The Bowness Bequest Read online

  And Frances? She was the spark that had set this in motion, the hovering ghost who needed to be exorcised. ‘She wrote me a letter,’ said Simmy again. ‘About the book. Do you want to see it?’

  Angie took a steadying breath. ‘If you like.’ She took it and read it quickly. ‘No wonder the girls are upset. She always vowed she would treat them exactly the same as the boys – and now she’s gone back on it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘When she adopted them – she made a great song and dance about them being completely the same as her biological children. So did Kit, in his way.’

  Simmy’s head started to hum. ‘Adopted? Did you say adopted?’ She tried to think back to those seaside holidays, the big noisy family, the three boys and the two smaller sisters. ‘How old was I then?’

  ‘Six or seven. She had George when you were almost five, and wasn’t willing to risk any more boys. So they adopted the two girls, sisters, fifteen months apart in age. Hannah was two and a half and Lynn just over a year. They were terribly sweet, with all that frizzy hair.’

  ‘But they look so like Kit. Everybody must assume they’re his.’ She paused, trying to absorb the sudden revision of old assumptions. ‘So it was a secret? Is that why nobody ever told me?’

  ‘They don’t really look like him. And no, it was never a secret at all. You were too young to understand. And there was no sense in making an issue of it. You never asked, so we never bothered to explain. You were very incurious as a child, you know. Suddenly, from one year to the next, there were two new Hendersons, and you just took it as normal. We thought Christopher might talk to you about it, but apparently he never did.’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ said Simmy, with a flash of desperation. ‘I should be able to, and I don’t. As far as I’m concerned, the girls were always there. I must have thought that was how it was in families – babies just turned up, even though never in ours. I do remember wishing we could have one or two. I wanted to be a big sister.’

  ‘Don’t start on that,’ warned Angie. ‘You got plenty of contact with other children. Not just the Hendersons, either. You were always having little friends coming to the house.’

  It was true. Other little girls had taken well to the way Simmy’s mother welcomed them in with a casual goodwill. She fed them, gave them full rein in house and garden, and dismissed any phobias or allergies with robust scepticism. If they fell over, she swabbed the mud and grit off and set them back on their feet. Living in Worcestershire at the time, there were tamer patches of countryside to explore than out here in the wilder north-west. Simmy shuddered at the sudden image of small friends tumbling into rushing becks or getting irrevocably lost on the fells, if they had been living in Cumbria.

  Angie went on, ‘And Frances always wished you were hers. She was madly jealous in the hospital, when I got a girl and she got Christopher. She’d assumed all along hers was a girl, you see.’

  ‘I know.’ That much of the story at least was familiar. ‘Which must be why she’s left me this,’ she summarised.

  ‘And the flowers. You being a florist,’ said Angie drily. ‘And her girls being utterly unartistic, and liable to try to sell it.’

  ‘I won’t do that.’ She gently stroked the page which lay open in front of her. ‘Look at this honeysuckle. She’s made it seem really alive. I can almost smell it.’

  ‘It’s not desperately good, though, is it? Not like those famous flower pictures you see on birthday cards and calendars and whatnot. I don’t think Fran’s mother was ever a proper artist.’

  ‘It’s good enough for me,’ Simmy defended. ‘I’ll always treasure it.’

  ‘Well, there you are, then,’ said Angie vaguely. ‘Everybody’s happy.’

  ‘They’re not, though. Kit wasn’t terribly friendly, and the girls were almost hostile. It was all quite awkward. Christopher was the only one who was nice to me.’

  ‘You and he were always meant for each other, you know. We arranged it the day you were born. It was very perverse of you not to co-operate better than you did.’

  ‘Hush, woman!’ said Russell from his warm chair. ‘You sound like an idiot, saying things like that.’

  Simmy merely smiled. It was an old joke, which she and Christopher had long since grown used to – although she had eventually realised how nearly it had prevented the two of them from developing a bond that went beyond the fraternal. They had known each other too well, so that when they had suspected themselves to be in love, confusion overwhelmed them. And then she had married Tony and Christopher had married Sophie. Simmy’s marriage had outlasted Christopher’s by several years, but both were over now.

  ‘Christopher and Sophie!’ Angie had mocked. ‘What a mouthful.’

  Sophie had been of mixed race, a loud and impatient woman, who had wasted no time after the divorce in finding a man more compliant with her wishes. She had three children in four years, and nobody really blamed her.

  ‘I’m terribly hungry,’ Simmy realised. ‘The Hendersons didn’t give me so much as a cup of tea.’

  ‘You always come here and take our food,’ said Russell. ‘What do you think we are?’

  She looked at him, unsure as to his tone. ‘I think you’re my parents,’ she said quietly.

  ‘There’s a bit of beef stew left over,’ said Angie. ‘Put it in the microwave. I’ll be glad to get it finished. Your father doesn’t eat as well as he used to. Miserable little helpings he has these days.’

  Simmy’s concern about Russell had mutated some time ago into a mixture of acceptance and low-level impatience. She had to perpetually remind herself – and her mother – that he couldn’t help the way he was, that there was nothing calculated or deliberate in the things he said. The shift in personality was mostly a matter of degree. He had always spoken his mind, just as his wife did, but his mind had generally been benign. He was a fount of knowledge when it came to local history, and a stickler for correct grammar. Now the sense that something was awry made him irritable and suspicious. He would flare into sudden panic, convinced that burglars or arsonists were out to get him. A good deal of this paranoia was rooted in actual events over the past year, where Simmy and he himself had found themselves under threat, and even direct attack.

  ‘I don’t get hungry any more,’ he said. ‘It’s something I regret.’

  Simmy ate the stew quickly, and took her leave. There was a lot to think about, she concluded, as she drove up the hill to her home in Troutbeck.

  Chapter Three

  Bonnie arrived in the shop bright and early the next morning, despite the November gloom. Clouds sat heavily on the fells, shutting out the light, and damp dripped from the bare branches. There was no colour in the gardens on the road into Windermere. But the girl was like a beacon in a vivid outfit of red and blue. Pale-skinned and light-haired herself, she should have been swamped by the flamboyant clothes, but the force of her personality won through. Her eyes sparkled and she almost bounced with energy.

  ‘What’s come over you?’ asked Simmy, feeling middle-aged and lethargic by comparison.

  ‘Oh, nothing. Christmas. Ben. Spike. Everything seems so … happy.’ She sighed and then smiled. ‘Am I tempting fate, do you think?’

  ‘Probably. But maybe not. It’s nice to see such a cheery face on a day like this.’

  ‘Did I miss anything yesterday?’

  ‘Not really. Hardly any customers.’

  ‘Well, here’s one now, look. And it’s only ten past nine.’

  Simmy did a double take at the man coming into the shop. It was almost a rerun of the previous afternoon, but not quite. This was a younger, chubbier version of Christopher Henderson. The middle brother, Eddie, who had never entirely come into focus for Simmy, being so much more ordinary than his siblings. She felt a strong inclination to take a step back, and if possible escape through the back room and into the little yard outside.

  ‘Not exactly a customer, I fear,’ she murmured to Bonnie. Then, louder, ‘Hell
o, Eddie. What is it now?’

  He managed to look reproachful and exasperated all at the same time. His large face and wide-spaced eyes were very much a likeness, as was the colourless hair, kept rather long. ‘That’s not very welcoming,’ he said. ‘I gather I missed you yesterday.’

  ‘I thought you’d gone back to … wherever it is. If this is about that book—’

  ‘It’s not. My mother was free to leave anything she liked to anybody she wanted. None of us could be trusted with the thing, anyway. My kids would wreck it within minutes. George would just lose it, and the girls didn’t even know it existed.’

  Which just leaves Christopher, thought Simmy. And he’s too unsettled to be saddled with something like that.

  ‘So?’ she prompted.

  He glanced at Bonnie, clearly wanting to speak privately. She stood her ground like a protective terrier. ‘I had a phone call from Dad last night. Everybody had gone off and left him on his own, and he was going over everything in his mind, the way he does. He’s coped amazingly well with Mum dying, but the change to his life is a lot to get to grips with. I can’t see him managing, to be honest.’

  So? she wanted to scream at him. What does this have to do with me? But she waited quietly for enlightenment.

  ‘The thing is,’ he went on, clasping his hands together, almost wringing them in his embarrassment. ‘The thing is, I wondered whether your mother could keep an eye on him a bit more. I know she’s got your dad to keep her busy, and the guesthouse and everything. But if she could drop in every few days for a chat about old times, I know he’d appreciate it.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask her? Why me?’

  ‘He’s scared of her,’ said Bonnie, shamelessly getting involved. ‘Like most people.’

  ‘Not at all,’ he snapped at her. ‘But it seemed sensible to run it past Simmy first. And I wasn’t sure what would be a good time – or how to go about it. Phone? In person?’

  ‘Text. Email,’ added Bonnie with naked sarcasm.

  He gave her a stern adult-to-child look, which made no impact on her at all. He was barely old enough to be her father, Simmy reflected. And he looked even younger than his thirty-six years.

  ‘Quite honestly, I can’t see it working,’ said Simmy. ‘She really does have her hands full already. And she’s not a very good carer at the best of times.’

  ‘He doesn’t need a carer, for the love of Mike. He just needs a bit of company, someone who’s known him most of his life and could have a good chat with him.’

  ‘All the same, it really isn’t her thing. As my father said, it was her and Fran who were the friends. The husbands were almost incidental.’ She thought again of the wife-swapping comment, and quelled a smile. ‘I did say I’d go and see him now and then – but I can’t promise to do it regularly.’

  They fell quiet, apparently at an impasse. ‘Why do you need anybody, anyway?’ Simmy said eventually. ‘The man has five children and any number of grandchildren.’

  ‘He prefers female company. And the grandchildren are all far too young to provide what he needs. He never was very keen on kids, if you remember. He wants a replacement for Mum, to put it baldly. He’s always liked talking to women, about their houses and furnishings and that sort of stuff. He’s worked in carpets all his life, don’t forget. He knows about colours and curtains and how to hide the television cables.’

  Simmy inwardly rolled her eyes at the thought of chatting to Kit Henderson about interior design. Besides, she said to herself, that was almost certainly not what the man would choose as a topic of conversation. Eddie was naive to think so.

  ‘I could go sometimes, if you like’ said Bonnie, with a charming air of diffidence. ‘He sounds like a nice man.’

  Both the adults looked at her in astonishment. Simmy’s first instinct was to veto the idea completely. Something about a lamb walking into a lion’s den came to mind. Kit Henderson was a bit like a lion, she realised. He had often been irritable and something of a tyrant in the seaside years. Any glitch in the arrangements, or bad weather, or childhood illness angered him. ‘I only get two weeks’ holiday a year, and I won’t let you lot spoil it,’ was a familiar cry. Without any discussion, his family and the three Straws had all colluded in making his holidays go smoothly. Now here was his son devoting time and effort to ensuring that he was cared for in his bereavement, in much the same pattern.

  ‘He’s not all that nice,’ said Simmy. ‘Sorry, Eddie, but you know it’s true. You’ve all indulged him for most of his life, and now you’re still doing it. I know he’s prone to confusion and forgets things, like a lot of men his age, but he’s not incompetent. He can go to clubs or groups and make friends for himself. He can get his own meals and go out for walks. And he should be made to appreciate his sons a bit more. Christopher lives only a few miles away …’ She tailed off, suddenly aware that she too was trying to organise Kit’s life for him.

  ‘Christopher is nearly twenty miles away, and that auction house of his takes about eighty hours a week of his time – or so he says.’

  Bonnie squealed. ‘Eighty hours! That’s nearly twelve hours a day, isn’t it? Seven twelves are eighty-four. That can’t be right. Doesn’t he get a day off?’

  Eddie emitted a spluttering little laugh. ‘You’re right. Seven twelves are eighty-four, and no, he doesn’t work that much. But he does sit there for six hours without any food or drink on a Saturday, doing his auctioneering act. And people are constantly asking him to value their silver teapots and chipped old plates. If he doesn’t know, he has to look it up. I guess it’s fairly full on.’

  ‘Sounds great,’ said Bonnie, a trifle wistfully. ‘Ben would love that.’

  ‘Ben loves everything,’ said Simmy, thinking that most people probably found auctions exciting and romantic. She even fancied going along one day herself to watch Christopher in action. She could go with her mother, perhaps, for at least part of an upcoming Saturday.

  The arrival of a customer cut the dilatory discussion short, and Eddie went away, with a rueful expression. ‘At least you got your mum out of doing it,’ said Bonnie. ‘Where does his father live?’

  ‘Glebe Road. It’s a rather old-fashioned bungalow.’

  ‘What number?’

  Simmy was watching the customer as she browsed amongst the buckets of cut flowers, trying to assess the potential sale. ‘I can’t remember. I just know the house,’ she answered. Bonnie let the matter drop, and the customer made a substantial purchase. The day was well under way, and it was easy to forget all about the Henderson family. Approaches to local restaurants for special Christmas displays were the main task, and Simmy found herself with a modest list of commissions after a few phone calls. ‘Better than last year, anyhow,’ she said.

  ‘That’s great,’ Bonnie applauded. ‘And there’s loads of places you still haven’t tried.’

  ‘Not in Bowness and Windermere there aren’t. And if I try to spread out to Staveley or Ambleside, I’ll run up against the competition, and probably annoy them.’

  ‘Let the best man win, I say. If yours are better, that’s fair enough. That’s what competition is all about,’ she finished with a severe look.

  Simmy smiled. ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ she said. There were moments when Bonnie was obviously speaking for either Melanie Todd or Ben Harkness, both of whom felt that the florist could be making a much bigger success of things if only she would stop being so soft about everything.

  As often happened, Ben himself put in an appearance at half past three. Bonnie had clearly been saving up news to tell him, and after their habitual fond kiss, which Simmy always found very endearing, the girl began to update him.

  ‘You know that Henderson family – the wife died? She was Simmy’s mum’s best friend. The funeral was last week.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said with exaggerated patience. Ben never had any difficulty in keeping up with local people and their doings. ‘What about them?’

  ‘One of the sons came in today, e
arly, and wanted Sim to tell her mother to go and visit the old man, because he likes talking to women, and might get lonely.’

  The boy snorted. ‘Some chance!’

  ‘That’s what Simmy told him – didn’t you?’ She invited her employer into the conversation, with a cheery look. ‘She said her mum was no good as a carer, and anyway the old dad isn’t very nice.’

  Simmy winced. Had she really said that?

  Ben nodded. ‘My mum knows him a bit – because of the carpets. He’s a real expert. It’s not actually architecture, obviously, but my mum gets asked sometimes. She’s got him on her database.’

  Mrs Harkness was an architect at the peak of her powers, working mainly from home, while juggling five children and a husband. Ben was her second, and more of a challenge than the others all added together. The fact that Ben knew the contents of her database came as no surprise.

  ‘I said I might go and visit him, but they didn’t seem to think that was a good idea.’ Bonnie threw Simmy a look somewhat less fond than the first one.

  ‘I could go with you,’ said Ben carelessly. ‘If you like. It’s only a few minutes from my house, anyway.’

  ‘You know where he lives, then?’

  ‘It’s that big ugly bungalow in Glebe Road,’ he nodded. ‘He’s there on his own now, then? None of his sons or daughters want to live with him, I guess.’

  ‘They’ve all got lives to get on with, and most of them have families already,’ said Simmy defensively. ‘They might ask him to move in with one of them, I suppose, but Eddie didn’t say anything like that.’

  ‘So he tried to delegate it.’ He looked at his girlfriend. ‘It’s not your problem, kid. It’s not even Simmy’s problem. The world’s full of old people on their own. You can’t feel sorry for all of them.’