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

by your lack of impartiality.’ He interlaced his fingers with hers. It felt good to be listened to, in the dark, with the covers forming a warm cocoon around them. ‘We haven’t even talked about losing Dad, not really – only his money and who gets it.’ It was true. That was shameful. ‘When Chloe gets all weepy and panicky, I feel irritated. And Noah’ – she felt fresh fury and frustration with her brother – ‘I know there’s something going on. I don’t know whether he and Josie are having a rough patch, or if he’s got problems with his job or debts that he’s covering up, but he simply won’t talk to me. And he’s drinking too much. You must have noticed. The slurring, the stumbling around. I know he likes a drink, but I’ve not seen him this bad for ages. I’ve had enough, Angus. It’s awful to say it, but I can’t do it any more.’ She heard the wobble in her voice. ‘And I’m not going to.’

‘Hey,’ he squeezed her fingers, ‘I get it. I understand. But you have to remember that it’s not your job to fix them. They rely on you too much, as it is.’ He paused. ‘We all do.’ He kissed her. ‘But that’s what happens when you’re Superwoman.’ He closed his eyes and kissed her again – kept them closed after the kiss ended. She was relieved; mindless comfort was all she wanted, all she could cope with. They lay, face-to-face, not talking, until he fell asleep and she slipped out of his embrace.

Chapter 52

IT WAS nearly over.

The house was dark and quiet, all of them in bed.

The solicitor in the morning.

Then they would be done.

Eloise had left hours ago. Megan had heard the front door slam and watched her car pull away up the drive – washing her hands of them, and the will, with a spray of shingle and the blink of an indicator light. It seemed like a small gesture of solidarity – a judgement on Jonathan’s children and their behaviour. Having an ally, of sorts, after all this time was a strange feeling. The irony that it had turned out to be Eloise was not lost on Megan. Jonathan would have been dumbfounded. The thought raised the ghost of a smile. In the café Eloise had, in her own haughty way, exonerated Megan of at least a portion of her guilt. Megan hadn’t seen that coming, or expected it to matter so much. But as she stood by the window, she realised it did. Eloise was the only person Megan had ever knowingly hurt. To hear her say that she was glad Megan had been with Jonathan at the end was a curious comfort – even though it wasn’t true.

It was cold in the bedroom, the heating had clicked off and the window was still ajar, but Megan couldn’t rouse herself to get up and close it. Something about the coldness in the room made her think of cleanliness… her mind made the jump to godliness. Sunday school teaching really did sow its seeds deep down in the cracks. Jonathan had been an avowed atheist – religion being far too irrational and too marked with mankind’s fingerprints for him. He believed that when you were gone, you were gone.

So had she.

The moonlight rippled across the ceiling like water. She closed her eyes and listened to the waves. She knew that she would forever associate the sound of the sea with Jonathan’s death.

He had been dead when she entered the room.

Still.

Silent.

Gone.

She’d felt a flush of intense heat at the sight of him. She remembered feeling confused, thinking grief should surely be cold! Lisa had stood behind her, waiting for a reaction, a word, a sign that Megan had grasped he was dead. Her emotions began to push their way through the thick blanket of shock – not sadness or grief, but something red-hot and sharp: jealousy.

‘Why didn’t you wake me?’

Lisa’s voice was disembodied, calm. ‘I’m sorry. There wasn’t time. It was very quick. I think it was his heart.’

‘His heart?’ What right had Lisa to talk about his heart?

‘A cardiac attack, I think. It has to have been something like that, for it to be so sudden.’

Megan’s sense of injustice was so huge that it engulfed every other emotion. ‘You were with him?’

‘Yes.’ Lisa paused. ‘He asked me to sit with him, like he does sometimes when he can’t sleep. We chatted for a bit, then he dozed off. I was about to leave. He woke up and said he felt unwell. He obviously had some pain. I was about to offer him something to ease it, then come and fetch you, but there wasn’t time. He went quiet, curled up on his side. It was over in a matter of moments.’

‘What do you mean, he curled up?’

‘Just that. He sort of contracted.’

Megan couldn’t breathe.

‘I held his hand. Then he was gone. He didn’t struggle. Not for long.’

Megan felt the phrase lodge like a splinter in her brain, knowing that it would be embedded there for ever. ‘Did he say anything?’

‘No.’ The cold air coming in through the open windows smelt of the sea. ‘There wasn’t time.’

It was over.

He was gone.

Lisa had held his hand as he died. Hers was the last face Jonathan saw. Megan fought the thought. ‘This doesn’t make sense. He was okay when I left him.’ He had been. There had been no indication, nothing at all, that it was going to be different from any other night. That’s why she’d gone up to bed. But there was no arguing with Lisa because there he was, Jonathan, lying on his side. A body, not a person.

‘Megan.’ Lisa made a move towards her, but Megan shifted away sharply. That didn’t deter Lisa from trying to offer comfort, but this time without the physical overture. ‘It sometimes happens this way. I know it’s a dreadful shock. But, for Jonathan, it’s over now. Quickly.