunshine walls and polished wooden floorboards were the perfect backdrop to the enormous silver buckets of flowers, and the large local watercolours of the nearby Lake District added to the overall calmness of the shop. Perfect.

  As the bell above the door tinkled and old Mrs Purdie walked in, Molly was brought back into the present. She’d been expecting her and had rushed back from the trip to the supermarket as Mrs Purdie usually popped in last thing in the afternoon, hoping some of the flowers had been marked down in price.

  She was relatively new to the village and nobody seemed to know much about her because she kept herself to herself but she was a regular visitor to The Bloom Room and Molly always looked forward to her visits.

  She watched as Mrs Purdi
e bent, gladiolus-like, over the silver buckets, inhaling the sweet aromas of the bouquets. Yes, she thought, Mrs Purdie was definitely a gladiolus: strong yet yielding. It was kind of a hobby of Molly’s to think of people in terms of flowers. It had started when she was about six. She’d been watching her mother walking round their garden one morning, pausing at the fantastic blooms on the rosa mundi and pushing her face deep into their blowsy petals, two-toned, fuchsia and shell pink, so like her personality: gentle yet vibrant.

  Molly looked up to see Mrs Purdie standing up to full height after admiring a particularly expensive bouquet.

  ‘Lovely!’ she sighed, closing her eyes as she was carried away on the scent.

  ‘I’m marking that one down,’ Molly said, ‘it’s three ninety-nine.’

  ‘Really?’ Mrs Purdie’s eyes sprang wide in surprise. ‘I’ll take it.’

  As Molly wrapped the flowers in paper she usually charged for, she remembered when Marty had spent a couple of hours in the shop with her one afternoon, and had been astounded when Mrs Purdie had spent one ninety-nine on a bunch of carnations, and had then admired another bunch of flowers at four ninety-nine.

  ‘Here – take them,’ Molly had said.

  Marty’s mouth had dropped open, mirroring the surprise on the woman’s face perfectly.

  ‘Molly!’ he’d shouted, as soon as the old lady had left the shop. ‘That is not how you run a business.’

  ‘Oh, twaddle!’

  ‘Don’t twaddle your way out of this one!’

  ‘Marty – it’s four-thirty in the afternoon; they’re not going to sell now, are they? They’ll probably end up on the compost heap. Anyway, Mrs Purdie only has her pension. She can’t afford many treats.’

  ‘You’re meant to be making a living, not running a charity.’

  ‘Oh, you sound just like Dad when you talk like that,’ she’d laughed.

  And it was true. Much as she tried to deny it, Marty was a Bailey through and through. Slowly, via careful brainwashing from their father, Marty had turned into an old Scrooge.

  Molly shook her head as she handed Mrs Purdie her new bouquet. ‘Three ninety-nine,’ she said with a great deal of satisfaction, secretly wishing Marty was there.

  Mrs Purdie handed over her money, a huge smile bisecting her face. ‘You’ll never guess what I did today,’ she began. ‘I bought a lottery ticket.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Look!’ Mrs Purdie reached into the depths of her voluminous handbag and pulled out the ticket, brandishing it as if it was a sure winner. ‘I’ve never bought one before. Have you?’ she asked, her eyes watching Molly carefully.

  Molly shook her head, her dark curls knocking against her pink cheeks. ‘No. I haven’t.’

  ‘The odds are astronomical, of course, but just imagine!’ Mrs Purdie’s eyes glazed over for a moment. What was she thinking of, Molly wondered? Rooms full of flowers? A retirement that involved a few luxuries?

  ‘What would you do if you won?’ Molly asked.

  Mrs Purdie looked up, her expression one of perfect surprise. ‘If I won?’ she said, giving a little chuckle. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. But it would be very nice, wouldn’t it?’

  Molly smiled and watched as she pushed the ticket back into her handbag and left the shop with her flowers, the bell tinkling as the door shut behind her.

  Just imagine!

  Mrs Purdie’s words echoed around Molly’s head like an unforgettable song. But she didn’t want to imagine. Not really. She couldn’t afford to for a start. The only money she had was in the till and the petty cash box, and she never touched that. Not unless there was a personal emergency.

  It would be very nice, wouldn’t it?

  Mrs Purdie’s words, it would seem, weren’t going to vacate Molly’s head easily, not until she did something about it.

  She turned round and looked at the little blue cash box nestling amongst the wrapping paper and, even as her hand closed around it, she knew that it was wrong and foolish but the temptation was just too much. This was a grade one personal emergency.

  She bit her lip and opened the box. With rebellious fingers, she picked out a gold pound coin, her eyes, dark as conkers, twinkling mischievously. It wouldn’t be missed. She’d return it as soon as she could. This just had to be done; it was as if something was goading her on.

  The odds are astronomical.

  Yes, Molly thought, but they were still there, weren’t they?

  Her hand swallowed the coin in a tight fist and, grabbing her front door key, she left the shop, hurrying to the corner store to buy her ticket.

  Chapter Two

  Carolyn stared down at the sink full of dirty dishes and swore to herself that this would be the last Saturday afternoon she’d spend at Marty’s grandfather’s.

  She turned round and looked into the living room at the sprawling mass of Bailey men. Well, Marty wasn’t sprawling; he was on the edge of his seat shouting at some footballer on the television. His father, Magnus, had sunk into the depths of the sofa, a glass of very inexpensive wine in his hand. Carolyn knew it was inexpensive because she’d had a sip of it herself and had instantly remembered the time she’d gone under at the local swimming baths.

  And then there was Marty’s grandfather, Granville Bailey, head of the great Bailey family. She’d only known him for three years but every time she’d seen him he was sitting in his winged chair as if it were a throne. Did he ever move? Did he sleep in it? From the head-shaped stain on the back, Carolyn suspected that he did.

  She stared out of the kitchen window and sighed. What was she doing there? She really had to put her foot down and tell Marty that she wasn’t going to come anymore. She wasn’t his skivvy, and she certainly wasn’t Magnus and Granville’s skivvy either.

  In a sudden thrust of determination to get her life back, she threw the dishcloth into the sink. She’d bought it a month ago. Granville Bailey didn’t buy things like that, not with the knowledge that somebody else would, and Carolyn felt sure that his meanness was one of the reasons he invited Magnus and Marty over every Saturday. Magnus always bought a bottle of wine, not spending more than two ninety-nine on it, mind, and Marty was responsible for the food, which Carolyn would cook and serve. Then, almost without her noticing, it had become her job to collect up the dishes at the end of the meal, serve dessert and coffee, and wash and dry up. But when had that happened? When exactly had she fallen into that routine?

  She walked through the living room but none of the men bothered to lift their eyes from the television screen, so she kept on walking until she found herself in the bathroom. She shook her head in annoyance. If she didn’t have the courage to stand up to Marty then she only had herself to blame, but he was a hard man to say no to sometimes.

  Take their wedding, for example. Even though her father had given a generous budget, Marty had insisted on scrimping and saving. He had cut corners on virtually everything, which probably explained why they’d had a round wedding cake.

  Carolyn had idly dreamt of a dress beaded and bejewelled but Marty had insisted that the money would be better spent on new guttering for the house. She knew he was right, of course, but it had been hard to imagine swooning over photos of new guttering in the years to come.

  She gave her hands a wash and fluffed her hair up. That was another thing she’d always done to please Marty: kept her hair at a feminine shoulder-length when she was dying to have it cut pixie-short. She ran her fingers through the butterscotch blonde, wondering how he’d react if she went and had it all chopped off. A little smile lit up her face at the thought. Did she really have it in her? She sometimes felt swollen with rebellion but she’d never carried anything through. Not yet.

  She wandered out into the hall and heard a collective groan of annoyance from the living room.

  ‘What does that referee think he’s doing?’

  It was Marty. But Magnus and Granville weren’t far behind.

  ‘Idiot!’

  ‘
He’s blind.’

  Carolyn sighed a sigh that could have stopped a train. She couldn’t face going back in there so decided to have a nose around the spare bedroom at the back of the house. It was stuffed with photographs, and Carolyn could never resist a quick peep. The trouble was, they were the sort of photographs that should have been expensively framed and put on display in the front room but Old Bailey obviously didn’t care for that. His front room had a good many photographs all right, but they were all of him: Granville Bailey shaking hands with some toff; Granville Bailey holding a shark-sized salmon on a Scottish fishing trip – all very self-absorbed. There wasn’t even a single one of his dearly departed wife. She too was relegated to the back room where the sun never shone: the room of lost photographs.

  Carolyn picked up the ten by eight of her and Marty on their wedding day. It was coming up to their third wedding anniversary and it still wasn’t framed. Instead, it remained in its cardboard folder, propped up on the top of an old shelving unit.

  Carolyn’s eyes swept over the hidden family album. There was Magnus, on his wedding day. It was an unusual photo of Magnus on his own. His thick, dark hair and black eyes gave him an almost demonic look, and he wasn’t smiling at the photographer, perhaps because he had lost his bride. Prophetically, she was nowhere to be seen. Carolyn had scanned the room several times to try to discover Marty’s mysterious mother, but she didn’t merit a single photo, even in the back bedroom. ‘That bloody Percy woman’ was how both Magnus and Granville referred to her in moments of heated anger, and Marty never talked about her at all. It was strongly held that all the misfortunes of the Baileys rested on the day Cynthia Percy had entered the family fold.

  Carolyn felt desperate to meet the woman who had seemingly created so much trouble within the family. She instinctively felt that one woman couldn’t possibly be as bad as the Bailey men made out. She couldn’t be the sole cause of Magnus’s jet hair turning silver – after all, he was nudging sixty; nor could she be held completely responsible for Granville’s rattling chest, though he was often at pains to say as much. The phrase ‘that bloody Percy woman’ was as common in the Bailey household as ‘you can get that cheaper in Tesco’.