Chapter twenty-eight
The Martine Henderson who called me at five past nine the following morning, to inform me that my presence was required at her solicitor’s ‘at two on the dot, and, Beth, please don’t be late – he’s squeezing us in as a special favour because we do not have a lot of time to get this arranged’, was the Martine I remembered from my early days with Fraser: a strong, politely fierce, Arpège-scented wind that blew your clothes straight and hustled you along the pavement at pace.
Somehow, in the hours between deciding she was going to set up her own charity to save Rosemount for Longhampton’s golden-age community, and my opening the car door for her, she’d amassed and processed the detailed information required to instruct her solicitor to put things in motion, most of which she relayed to me as I drove to the meeting.
Her lipstick was immaculate, her suede shoes were pointy, her attitude was so confidently propulsive Christian would have offered her a job on the spot. My job, probably.
But, to be fair, this Martine did at least say please, and thank you so much for making time to do this, and complimented me on my hastily assembled ‘agreeing to be a trustee for a charity’ outfit – reassurance I gratefully accepted, because I don’t mind admitting that I was somewhat daunted by the scale of what we were about to undertake, even if it had been my idea to begin with.
Martine, however, was not daunted in the slightest.
‘I’ve also asked Jacqueline to act as trustee,’ she told me, checking through her paperwork, paperclipped and pre-sorted.
‘She’s got masses of committee experience, so she’ll be able to tell me what to do for once, which I suspect she’ll enjoy.
She got terribly emotional on the phone, talking about Ray’s legacy and how proud he’d be, the two of us working together in his memory and so on.
’ Her expression remained neutral. ‘She agrees that this’ll be little more memorable than a park bench. ’
‘Did you explain about the funding? And why it’s important for you to be in charge of this?’ That was a diplomatic way of putting it, I thought. Quite the tip of a conversational iceberg. But it was a conversation that needed to be had.
‘I said her father had tied up the money from the business sale in trust for charity. Not quite all the ins and outs, though – let’s get this out of the way first.’ Martine shuffled some papers.
‘However, you’ll be pleased to hear it’s not going to be the Ray Henderson Foundation.
Or the O’Shaughnessy Foundation. I’ve decided to rename it the Cellars Trust. I thought that was fair. ’
‘And very appropriate,’ I said, trying to lighten the mood, ‘given that the residents are ageing like fine wines.’
‘But I will speak to her. And the other three.’ Martine glanced across the car.
‘You know, it’s never easy to see one’s family through someone else’s eyes, Beth, especially when you’re forced to confront behaviours you’d rather ignore – including one’s own.
You’ve made me realise how much we’ve been held back by things that shouldn’t matter anymore. ’
‘Please don’t pin this on me!’ I said, only half-joking.
‘But none of this would have happened without you. No, don’t try to shrug it off – if you hadn’t bumped into me in town, I wouldn’t have invited you to stay, and if you hadn’t been staying, I wouldn’t have known about the story project at Rosemount, and if I hadn’t .
. . Well, it’s quite a sequence of events, but I believe we’ve ended up in a good place. ’
She patted my knee. ‘And you were the inciting incident! The call to action!’
I smiled, but I didn’t say what I was thinking, which was: I wasn’t the inciting incident. Fraser was.
I won’t lie: I had moments when I thought about Fraser and went hot and cold, then hot and queasy.
Sometimes cold and sad. It had only been a matter of days, after all.
What’s that they say about the five stages of grief?
There must be at least five stages of relationship break-up; I’d done denial, anger, and bargaining ages ago, but now I was ploughing through disorientation (so many of my future assumptions collapsed overnight, leaving me facing weird gaps), as well as self-recrimination (what was wrong with me that I’d allowed myself to think like that?).
Even if I was finally crawling into the healing phase, after five long years, it still felt exhausting, recognising how much I’d have to rebuild from scratch.
In my darker moments, the craven thought crept across my mind that it’d be so much easier if Fraser admitted he’d made a big mistake.
I hadn’t heard from him since I’d left him at the Wild Dog Café.
He hadn’t returned to Martine’s, and I didn’t know what, if anything, he’d told his family about his new life.
It was unsatisfactory. I didn’t like loose ends – Fraser had remained front and centre in my life for five years simply by being a loose end – but I was too scared to pull on this thread yet.
I sidled up to the issue slyly. ‘Are you asking all the siblings to act as trustees?’
‘Of course, but as usual, it’s only Jacqueline who’s come up trumps.
’ Martine was checking her make-up in the mirror.
‘Cara says she’s happy to do it remotely, Heather says she’s not sure if she’s eligible, goodness knows why, and I haven’t even had a reply from Fraser.
I know he’s busy but even so.’ I could see she was struggling to find an excuse for him.
‘He must realise how significant it is to you.’ I paused then added, ‘I think that’s quite rude, actually.’
‘It is, isn’t it?’ It burst out of Martine with startling force. ‘I thought this was a good resolution to that unpleasantness about the Cellars, but no, he can’t even be bothered to respond. I suppose he could be on holiday, or thinking about it, or . . .’
‘No, it’s rude. Not replying to you is rude. It’s OK, Martine. You’re allowed to be pissed off.’
I caught a tiny twitch at the corner of Martine’s mouth; she pretended to look out of the window at a new cake shop, but – I saw it.
‘I suppose it’ll just have to be the women sorting things out,’ she said. ‘As per usual.’
Jackie was waiting for us at the solicitors’ office, wearing shades and looking uncharacteristically shifty. ‘No, no! Don’t fuss! If anyone from school spots me, I’m in serious trouble,’ she hissed, when Martine asked if she was expecting paparazzi.
‘Darling!’ Martine looked amused. ‘Are you bunking off?’
‘Yes, I am! I’m supposed to be in an English-language curriculum meeting right now.
I told them I had an urgent legal matter to deal with.
Which I suppose I do.’ She peered at me over the sunglasses.
‘Hello, Beth. Did you imagine you’d be signing up as a trustee to a charitable trust at the start of this week? ’
I shook my head. I had worried Jackie might feel I’d overstepped.
Crashing in your ex’s mother’s spare room was one thing; elbowing yourself into a place on the family charity board was another.
‘I’m very honoured to be asked. I hope my financial background might be useful, but if you need to replace these initial trustees with more qualified people at a later date . . .’
‘Certainly not,’ said Martine. ‘Think of your CV, Beth.’
Jackie regarded me for a moment, then rolled her eyes conspiratorially: a ‘WTF? we’ll have to discuss this later over a coffee’ kind of look. She shouldered her bag. ‘Come on, then, let’s get this show on the road before Mum decides to buy a school too.’
Once we’d cleared the paperwork, the next step was the meeting with Eric Alexander to persuade him that selling Rosemount to a charitable trust looked better than selling it to property developers to be turned into luxury flats.
The strategy for this came from a seasoned PR expert.
‘Lean on the optics. Pitch it as an organic marketing opportunity,’ said Kay, when I found her in the library, doodling on the piano.
‘Say you’ve found a tame journalist to write it up as positive exposure – “leading national care provider going above and beyond to help a grassroots charity launch a small-scale social enterprise”, blah blah, “handing over the baton of tailored care to the community”, and so on.
They get to gloss over the fact that they were hanging their existing residents out to dry, they look like social pioneers, but still get their money. ’
She paused. ‘And if he’s got any sense, Eric Alexander will realise that the same journalist placing a news feature about a charity being outbid by a property developer so old people are turfed out on to the street won’t look great either.’
‘Isn’t that blackmail?’
Kay winked. ‘I prefer to call it strategic manipulation.’ She played a few dramatic Abba chords. ‘I hear you’re leading the sales pitch next week?’
Were there no secrets in this place? ‘Who told you that?’
‘A little bird. Good choice. I think you’re the perfect person to do it.’
I wasn’t sure about perfect, but I was the person leading the presentation to Eric Alexander.
Lewis had immediately ruled himself out (‘I do still technically work for Acorn Care Homes, you know . . .’) and Martine refused (‘I’m the same age as the people in here, I can’t make it look as if I’m trying to buy a house for myself!
’). In any case, I could tell she had that familiar bit between her teeth about pushing me to push myself, but this time though, she was pushing on an open door.
I wanted to do it. It had been my idea, born out of a genuine desire to protect something I cared about, and the harder everyone else worked to put the framework in place underneath, the more I wanted to do it justice.
That said, between my paranoid preparation and the general heightened atmosphere around the place, when the morning of the meeting finally dawned, my stomach was churning so badly I was convinced I’d got IBS.