Chapter 3 Emma January 2019
Emma
Emma yawned. It had been such a long drive to Morecambe to the solicitor’s office.
She wasn’t used to driving that far and she felt guilty for leaving James in the middle of his mocks.
And work. She’d never finished the condition survey.
And it was due today. She sighed and looked around the small solicitor’s office.
The window ledge hadn’t been dusted for years.
A dried-out spider plant was caked with decades of grime.
The reception area, which doubled as the secretary’s office, was chilly.
There was a heater under the desk of the woman who had only reluctantly glanced up from her pile of paperwork to welcome Emma.
She didn’t look much younger than the building.
Behind the secretary’s desk, Emma saw a figure emerging from a narrow corridor.
Mr Eals, her mother’s solicitor, looked even more dilapidated than his office.
His dark eyes were sunken into his face, barely visible below untamed eyebrows.
The hand he held out to greet Emma was equally hairy.
Already a short man, he was bent over, as if from the weight of people’s troubles he had shouldered over the years.
He was smiling. ‘Ah, Margaret’s daughter, Mrs Bowen. I was hoping we would meet. It’s a pleasure.’
‘Good to meet you too, Mr Eals.’ They shook hands and he ushered her back down the narrow corridor, years of spilled coffee staining the carpet tiles.
The back door was open, the chilly draught riffling the stacks of paper lining the corridor and breezing into Mr Eals’ small office at the back of the building.
The windows here were high up on the wall, so there was no view of whatever lay behind the office.
But even if there had been big windows, Emma suspected the old solicitor would have found a way of covering them.
Every single surface in the room was buried under piles of manila files held together by elastic bands, labelled in the same spidery script.
The top of a mahogany glass-fronted bookcase, which was full of impressive-looking legal tomes, was stacked to the window ledge, and even the chair opposite the old desk had several newer-looking folders on them.
Mr Eals slid them on to a pile on his desk and indicated where Emma should sit.
He eased himself past another tower of files and sat on a well-worn leather chair opposite her.
He was watching her, the tips of his fingers pressed together, his elbows resting on the cluttered desk. ‘You do look like your mother. I suspect everyone says that.’
Emma smiled. ‘Not many of my friends knew her.’
The contours around his eyes rippled as the old man returned her smile.
‘Your mother was one of my longest-standing clients. I’m sad that this day has come.
As a solicitor, you follow a client through their lives, intervening at the crucial points.
Births, marriages, divorces, deaths of relatives, house purchases, and, then eventually, death.
It’s the natural order of my professional life. ’
‘So you had known Mum a long time?’ Emma didn’t recall her ever mentioning Mr Eals.
‘Yes, since her twenties. She was one of my more interesting clients,’ he said slowly. ‘Now, have you got the death certificate we discussed on the phone yesterday? It is a relatively simple estate so, with a fair wind, we should secure probate in a couple of months.’
Emma drew the envelope out of her bag – she’d got the death certificate from the town hall that morning – and handed it over to the solicitor.
He took out his glasses and put them on his nose before examining the death certificate closely.
He nodded gravely. Then he raised his arms to the sides of the chair and used them to push himself upwards, until he seemed to judge that his knees would be able to support him.
He moved slowly over to a pile of files in the corner nearest Emma and selected an enormous series of folders second from the top.
It was held together by blue elastic bands, straining against almost a foot of paperwork.
What on earth had her mother needed to discuss over the years?
Mr Eals dropped it with a thud on to the desk with the look of a man surveying a job well done. He rolled off one of the elastic bands and slid in the death certificate.
‘Thank you for arranging to get this so quickly and for offering to sort out her possessions. As I said on the phone, the will makes a number of stipulations about certain items. I always think it’s better for relatives to manage that.
It saves unnecessary solicitor’s fees and allows for what the Americans like to call “closure”. ’
‘I think I’d have to go through years of therapy to get closure with my mother,’ Emma said with a grimace.
She’d meant the comment light-heartedly, but Mr Eals paused and looked down at the file, stroking it.
‘I’m not a religious man,’ he said quietly, ‘but I believe there’s a phrase in the Bible about walking a mile in another man’s shoes. Until we have done that, we will never understand what it’s like to be the other person.’
Emma glanced down at her hands and realised she was twisting her wedding ring around her finger.
She placed her hands on the desk and looked up at the old solicitor, who was watching her over his glasses.
She nodded. Emma had no wish to walk in her mother’s shoes.
Their relationship had been difficult at best.
He eased a couple of sheets of paper out of the file. ‘I have your mother’s will here,’ he said, passing it across the desk, ‘so you can see what needs to be done.’
On the top sheet Last Will and Testament was printed in large bold letters across the top.
‘This Will is made by me Margaret Chapman of Flat b, 487 Marine Road East, Morecambe on this day Monday the 21st of January 2019,’ she read.
Emma looked up quickly. ‘This will was made the day before she died,’ she said, her eyes wide. ‘Didn’t she have a will before, or did she change it?’
Mr Eals hesitated. ‘Your mother made some small changes to her will just before she died, but it was easier to make a new one than add them in as a codicil.’
Emma frowned and looked down at the document. Her heart started to thud. Why would Mum change her will just before she died?
The solicitor continued. ‘Now, after the usual blurb about revocation, executors – that’s me’ – he looked up – ‘and funeral directions, you’ll see there’s a section entitled “Specific Gifts”.’
Emma traced her fingers down the page. There was a list of items that her mother wanted distributing to different people. Books, ornaments, jewellery, a coin collection. Nothing that Emma particularly remembered.
‘All these items are in her property,’ Mr Eals said, ‘and I’ve arranged a courier to come to collect them later today to save you having to distribute them yourself. Some of them are going to other parts of the country, although a couple are local.’
Emma reached the end of the list and gasped. ‘The Girl in the Midnight Maze. She wants the painting to go to someone called Clare Richens. But—’
‘Yes, your mother’s friend Clare lives close by. I’ve included her address and phone number on this sheet,’ he said calmly, slowly sliding another piece of paper across the desk. ‘If you prefer, I can cancel the courier and you can deliver it yourself?’
‘But The Girl in the Midnight Maze is ours. Our family’s. It can’t go to a stranger. I love that painting, it’s beautiful,’ Emma said, suddenly finding it difficult to swallow. She thought of the little girl dancing in the moonlight in the centre of the maze.
The secretary appeared at the door with a tray cluttered with a teapot, cups, and a milk jug.
She laid it gently between them and set out the cups either side of the tray.
Mr Eals reached forward and carefully poured milk and then tea into two cups, both covered in roses, and slid one across to Emma.
She picked it up, her hands trembling, and took a sip.
With his fingertips once more pressed together in what she realised was his habitual pose, Mr Eals spoke quietly. ‘I’m afraid that’s what Margaret’s will says. She wanted the painting to go to Miss Richens.’
Even though Emma hadn’t seen the painting for years, for much of her childhood it had hung in the sitting room of their family home in Sussex, watching over her as she grew.
When she was tall enough, she would reach up and follow the labyrinth with her fingertips, trying to find an escape route for the girl in the white dress locked within the shadowy prison of green hedges.
Her shoulders dropped and she looked back to the will. She hadn’t thought there would be anything controversial in it. How naive. Mum had always loved any opportunity to be contentious.
‘There is also the matter of her property itself. If you turn to page two, clause seven . . .’ The solicitor paused and looked up at her.
Emma flicked over the page, scanned down and read out loud. ‘To Elizabeth Margaret Bowen I leave my property Flat b, 487 Marine Road East, Morecambe.’ She looked up at the old man. ‘She’s left her flat to Libby?’
Mr Eals smiled. ‘Yes, to your daughter. Your younger child, I believe?’
Emma covered her mouth with her hand. ‘But Mum hated Libby,’ she said, rereading the text.
‘Hate is a strong word,’ he said calmly, slowly opening a drawer and extracting a set of keys.
‘These are the keys to your mother’s flat.
I’m afraid it’s been empty since she went into the nursing home a few months ago, but I’ve been keeping an eye on it.
’ He reached up and scratched his neck inside his starched collar. ‘I think you’ll find it all in order.’
Emma nodded, staring at the keys. Some had a carefully labelled tag, written in an unfamiliar hand: communal door, front door, meter cupboard. A small brass key was unlabelled.
‘The residue of your mother’s estate goes to a selection of charities, as you’ll see on page four. If you can box it all up and label it, I will arrange for all of that in my role as executor. I can perhaps book another courier to save you taking it to the various charity shops she stipulated.’
Emma nodded blankly and then blurted out, ‘What was it she changed the day before she died? The property going to Libby or the painting going to’ – she looked down at the will – ‘Clare?’
The old solicitor shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to disclose the content of her previous will. I’m sure you understand.’
Emma nodded again, her foot tapping the floor.
‘Now, this final document’ – he slid a sheet of paper across the desk – ‘details her funeral wishes. The music, readings and so on. Margaret had been in touch with a funeral home and made all the arrangements herself. You will just need to contact them and arrange a date.’
Emma scanned through a short list of music and the contact details for a humanist celebrant. How very like Mum to want something different to the norm.
‘If you need anything else, do get in touch.’ Mr Eals pulled himself up by the arms of the chair and stood. ‘I will be in contact about the probate in due course.’
She also rose, clutching the keys. ‘Thank you for your help,’ she said automatically and followed him out of the room, her throat tight with repressed emotion.