Chapter 28 Ill Will
Ill Will
When Will walked into the small private dining room at the Star and Stone next day and found a reception committee awaiting him, not just me, he stopped dead on the threshold looking totally taken aback – and even aghast, once his eye fell on Evie.
‘Hi, Will,’ I said breezily. ‘Why don’t you come in and close the door?’
‘What’s all this?’ he blustered. ‘I wanted to see you alone, Ginny, not have some kind of public meeting!’
‘Far from public – that’s why we booked this little room to have our discussion in,’ said Evie. ‘I don’t suppose you knew I was at the writing retreat too?’
‘No, and I don’t think what I want to discuss with Ginny is any of your business, either. And who the hell are you?’ he said rudely to Rhys.
I don’t think he’d noticed Mr Jenkins, who was sitting well back and observing Will with interest.
‘I’m Rhys Tarn, a friend of Ginny’s.’
‘That woman at Triskelion I spoke to on the phone mentioned some old boyfriend there you’d met up with, Ginny. I suppose that was him?’ He jerked his head at Rhys.
Verity not only appeared to have shot her mouth off to a total stranger but also, typically, got things disastrously wrong, I thought in exasperation. What business of hers was it to gossip about me to Will?
‘She’s wrong. I’d only met Rhys briefly once before I came here, years ago at a publisher’s party, and had no idea he lived at Triskelion.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Will said, his eyes narrowing. ‘Perhaps he’s the real reason you sold up the cottage, not because you had a good offer from the new owners of the Hall?’
‘It happens to be true,’ Evie said, ‘but that’s neither here nor there.’
‘No indeed,’ said Mr Jenkins, speaking up for the first time, and Will spun round to stare at him.
‘That is totally irrelevant to the matter in hand. I am Ms Spain’s solicitor, and we have discussed the whole matter of your spurious claim on some of the proceeds from the sale of Wisteria Cottage.’
‘They are not spurious,’ Will said furiously. ‘I asked a solicitor myself about it. It was my home too, after all!’
‘No, it most certainly wasn’t. It was always mine alone, and you contributed nothing to the upkeep of it or any of the household bills – you were just a weekend visitor.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid that unless you can show proof that you did indeed contribute in that way, which Ms Spain assures me you cannot, you have no claim whatsoever on any of the sale money,’ said Mr Jenkins.
‘If you indeed saw a solicitor, either you did not make the true matter plain, or he gave you very bad advice.’
‘So, you seem to have had a wasted journey,’ said Rhys pleasantly. ‘And I’d advise you to cease to attempt any future contact with Ginny.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ agreed Mr Jenkins, ‘for that could well give Miss Spain grounds to prosecute you for stalking.’
Will looked in baffled fury from one of us to the other, then gathered himself together before, like a not terribly successful shape-shifter, turning a facsimile of his old, boyish smile on me, exuding charm like cheap aftershave. I wondered how I’d ever fallen for it in the first place.
‘Ginny, after all we’ve meant to each other, you must see that it would be unfair not to share—’
‘It would only be fair if you took yourself off and never bothered me again,’ I cut in.
‘Or, as the immortal Douglas Adams put it, “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish”,’ piped up Evie unexpectedly.
Will stared blankly at her for a moment. Then his expression changed to one of blind, baffled fury and, turning on his heel, he stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
A sporting print fell off the wall and Rhys picked it up and rehung it.
Mr Jenkins got up. ‘There, that seems to have ended the matter satisfactorily, but if you receive any further communication from him, do pass it on to me, Ms Spain.’
‘You’ve been wonderful – thank you so much,’ I said gratefully.
Evie got up to follow him. ‘Well, if that’s it, I’m off, too.’
This wasn’t a surprise since Evie had driven herself in, because earlier she’d received notification that a parcel was arriving this afternoon, and she hoped it was Milly Vane’s Memory Box at last.
The door closed behind her, leaving me alone with Rhys. Now it was over I felt both totally wrung out and hugely relieved that I’d never have to see or hear from Will again.
‘Thanks for all your help and for being here,’ I said. ‘I knew logically he didn’t have a leg to stand on, but still … And now I’ve seen him again, I can’t imagine how I ever fell for him in the first place – or took him back the second time.’
‘We all make mistakes and that’s something else we’ve got in common,’ Rhys said cheerfully. ‘Come on, let’s go and have a celebratory lunch at a great little restaurant I know in Harlech!’
*
We had a delicious Italian meal and, afterwards, we walked around Harlech, enjoying the view of the impressive castle and browsing the interesting shops, so it was late afternoon by the time we got back to Triskelion.
Only Toby and Pearl were around, playing table tennis in the refectory. Pearl said her sister was in the TV room and that Kate had been in and taken a plateful of cake back up to her room, where she was presumably engrossed in her new novel … or thoughts of Mr Teddy Bear.
Hearing us, Cariad bounced out of the kitchen followed by Snookums and, in a statelier fashion, Pompey. She’d been baking with Bronwen and insisted we try the little butterfly sponge cakes she’d helped make and some rather odd-shaped brandy snaps.
‘You have to wind them round the handle of a wooden spoon before they go too hard, and it’s difficult,’ she explained. ‘But even the flat ones taste fine.’
‘I wonder if Evie’s parcel came?’ I said, and Tudor, coming in just then, told me he’d carried a big box up to Evie’s room after lunch and she’d been up there ever since she got back.
I was curious to know if this was the long-awaited box and, if so, what was in it, so I went upstairs and tapped on her door … but she wouldn’t let me in!
‘It is the Memory Box,’ she said through the half-closed door. ‘And there’s a lot more in it than I expected. But you know my style: I like to excavate each layer, scan and evaluate it, before moving on to the next.’
‘But can’t you just give me a hint of what’s in there? Photographs, diaries, what?’ I pleaded.
‘Certainly photographs, but we already knew Milly was a keen photographer. As to the rest, you will just have to wait and see.’
And with that, she closed the door again.
My mother is the most annoying woman in the entire known universe.
*
Evie didn’t appear in the sitting room until it was almost time for dinner, looking rather abstracted and with her pinkish hair up in spikes from running her hands through it. It sort of suited her, in a punk kind of way.
I’d already told everyone about the scene with Will. I might as well – they knew most of the story already. From being a near clam living alone I’d gone to sharing my private life with a company of complete strangers, except that, oddly, none of them really felt like a stranger any more.
Evie replied vaguely when Nerys asked her if she was finding the box of material that had arrived useful. Her mind was thinking only of her work, and that was how it was to be for the whole weekend.
She would emerge at intervals for food and drink, but while her body was with us, her mind was upstairs with the contents of the Memory Box.
*
Timon had explained that the family didn’t do much to celebrate the New Year, other than stay up to raise a toast at midnight, for the Solstices and Twelfth Night were their big occasions.
Noel was to stay on after dinner till midnight, which I think is why Ma didn’t vanish back upstairs to her mysterious delvings that evening.
Opal, too, stayed up, sitting in the TV room, until Pearl finally winkled her out just before midnight, when she came in reluctantly and perched on a small tub chair as if ready to take flight.
Nerys had taken a hot whisky and lemon up to Verity and said she was watching a New Year’s Eve programme on the telly and working her way through a box of chocolates. Then, as Timon filled all our glasses, Nerys turned on the radio just as the deep chimes of Big Ben began to mark the hour.
We all clinked glasses and wished each other a happy New Year.
‘A happy, healthy and prosperous one for you all, I hope,’ added Noel.
‘And the New Year is always a good time for fresh ventures, or a change of direction – so here’s to new beginnings, too!’ Timon said.
‘I’m certainly now ready to find my new forever home at last,’ I said. ‘Max Prynne has kindly offered to let me rent the small lodge house by the back gate of the estate while I make my mind up where to settle.’
‘I want you to stay here for ever,’ said Cariad drowsily. Having been allowed up until midnight she was now in a state resembling the sleepy Dormouse in Alice in Wonderland.
‘We’d all like that,’ Timon agreed kindly.
‘And off to bed with you, Cariad,’ said Nerys. ‘I’ll come and tuck you up in a minute.’
Cariad must have been tired, because she didn’t complain, other than to say she wanted her daddy and me to go and say goodnight too.
‘I’m going to walk Uncle Noel home shortly, but I’ll look in when I get back,’ promised Rhys. ‘And I expect Ginny will too, but I’m pretty sure you’ll be fast asleep the moment your head hits the pillow.’
Once she’d gone, Evie finally emerged from her abstraction.
‘Renting that cottage while you look around for a new home is a good idea, Ginny. A nice breathing space. If you decide to settle here permanently, I’ll see you occasionally when I’m up staying with Noel to research Gwendoline Sutler for the next book.
I expect that will be my new beginning, once I’ve wrapped up the Milly/Arwen one. ’
‘You will always be very welcome,’ Noel said.