‘I’m sorry, could you just wait a second—’
The man in the woolly hat shook his head, balled his fists and banged them on the countertop.
‘No, no, no. If I wait much longer I’ll be dead. If you’d answer your stupid phones I wouldn’t have to show up here in the first place.’
Annie Collins, a phone pressed against her ear as an old lady coughed and began to repeat her account number for the fourth time, could only give a grim smile at the irony of it all.
‘I’ll be with you in a moment,’ she said to the man, while trying to type the woman’s number into a computer. As she pressed a seven instead of a six and then lost her concentration, she silently cursed. ‘I’m afraid we’re a little short staffed today. Someone called in sick—’
‘Let me a guess, a little sniffle? I bet if I open their MySpace I’ll see pictures of Thorpe Park—’
‘Could you repeat that again?’ Annie said to the woman on the phone, wondering at the same time who still used MySpace. ‘Sir, I’ll be right with you.’
‘That’s the third time you’ve said that. Where’s your manager? No doubt it’s some little whippersnapper who hasn’t even had a shave yet. Well, I’ve got a few strips to tear off him. Hey, you over there!’
‘Sir, please!’ Annie said, standing up, wishing she could catch the eye of the security guard, but he was outside the main doors, chuckling as he peered at his phone.
‘I’d prefer it if you called me madam,’ came a voice from the phone. ‘I know you young people are all confused these days, but I’m a bit more traditional.’
‘I’m sorry, Madam,’ Annie said, a little too loudly.
‘I’ll climb over there and drag him out myself,’ said the man in the woolly hat, leaning on the countertop as he tried to get one leg up, knocking a box of pens on to the floor.
‘Sir, no!’
‘No, really, I prefer madam.’
Annie put the phone receiver down. Someone else had pressed the alarm, and now Geoff the security guard came running back in through the door as the man tried to lever himself up, managing to get one hand over the top of the glass screen as his legs dangling off the edge of the countertop. As Geoff reached him, the man let go and slid down to the floor. He let out a sudden gasp then twisted around, hands over his heart, a look of horror on his face.
‘I think I’m having a heart attack,’ he groaned.
‘Ambulance!’ Geoff shouted, loud enough to give someone else a heart attack, as the man in the woolly hat fixed Annie with a stare that seemed to say, this is your fault.
Annie could only stare dumbstruck as chaos began to ensue, alarms blaring, people running back and forth, screaming and shouting and not staying calm in any way whatsoever. Feeling caught in the eye of an impromptu banking maelstrom, she lifted the phone to her ear, only to hear the old lady snap, ‘Your name is Annie Collins, isn’t it? I’m just checking because I’d like to make a complaint….’
A scattering of circulars on her mat seemed to have been put there merely to trip her. Annie kicked them aside as she went into her pokey bedsit and sat down on the bed. It was only six o’clock but if she fell asleep now she might get a few decent hours before the police sirens woke her up. It didn’t help that her only window didn’t quite shut properly, but Friday nights were always the worst, even if at least tomorrow was Saturday, meaning she didn’t have to go into work.
As she lay on the bed, however, all she could think about was the look of horror in the eyes of the man with the woolly hat as he clutched his heart. She’d hoped he was faking it to punish her inattentiveness, but he had still been staring with a wild look in his eyes when the ambulance pulled up outside and the paramedics rushed in to aid him.
According to her boss, who had been in touch with the hospital, he had been stabilised and would make a complete recovery, but Annie still felt bad, as though it had somehow been her fault.
With a sigh, she stood up and went to her little kitchenette, noticing to her frustration that the fridge door had failed to close properly again, meaning her milk had likely gone off. She closed it with an angry jerk of her knee, which in turn knocked one of the magnets and the postcard it was holding loose.
It was from her cousin Maggie, currently enjoying a honeymoon in the south of France with Henry, her perfect new husband. Annie had met him only once, a few months ago during one of Maggie’s rare trips south from her new home in Scotland to visit some family. Annie had been somewhat overawed by Henry—much preferring him to Maggie’s previous boyfriend, Dirk, who had practically dripped with slime and been underhand enough to ask for Annie’s phone number while Maggie was in the toilet at a family New Year’s gathering—but all his apparent perfectness had been easier to temper with the fact that he was a reindeer farmer. As far as Annie was concerned, it was long overdue that Father Christmas got with the times and bought himself a more modern sleigh, perhaps one made by Tesla that ran off batteries or solar panels. In time, perhaps, Rudolph and his smelly chums would be relegated to a Christmas afterthought.
There was nothing in the fridge to eat except some leftover curry, which was probably a little warm now to be safe. It looked like chips again, for the third night this week. Still, mushy peas counted as a vegetable, didn’t they?
She went to the door and reached up to take her thickest jacket down off the hook. The nearest chippy was a ten minute walk, and the weather had closed in over the afternoon, bringing with it a chilly November wind.
As she went to slip it over her arm, she dropped it on the floor. Bending to pick it up, she found herself scooping up a handful of letters at the same time, and turned to toss them into a basket she kept by the door which once a week she emptied into a recycling bin outside work.
She frowned at one that looked official, then realised it was the same scamming law firm as before. The one that claimed she had inherited a manor house in the Lake District.
The first one, addressed to her old married name, which had shown up in the second week of September, had made her smile. She had read it all the way through, wondering when the hit was going to come, the “we only need you to send us five thousand pounds and we can release the deeds to you” bit. Instead, there was just a phone number, asking her to contact them, because they had further details. She had ignored it, of course, and tossed the letter into the recycling basket, hoping it ended up part of a decent roll of toilet paper.
The second letter had been pretty much a repeat of the first. This time she had tossed it straight into the bin and felt a little guilty about it later.
It had been another long day at work, made worse by spotting a guy during her lunch hour who looked a little like Troy.
It wasn’t him, of course, but it had been a bit of a shock.
According to his Facebook, which Annie would usually stalk after a couple of glasses of wine, he was living in Malaga with a beautiful young Spanish wife, enjoying easy days on the beach and cool, wine bar evenings. Probably there would soon be a child on the way—something Annie had never been able to give him during their five years of marriage—and their life would be seven shades of perfect.
There was no way whatsoever he would be wandering around the Exeter shops on a Tuesday afternoon, but nevertheless his doppelganger had ruined Annie’s day, even before the crazy guy and his heart attack had put a big fat cherry on the top.
‘Sod it,’ she muttered, putting her coat back on the hook and taking the letter over to the kitchen, where she found a packet of supermarket own-brand custard creams in a cupboard and the remains of a bottle of wine warming in the fridge. ‘Let’s be a princess.’
She sat down on her IKEA recliner, stuffed a biscuit into her mouth, and opened the letter, cringing as she always did at the sight of her old married name:
Dear Mrs. Anne Weathersby,
Would you please get in touch with us at Barnsley and Sons Solicitors at your earliest opportunity? Your grandfather’s estate needs to be executed.
‘So do I,’ Annie said, taking a large slug of wine, then immediately breaking into a fit of coughing as a piece of the biscuit she was still chewing went down the wrong way.
You have been assigned as the sole beneficiary of your grandfather’s will, and it is your responsibility to take ownership of it. Should you then decide to sell or lease the land and its property, we can be of assistance with that.
‘I bet you can,’ Annie said. ‘How much?’
In addition, your grandfather employed several members of staff, the ongoing status of which needs to be established—
‘And for that we’ll need your credit card number,’ Annie said, rolling her eyes, preparing to rip the paper in two. After all, it was a load of rubbish. Her grandparents on both sides were long dead.
—so please get it touch at your earliest convenience and we can discuss the transferring of the deeds into your name.
‘I bet you can,’ Annie muttered, stuffing another biscuit into her mouth and spitting crumbs all over the floor.
Lastly, and on a personal note, I would like to congratulate you. Your grandfather was a customer of our company for many years, and we look forward to serving you in the future, and helping to meet the ongoing needs of Stone Spire Hall and its Estate.
The letter was signed by someone called Barbara Beddingfield. Annie held it up to the light, looking for little indentations in the paper to prove it had been written by a real human with a pen, rather than printed off a computer.
It certainly looked like it, but what did it matter? It was still a scam.
She screwed it up and tossed it over her shoulder, then looked out of her second floor window at the side wall of the neighbouring building.
She smiled. She quite fancied being a lady of the manor. Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a big mansion with fields and gardens and orchards?
Wishful thinking. She was Annie Collins, formerly Weathersby, thirty-seven, divorced, a bedsit-living bank clerk with no car, boyfriend, or future. But Christmas was coming, after all. Perhaps she’d find a handsome prince in her stocking. Knowing her luck, however, he would probably be on the run from the police, his costume stolen from the bargain rail in TK Maxx.
She realised she had already finished what was left of the wine, so got up to check in the cupboard beside the sink to see if there was another stray bottle hiding at the back. Alas, the cupboard was bare. She would need to make a run to the corner shop if she wanted to get obliterated, but it had just started to rain.
Her phone was lying on the floor underneath the chair. When she reached down to pick it up, however, she found a lump of screwed up paper sitting on top of it.
The letter.
It must have bounced off the wall. With a smile, she wondered if it was a sign.
She picked up the crumpled ball, smoothed it out on her lap, and dialed the number before she could chicken out. Only as she did so did she remember it was nearly seven p.m. on a Friday night, and any kind of law firm would surely be closed.
She was about to hang up when a woman’s voice said, ‘Hello?’
‘Ah, hello … this is Annie Collins. I’m just calling you because you sent me a letter—’
‘Annie Collins? I don’t know—’
‘It, ah, used to be Annie Weathersby, but I go by Collins these days.’
‘Miss Collins, I do apologise. So, about your inheritance … if we could just confirm your identification—’
Annie rolled her eyes. ‘Okay, so I need to send you a copy of my passport, is that right? And I suppose you need my bank account number? Sure, don’t worry, I’ll put them in an envelope with a key to my flat. Although I’m not sure what you could do with that.’
‘Miss Collins—’
Annie ended the call and let out a long sigh. A scam, as she had thought. Well, it had been too good to be true, which, of course, meant it couldn’t be true.
Her phone was buzzing in her hand, Barbara Beddingfield’s number flashing up. Annie declined the call, put her phone on the countertop, then got up to find her umbrella. Sometimes it was best to dream small, and finding another glass of wine in her hand was a good enough dream for a rainy Friday night.