The kitchen of The Lodge was an unusually large and comfortable room. When the house was first built it had been the dining room but in the extensive renovations undertaken in the nineteenth century it had been remodelled into a kitchen suitable for the dozen or more cooks and kitchen maids who served the prosperous household.
Over two hundred years later, when staff were no longer employed, the room had taken on a new life. It was where meals were consumed as well as cooked, where books and newspapers were read, where radio was listened to and television watched, where homework was done and where conversations and discussions were held. It was the heart of the house.
Skye Lacey had lived with her aunt for all but the first two of her seventeen years and she could not remember a time when the main reception rooms had been used. She understood that they belonged to an era, long past, when the Lacey family had been an important one.
*
“Have the bloody builders gone again?” Audrey Lacey asked tetchily as she watched her niece shut the back door behind her. “They never seem to stay much longer than it takes them to drink a flask of tea.”
“Yeah, they’ve gone.” Skye replied, concentrating on prising off her boots.
“Did they say when they’d be back?” Audrey could not keep the irritation from her voice. She hated the disruption and was increasingly worried about the cost.
“No, they didn’t. They said they can’t do much while everything is so wet.” Skye took off her coat and draped it over a stool. “But it’s not raining now; it’s not even particularly cold. I reckon they could easily be getting on with it even if the wind is getting up a bit.”
“Hang your coat up, dear.”
Skye obeyed her aunt with a good grace, as she did more often than not.
“What did you say the builders were doing?” Audrey asked again.
“I told you, they’ve gone.” Skye sat down next to her aunt at the large table in the bow window.
“They should have known not to start in December if bad weather was going to be a problem,” said Audrey tetchily.
“They’ll probably be back when it improves.” Skye tried to sound encouraging.
“But that could be ages. I’m not sure I can stand the idea of months more of that dreadful scaffolding and all the mess, not to mention the expense. No doubt the builders will pass on the extra costs and we can’t expect my brother to help, can we?”
“You could ask him. It is his house after all.” Skye pointed out the unwelcome fact.
“It shouldn’t have been.” Audrey had always felt a strong sense of injustice that the home she loved belonged to her brother. “If it weren’t for that bloody stupid idea that a man inherits everything it would be mine. And then, out of the kindness of his heart, he allows me to live here as long as I am able.” She paused briefly before abandoning sarcasm as pointless and continuing in a determined voice. “And I will live here as long as I am able. I won’t ask him for a penny. If he paid anything he’d feel he has the right to kick us out.”
“He’s probably claiming for it on his expenses anyway. We don’t know, but I bet you anything he is.”
“Thieves, crooks and bloody bandits, isn’t that what everyone calls politicians now? You’re quite right, of course he’s claiming for it. My brother is a dishonest man as well as a completely deranged one.”
“Well I really hope that they haven’t given up on investigating him. They can’t have tried very hard. All they had to do was ask us and we can prove he hasn’t paid anything towards the costs of The Lodge.” Skye had no reason to think well of her father.
“He’ll be claiming every penny he can get away with despite never having spent a night under this roof since 1946. And the house shouldn’t even be his. If there were an ounce of natural justice it would be mine and then, when I’m gone, I should be able to leave it to you. Instead, the moment I’m dead he’ll sell up and kick you out without a second thought. I won’t be able to stay here much longer anyway. I’m eighty years old. I can hardly walk, even with this wretched thing.” Audrey poked at the walking frame that was parked next to her chair. “And you’ll be off to university in September so I suppose I’ll have to leave the old place then and move to a bungalow in Yarmouth or Freshwater or somewhere.”
Skye knew from experience that it was best not to interrupt while her aunt talked herself out of one of her bleak moods and it was a few minutes before Audrey straightened her shoulders, jerked her neck to free its stiffness and returned to the subject of the builders. “As I was saying, we should never have let the builders start at this time of year.”
Skye was relieved that her aunt had turned her thoughts back to the chimney. That, at least, was a problem that could be solved.
“We’ve been through all this. We need the Aga to cook on and keep us warm and we can’t keep that going for much longer without the chimney being fixed. The surveyor said the stonework wouldn’t last through the winter, especially if we have storms like we had last year.”
“Well it certainly had more chance of survival before the bloody builders started dismantling it and attaching scaffolding poles,” Audrey pointed out sharply before turning her back on Skye and concentrating on the weather forecast on the television. “And now look what’s on its way, storm-force winds, thunder and lightning, the lot.”
*
The Lodge had been built on the lip of a ridge, in a position that took advantage of a commanding view across the north of the Isle of Wight towards the Solent and the mainland beyond. The location did, however, leave the building exposed to the weather.
For over two hundred years The Lodge had survived many storms but few had been as bad as the one that blew up that night in January 2010.
Neither Skye nor Audrey could sleep as the wind raged around The Lodge and the sky lit up with almost continuous flashes of lightning and deafening claps of thunder.
A particularly loud crack made Skye sit bolt upright in her bed. For a minute, as her hearing adjusted, she struggled to think what could have caused the extraordinary noise. Pulling on her dressing gown she ran down the stairs into her aunt’s bedroom. “Leave me be.” Audrey snapped, “Go and see what it was. It sounded like a bomb went off.”
Skye checked all the rooms as she headed for the kitchen and was surprised to see no signs of damage, but just as she reached the hall the lights went out.
Power cuts at The Lodge were not infrequent and Skye moved into a familiar routine. She felt her way into the kitchen and found the candles and matches in the dresser drawer and lit them. She turned on the battery radio, filled the kettle and put it on the Aga.
“What time is it?” Audrey asked as she appeared at the kitchen door.
“Just after five.”
“Have you found out what that bloody noise was?”
“I think we must have been struck by lightning, though I’ve looked in the big rooms and couldn’t see anything. I’ll have to have a look outside.”
“Don’t go out until the storm has died down.”
Skye heard the rising panic in her aunt’s voice and decided she would have to do as she was asked. “OK. I won’t, even though it seems to be dying down a bit. At least there’s a bit of a gap between the flashes now.”
“We’ll have to do something to take our minds off it. I certainly don’t want to spend the next three hours worrying about what you’ll find.”
“Scrabble?”
“I’d rather talk.”
As the thunderstorm passed Skye listened, occasionally asking the questions that prompted well-remembered stories, as Audrey talked about her Uncle Henry “However much I loved him I always think it would have been better for him if he had died in The Great War”, his wife Rose “A lovely lady, a miner’s daughter from Wales” and their daughter Rowan “She was my best friend and it was so unfair that she was killed, but then there was much that was unfair about 1943.”
Audrey’s recollections strayed to her father “He was not a nice man, though I never really knew him and always think of him as Sir William.” As the hours passed she talked of William and Henry’s parents. “My grandparents died before I was born, but Henry always called them ‘the feeble Bernard’ and ‘the dreadful Catherine’, but then he was biased by the way they had treated him.”
Whenever Audrey talked to Skye about their ancestors she never went back any earlier than Bernard and Catherine.
There was so much that she knew about Bernard’s father and grandfather but had sworn never to tell. She had seen too much in the family Bible before Uncle Henry had taken it from her, ripped out the pages and torn them to shreds. The memory of his cold anger always unsettled her.
The storm had passed by the time there was sufficient light in the sky for Audrey to snuff out the candles. “Can’t put it off any longer, you’d better go out and check,” she said firmly.
“I will be careful,” Skye reassured her aunt as she slipped her phone into a pocket, suspecting that she might need to take pictures for the insurance.
Her face, as she walked back into the kitchen five minutes later, told Audrey the news was not good.
“It’s that bad is it?”
“The old pine trees have fallen.”
“We lost a few last winter too. Perhaps we should have had them lopped. What else is there? That noise wasn’t a tree falling.”
“I think a bolt must have hit the chimney. There’s a gaping hole at the bottom and scaffold poles are lying in a jumbled heap with blackened bricks and lumps of stone. I’ve taken photos. Here.”
Audrey looked at picture after picture without saying a word until she stopped at one. Staring hard at the image on the small screen she was able to focus on what looked to be an unusual shape. “Is that something in the wall?” she asked, handing the phone back to Skye.
“Where?” At first Skye could see nothing.
“There in the corner.”
Skye put her fingers on the phone and stretched the image. “There is something. You’re right. I’ll go out and see.”
A few minutes later she was back in the kitchen. “There’s a big hole and it isn’t empty.”
“I don’t think we want to find a skeleton or anything like that.”
“It’s not a skeleton, it’s just a bag, an old canvas bag.”
Audrey shivered involuntarily. Without seeing it in any detail and without having any good reason she knew that this bag would be connected to the words she had seen written on the flyleaves of the family Bible.
“Don’t go back out there. If it’s been there a few hundred years it’ll wait a few more days.” Her voice was sharper than she meant it to be.
“We can’t do that! Don’t you want to know what it is?” Skye pleaded but Audrey did not answer as she stared across the kitchen to the chair by the Aga which had been Uncle Henry’s place for so many years.
She was remembering the day when he had told her to fetch the family Bible from the library. “No one else knows it’s there,” he had said. “Look on the west wall, third shelf up, three feet in from the central upright. Bring it to me now and be sure you don’t open it.”
But she had opened it and she had seen the family details recorded there.
She had no idea how but he had known that she had looked and he had been very angry, grabbing the book from her hands. She had watched him feel for the first pages, rip them out and tear them to shreds. He had made her burn the pieces and he had made her swear that she would never tell a soul what she had read.
She had never told anyone, but she had put some of the unburned fragments in the treasures box in the drawer of her bedside table and they were there still, along with Rowan’s locket and the photographs that reminded her of the life she had had before her brother’s daughter had come to live at The Lodge.
“Don’t you want to know what it is and what’s in it?” Skye asked again.
“No. And nor should you. What’s past is past and must be left there. Whatever it is it was hidden for a reason. We should leave it be.” She had to try to put a stop to Skye’s curiosity.
“But we’ve got to look.”
“Just do as I say and leave it where it is.”
“But it’s been in the dry. It will get wet now, and it’s beginning to rain again.” Skye thought that what she said made sense and she was impatient to investigate. “I’ll just go out and check.” She opened a drawer and took out a handful of plastic carrier bags and headed back outside, for once ignoring her aunt’s anger.
Peering into the hole she saw the canvas bag. She reached in and felt for the handles. As it cleared the blackened stones she saw what seemed to be a large wooden box in the cavity. She decided to retrieve it later, when Audrey would not be in the kitchen to see it.
“Look what I’ve found,” she said cheerfully as she returned to the kitchen.
“I told you to leave it and I don’t want to know,” Audrey said petulantly, folding her arms and turning towards the window as Skye placed the canvas bag on the kitchen table.
“It looks very old doesn’t it?”
“Pretty much a statement of the obvious I would have thought,” Audrey replied tartly without turning to look.
“I can’t see anything on it to say who it belonged to.” Skye tried to be positive in the face of Audrey’s uncharacteristic reluctance to be interested. “There’s some faded writing but I can’t see what it could be.”
Audrey shrugged her shoulders. She was thinking of Uncle Henry and the solemn promise she had made to him.
“Let me take a photo, then I can enhance it. Something may be readable,” Skye suggested.
Whatever the contents of the bag, Audrey told herself, it was highly unlikely that Skye would find out the truth, if what she had read in the Bible that day had been the truth. “Well why don’t you do just that?” Frightened of the consequences, Audrey spoke more brusquely than she meant to.
It only took Skye seconds. “There are some letters but I can’t really make them out, and some numbers.”
Audrey turned slowly but did not look at the bag. Instead she watched Skye who was concentrating on the image on her phone.
“There are a couple of Cs and Xs.” Skye ran her finger over the screen, tracing the lines. “See?”
Audrey turned away again. She would not show that she was interested.
“It looks like it’s a date in Roman numerals. The first letter is an M and next to it there’s a D.”
As Skye read out the letters she thought her aunt’s silence odd. She was normally curious about everything.
“There are two Cs. Or is that an L? It’s definitely C C then another possible C then there are three Xs and an I and a V,” she finished with some triumph in her voice.
Audrey said nothing. She did not want to give any encouragement.
“MDCCLXXXIV or MDCCCXXXIV that’s either 1784 or 1834,” Skye translated. “Do you think it’s been in the chimney all those years?”
“I doubt it.” Audrey’s harsh reply did not encourage a response.
“Shall I open it?” Skye did not wait for an answer as she pulled gently at the leather straps. She reached in and pulled out a thick triangle of cloth and began to unfold it. “It’s a flag. Where’s that the flag of? Do you recognise it?” Skye asked, trying to tempt her aunt to be interested. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
When she received no answer Skye turned to her laptop, ever-present on the kitchen table. “The wonders of the internet,” she said. “Oh shit, there’s no electricity yet. I wonder when they’ll get it back on.”
“Use a reference book like any sensible person. And please don’t swear.”
Skye looked at the shelf of books Audrey used for completing crosswords and found one with a section on flags. “Corsica. It’s a Corsican flag,” she said after a few moments. “Apparently it’s the head of a moor in silhouette with a bandana.” Skye turned back to the bag.
“There’s another flag.” She unfolded another triangle of cloth. “Ah! I recognise this one,” she said as she carefully unfolded it. “This flag is French.”
Audrey turned around, accepting that she could not now stop Skye’s investigations. “If you insist on carrying on with this then at least get your facts right. Is it blue-white-red or red-white-blue? Are the stripes the same width or different? Unless you can answer those questions you cannot possibly tell what flag it is.”
“I’ll look it up later then.”
There was an uncomfortable silence as Skye turned back to the bag. “How about this! It’s a bit faded but it’s definitely one of those rosette things the revolutionaries in France wore on their hats.”
“They’re called cockades.”
“It’s a bit faded and a bit damaged.”
“So would you be if you you’d been through a revolution.”
“You think these have been through the French Revolution?”
“It seems likely, don’t you think? I mean, flags and a cockade are someone’s memories of a very difficult and dangerous time. And those mementoes were sufficiently important to whoever owned them for them to be preserved for posterity in the wall.”
“Who do you think hid it?”
“How on earth should I know?” Audrey snapped, annoyed that she had almost allowed herself to be swept up by Skye’s enthusiasm.
“Were any Laceys involved in the French Revolution? Perhaps whoever it was didn’t want anyone to know, so hid the evidence?”
“Ridiculous,” Audrey replied tartly. “With your interest in history you should have thought of the explanation.”
After a few moments Skye prompted her to continue. “Yes?”
“French officers captured in the Napoleonic wars were often given parole, one of them may have lived here and hidden these. Anyway, no one of the Lacey family lived at The Lodge for a generation or more after those wars ended.”
Audrey relaxed, satisfied that Skye would not believe that the bag could have anything directly to do with her family.
“There’s something else in here.” Skye pulled out a jacket. “It looks like part of a uniform.”
Audrey reached out and gently touched the folds of once-blue cloth, her curiosity getting the better of her fears. “I find it sad that we cannot know who last touched this, and when and why the bag was hidden in the chimney. We cannot ask questions of them and they cannot answer.”
Audrey turned away from Skye and closed her eyes. She saw again the words on the pages Uncle Henry had ripped to pieces, the fragments of which were still in her box of treasures. She could see the names Claude Olivierre and Napoleon Bonaparte as clearly as if the page was still in front of her.
Skye, sensing something of her aunt’s mood, carefully packed everything back into the canvas bag and refastened the buckles.
It was some time before Audrey spoke, and then it was as if to herself. “We spend our fourscore years, incomprehensibly minute dots in time, on a speck of land, on an insignificant planet, spinning around a minor star amongst billions of other stars in an inconsequential galaxy amongst billions of galaxies in a universe we cannot even begin to understand. Why do we ever think that anything we do can be of the slightest importance? The man who packed these things so carefully in this bag may have been very grand in his world and in his time, but even he was completely and utterly insignificant in the overall scheme of things. Why do any of us think we matter?”
“Audrey?” Skye asked after a few minutes of silence. She noticed tears falling unchecked down her aunt’s cheeks. “Are you OK?”
“You shouldn’t have opened that bag.”
“Why ever not?”
“Because I told you not to.”
“But I thought you—”
“No, young lady, you did not think. I told you to leave it alone. You disobeyed me. Young people should always understand that their elders know better. You disobeyed me and I disobeyed…” Audrey didn’t finish the sentence as she struggled to stand.
“Put the blessed bag away and get me to my room. I’m tired. You have made me do things I should never have done.”
Having no idea what her aunt meant, nor why she was so upset, Skye did as she was told.
When she returned to the kitchen, which now felt empty and unusually unwelcoming, she took the canvas bag and placed it in a corner of the little-used library, covering it with a heavy red velvet cloth. If it had upset Audrey so much she would not mention it again.
After two hours of worrying about the decision Skye retrieved the box she had seen in the chimney wall and placed it, with the canvas bag, under the red cloth in the library.
*
Skye did not know whether it was worry about the damaged chimney or the opening of the canvas bag, but from the day of that storm her aunt was a different person, spending most of every day in her room and showing little interest in anything.
“What about clearing the drive?” Skye had asked the next day. “I should go back to college the day after tomorrow.” When all the reply she got was a shrug of the shoulders she added that she would call a neighbour with a chainsaw. “What about the insurance claim? Do you want to get in touch with them or shall I?” Audrey shook her head slightly, so Skye decided she would do it that afternoon. “Do you want to call the builders? They need to see what they’ve done and start to put it all back together.” When all the response she got was another shrug of the shoulders Skye was really worried. “Don’t you want to yell at them or something?” Still there was no reply.
Skye became increasingly worried about her aunt, as she spent the last days of her holiday clearing the drive of fallen branches so the builders’ vans could get through.
*
Every afternoon for as long as she could remember, when she had arrived home from school or college, Skye had been greeted with a mug of tea, a jam sandwich and Audrey’s enthusiastic question “Well, what have you learned today?” It was a ritual both enjoyed, even when the answer was “Not a lot.”
After the storm they established a different routine. When Skye returned home the kitchen was dark and quiet. She would switch on the lights, boil a kettle and take mugs of tea up to her aunt who was, more often than not, still in her bed.
She was thinking that Audrey’s strange mood had lasted over a month as she pushed open the bedroom door.
“At last. Call a bloody ambulance will you? I’ve broken something.”
“How long have you been down there?” Skye asked anxiously. “Here, let me make you more comfortable.”
“Don’t touch me. Just call a bloody ambulance.”
How long Audrey had lain by her bed unable, or afraid, to move, Skye never discovered.
*
At the end of the Easter holidays Audrey was finally fit enough to leave hospital. When people from the Social Services tried to persuade Skye that her aunt would be better off in a home she told them she would look after her at The Lodge. She argued that since Audrey had given up so much to care for her it was only fair that she make Audrey’s last months as comfortable as possible.
Skye abandoned college and soon lost contact with her friends because from the day Audrey left hospital her time was filled with caring for her increasingly fragile and irritable aunt.
By the time Skye’s twenty-first birthday, the twenty-seventh of January 2014, passed Audrey’s last months had stretched to nearly four years and Skye had wondered many times whether she had made the right decision.
*
The end, when it came, came quickly.
Skye knew that Audrey’s mood was never good when Sir Arthur was on the televisions news, which he was increasingly often.
“That bloody brother of mine’s on the bloody television again spouting out his politics of bile and hate.”
Skye knew no answer was expected of her. “Shall I turn it off?”
“No. Leave it. Bloody man should be shot.” She settled back against the pillows, staring at the television with a look of undisguised hatred. “Ghastly man, who on earth can possibly take him seriously?”
Skye began tidying away the remains of Audrey’s breakfast, trying not to watch her father’s performance on the morning chat show.
“God-awful man,” Audrey shouted. “For God’s sake, why doesn’t someone shoot him?”
“Is there anything you want me to bring up?” Skye asked as she picked up the tray.
“If there was I’d have said,” Audrey snapped.
Skye knew it was the unremitting pain and the frustrations of her helplessness that had turned the Audrey she had known into the angry and selfish woman she had had to endure for the previous four years, and her mood was always at its worst when Sir Arthur was on the television.
“Why do you watch him when it upsets you so much?” she asked, but there was no reply as she left the room.
Ten minutes later she returned.
“I’ve…”
Skye looked at her aunt and knew that it was all over. She looked for signs of breathing but there was not even a slight rise and fall of the flat chest. She lifted a thin, veined wrist but felt no resistance and no pulse.
Skye reached for the remote control and the last thing she saw before she turned the television off was her father smiling in his self-satisfied way at the camera.
She felt it was almost as if he could see into the room where his sister lay dead.
*
In the days before the funeral Skye emptied Audrey’s room of all the equipment and medicines that had been accumulated over four years. When it was returned to the way it had been before the fall she began the task of emptying drawers and the wardrobe, sorting her aunt’s things into what she would keep, what could go to charity and what should be burned.
She left the drawer in the bedside table to last.
It had been Audrey’s private place and it took Skye some time to build up the courage to open it. When she did she found it empty apart from a few tissues and an old cigar box with some neat, childish writing on its lid. My Treasures Box, Audrey Catherine Lacey, aged 11 years and 7 months, Christmas Day 1940.
Tentatively lifting the lid she saw some small, square, black-and-white photographs. She recognised Audrey and her Uncle Henry and Aunt Rose, along with their daughter Rowan, but there were some people she did not recognise and she wondered who they might be.
There was a piece of ribbon, carefully rolled around a lock of blonde hair. Skye wondered whether it was Rowan’s or perhaps Audrey’s own hair. Ever since she had known her Audrey’s hair had been grey but perhaps she had been blonde when she was young.
After carefully laying out the photographs and the lock of hair on the bed Skye picked at some pieces of torn paper that she assumed was confetti until she looked more closely and could make out the writing, e Oliv and e Jon and ril 181 and lyn L. She looked in the box to see if there were more pieces and found some others on which she make out eone Bu and ivie and acci.
As she wondered why these scraps of paper were treasures to be kept Skye was hit by the realisation that all her questions would remain unanswered now Audrey was gone.
It was a few minutes before she could look back into the cigar box. She picked out a twist of paper which she opened to reveal a pendant on a gold chain. On the crumpled paper was written Rowan gave this to me at the end of her leave, May 5th 1943. Skye could not remember ever seeing her aunt wear it and wondered why that would be when it so obviously meant a lot to her.
Gingerly pulling the chain over her head she resolved she would always wear it, as a tribute to her aunt.
Turning the crumpled paper over she read Crem. No Godifying, just B’s 5th C slow. She recognised the reference to Audrey’s favourite music and was relieved to have some instructions for the funeral. The arrangements had been worrying her.
*
Two weeks later Skye received a phone call from Audrey’s solicitor.
“The funeral was very Audrey,” David Green said without preamble. “Have you recovered?”
There had only been the two of them in the crematorium the day before as the curtain had closed behind Audrey’s coffin, accompanied by a tinny recording of the slow movement of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto.
“She really didn’t want any more. She wrote it down on a piece of paper I found in her bedside table. I don’t know when she wrote it, she hasn’t been able to hold a pen for years.”
“Very Audrey,” the elderly solicitor repeated before continuing in business-like fashion “I’m afraid I have to tell you that your father and his wife have been in the office all morning.”
“He couldn’t make it to his sister’s funeral then?” She knew there could be no answer, so she continued. “I suppose they’re here to get me out of The Lodge?”
“Sir Arthur and Lady Barbara are here for the reading of the will.”
“And to see me out of The Lodge,” Skye persisted.
“Well, yes, I have no doubt that that is what they are after. They are insisting on a formal reading of Audrey’s will at The Lodge tomorrow morning at ten.”
“I don’t suppose I have any say in that?”
“I’m afraid not. None whatsoever.”
*
Skye was ready at ten o’clock the next morning. Fresh coffee was in the percolator, and four cups and saucers were arranged carefully on the table in the library along with a plate of freshly opened biscuits.
She grew increasingly angry as the minutes passed and there was no sign of a car on the drive. It was simple courtesy, Audrey would have said, to phone if they knew they were going to be late.
At half past eleven Skye stopped staring out of the window and opened a bottle of wine. She poured a glass and drank it down in one.
The clock in the hall was striking twelve when she heard the car on the gravel. She jumped up to open the door before the peace of the house could be disturbed by the ringing of the bell.
“Come in. I thought we’d be more comfortable in the library.” She did not want them in her kitchen.
As she ushered her father, his wife and David Green towards the library she could not help but notice how much attention Lady Barbara was paying to the house, peering in through doors and up the stairs.
“I’m afraid the coffee is cold because I was expecting you at ten. Can I get you a drink of any kind?” she asked with elaborate formality, as if entertaining welcome visitors.
“No, thank you, Skye. I don’t think we’ll be here too long,” David answered grimly.
Sir Arthur took the seat at the head of the table in the centre of the large book-lined room. As David Green and Lady Barbara took their places Skye found herself facing them all as if in an inquisition.
She looked from Sir Arthur to Lady Barbara and back to Sir Arthur but neither met her steady gaze.
She had nothing in common with the man who was her biological father, who had already been middle-aged when he had made his young assistant pregnant, and who looked far less distinguished in the flesh than he did on television.
“Sir Arthur, Lady Barbara.” She would never have dreamed of calling her father and his wife anything else. “It was such a shame you couldn’t make it to Audrey’s funeral.”
“Sir Arthur is a busy man.” Lady Barbara answered for her husband, managing not to look at his daughter. “It is not easy coming over to the Isle of Wight.”
After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence David Green began the business of the meeting. “I don’t think this should take too long. Audrey’s will is a simple one.”
“So I should expect. My sister could have had very little that was her own. She has lived off the generosity of others all her life.” Sir Arthur spoke for the first time since entering the house and Skye was relieved she didn’t have to respond when David Green came to Audrey’s defence.
“Your sister had much that was her own.” He paused as he looked down at the schedule in front of him. “Firstly she had the Lacey jewellery. Your grandmother, Lady Catherine, unfortunately sold much of the Victorian legacies but your mother acquired some nice pieces which, of course, she left to your sister and which Audrey leaves to her niece, Miss Skye Lacey.”
The thought crossed Skye’s mind that at least she could not be accused of stealing the pendant that she now always wore around her neck.
“That’s ridiculous. It should come to me.” Lady Barbara looked fiercely at her husband. “Some of it may be quite valuable.”
“Sir Arthur,” David explained carefully, “it was made quite clear in the wills of both your mother and your father, which I have had sight of, that the family jewellery went to your sister and she quite clearly wished it to go to Skye. She has also left all her other personal possessions to Miss Lacey.”
“What other personal possessions could she possibly have had?” Lady Barbara asked with what Skye could only think of as overbearing condescension.
“There are a number of pictures and a small collection of silverware that she has acquired over the years from her own personal income. She was also the sole beneficiary of her uncle’s will.”
“Henry? My uncle could have had nothing to leave. How could he have had anything? He went to war with nothing and then was a blind cripple for most of his life, living off my family’s charity,” Sir Arthur blustered.
“I’m not saying there is anything of any great value but there is some fine china, and of course his medals and the rather fine collection of books he acquired through the local sale room. It is all itemised.”
“What books? None of these.” Sir Arthur looked around the library. Shelving occupied all available wall space and every inch was occupied by books that showed no sign of having been touched for generations.
“You are absolutely correct, none of these,” David Green continued smoothly. “Audrey was always scrupulous in keeping her own personal effects separate from the Lacey estate. I have a definitive inventory of what belongs with the house and since only I and my father have dealt with her affairs for all her adult life I am well aware what is hers and what is not.”
“So all her little trinkets go to the girl but everything of any value is ours.” Lady Barbara wanted to move on.
“There is nothing else,” David answered quickly, looking at Sir Arthur. “As you are aware under the terms of your father’s will The Lodge and its contents are yours. What you had to abide by was the covenant that your sister be allowed to live here for as long as she wished.”
“And we have abided by that covenant,” Lady Barbara said, failing to hide the resentment in her voice. “But I have to say I am very disappointed that she’s let it get so run down.” Lady Barbara was more used to modern London properties. “It obviously requires a great deal of work before it is fit to be sold.”
Skye knew that that was what they would want to do but, hearing the plan voiced so blatantly stated made her look away for a few moments. She glimpsed the red cloth in the corner and wondered, for the first time in a while, why what lay under it had upset Audrey so much. She hurriedly turned back to concentrate on the conversation. She didn’t want anyone to question what lay under that cloth.
“Audrey was not a rich woman and she certainly did not live extravagantly. I know she did what she could in maintaining such a large property. I understand, Sir Arthur, that you have made no contribution to the upkeep?”
“Why would I? The covenant mentioned no obligation to do so and I have no wish to live here. I haven’t slept a night under its roof since I left for school in the winter of ’46. Nor, I may add, do I ever intend to. As Lady Barbara has indicated the place will be gutted and made habitable by the standards of this century, and then it will be sold.”
“That’ll cost a fortune,” his wife whispered.
Sir Arthur whispered something to his wife which neither Skye nor David could make out before adding, rather too loudly, “I will require the girl out by the end of this month.”
“The end of the month?” Skye had been determined to accept whatever was said without comment but that was too much of a surprise. “I can’t possibly go in three weeks!”
“And why not, may I ask?” Lady Barbara replied. “Sir Arthur is under no obligation to give you a home and his generosity has limits which have been reached.” Lady Barbara did not look at Skye as she spoke, instead focussing on the books on the shelves somewhere above Skye’s head.
“There’s too much to do! I have to finish clearing Audrey’s things…”
David intervened to save her before the enormity of what she was facing reduced her to tears.
“That is too soon, Sir Arthur. Today is June the fourth. I suggest you give your daughter until Michaelmas quarter day.”
“The end of September? That’s the best part of four months. That is far too long. No, she must be gone by the end of this month,” Lady Barbara answered, but David Green continued to address Sir Arthur.
“Your daughter needs time to adjust to her new circumstances, to clear her beloved aunt’s belongings and put into sale everything she doesn’t want to keep. She will then have to find a job. She may even wish to resume her education, you will know that she gave up a great deal to look after your sister. She certainly has to find somewhere to live. I think it reasonable to allow four months.”
Skye looked at David gratefully.
“No, I repeat, four months is too long. We need to make a start on the house and I cannot lose the summer.” Lady Barbara again looked at a point above Skye’s head.
“It wouldn’t look good though, would it?” Skye decided to fight.
“What wouldn’t?”
“If I went to the press.”
“What?”
“I could go to the press, explain my relationship to Sir Arthur. I could explain how he is kicking me out of the only home I’ve ever known with virtually nothing. It wouldn’t look good, would it? And the papers are already gearing up for the general election next May. Do you really want them and the phone-ins to be full of all that?” Skye knew she was on dangerous ground. She had no idea how to go about telling anyone, but she knew it was the sort of threat Audrey would have made.
For the first time Sir Arthur looked his daughter in the eye and in that instant judged that she was in no position to make trouble for him.
“The end of this month,” he said again, firmly, and looked away.
“And what about the expenses investigations?” Skye continued to fight her corner. “I bet you’ve claimed for The Lodge and I know you never gave Audrey a penny. You’ve just admitted as much.”
Sir Arthur had been made aware that the Committee on Members’ Expenses had reopened the investigation into accusations that he had been producing bogus invoices over a period of at least fifteen years. But men with influence on that committee were his allies and the delays they created meant that they would do nothing in this parliament. After the election in May 2015, his position would be even more powerful and no one would dare bring any accusations against him.
“The end of June,” he repeated firmly.
Skye looked to the David Green for help but her gaze was not met.
She stood and, as calmly as she could, asked them all to leave. “We have obviously covered everything there is to talk about. I will be out by the end of June so please leave me in peace for what time I have left at The Lodge.”
*
Returning to the kitchen she opened her laptop, intending to create a spreadsheet of all that she had to do before leaving, but she stared at the blank screen unable to decide where to start.
She reached for the half-empty bottle of wine and decided to allow herself a few hours to wallow in self-pity.