‘Oh my God, Mum,’ said Rachel. ‘Why did you never tell me about this?’
‘Because it’s not something we liked to discuss,’ said Val. ‘I’m not sure I want to talk about it now, actually.’
Which was possibly the worst thing she could have said.
‘You have to,’ said Rachel.
10
Val’s shifty tone immediately alerted Rachel that there might have been more to her mother’s frequent phone calls than a simple interest in Rachel’s house-clearing skills.
Was she worried that some family secret was about to come to light, she wondered with delicious curiosity. Because it obviously was.
‘Come on, Mum,’ she said. ‘This is news to me. I thought the whole point was that Dot lived the life of a nun, but with dogs instead of singing children and a guitar.’
‘I didn’t say she didn’t
ever
have a boyfriend . . . I said she was too picky to settle down with one.’
‘Well, she doesn’t look as if she did too badly with this bloke,’ said Rachel, examining the photograph more closely. ‘Who is it? It must be, what . . . mid-sixties? In what looks like a hotel bar?’
There was a pause on the other end of the line. ‘It would probably
be Felix, I expect,’ said Val. ‘Tall, curly hair? Bit of a dandy?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. Looks like an expensive suit.’
‘Mmm. Felix Henderson was his name.’ Another pause. ‘He and Dot were . . . Well, I can’t pretend I know what went on there. They seemed quite serious about each other, but it all fizzled out for some reason. I didn’t like to ask, in the end. Dot thought I was very old-fashioned about relationships, but then I was married at twenty-one years of age.’
Rachel’s brain was busy putting two and two together, very rapidly, given her own experience of complicated relationships. Was this what Dot had meant, when she said men liked to be complicated? Was this Felix already married? Was he someone Dot had worked with? She wasn’t even sure she knew what Dot had done for a living. Val was very vague about anything that went on in London.
‘But they were quite serious, though?’
‘Well, they courted for a good few years, went on holiday together, that sort of thing. He never managed to get a ring on her finger, though, poor Felix. She was daft to let him go, if you ask me.’
‘Maybe she didn’t want a ring on her finger,’ retorted Rachel, automatically. Dot’s fingers in the photograph were noticeably covered with plenty of other expensive jewellery. ‘Maybe she
preferred
being single.’
‘Preferred suiting herself, more like.’ Val sounded vexed. ‘But that was Dot. Wouldn’t be told anything.’
‘So how come I don’t remember this Felix?’ Rachel turned the photograph to the light. ‘He’s really handsome. They both are. They make a great couple – Dot looks like a model in this.’
‘Oh, you wouldn’t have met him – Dot broke it off when you were a toddler. I never got to know him, not really. She didn’t trouble Felix with our family functions, said he was too busy with his job.’ The short pause added,
which even your father didn’t believe.
‘Which was?’ she prompted.
‘He was a businessman of some kind. Dot met him when she was working as a secretary in the City, I think.’
‘But you met him, though?’ Rachel was curious now. ‘What was he like?’
‘I just met him the once. Amelia’s christening was the only time our side of the family ever met him. In eight years, would you believe. Anyone would have thought he didn’t
want
to meet us.’
Not going to family functions was a hanging offence in Val’s book; Rachel had been hauled over the coals about it herself in recent years. Naturally, she hadn’t been able to explain that holiday opportunities with Oliver were like hen’s teeth and had to be grabbed with both hands, even if they did coincide with other people’s wedding anniversaries. Especially since weddings and wedding anniversaries weren’t Rachel’s family occasions of choice.
A gossip bell rang in a distant part of her memory, and she frowned, trying to dig out a half-heard grown-up conversation. ‘Did something . . . happen at Amelia’s christening, Mum?’
There was a pause. ‘Not that I’m aware of.’
Rachel rolled her eyes. That meant something
had
done. Val was a skilful brusher-under-the-carpet. If she didn’t want to talk about something, it might as well never have happened.
Rachel, on the other hand, had all the imagination Val and Amelia lacked, and a secret knowledge of the complications illicit relationships brought. Her mind whirred.
Felix was a good-looking guy. Had there been some sisterly jealousy? Her dad was a nice man, but he thought a good night out involved bowls and a lock-in at The Bull and Bishop. Felix, on the other hand, looked as if he
was
the good night out. Like Oliver. Suave and confident. A man who could have you in a cab in ten seconds on a rainy night, and into bed in sixty.
‘So how did they meet?’ she persisted, curious. ‘Come on, Mum – I can’t believe you’ve never told me about Dot’s gorgeous bloke. I thought she was a lonely old spinster!’
‘Well, if she’d sorted herself out and married Felix she needn’t have been! Not that I ever really knew any details.’ Val was sounding really shifty now. ‘Rachel, it’s never nice to speak ill of the dead. It wasn’t any of our business at the time and it’s still not.’
‘Mum, I’m in her house! I’m going to find out anyway, once I start going through the eight million drawers!’
There was a reluctant sigh. ‘He did something financial,’ Val said. ‘He had a big house in Chelsea, I know that much, when she had some poky studio flat. Felix either came from money, or had made a lot of it, because he had some very fancy friends, and a nice sportscar that he gave Dot when he got bored. I remember your father was very jealous of Dot getting to drive around in it . . .’
Rachel moved slowly across the room, and picked up other smaller framed photographs, kept in a shrine-like cluster on the mahogany chest: Dot on a continental quayside in big shades and Capri pants, Dot and Felix at another black-tie party, Felix on his own, posing against a white Jaguar E-type, his tight shirt open and an uproarious smile lighting up his face, as if some passer-by had just mistaken him for Tom Jones – and he didn’t really mind.
No wonder Dad was jealous – he was schlepping us around in an Austin Allegro, she thought. Yelling at Amelia not to spill pop on the seats.
‘But they just split up? Didn’t she tell you why?’
She could almost hear her mother’s lips purse. ‘We didn’t talk about things like that.’
Rachel stopped in front of the window, which looked out over the small gravel drive, towards Longhampton, the spires and towers visible in the far distance, and the sheep-bobbled fields in between. So different from the London scene Dot had obviously been a glittering part of. The photos downstairs and the photos in this room could be of two totally different women, two totally different lives.
‘And you never asked?’ Rachel had never quite understood her mother’s fundamental lack of curiosity.
But scrupulously fair or not, Val wasn’t afraid to go on the counter-attack. ‘Do you and Amelia talk about private things? Has she ever asked you why you and that nice Paul split up? Because he was a nice chap, Rachel. We hoped that might . . .’
‘Paul and I were never serious,’ Rachel began, and then stopped. Paul – a thoroughly pleasant solicitor friend of a friend – had been an attempt to prompt Oliver into some kind of . . . well, she wasn’t even sure what she’d expected. It hadn’t worked. Paul wasn’t right. Oliver knew it. She’d gone back to him before nice Paul had had a chance to get attached.
Oliver. God, he had made her behave in ways she really wasn’t proud of.
On top of the chest, on a lace runner, was a faded colour photograph that she’d never seen, but she recognised the occasion from the clothes: it was herself, about two years old, in Dot’s arms at Amelia’s christening. Dot was wearing a fashionable tangerine orange trouser suit, complete with trailing headscarf, and she was wearing a pair of tiny dungarees. They were both beaming at each other with great delight, big nose to miniature big nose.
We do both have strong noses, thought Rachel, rather sadly. I suppose I’ll end up with all that white hair too. And the house, full of dogs, and no man, while my sister brings up her kids and organises Boxing Day sherry parties and drives everyone up the wall sending birthday and anniversary cards.
She felt her skin prickle. History was repeating itself. Dot had messed things up with a man, and now she had too. Maybe it was inevitable, a character trait. Like Dot’s isolation.
‘Amelia thinks . . .’ Val began, but Rachel interrupted her.
‘That doesn’t mean I don’t
love
Amelia, though,’ she blurted out. ‘Just that our lives . . . our lives are very different. She’s got Grace and Jack, and she thinks I’m . . . well, it doesn’t matter. I never know what to say. Just because someone’s related to you doesn’t mean you automatically get on.’
There was another pause on the line, but it was different to the previous ones. Rachel thought she could detect a sigh.
‘Well, exactly.’
She stood still, in front of the big double bed for one, wondering whether handsome Felix had ever pulled Dot to his bare chest in this room. A shiver ran through her.
‘Have you tried in her wardrobe?’ suggested Val, in her ‘changing the subject’ tone. ‘Because now I think about it, you should have a look for some of the jewellery Felix gave her. Some nice pieces there, I’d say, might be something you could give to Amelia and Grace for when she’s older.’
‘But I can’t send them to you until probate’s been granted.’
‘You can look, can’t you?’
Rachel opened Dot’s modest wardrobe, ready for a blast of mothballs and old coats, and blinked at the unexpected flash of emerald and cherry red. Satin and brocade dresses and jackets gleamed from the dark interior, tucked between dark wool suits like jewels in a case. Elegant hat-boxes and tissue-stuffed shoes lined the bottom while drawers of gloves and folded evening scarves filled up one whole side.
Her great-grandmother’s silver-backed brush and mirror set sat at the top of the drawers, stashed carelessly on a box from a Mayfair lingerie shop.
‘Are they there?’ Val enquired, clearly wishing she was there to do the job properly.
Rachel grinned. I bet Mum expected her to have them on the dressing table like a dutiful spinster ought, she thought, liking Dot even more. Not hidden away on top of a gift from her rich lover. I wonder if Amelia would prefer what’s in the box?
‘I’ve found them,’ she said. ‘Tell Dad I’ll look for his Acker Bilk albums this afternoon.’ She pulled out a silver maxi dress that rustled seductively in her hands like snakeskin. It still smelled of Shalimar.
Dot! thought Rachel. What
did
you get up to before you hid yourself away here? The prospect of beginning the sorting-out process suddenly didn’t seem so bad.
‘Good girl,’ said Val, sounding more like herself. ‘Have you got time off work? They ought to be understanding, what with it being a family bereavement.’
‘Mmm.’ Felix must have taken Dot to some smart places, she thought, stroking the soft velvets and crisp moiré satins. Maybe the same places she’d gone with Oliver.
‘Mum, listen, I’ll call you back, shall I? I’ve got to go,’ she said, making a mental vow to tell Vall all about her resignation next time they spoke.
Then she sank down on the bedspread and read Dot’s letter properly.
Dear Rachel,
Dot wrote
.
If you’re reading this, then I’m long gone, you’ve seen the solicitor, and now you’re beginning the uphill task of sorting out my house. Poor you! I want you to know that I’ve left you in charge because you’re the only member of our family whom I think really understands secrets. In the course of sifting through forty years of junk, you’re going to come across things that are precious to me – and some of those are secrets I’ve held on to for many years. Not all of them are mine. It’s up to you what you do with them, just as it’s up to you to decide what to do with the house.
Here’s our first secret. I’ve made a bit of a mess of saving for inheritance tax – you’re going to get clobbered. But in the butter dish in the fridge there is a necklace I’ve never worn. Wear it so everyone thinks it’s yours, and then, if needs be, you can sell it. I have a feeling your ‘complicated ’ relationship means the odd diamond necklace here or there isn’t unlikely.
And here’s another. Your mother and I fell out some years back, and she thinks it was her fault. It wasn’t. It was mine, as you might see when you go through the house. If you can find a way of explaining it to her, then I’ll be eternally grateful. I would have explained it to her years ago, but I made a promise that I couldn’t break. Maybe you can.
I hope you’ll find everyone you need in this house. I did. I hope, too, that by the time you read this, you’re more settled than you seemed last time we met. If all else fails, my advice – for what it’s worth – would be to take the dogs for a walk. Even if the answer never comes, you’ve made someone else happy in that time, and I find that counts for something in the bigger picture.