“Hello, Tallulah.”
“Nice to see you again, Andrew.”
“Please sit down. Do you want anything, tea, coffee, a glass of water?”
“No, thank you, I just had a coffee at the café downstairs.”
“Right, well, let’s get straight to it,” Andrew Lyons said, tapping a pencil against his palm.
“I could have phoned you with all this, Tallulah, but knowing you as I have over the years, when you and I have both been a party to some of Duncan’s little imbroglios, I thought I should talk to you in person.”
I nodded, knowing what was coming; had known it ever since Duncan had fallen ill and begun dropping hints about my own future, intimating that I “wasn’t to worry,” that I would be “taken care of,” words that unsettled me every time he had spoken them.
I didn’t want to be taken care of, I didn’t want a single thing from Duncan McAllister, didn’t want to be sitting here in the offices of Ferris and Lyons, perched on the edge of a familiar sofa, with Andrew buzzing around me like an attentive beige fly.
All I wanted—stupidly, impossibly, childishly—was Duncan back.
I wanted Andrew to say, “This might come as a shock to you, Lulu, but Duncan is not, in fact, dead, but is now, as we speak, relaxing on a little-known island in Melanesia, having cleverly staged his own death in a bid to avoid paying tax.”
Since Duncan had died, my feet had remained firmly on the first rung of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s famous five stages of grieving: denial, my mind running through a series of impossible scenarios about where he really might be, each more fantastical than the last, and all of them, I supposed, designed to keep me from the aching truth—that my friend was gone.
But it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep up the charade in Andrew’s office, the backs of my legs sticking to the leather sofa, perspiration plodding down the back of my neck, and Andrew about to tell me what Duncan had bequeathed me.
I had no idea what it would be—the man was capable of anything—and although it had been generally presumed before Duncan’s death that he was a wealthy man, no one had any idea just how wealthy, and even Kimmy had reportedly gasped after being told of the extent of her more-than-generous slice of the McAllister pie.
Andrew excused himself and walked through the heavy, paneled door to the room Duncan had always called “the inner sanctum of the inner sanctum,” so I sat, looking at the degrees on his walls, wishing I had asked for a glass of water.
There was a photo of Duncan on the wall, sitting on the same sofa I now occupied, with Andrew’s children, a blurry gaggle of limbs and missing-tooth smiles, wrapped around him.
A memory of one of the last conversations I had with Duncan flitted by.
“Lulu,” he had said one morning when I was making up the guest room at Lingalonga, “do you think you’ll have children?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I’d like to—but in case you haven’t noticed, there’s a distinct lack of a potential father at the moment.”
“I don’t think you’ll need to worry about that, my dear,” he had said, adopting one of his maddeningly enigmatic “I know something you don’t know” countenances. “No.” He’d chuckled. “I don’t think you’ll have a problem with that at all.”
Oh God, I panicked, as a thought struck me, making me sit bolt upright on the sofa so suddenly the leather ripped at my sweaty skin.
Had Duncan left me some of his own sperm? I wouldn’t put it past him; in fact, the more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed, so that by the time Andrew reentered the room, I had convinced myself he would be carrying some sort of gold-plated petri dish.
“Sorry about that, Lulu,” he said. “I just had to check on something—well, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer.”
Putting his fingers to his lips, he whistled, a sharp, shrill sound that jerked though the air.
Through the inner sanctum of the inner sanctum, a familiar shaggy figure banged the door open with his mighty head and came barreling toward us.
Barney.
Duncan had left me Barney.
Andrew passed me a letter while Barney gamboled around our feet and pressed his great head between our legs, before settling himself between us as I opened it.
Dear Lulu,
By the time you read this I WILL BE DEAD—I’ve always wanted to write that, so dramatic, isn’t it? Like an Agatha Christie novel on a wild and stormy night, everyone gathered at the mansion to hear the old boy’s will. Anyway, by the time you read this I really will be dead, and you will be in possession of one of my most treasured possessions, Barney.
I know how hard it is to find a place to live these days with an animal, particularly one who may or may not be a wolf, so I have also made arrangements, through Andrew, to house him in the sort of premises to which he is accustomed.
To that end, I have bought Barney a home of his own on Willow Island, not too far from the one where I no longer lingalonga, which, as you probably know, I have left to the children.
You may not have noticed it, as it is nothing fancy, just a nice little shack by the sea with plenty of room for Barney to run around in, and lots of trees for him to claim as his own.
Unfortunately, because the archaic laws of our country are yet to recognize what we both know, which is that Barney is, of course, human, I was forced to purchase his new home in your name, as its caretaker.
Now, don’t get all huffy about this, Tallulah, it is yours in name and legality only; in reality it belongs to Barney to happily eat his way through for the remainder of his years. In the meantime, you are most certainly welcome to visit, or indeed, as I suspect will be the case, live there for as long as you wish or as long as it takes for you to become happy.
I know you’re not happy, Tallulah, and it is my greatest wish that by caretaking Barney’s home you may find on Willow some shelter from the storm you have found yourself in.
Don’t be mad at me—I can’t bear it when you’re mad at me. Also I cannot answer back, so it would be more than a little unsporting of you.
Your friend,
Duncan
PS I wonder where I am, don’t you? Personally, I’m hoping for Hawaii.
“So,” Andrew said, “what do you think?”
I looked up, and the sight of Barney, his leash dragging on the ground with no familiar hand tugging at the other end of it, finally undid me.
Duncan was not swinging in a hammock strung up between coconut trees, not being spirited away in the dead of night by a speedboat driven by a woman in a white bikini with a fishing knife between her teeth.
Duncan was dead, and I knew it in the moment I saw his lost, riderless horse.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what to think. I didn’t want anything from him.”
“He knew that, Lulu,” Andrew replied. “That’s why he gave it to you.”
“Well, what sort of a house is it?” Simone asked, excited, impatient, revved up on the three coffees she had managed to inhale in the half hour she, Stella, and I had been sitting in the café across the road from her work.
“I don’t know, I haven’t seen it yet.”
“God, I wish someone would give me a house,” she said.
“Well, I wish he hadn’t.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Lulu. Besides, you already told me, he gave it to Barney, not you.”
We both looked down at Barney, rhythmically licking Stella’s shoes with his great, lapping tongue.
“What are you going to do?” Stella asked, nudging Barney off her right foot with her left. “Are you going to move there?”
“I don’t know, I thought I’d see it first, maybe spend some time there. I don’t really have anywhere else to stay at the moment anyway. . . .”
“You know you can always stay with me, Lulu. But you should go over—check the place out, decide what you want to do with it. Want us to come with?” Simone asked—lately she had grown so busy, she had decided to do away with what she called “superfluous” words.
“No, I think Barney and I should do this on our own, but thank you.”
“Suit.”
“Stop it, Simone, it’s suit yourself, suit yourself.”
“You knew what I meant, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t,” said Stella. “Anyway, let’s get back to this house business. When are you going to go?”
“This weekend.”
“At least let us run you to the ferry,” Simone offered.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I’ve done it a million times, I’ll be fine.”
“When can we come and see it?” she pushed.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll call you once I’ve settled in.”
“Here,” Stella said, taking a small gold medal from the enormous green carry-all she was always toting, “take this with you.”
I looked at the bright circle in my palm and found Saint Christopher, patron saint of travelers.
“Bloody hell, Stella,” Simone said. “Who carries religious medals around in their handbag? Who else have you got in there?”
“Um, let me see,” Stella said, fishing around in the green abyss. “Therese, I think, and Jude and Florien.”
“Florien?” Simone snorted. “Who’s he? The patron saint of hairdressers?”
“It’s chimney sweeps, actually,” said Stella primly.
“Oh, well, he’ll be getting a lot of work around these parts, then.”
“Stop it, Simone,” I said. “Thank you for the medal, Stella, I’ll put it in my backpack.”
“Oh, Lord save,” said Simone.
“It’s Lord save us, Simone, Lord save us.” Stella sighed.
Everyone, it seemed, was determined to make the first trip to Barney’s new home with me, including Rose, who I visited a few days before I left.
“I’m coming with you, Lulu,” Rose said firmly.
“Rose, it’s not necessary, really, I’ll be fine.”
“I know it’s not necessary, Lulu,” she said, “but I’m still coming.”
“But I don’t need you to.”
“Well, I need me to.”
Harry was looking on, enjoying every minute, I knew, of this battle of wills between his wife and daughter, watching Rose fight her own corner.
“Rose,” I said, “you can come later. It’s a bit of a hike; it’s not like we can just jump in the car and we’re there.”
But if we were to just jump in, I knew it would be, for the first time in a long time, Rose behind the wheel. Harry had told me that a few weeks earlier, at Rose’s request, he had taken her station wagon out of the garage, cleaned it, checked it from top to bottom, turned it over, and taken it for a run around the block a few times, before Rose slid behind the wheel, turned the ignition, and took off, wearing Phoebe and a new hat.
Since then, she had driven a little farther each day, until they discovered her license had expired and she’d had to retake the test for a new one. Now it was in her wallet, where she had shown it to me, saying, “Can you believe it, Lulu? I don’t look too bad for an old girl, do I?”
“You look great,” I’d said, and we’d both sat staring at a miniature Rose smiling out at us from behind the plastic.
I was thrilled for her—and for Harry, his Rose reemerging as the laughing girl who slipped out of her dress and jumped into waterholes, who now took off in the car wearing a hat and came back brandishing takeaway dinners: “Just like that,” Harry had said.
But I’d also learned not to trust this Rose, the one in full bloom. I’d seen her like this before, watched how easily her shoulders could drop, like petals to the floor. When she was like this, she was always in a hurry to throw herself back into the family, impatient to mend the frays at its edges. Now she wanted to come with me to Willow, but I wasn’t ready for that, for her, yet.
“Rose,” I said, “I promise you can come next time; just let me go over by myself first.”
“Fine,” said Rose, “but I’m baking you some biscuits.”