Chapter 8 Charlotte
Charlotte
I couldn’t begin to guess how long I’d been standing in the hallway, staring into space.
Instead, I drifted from room to room like a ghost, taking paintings off the wall and putting them back up again.
Those people were mad, wanting the house in this state.
There was so much wrong with it, I didn’t even know where to start.
Paint had chipped off the internal doors and skirting boards.
The wallpaper was yellowed and peeling. It was like being caught in quicksand.
I’d step into the spare room and catch sight of the gray mold blooming in patches, or the garage and see the pile of rusted bicycles and tools, and I was sinking. Easier to shut the door and retreat.
It was my fault the house had fallen into such a mess.
Looking after Dad took up so much of my time, and I’d tried to fit in shifts at the local pub to keep us afloat.
Now, I just didn’t have the energy. It needed to be emptied and cleaned.
Tiff had suggested a clearance company, but that was no good.
There was too much that needed to be hand sorted. They’d just throw everything away.
A key twisted in the front door and I went back to the hallway. Tiff stormed inside, stopping to tug off her boots and hang up her leather jacket in the closet stuffed with Dad’s old coats and umbrellas.
She planted her hands on her hips. “The estate agent called me. What were you thinking? You can’t just tell people the house isn’t for sale.”
Hello, lovely to see you, too. I’m fine. Thank you for asking.
She moved past me into the living room and flung open the curtains. Daylight dazzled me. Blue skies. Bright sun. Somehow, it had slipped my mind that it was daytime. I was still wearing pajamas.
She thrust a large manila envelope at me. “This was in the porch.”
I tossed it on a side table and flopped into a frayed armchair.
“You didn’t see these people. They were talking about knocking a wall out.
What kind of people walk all over someone’s carpets in outdoor shoes?
Psychopaths, that’s who. Antisocial behavior like that is an indicator of more serious criminality. ”
Tiff let out a deep sigh and cradled her face in her hands, like I was exhausting her.
I probably was. It wasn’t my intention. Tiff approached her grief by attacking it with a sledgehammer.
She wanted the house cleared and sold. Done and dusted.
When she’d cleared all the Dad admin from her inbox, maybe then she’d drop to the floor and howl, but not a moment before.
If I could have physically wrapped my arms around this house and carried it away to somewhere safe where no one would bother us, I would have. Every book, every ornament, every teaspoon destined for the charity shop was a little shard of glass twisting in my heart.
“It’s true, Tiff. I watched a documentary about it once.
You know these people who graffiti bus-stops or park in disabled parking spaces when they don’t have a permit?
Nine times out of ten they turn out to be murderers.
Anti-social behavior, you see. I’m sure it’s the same with not taking off your shoes. ”
Tiff held her head in her hands and sighed. “I know this is awful. It’s all terrible and painful, and I don’t want to do any of this either, but these are cash buyers. Do you know how rare cash buyers are? We have to get this done.”
I let out my own deep, dramatic sigh, because Tiff needed to know that she was exhausting me, too. “I’m sorry that I’m not willing to sell our childhood home to psychopaths. We don’t have to rush into this. Can we at least discuss renting again?”
“Cash-buyer psychopaths.” Tiff stood at one of Dad’s overstuffed bookcases, pulling out dusty tomes and leafing through them absently.
“This is what we agreed. We’re not renting.
It’s delaying the inevitable. Who wants to be a landlord?
You’ll get no peace. The place is falling apart.
We’d need a new boiler. Rewiring. Everything .
. .” Her eyes shifted to the envelope I’d put down and she wrinkled her nose.
“Aren’t you going to open that? It looks important. ”
Nope. It’s never important. I drifted away to make tea.
Tiff started a tale of woe about being left out of the school mums’ group chat, but I let her voice fade to a drone.
In the kitchen, the dark linoleum had been trodden to gray.
The floral curtains hung faded and threadbare.
Somebody else would come in here. They’d rip this floor up and tear these curtains down. My stomach started to hurt again.
When I returned to the living room with the tea tray, Tiff was stacking an empty cardboard box full of Dad’s books.
“What are you doing?”
“Life can only be understood backward; but it must be lived forward,” she said.
“Pardon?”
“Kierkegaard.” She snapped the book in her hand shut and dropped it unceremoniously into a box. I resisted the urge to dive and snatch it back.
Tiff’s expression was deadpan. “I always found philosophy so depressing. This Kierkegaard dude sounds like another barrel of laughs.”
“I heard he got left out of the school mums’ group chat and that’s when his melancholy took root.”
“Fuck off.” She rolled her eyes, but a faint glimmer of humor flashed on her face. “I was the first one to discover that the head teacher was having an affair, and I always volunteer for the bottle tombola. I’m an asset to any mums’ group chat. Who wouldn’t want me in their clique?”
“I don’t know. Your meme game is so strong, too.”
She nodded her head in firm agreement. “I know, right? At least someone appreciates my memes.” She scooped the envelope off the table and thrust it at me. “Open it. You can’t just let letters pile up in the porch.”
Fine. I opened it to humor her, with my best “this is a pointless exercise, but you’re insanely irritating so I’m doing it to shut you up” expression, so she’d get fed up and go home.
I slid out a wad of neatly printed paper, and the bold “Marital Contract” header jumped out at me.
A bright yellow Post-it clung to the front page, with a handwritten “To Charlotte. For your urgent review. Cole.”
I flipped through, scanning the document. It was all bullet points and inscrutable legal jargon. For goodness’ sake. He’d actually drawn up a contract? What was he thinking?
“Cole?” Tiff’s eyebrows shot up. “You’ve kept in touch? Didn’t he dump you and do a runner after you kissed him?”
I had no energy to get into it all, but it was preferable to being lectured about the house.
“He kissed me. And yes, we . . . parted ways, and now he wants to marry me because he can’t be bothered to find a real wife. He’s such an arsehole these days that he needs a stooge to come to his events with him, like some weird employee/wife to convince people he’s not that much of an arsehole.”
Tiff’s incredulous laugh came out in a burst. “You’re joking?”
“I wish I was.”
Another slim envelope slipped out of the paperwork onto the floor.
Bending down to retrieve it, I read the handwritten note on the front: “You’ve been carrying too much for too long.
You need to rest. I have a resort in the Maldives.
Silk sheets and a private chef on call. Stay as long as you like. You won’t have to lift a finger.”
I eased the envelope open and scanned the details of how to organize a flight on his private jet. My heart pounded. He couldn’t be serious? Who could accept something like that?
“What’s that?” Tiff demanded.
“Nothing.” I hastily stuffed everything back into the larger envelope. “No one should even be a billionaire. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. They could solve world hunger, but they just swing their dicks around instead.”
Curiosity lit her eyes, and she grabbed the envelope from my hand.
She pulled the contract out and scanned it.
Her eyes darted over the printed pages. “Right, all those Ashcombe boys were entitled manbabies, but I’ve dated plenty of entitled manbabies that I’ve had to support financially.
At least you’ll get a Birkin out of it.”
Tiff fell silent as she scanned the contract. While she was distracted, I returned Dad’s books to their rightful place on the shelf. Tiff gasped. The contract dropped heavily onto the coffee table. She covered her mouth with a trembling hand.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
She spun to face me with wild eyes. “You need to sit down and read this.”
“No. Thanks.”
She thrust the paperwork toward me and spoke slowly, with quiet emphasis. “You need to sit down and read this.”
I made no move to retrieve the stupid thing from her. “I’m not interested.”
She flipped through the pages frantically, her voice rising with every word. “You just have to go to a few parties and travel around with him. It’s hardly a chore.”
“I don’t even like him. He ghosted me. You know how long it took me to get over him.” I sounded whiny, but my sister always had a way of bringing out the petulant kid inside of me.
“Good. This is your chance to get even. Spend his money. Make him pay for what he did. Take him to the fucking cleaners.” She rapped her knuckles on the table for emphasis.
“I’m not a prostitute. I don’t care if that’s how some people choose to make their money, but my body is not for sale.”
“Calm down, Julia Roberts. This isn’t Pretty Woman.
No sexual contact. He takes great pains to mention it in several bullet points.
Cole wants your sparkling personality. He’s not offering you billionaire dick.
Imagine the places you could see. A man like that isn’t staying in a Motel 6.
You only have to do a year. That’s all. One year.
You can endure anything with an ending.”
“Who wants to endure a year of their life? I want to figure out what comes next. I’m about to turn thirty and I have nothing to show for it.”
Tiff stroked the contract worshipfully, like it was some previously undiscovered edition of Pride and Prejudice with an extended Mr. Darcy epilogue.
“This comes next. Let it be this. You deserve this. Let this obscenely rich man spoil you and take you to all these fancy events. It’s a dream come true.
You can put up with it.” She grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me around to face her.
Her excitement spilled over into a grin. “You’re doing it. No debate.”
“You want me to marry an arsehole?”
“Give him a year, and he’ll give you five million pounds.” Her hands fluttered everywhere, and she laughed wildly. “Five. Million. Pounds. Either you bloody marry him, or I will. Cole Thorner isn’t just any old arsehole. He’s a cash-buyer arsehole.”