Chapter 4
We only need to walk for a few streets before Dair lets me into the twin of Flynn’s townhouse. This one is subdivided.
“We’re on the ground floor.” He wrestles with an old lock. “If I can get in, that is. Ah, here we are.” The door creaks open, and even before it closes behind us, I can tell this place won’t be hoarded. Believe me, if it was, I’d be able to smell it, even with the lights out.
Neglect doesn’t catch at the back of my throat this evening.
I’ve uncovered enough rats’ nests when clearing houses to note its absence.
If anything, all I smell is furniture polish.
And the scent of home cooking. It reminds me that my lunchtime meal deal was a long time ago. “Something smells good.”
“Oh, that’ll be the stovies I made for after my late shift. Working nights always messes up my body clock. I’ll be eating them for my breakfast.”
I’d ask him what stovies are, only Dair flicks on a light switch, and I’m surprised into silence.
I mean, I’m an antiques amateur, not an actual expert, but there’s nothing worthless here.
I’m not saying I spot any furniture that Chippendale himself might have crafted or any ceramics from the Ming dynasty, but there’s plenty of it.
China tea sets cover every surface. Even more are on display in glass-fronted cabinets.
I crouch beside one to count pieces and reach an easy hundred.
Then I get up to study a Welsh dresser. It’s old.
Dinged by family life. Scuffed and a little shabby, but with some TLC could be worth a couple of hundred.
I think the same in the next room Dair shows me into.
“Who told you none of this was worth selling?”
“Does it matter?” Dair sits heavily at a dining table. “Because they were right, weren’t they? Nothing matches. Not even a single one of the chairs around this table. And not much of the china. Who buys mismatched collections? It’s all…”
The word eclectic comes to me. There’s no way I picked that up on the Isle of Dogs. I must have absorbed it while sitting on the sidelines of a meet-up.
Dair sighs like some of Kev’s clients do when their Billy bookcases from IKEA fall to pieces mid-removal. “None of it is even worth putting on Facebook Marketplace, is it?”
A vision of my cousin swims into focus. I can almost hear him telling me to keep my lip buttoned, but if he was here, listening to what Dair just said about shift work, and if he saw the care-assistant scrubs he wears, he’d know Dair is the opposite of rich.
Kev would also know that everything here has some value.
I’m not the best with words. Worthless isn’t the right one for any of it.
“How big is this bill you gotta pay? We talking hundreds?”
He sighs again and shakes his head.
“Thousands?” He’s out of luck, if that’s the case.
“It’s big enough.” He points up. “And it will only keep rising if I don’t find a way to pay it.
” He doesn’t go into the fine detail, and I don’t blame him for being cagey.
It sounds like someone’s tried to rip him off already, but he does show me some papers on a bureau.
“The other firm said it would be too much like hard work to sort all of this into auction-lot categories. And that it wouldn’t be worth my time listing on Gumtree or Marketplace either.
” He shuffles through papers. “This is the contract with their charge to take it all away in one go. If you charge me less than them, the job’s yours. ”
“They were going to charge you?”
He nods. And wets his lips before asking a shaky question.
“M-maybe I misunderstood? The thing is, it has to go. All of it. If anything is left at the end of the month, I’ll be in legal trouble.
” He blinks fast. “Alice’s family are going to gut the place.
Tart it up and sell it on. It has to be empty the day I give the keys back.
” He looks down at those sheets of paper. “What do you think?”
I think Alice’s family will make a fucking fortune. “Did you already sign a copy?”
“No. The man who came to quote for the job wanted me to. Got a wee bit pushy.” He rubs at the back of his neck, blinking fast again. “I told him I needed time.”
“To read all the small print before deciding? Good thinking.”
“You think so?” Dair speaks so quietly, I almost don’t hear him add, “He laughed at me.”
“Laughed at you?” I’ve been in that spot way too often. “Why?”
“Because he said I wouldn’t get a better offer, but go ahead, Vincent. You’re the real expert. Read all the small print and tell me if I should go ahead and pay them to take it all away.”
Now Charles Heppel takes a turn at swimming into focus.
I knew that if anyone could steer Dair in the right direction, it would be you.
Right now, I want to steer Dair to wherever this other firm is based so he can point out which fucker laughed at him. Instead, I make myself follow at least one of my cousin’s orders. “Let me check in with someone. Can I …?” I hold out my phone.
“You want to take a photo? Go ahead. Help yourself.”
I cross to the bureau and take a quick snap.
Just as quickly he says, “No.” He taps a different page. “That was the final court judgement. This is the contract he wanted me to sign.”
I photograph that second sheet, zooming in on a clause someone has circled. Less than a minute after I press Send, my phone rings, and as soon as I answer, Kev says, “I’m reading. Give me a minute.”
I do that by stepping out into the hallway where framed photos show a young bride and an older husband, a happy couple I track through the years until only a woman features.
Alice.
The last few frames show her with Dair. Any other family are absent, and I drift back to the doorway as Kev rasps in my ear. “You thinking about taking on the job?”
“Maybe.”
“That contract means someone thinks there’s some cash in it.”
“Because?”
“They’ve circled a saw-you-coming clause.
Your punter would be signing everything over with no comeback even if it makes real bank at auction.
” His voice lowers. “Make an offer if you want. But keeping it low would be one way to make up for all that work you did this winter for fuck all. Offer him a ton or two to clear the lot. Keep the profit.”
That’s two hundred quid more than Dair’s already been offered. I look back into the room where he’s taken a mismatched seat at the dining table, all his focus on a contract he folds up. Somehow, he looks smaller. Slighter. As fragile as the china covering each and every surface.
Maybe folding the contract doesn’t have his entire focus—he looks my way, his smile a little helpless, a little hopeless, a whole lot sweet, and I can’t do it.
I tell my cousin, “Thanks. Talk to you tomorrow.” Then I tell Dair, “Don’t sign it. And don’t start listing anything here on Marketplace.”
Dair huffs, defeated. “Because no one wants my secondhand tat?”
“Tat? That’s what the other firm told you all this is?”
“This and all of Alice’s other collections,” he says glumly.
“Collections?”
He gives me a tour of more rooms dedicated to whatever took his ex-employer’s fancy.
“She loves a car boot sale. Loved, I mean. Was always on the lookout for more dogs.” He tells me that in a room crammed with chintzy armchairs where a mantelpiece holds blue and white ceramic examples. “Spaniels were her favourite.”
“So I see.” I pick up a matching pair of mantel dogs similar to ones I bid on for Flynn that were a finishing old-money touch to fool some new investors. Dair picks up another and shows me the maker’s mark.
“Is it worth anything?”
“No idea. Cabinetry is more my thing.” And there’s plenty of that to distract me, even if a lot of it shows a lifetime of usage.
So does every room I look through. They’re all cluttered, but cosy.
Clean and tidy, if dated. Cared for, and I can’t lie, I’m kinda glad Flynn fucked off.
It means I get to see more of Dair’s relief from close up in another bathroom where I tell him, “I can help you figure out what to do with it all.”
“You can?”
Perhaps that relief is overwhelming. He turns away to dig through a medicine cabinet like he promised and takes a suspiciously long time before turning back. “Will this be okay for you?” The medication he offers is familiar, the box covered in bees and flowers.
“Yeah, thanks.”
I go to take it from him. Before I can, Dair says, “You do need to know this first.” He clutches the antihistamine instead of handing it over, and I assume his professional role has kicked in and he’s about to read out a list of contraindications.
He actually warns me about himself.
“I can’t pay you up-front for your help. Especially if I can’t sell any of it.” He’s so bleakly honest. “But I’ve taken on some more care shifts, so I will have some cash by the time I have to clear out of here, even if I do have to take it all back home with me.”
I know what Kev would charge for removals between here and Scotland, and I can’t help wincing.
He notices. “You don’t think I should take it all home? I mean, I really don’t have room for any of it, but what else would you suggest?”
What would I suggest? It sounds like he’d believe anything I told him. I start with what I can’t hold in any longer.
“I’d suggest you get a better lawyer instead of one who let you get fucked over.” A hot-looking flush stains his throat, and I dial down my nark. “Charles mentioned that your client—”
“Alice. Her name was Alice.”
I nod. “He said Alice left you this place. Property in Kensington gets snapped up as soon as it goes on the market.”
Dair goes taut, like a guitar string tuned too tight and close to snapping, so I aim for joking.
“You sure you didn’t find your lawyer on Marketplace? Because it doesn’t sound like they knew what they were doing.”
His tension releases, and he huffs gently. “No. I didn’t find him on Facebook.”
“You sure? Because this place—”