CHAPTER 2
Dorothea didn’t leave me an ancient rocking horse or an old family heirloom. She left me her house. Her beautiful Regency villa in Bath.
Josh gasps and reaches over and grabs my hand, squeezing it in excitement.
We’re sitting side by side in the solicitor’s office in Bath.
It has high ceilings and views over the Georgian buildings opposite.
I keep thinking Lawrence Kemp is about to tell us he’s made a mistake, that the house wasn’t meant for me after all, because how can this be true?
Things like this don’t happen to me. They just don’t.
‘Ms Roe has some stipulations in her will surrounding the house,’ Lawrence says, pushing his little round spectacles further onto his face, turning away from the screen to give us his full attention.
His beard is so thick and bushy it’s hard to see his lips unless he opens his mouth.
‘You cannot sell the house for a minimum of one year, which is fairly unusual. And she’s left you enough money for the continued upkeep.
Congratulations, Imogen.’ He reaches into his drawer and pushes a set of keys across his desk.
There’s a buzzing in my ears as I take them.
Lawrence explains that I’ve inherited the bulk of her estate, with the rest going to charity, and I try and concentrate on what he’s saying but all I can think about is Dorothea’s house.
The house that I’d loved so much as a teenager.
The house my mum used to clean. It’s mine.
It’s actually mine. I don’t care that I can’t sell it for a year. I don’t want to sell it anyway.
Lawrence hands me some paperwork to fill out. Josh is peering over my shoulder as I write down my bank account details. We have a joint account for the mortgage and bills, but we also have our own separate accounts too, which is the one I stipulate that I want the money to go into.
‘Thank you, Miss Cooke,’ says Lawrence when I hand him back the forms.
‘And how much money will she get?’ Josh asks, much to my irritation. I’m desperate to know too, of course, but I can’t help but feel it sounds greedy. Dorothea has already given me her house.
Lawrence glances at me for approval, and I give an embarrassed nod. ‘Let me have a look,’ he says, turning back to the screen. ‘Yes, it looks like there will be an initial sum of ￡250,000 and whatever her yearly royalties will be, which will, of course, change every year.’
Josh is tipping forwards in his chair and whistles in surprise. And then he’s standing up and I follow suit as though in a trance. Lawrence passes me a folder full of paperwork to take away, shakes our hands and then ushers us out, seemingly unconcerned that he’s changed my life.
It’s not until we are standing on the street outside that Josh begins to laugh. ‘Oh. My. God. This is crazy! We need to go there. I need to see this house for myself. Come on, Ims. What are you waiting for? Let’s go.’
He pulls my hand and tries to lead me down the hill, but I can’t move. ‘I just … I can’t believe it.’
His eyes light up. ‘Well, believe it, babe! Didn’t you hear what he said in there? You’re now a very rich woman. You never have to worry about money again.’
And then my emotions play catch-up and I squeal in delight – startling a couple walking by – and throw my arms around Josh’s neck.
I peer through the bars of the wrought-iron gates like an orphan from a Dickens novel, the rain falling softly on my hair. Everything around me feels hazy and slightly unreal, like I’m in a dream that I don’t want to wake up from.
‘Fucking hell,’ exhales Josh, his breath dissipating into the damp air. ‘Villa Oiseau.’ He reads from the inscription on one of the stone pillars to the side of the gate. ‘Isn’t that French for bird?’
‘Oh yes. I remember she always had birds in her art.’
It’s been over sixteen years since I was last here but my memories from that summer are pin-sharp: the lush green lawn out the back, Dorothea’s glass studio overlooking the Royal Crescent and the streets of Bath, the three hyper dogs, the fluffy grey and white Persian cat, Casper, flopped on the back of the sofa, my mum, happy and relaxed for the first time in years as she took a batch of cakes from the Aga, a slant of sunlight picking out the red in her brunette hair, the wood fragrant with sweet scented honeysuckle, and Harry, the boy who used to live next door and who I’d had my first kiss with one night under a starry sky.
The villa is shabbier than I remember and the gravel driveway could do with re-laying.
But the creamy Bath stone walls, the majestic portico and the sash windows with original shutters look as imposing as ever.
I can’t see any evidence of the fire, although Lawrence told me at our appointment this morning that there is damage around the back of the house, mainly to the studio.
I’ve never had much money. My mum was a cleaner and my dad worked in a warehouse.
I grew up in Keynsham, a small town between Bristol and Bath, and we never went on fancy foreign holidays, or even on day trips, and any money my dad had would be spent down the pub.
After Dad went to prison I lived with Alison.
Seven years older than me, she was twenty-one when Mum died.
She’d escaped our aggressive father and moved to Cardiff three years earlier, only returning now and again.
After our mum died she reluctantly moved back to Keynsham in order to sell the family home and, with the little money we received from it, she rented a flat near to my school so that I had some continuity.
Josh makes a disbelieving sound that brings me back to the present. ‘I can’t believe this is our house,’ he says.
My house, I think. And then I instantly feel guilty after everything Josh has done for me, how kind he’s been about my suspension. ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’
‘You never said it was anything like this. I mean, it’s got a wood out the back. Its own fucking wood.’ He laughs. ‘It must be worth millions.’
I picture my sister in her tiny new-build semi in Cardiff.
What will she think about this? It doesn’t seem fair.
Why did Dorothea leave this to me and not to both of us?
Although I think Alison only met Dorothea twice, and that was after Mum had died.
Alison had already moved away to Cardiff when Mum started her cleaning job for Dorothea.
She worked for a chain of hair salons so managed to get relocated to the Bristol branch after Mum died and Dad was arrested.
We rubbed along together well enough for those four years.
I had a part-time job after school as a cashier in Tesco so that I could help Alison with the rent.
After I followed Josh to Nottingham University, Alison moved back to Cardiff, met and married Gareth, and now they have a little girl, my six-year-old niece, Lila.
Even after everything we’ve been through I wouldn’t say we are close.
We’ve rarely talked about our parents. We’ve buried it all under hard work and polite small talk.
It’s been our way of coping, I suppose. Heads down and carry on.
I wonder why there is the clause in the will that won’t allow me to sell the house for the first year.
Josh is opening the gates with a code the solicitor gave us.
He suggested we change it as soon as we can.
Josh is wearing wellies over his work trousers and the fabric has puffed around his knee, making it look as though he’s wearing old-fashioned breeches.
I want to laugh at the absurdity of it all.
It’s like we’ve abruptly been transported to the early 1900s and Josh is standing at the foot of his estate.
‘What?’ he asks, noticing my expression.
‘Nothing. This is all a bit surreal, that’s all.’
‘Too bloody right.’ He hasn’t stopped buzzing since we left the solicitor’s office. I’m excited too, of course. It’s the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me.
Almost too amazing. As though something is about to go wrong.
Josh returns to the car and drives it through the gates, and I follow behind, preferring to walk over the gravel, which is sparse in places.
In my peripheral vision I see something yellow fluttering in one of the bushes by the front porch.
It looks like a piece of ribbon and then, with a stab of revulsion, I realize what it is.
Police tape. I untangle it from the branches and pocket it.
Then I walk up to the front door with the arc of stained glass above and wait for Josh to get out of the Vauxhall.
His car, a decade old, looks out of place next to this beautiful house.
He comes over to me, his expression softening.
‘Are you okay, Ims?’ He takes my hand. ‘I can imagine this must all be weird.’
I squeeze his hand. ‘I’m happy – about the house and everything.
But also sad, for Dorothea.’ I think of the police tape lining my pocket and it hits me again that Dorothea died here.
Since Friday I’ve read everything I could find online about her death.
It sounds as though she fell down the stairs in her rush to escape a fire which had broken out in her studio, and it saddens me that she died all alone.
I can just imagine the fear and sheer panic she must have felt when her house started to fill with smoke.
She had no family, no children, and another pang of regret hits me that I didn’t try harder to get back in touch.
That I let my hurt pride get in the way of reaching out to her.
‘You never talked about her to me,’ he says gently, rubbing his thumb against mine.
‘It was all tied up with my dad.’ I swallow. ‘And after Mum’s funeral, Dorothea never got in touch and so I … I pushed it all to the back of my mind.’ I’d felt so close to her when we stayed here that summer. This was the last place where me and my mum were truly happy.