Puppies Are For Life (7 page)

‘Have another piece,’ Jan urged, so that she, too, could help herself again without appearing greedy. ‘And,’ she ventured to add, ‘tell me when you think the money will be sorted out.’

So far they hadn’t talked much about the funeral or its implications; Frank had stripped off for a shower the minute he got in and she had been busy with the meal. But still Frank wouldn’t be drawn.

‘I suppose,’ Jan pressed on, ‘it’ll take ages, won’t it, having to sell Bert’s grotty old house before we can do anything else? Or did you get the solicitor to agree to hurry it all along? Couldn’t it be sold by auction, perhaps? Or –’

Frank swallowed down more of the wine while his wife prattled away, hardly aware of its subtle flavour; tonight he desired only numbness. Eventually, realising that even another bottle wouldn’t be sufficient to achieve that, he raised his travel-tired eyes to hers and told her as gently as he could that they could expect nothing from his brother Bert.

‘Oh, but … surely …?’ Jan suddenly lost her
appetite and let fall her piece of cheese.

Fingering a locket that hung perpetually round her neck, her gaze wandered past Frank’s left shoulder and pierced the gloom. In the light of the wavering candle-flame her closely shorn head appeared gaunt, her neck thin and scrawny, and her eye sockets deeply shadowed. Only her eyes shone through like glittering marbles.

‘Well, who
is
going to get Bert’s house? Susannah? Not that I’d begrudge it her really. You know I hold nothing against her, even though she’s never taken to me …’

‘No, well, it’s not Susannah; it’s some old flame of his.’

Jan giggled her relief. ‘Now I know you’re teasing me. For a minute I thought –’

‘No! No I’m not, Jan. Honestly. I only wish I were.’

And Jan could see from his face that he was telling her the truth. ‘But –’ Her gaze wandered over his shoulder again. She could just about make out the tarpaulin that stretched from one side of the farmhouse to the other. It concealed a door-less, window-less construction yawning open to the winter sky. ‘I never knew Bert had an old flame. The wily old devil.’

‘Not so much of the “old”. Don’t forget he was younger than me.’

‘Yes, but he always seemed so much older, somehow, on the few occasions I met him.’ She sat back in her chair, her hands slapping down on the
table. ‘Well, this is a turn-up for the books, I must say. What are we going to do now?’

‘I’m sorry, Jan, really I am.’ Frank ran a hand over his face and looked glummer than ever. ‘Why don’t you go ahead and say it: it’s all my own stupid fault? I should have been nicer to Bert while he was alive. Brotherly love and all that. Then we’d be out of this dreadful mess.’

Jan let out a sigh. ‘I never wanted to be married to a hypocrite, Frank. At least you’re always honest about your feelings.’

‘Yes, and just look where it’s got us: well and truly in the mire.’

It wasn’t in Jan’s nature to be down-hearted for long. ‘Actually,’ she pointed out, ‘apart from your air fare for the trip, we’re no worse off than we were a week ago.’

‘We’re not a jot better off, though, either.’

‘But at least we’ve got each other.’

Frank managed a smile at last. Dear old Jan. He should have known she would hold nothing against him.

He looked at the remaining goodies, unpacked in delighted haste and still scattered across the table. It had been a horrendously expensive shopping trip, all in all, but well, what the hell …

‘Fancy a bit of this chocolate, love? Or a good old cup of tea?’

‘Dad!’ Susannah recognised her father’s breathing over the phone before he actually spoke. ‘What’s
the matter? Are you still here – in England, I mean?’ She imagined him stuck at the airport, the victim of some sort of strike, and desperate for a bed for the night – although he would have to be really desperate to consider coming to Wiltshire for one.

‘No, I’m home. Sorry if I woke you up, I know it’s very late.’

Jan had crashed out on the bed after the meal, but tired though Frank was he’d not been able to sleep. Must have been the cheese. Or the chocolate.

‘It’s OK.’ Susannah yawned widely. ‘But what is it?’

‘Well, I’ve been thinking.’ Thought of nothing else for God knows how long. ‘There must be some way of contesting that wretched will. The whole thing’s totally unjust.’

Susannah sank into a depression at her father’s words. Somehow she knew she was about to be involved.

‘Well,’ Frank went on, ‘it’s absolutely hopeless, me trying to do anything from here. I can hardly spend hours on the phone running up bills. And letter-writing’s too long-winded by half. I want this all sorted out. And quickly. Look –’ his tone became soft and conciliatory – ‘you’d better pop over and have a word with that solicitor chappie of Bert’s; see if you can make him see sense.’

Susannah felt hysteria close at hand. He made it sound as though she had only to run across the road and knock on the nearest door; forget the hassle of catching trains or the miles of M4 and
the tortuous drag round the M25.

‘Pop over –?’ she heard herself echo.

‘Well – you’ll need to make an appointment first,’ he added as though she were fresh out of school.

‘But Dad –’

‘I’d come myself if I could … but it might be a fruitless exercise. All that way for nothing …’

‘Precisely. That’s exactly what it would be: for nothing. A total waste of time. And –’ she shook her head at her father’s audacity – ‘I don’t know how you can think of pursuing it anyway. If Uncle Bert wanted this Saxby woman to have the house, then who are you to deny him?’

‘I – it’s the principle of the thing. I’m family and she isn’t. I’ve no doubt she’s nothing but a fortune-hunter, and Bert was a sucker if ever there was one. She’s conned him into leaving it to her. I know she has.’

‘And then bumped him off, I suppose? Oh, Dad! I’ve got enough on my plate right now, without running about on fool’s errands. How am I supposed to find the time?’

But Frank May was not to be troubled with practicalities. He had given his daughter her orders. And he expected to be obeyed.

Katy hooked aside the odd lock of her hair and peered at the bedside clock. She rolled on to her back with a groan. Her parents had gone to work hours ago; the old plumbing had creaked and gurgled at some ungodly hour and thoroughly woken her up. But she had managed to go back to sleep again.

She supposed she ought to get up. But what for? The day – or what was left of it – stretched endlessly ahead. Absolutely hours of it and nothing at all to do. She hated winter.

Her eyes travelled round the room. It was quite pretty, if you liked that sort of thing, and better now that she had arranged some of her own belongings around it. Andrea had promised to come down with the rest of her stuff as soon as she could; then it would look more like home.

Home? Huh! This place didn’t feel like home. And what a reception she’d had! Dad had been all right – still treated her like she was six, of course, but she was used to that – but Mum, well, you couldn’t exactly say she had been overjoyed.

Well, that made two of them. Because
she
wasn’t
happy about it either. She didn’t want to be here. Who, given the choice, would want to live with their parents? But what else could she do? Live in a cardboard box? Walk the streets like some girls did?

No, she had had to come home, like it or not. She’d had no other choice.

Susannah slumped down at her desk without bothering to take her coat off and dared Molly, with a long dark look, to say anything. But Molly was not that easily put off.

‘What’s up with you?’ she chirped. She was one of those people who were at their best early on in the day, and the smell of wet shoes, damp coats and dusty files was not enough to daunt her. She treated Susannah to a cheery grin.

‘You look knackered,’ she said, unwrapping her first Kit-Kat of the day. ‘Surely you can’t have been decorating again?’

‘No,’ Susannah roused herself sufficiently to reply. ‘We’ve finished that. Just don’t ask.’ But then she immediately began to tell Molly how her father was breathing down her neck about the will, and about Katy coming home with her problematic hands.

‘That’s tough,’ Molly said when Susannah was through. ‘You can get RSI from playing the piano, you know. And the violin. Well, anything that uses a lot of fingering, I suppose. Poor kid.’

‘Heaven knows how soon she’ll recover … I suppose she
will
recover?’

I –’ Molly searched her memory to remember all that she’d heard on the subject – ‘I don’t really know much about it. Is she seeing a doctor?’

‘She saw one in London. He gave her an injection which worked for a while. Obviously it wasn’t a cure. She’s going to make an appointment with our GP. Lord, but I’m exhausted.’

Susannah hid her mouth as she yawned, and when the yawn subsided her eyes focused on Andy from the computer room. He was threading his way among the work stations at the far end of the office carrying a stack of bar-marked documents – BMDs – similar to National Lottery tickets but A4-sized.

‘Looks like bad news for someone,’ she said, beginning to unbutton her coat.

Molly twisted her pudding-shaped body to observe Andy for herself. ‘You’re right,’ she agreed. ‘Rejections for some poor sods. I hope none of them are ours.’

‘Me too,’ was Susannah’s fervent reply.

She unlocked her drawer, ran a comb through her hair, checked her lipstick in a piece of old mirror, and slammed the drawer shut again. Then she picked up a Biro and clicked the button on it, full of good intentions – until she found Andy beside her.

‘Oh no,’ she groaned dramatically, and buried her head in her hands.

‘Sorry,’ Andy mumbled. ‘The machine wouldn’t read these. We don’t know why.’ He dumped a pile of the documents on the desk at her elbow. ‘Maybe
there’s a flaw in the paper, or something.’

Susannah riffled the pages in horror. ‘But – but – it’s
got
to have read this batch!’ she protested. ‘This is the shift-workers’ overtime! If they don’t get the money in their banks this week they’ll lynch me.’

Andy shrugged. ‘If you’d put them in earlier, you’d have time to do them again. As it is …’

But taking a day off for the funeral had put her week out of kilter. That was her official excuse, anyway. The fact was that she had lost interest in the job of late, and mistakes were the result.

‘What am I going to do?’ she wailed to Molly when Andy had sauntered away.

‘The usual: make manual payments this week to keep the punters happy; put new bar-marked forms in next week so their records look OK. Oh, and recover the manual payment next week too, because the new bar-marks will pay it again.’

‘I know. I know. I know.’ It wasn’t the first time they had had to tie themselves in knots trying to beat the system.

‘I’ll give you a hand if you like.’

‘You’re a treasure.’ Susannah sighed deeply. ‘I hate this rotten job.’

‘Don’t we all,’ came the stock reply.

‘Right,’ Susannah announced when she returned from the stationery cupboard. ‘Manual payment forms for Accounts.’ She slapped them down on her desk, split them in half, and pushed a pile across to Molly.

Molly reached out and examined one. ‘I suppose you realise Duffy has to sign these?’

‘Grief, he doesn’t, does he?’ Susannah’s depression increased. She could picture the humiliating scene with her superior. He would fix her with one of his dark, withering looks before firing a barrage of questions at her, all cleverly designed to make her appear a bigger fool than she already felt.

‘My,’ Molly was saying, ‘but they’re going to love having to make out all these cheques in Accounts. But never mind. Are these the shift-workers’ claims? OK, we’ll soon zip through them. Erm –’ she strummed her lower lip – ‘where are your workings-out?’

‘Ah.’ Susannah looked up over her IN tray; she had just come up against the same snag. ‘I – er – don’t actually have any, Moll.’

‘What do you mean, you don’t have any? You must have reckoned up how many hours they’ve done. Why aren’t they down on the sheets?’

‘Well –’ Susannah tried to look innocent. ‘I never do put them down. I tot them all up on the calculator and bar-mark it straight away. It – er – saves a whole lot of time.’

‘I see.’ Molly was trying her hardest to stay calm. ‘But what happens when you get a query?’

‘Well … that only happens for the odd few, and I just work those out all over again.’

‘Oh, you do, do you? Great. So this isn’t simply a question of a quick estimate of what they’re owed, is it?’

‘Well –’ Susannah wriggled on her chair – ‘no.’

‘This is going to take all day.’

‘Oh, I don’t think – hey, wait a minute! Are we stupid? All we need do is take the info from the duff bar-marks!’

‘The bar-marks!’ Molly clapped a hand to her head. ‘Why didn’t I think of that? So, dear Susannah, where have you put them?’

Susannah looked about her. ‘Damn. I gave them all back to –’

‘Andy.’

‘Andy!’ Susannah shrieked and made a dash for the door.

‘Sorry,’ Andy said when she found him. ‘I’ve just put them all in the shredder.’

‘So why do you do it?’ Molly said when the task was done and Susannah came back from Accounts. ‘I’ve always wanted to know.’

‘Do what? Make extra work for us both? Well, I think that’s a bit unfair, Molly. I don’t have control over the pathetic reading machine.’

‘No, this, I mean,
this.
This wonderful, stimulating job.’

Susannah looked vaguely at the wall above Molly’s head; her mind was still with the forms she had dumped in Accounts. Should she confide in Molly that she had authorised them herself?

Mr Duffy had not been in his room when she’d needed his signature, and she’d not wanted to waste more time waiting for him to show up. So
she had closeted herself in the ladies and quickly worked her way through them, scribbling her own name at the bottom of each. ‘Harding’ didn’t bear much resemblance to ‘Duffy’, it was true, but she hoped no one would notice. She was sometimes authorised to substitute for him, after all, so it was unlikely to be queried.

But Molly was still waiting for an answer. ‘Why
do
you put yourself through this aggro?’

Susannah had had enough for one day. She had started to clear her desk to make things easier for the cleaners who were supposed to perform miracles in the night but somehow managed not to find dust and balls of fluff.

She paused in the middle of scraping pens, pencils, and rulers back into the drawer. ‘What else can I do? I never qualified for a decent job.’

‘But that doesn’t matter, does it? You don’t have to do anything really. You could sit at home all day doing … I don’t know … whatever turns you on, as the saying goes. I mean, you really don’t need the money, do you?’

‘Oh Molly –’ Susannah looked at her friend uncertainly. Had something of what she’d wanted to tell her the other day filtered through after all? Could she confide her true aspirations? Or would Molly laugh at her?

‘Let’s just say that work keeps me out of mischief,’ she said, getting up and reaching for her coat. ‘And what on earth would I do without you to talk to all day? I’d go stark, staring bonkers.

‘Thanks for helping me out, Molly; I’ll do the same for you some time.’

‘You’re not going home already?’ Molly looked at her watch in mock horror. ‘I suppose you realise you’re leaving in core time, Mrs Harding?’

‘I do. And I don’t give a damn.’ Susannah grinned, wrinkling her nose. ‘Sometimes I like to live dangerously.’

The trolley trundled up and down the aisles as fast as Julia could push it. She snatched at items as she passed them, her irritation increasing with every pause.

New pan-scourer … fabric softener … bleach. Toilet rolls … panty-liners – must be needing those soon … bubble bath … Oh, but she shouldn’t be doing this!

Shopping was Harvey’s job now. She simply didn’t have time. What a waste of a morning. She should be down at the library reading
The Go-Between.

But Harvey was hopeless at shopping, probably because, having three big sisters to spoil him, he had never learned how to do it. He would load the car to the gunnels with all sorts of useless things that she wasn’t sure they could afford at the moment: with wines – all carefully chosen, judging by the length of time he’d been gone – or with cream cakes that they weren’t supposed to be eating because of their waist-lines, or with jars of black olives that would last them till kingdom come.
Nothing you could make a decent meal with.

Last week she had found a tin of snails with Champagne in one of the kitchen cupboards. Snails, of all things. Every time she opened the cupboard and saw it, she felt she wanted to be sick.

Cold meat? Bacon? Cheese? Can’t be bothered to stand in that queue.

Eggs … salt … cooking oil …

They’d had some odd concoctions lately, thanks to Harvey: curry with tagliatelle; pork chops with black bean sauce; tea without milk; ditto Weetabix. They seemed always to be out of milk. A joke, considering they lived in what was once a dairy!

You’d think a man with Harvey’s brains could do better. Surely
anyone
should be able to keep house? How had he made it to area manager, for heaven’s sake? But there’s clever and there’s clever, her mother was wont to say.

Julia was beginning to see what she meant.

When Susannah got in from work Katy was wandering down the stairs, wrapped in a pink spotted dressing-gown with coffee stains down the front. Her face was bare of make-up and she looked ten years younger than her age. She also looked as though she had just woken up.

Susannah checked her watch with raised eyebrows and hung her coat on one of the hooks in the lobby.

‘Cup of tea?’ Katy enquired, following her mother into the kitchen.

‘Oh, Katy, that would be lovely!’ Susannah quickly changed a tut of annoyance into a grateful sigh; she had been about to remonstrate with her daughter for doing nothing about the heap of laundry. She could see it still sitting in a damp tangle inside the washing machine, and it would have been nice to come home just once to find it hanging up and beginning to dry. But evidently that hadn’t entered Katy’s head.

Oh for a five-minute sit-down, Susannah thought; then she might be able to face the washing, clean around a bit, and get the dinner started. Any thought of exercising her creative powers in the studio later that evening lay on an impossibly distant horizon. Perhaps she would feel better after a cup of tea …

But when she looked up from the jumble of washing, Katy hadn’t moved from the doorway. She had her arms crossed over her chest and her hands tucked into her armpits.

‘I can’t lift the kettle,’ she said helplessly, and Susannah felt suitably shamed.

‘Sorry, love, I forgot,’ she sighed. ‘I suppose they’re no better today?’

‘No. ‘Fraid not.’ Katy wandered over to the work-room door and pushed it ajar with her foot. ‘What’s in here? I don’t remember this.’

‘It’s my studio.’ Susannah spun round and hurried after her, anxious to defend her domain. ‘Don’t you remember? It was full of all our junk while we were sorting ourselves out. That’s why you don’t recognise it.’