The following morning Bel was carrying a basket of washing she’d collected from her father’s bedroom to the small utility room when her phone rang in her back pocket. She frowned at the screen, wondering for a moment who Patsy was, although the name was saved in her contacts. Then she remembered.
‘Hi, Patsy.’ Bel rarely spoke to the woman who lived next door to her mother’s Cornish cottage. There was no need. The village seemed collectively to sort out any maintenance problems for Lenny, the tacit agreement that Bel would let him stay long since accepted by everyone. Now she waited to hear the reason for the call.
‘How are you?’ Patsy began.
‘I’m OK,’ Bel replied cautiously. It was a hard question to answer these days.
‘Good. It’s just I did ring you at the end of last year, but you didn’t pick up or call me back. So Rhian Parry, the vicar, wrote to you …’ She paused. ‘I’m not sure if you’ve heard? Lenny died, sadly, in early December, from Covid.’
Bel was taken aback. ‘Oh, no. I’m so sorry.’ She thought about what Patsy had just said. ‘You rang me?’
‘Yes, a couple of times … He died on the tenth, so it must have been soon after that. Then Rhian sent you a letter and the order of service for his funeral – it was only a few of us from the village.’
Four months ago. The tenth of December, Bel thought. It was etched on her memory: the date at the top of Louis’s ‘Dear John’ letter. She couldn’t remember any calls from Patsy around that time, but she’d been so discombobulated and crazy. ‘Things were a bit chaotic back then,’ she explained. ‘I never got the vicar’s letter, though. I’ve been living in my father’s flat since January. Maybe it got lost in the mail redirection.’
‘Maybe,’ Patsy agreed. ‘Rhian sent it to the Walthamstow address you gave us. Anyway, that’s how things stand. I just wondered what your plans might be, and if there’s anything you want us to do to the place. So far we’ve left it as it was.’
Bel was trying to take in that her cottage was now empty. ‘Umm … Goodness, Patsy, I don’t know. This has come as a bit of a surprise. I’ll have to think about it.’
‘No hurry,’ Patsy replied calmly. ‘You’d be very welcome to stay with us if you want to check the place out.’
‘I’d love to come down,’ Bel said, at the same time remembering all that might stand in her way: money, her father, Vinny’s sandwiches … But she would find a way. The thought of a visit to Cornwall made her heart beat a little faster. Just a week off …
‘I’ve got my granddaughter living here,’ Patsy was saying, ‘but she’s young, won’t hurt her to bunk on the sofa for a few nights.’
Bel thanked her and heard her begin her goodbyes. ‘Before you go, Patsy, what sort of state is the cottage in?’
‘Hmm, not a pretty sight, I’m afraid. Lenny wasn’t the tidiest of men.’ She laughed softly, perhaps at some memory of her friend. ‘But nothing a bit of house clearance couldn’t sort out, I suppose. Depends what your plans are.’
‘Right. Thanks. I’ll be in touch when I’ve had a think.’
They said goodbye, and Bel continued along the corridor to the utility room to put the washing on. Her mind was buzzing. The house is free, she kept repeating to herself. She didn’t know exactly what the implications were for her. But she knew they were significant.
Her father was in the sitting room at his desk, fiddling with the clip at the top of a pile of what looked like bills, when she told him what Patsy had said, adding, ‘I never got the letter. It must have been lost in the post.’
Dennis didn’t reply, didn’t look at her.
‘Dad? Did you hear what I just said? Lenny Bright died.’
He turned in his chair. ‘Oh? Did he?’ He wouldn’t meet her eye and feigned interest in the bulldog clip again.
Bel stared at him. ‘Did you know?’ She was suddenly sure, from his shifty look, that he did.
‘I think there might have been something … a letter … I meant to give it to you, but I must have forgotten.’ He flashed an apologetic smile. ‘Brain can be a bit fuzzy, these days.’
‘Wait. So you opened the letter the vicar sent me about Lenny?’
Her father threw his hands into the air. ‘I really can’t remember, sweetheart. I might have opened it thinking it was for me. Easy to do.’
‘Where is it, Dad? Where’s the letter?’ Bel was trying not to make more of this than she needed to. But it was hard not to be irritated, and suspicious of her father withholding something so important to her.
‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s months ago now. Why do you need it, anyway? You know he’s dead.’
‘Please,’ she said, with admirable restraint. ‘Can you look for it? Maybe it’s in the desk drawer. It’s where you put most of your post.’
With clear reluctance, Dennis turned back to his desk. He seemed flustered, which only served to make Bel more certain that this was deliberate. Muttering under his breath, he made a show of leafing through piles of paper in the various drawers in the knee-hole desk. After a few minutes of heavy breathing in the silent room, he finally came up with a brown A4 envelope and waved it casually at Bel. ‘This might be it.’
Bel took it from him. There was a typed Royal Mail redirection sticker across her previous address, but ‘Isobel Carnegie’ was written in bold black marker pen above the label. Hard to miss.
‘I meant to give it to you,’ Dennis repeated stubbornly.
Bel did not reply as she took the letter back to her room. She sat on the bed and lifted the already-torn flap, drawing out a typed letter clipped to a funeral order of service. On the back was a photograph of a smiling man with sparse hair, a round face and uneven teeth, probably in his forties at the time of the snap. His expression was full of joy. Beneath it she read:
LENNY BRIGHT
14 SEPTEMBER 1953–10 DECEMBER 2021
NOW WITH GOD
Bel turned back to the letter:
Dear Ms Carnegie,
I thought you might like to see the attached.
Your extraordinary contribution to Lenny’s life and wellbeing is without precedent. He was always so grateful.
Lenny was a wonderful man and we all loved him. He will be sadly missed by the whole community.
Your cottage, as Patsy will have told you, now lies empty. But, rest assured, we will continue to keep an eye until you decide your next move.
Look forward to meeting you, when you have time to venture down this far again.
With warmest wishes,
Rhian Parry
Rev. Rhian Parry
Vicar of St Saviour’s Parish Church, Penruthyn, Cornwall
administrator@StSaviourschurch.org.uk
Bel stared at the photograph of Lenny, but her thoughts were centred on her mother. It was Agnes’s kindness for which thanks were due, not Bel’s. She had merely followed her mother’s instructions, but had done nothing proactive for Lenny – she’d only met the man for a fleeting, slightly awkward handshake all those years ago. Yes, she had let him live in her cottage, but she hadn’t wanted to live there herself, and she hadn’t needed the money then.
There had been a moment, she remembered, when Louis had suggested she was being foolish, letting an obvious financial asset go to waste. But there was no chance she would have turfed Lenny out, even if the cottage had been much more valuable than its probable dilapidation indicated. It was one of the rare occasions when she’d stood up to Louis, because she knew that if she’d gone ahead and done such a cruel thing, the money would only have been sucked into the bottomless maw of 83. I’ll go down as soon as I can arrange it, she told herself now. Her spirits spiralled upwards at the prospect.
Later, when she and her father were having lunch in the kitchen, Dennis still seemed defensive about Rhian Parry’s letter, although Bel hadn’t mentioned it again, her mind taken up with thoughts of her newly vacated inheritance.
‘You must know how easy it is to open someone else’s mail by mistake,’ he said, as he munched his ham sandwich.
Bel nodded. ‘I’ve done it myself, occasionally.’
Her father looked relieved. ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference to you, knowing sooner, anyway,’ he said complacently.
She was suddenly on the alert. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, I imagine it’s a worthless wreck after all these years of neglect.’ He chuckled drily. ‘It wasn’t up to much in the first place.’ When Bel didn’t reply, he added, ‘It’s not as if you’re going to live there. So, no harm done, eh?’
He was eyeing her intently. She said nothing, although she was well aware of his motivation for not giving her the letter. He doesn’t want me to have money … choices. The knowledge should have made her angry. But it only made her scared. He doesn’t want me to leave.