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

on the kitchen windowsill, where they got wet, the carefully composed messages of condolence becoming illegible blurs. Megan exhibited the same disinterest in the barrage of sympathy cards that arrived. She left them unopened on the side, piling up, a small mountain of cream and pale-purple envelopes.

By the Thursday evening Chloe had had enough. She simply couldn’t tolerate the lack of respect for her father’s memory any longer. She opened and put up the cards, reading each one as she did so. They were from colleagues, family friends, distant relatives – a parade of familiar and unrecognised names. Many of them had taken the time to write lovely things about her dad: what an honour it had been to know him, work with him, learn from him. There was much praise for his contribution to teaching, the inspiration he provided, the rigour and commitment he brought to the profession. There were also plenty of funny, more personal recollections, most relating to his cricketing days and his penchant for expensive Scotch. The messages conjured up a man who had been respected and liked. The cards made Chloe feel both proud – they deserved to be on display – and sad, because the man captured in the messages was very different from the one who had been her father at the end.

There was a grand total of two cards from Megan’s family. Chloe had no qualms about opening those as well. Why should she? Megan plainly was not bothered. The one from Megan’s father was succinct to the point of impersonality: Sorry for your loss. Love, Dad x. Megan’s sister, Sarah, had written a much more heartfelt note about love and bereavement – she seemed to have some personal experience of it. Chloe couldn’t remember her father ever mentioning Megan having a sister. Not that he was prone to discussing anything that touched on the seismic shift that his affair, and subsequent choice of Megan over their mother, had occasioned. Chloe and Noah had often speculated about Megan’s family’s attitude to her relationship with Jonathan. Having your daughter or sister ‘run off’ with a married man nearly twice her age couldn’t have gone down well. Chloe wondered if they would attend the funeral – a funeral for which there was, as yet, no date and no organisation. She felt a flutter of panic.

It was out of her hands. She could do what she could do, nothing more, so she focused on the job in hand.

Cards sorted, Chloe gathered together the bouquets, unwrapped them and set about arranging the myriad flower stems properly. There were so many that she had to use a random assortment of jars, jugs and mugs from the back of the kitchen cupboards to hold them all. Pleased with her efforts, she put a flower arrangement in each of the rooms, even the bathroom.

The act of sorting the flowers and the cards, as much as it was a solitary task, brought Chloe some comfort. When she’d finished she sat on the stairs. The whole house was filled with the scent of lilies and roses. It finally looked, and smelt, as it should do: a house of mourning. Not that she knew what one of those should look like. Her father was the first person she had loved who had died. A sob rose in her throat. The sombre atmosphere and the silence settled on her, bringing her loneliness to the surface. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and tried her mother again. It went straight to voicemail. She didn’t leave another message – it felt too needy – but as she sat on the step and listened to the quiet, Chloe admitted that was exactly what she was.

Her mother had been frustratingly unforthcoming all week. It was almost as if, having drawn close to her children in the first few shock-filled days after Jonathan’s death, Eloise had once again taken a step backwards, retreating, as she so often did, into her work and her routines and her life far away from Scarborough.

Their mother’s withdrawal had forced Chloe to rely on her siblings. And, as always, that experience had been a bumpy and curiously unsatisfying one.

Liv had been in contact daily. In fact it had felt more like hourly. She’d sent a steady stream of precisely composed emails, often with attachments, that provided very little in the way of comfort. Indeed, they brought more pressure than peace into Chloe’s solitary existence. Liv’s lengthy missives usually contained requests for very specific pieces of information from Megan. Information that was essential. Liv wanted everything available and in order, in advance of their planned get-together at the weekend. Chloe deeply resented her own designated role as go-between. Discussing anything personal with Megan was difficult at the best of times; and this, most definitely, was not the best of times.

Chloe had tried, but Megan’s responses to the many and varied requests were always vague. When Chloe asked for some specific pension paperwork that Liv wanted, Megan mumbled something about sorting it out when she had time; and when Chloe prompted her, again, about speaking to the bank, all she got, by way of response, was an incline of the head that could easily have indicated ‘no’ as much as ‘yes’. As the days passed and there were no files forthcoming and no calls made, it became clear that Megan had no intention of doing anything Chloe asked of her.

Liv was not happy, as she made abundantly clear when she called. Her ‘You have to be more direct with Megan’ was no help whatsoever. And when Chloe, in a fit of exasperation brought on by the stress of it all, had yelled at Megan’s retreating back that they really needed access to her father’s files, and that they had every right to see them, as executors of the will – another useful ‘Liv observation’ – Megan had stopped, turned and stared, dark-eyed, at Chloe, before saying, slowly and very deliberately, ‘It’s all in