The Legacy, Caroline Bond [popular books to read txt] 📗

supposed to live?’ The red rash creeping up her neck confirmed her rising agitation.

‘Look. I’m not saying sell it immediately.’ Noah banged his chair back down on its legs. ‘But it’s the biggest asset. It’s been too big for Dad for years. Five bedrooms, the grounds. It should have a family living in it.’

‘It has. Or at least it used to!’

As always, Noah chose to ignore the signs that Chloe was teetering on the edge. He ploughed on regardless. ‘Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just saying what other people are thinking. Liv, surely you agree?’

Liv spun her mug through 360 degrees, buying time. As she did so, she noticed the old stain on the tabletop – caused by paint seeping through her art homework onto the veneer. Noah was right. The house needed to be sold; it was too full of the past. It was probably worth in the region of £600,000 to £700,000, which made it by far the biggest asset. But the complications of a newly bereaved and disinherited Megan and a currently homeless, partner-less, rootless Chloe did complicate the matter slightly. Never mind what their mother would say. To date, Eloise had said surprisingly little, which was puzzling Liv. Their mother was not normally one to keep her own counsel. Liv pushed that thought to one side for the time being. They needed to agree an outline of what they were going to do, before they said anything to their mother. If they presented anything other than a united front, it was going to get messy.

‘Can we take a few steps back. If I’m being be honest, the will shocked me. Not so much the contents, though even they seem odd to me, but more the cloak-and-dagger approach of the whole thing. Whenever Dad talked to me about his affairs, I thought, like you said, Noah’ – olive branch waved – ‘that he was on top of it all. When he got the diagnosis, I know that ramped up his desire to put his house in order. From the way he spoke about it, I got the impression that he’d broken down everything in detail. Made everything clear, in terms of who was to get what. And when I looked through his paperwork, it was very organised. But the will… and that bizarre Statement of Wishes. Well, it’s just so out of character.’

Chloe nodded. ‘And the fact that it’s a new will. When did the solicitor say he changed it?’

Liv started looking for the exact date. The revision bothered her as well. She had read though the file Ms Hewson had given her. The original will had been written back in 1982, soon after Liv was born. It was revised, but only marginally, in 1985 after Noah’s birth, and then again in 1993 after Chloe arrived on the scene. At which point it had been simple. Everything to Eloise, apart from a series of bequests to close friends and local charities. Then there was a gap of more than twenty years. At the end of which he’d had his midlife crisis, lost his head, fallen for Megan, abandoned his marriage, driven their mother away and, far too quickly, installed his young lover in their home. Liv had been shocked and distressed to see how, immediately after the decree nisi came through, their father had rewritten the original will to reflect that seismic shift. He had cut out their mother, brutally and efficiently, as if she was something cancerous.

They were all aware of the financial wrangling around the time of the divorce – it had been impossible not to be. It had been heartbreaking to see their parents descending into the mire. They had sided with their mother, of course. How could they not? It had been a huge relief when the pair of them finally agreed a financial settlement and something that vaguely resembled a truce.

What the actual divorce settlement had been, they’d never found out – which was a reflection of their parents’ old-fashioned reticence to discuss money and, very possibly, an indication that their mother had taken their dad to the cleaner’s. Whatever the settlement was, it had plainly been enough for Eloise to start a new life, in her own home – a very nice two-bedroomed town house in York – and set up a new business. It was something to do with professional development. Liv still didn’t fully understand what their mother actually did, for the extortionate daily rate she claimed to charge.

After the hatchet job of cutting their mother out of the original will and reapportioning his estate with percentage legacies for each of them, and any subsequent grandchildren, plus a slightly revised list of bequests to specific charities and close friends, there had been no further changes. Until the last revision five months before his death. When he had filleted the will of every detail, and had made them executors instead. An action that seemed totally out of character, and pointless.

And here was an even stranger thing. Having gone to the effort of rewriting his will – not once, but twice – at neither point had their father so much as mentioned Megan. If Megan really was the love of his life, the woman for whom it had been worth ripping his marriage apart, why was she not a beneficiary? It made no sense, especially after her years of caring for him through his illness. Liv was struggling to find a rational reason for his behaviour. Had his awareness of his own mortality made him reassess? Had he weighed up his life and reflected on his decisions? Perhaps this new, final will was a sign of his regret at being so blinded by his passion for Megan? Perhaps it was his way of trying to compensate for breaking up the family?

But that left Megan as their problem – which was hardly fair. She must be feeling so abandoned by their father, served up to their mercy, or their spite. And