Chapter 10
TEN
LIANE
‘Well, are you going to answer me?’ Haven asks me as I spin around and see her standing in the doorway, a towel wrapped around her, and her wet hair falling over her shoulders.
She’s obviously just got out of the shower, which explains where she was when I came up here looking for her and Joel.
I still don’t know where he is, but that’s hardly the most pressing issue at the moment.
‘Why are you looking at my phone?’ Haven demands to know, staring at the device in my hand that doesn’t belong to me.
‘I wasn’t looking at it. I was just…’
‘Just what?’
I have no idea what to say. Of course I was looking at it.
‘What’s going on?’ the voice behind Haven says, and I see Joel entering the bedroom.
He has a towel around his waist and, like his girlfriend, his hair is also wet, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out where they have both been.
So that’s why I couldn’t find them. They were in the bathroom together, taking a shower, making the most of having the house to themselves.
Except they don’t have it to themselves anymore. But I really wish they did.
‘Ask your mother,’ Haven snaps, answering Joel’s question. ‘I just walked in here and found her looking at my phone.’
‘What?’ my son cries, looking towards me, and it doesn’t help my case that I am still holding Haven’s phone. I quickly put it back down on the bedside table but it’s already far too late, so I better start talking, and fast.
‘I came up here because I wanted to talk about what happened back at the restaurant,’ I say, before realising I need to go a little further than that. ‘I was going to apologise for any misunderstanding.’
‘Misunderstanding?’ Haven repeats. ‘You accused me of being with your son for his inheritance.’
‘Yeah, that was a really horrible thing to say, Mum,’ Joel adds.
‘I know it was and that’s why I’m here to say sorry. I’ve just been under a lot of stress lately. Mum’s death has hit me hard and I haven’t been myself. You see that, don’t you, Joel? You see that I’ve not been myself.’
Joel looks like he has to admit that and nods.
‘It’s fine, don’t worry about it,’ Haven says then, quite surprisingly. ‘But I’d appreciate it if you didn’t come in here and snoop around my personal belongings. You have no right to do that. I am entitled to privacy, even in your home.’
‘I wasn’t snooping!’
‘It kind of looks like you were, Mum,’ Joel says.
There is no way I can talk myself out of this, so I just concede defeat, for the sake of avoiding any more arguments or awkwardness.
But I wish I could just remind Haven that she is in my house and I am entitled to do what I like here, in this place that I pay for, not her.
Okay, so I shouldn’t have looked at her phone.
But she shouldn’t have given me reason to go looking at it.
‘I think I better go downstairs,’ I say, heading for the door and, thankfully, both Joel and Haven step aside, allowing me to pass without any more questions.
In different circumstances, I might feel uneasy that the two of them had been sharing a shower in our bathroom while Frederik and I were out, but that’s the last thing on my mind as I go back downstairs to find my husband.
All I can think about is how it doesn’t feel like I have made the situation any better.
Then there’s the message I saw on Haven’s phone, which only strengthens my worry that Haven is hanging around this family for cash and nothing else.
* * *
I find Frederik sitting on the sofa, a glass of water in hand and an old war movie on the television. I wish I could switch off and relax as easily as he clearly can, but us women are wired very differently to men and I’m not the first person to notice that.
‘How did it go?’ he asks me casually, as if all I had been sent to do was complete a menial errand rather than navigate a complex conversation with a close family member and their difficult partner.
‘I think I made things worse,’ I admit as I slump down onto the sofa next to him.
‘What? How did you do that?’ Frederik cries, turning off the television to give me his full attention. He’s looking at me as if it was impossible for me to make things worse, but that’s only because he doesn’t know what I am capable of yet.
‘Haven caught me looking at her phone,’ I confess.
Frederik’s eyebrows go up, so I quickly speak before he can ask the obvious questions.
‘I knocked on Joel’s bedroom door, but there was no answer so I went in. They weren’t in there so…’
‘So you looked at Haven’s phone instead of just leaving?’ Frederik assumes.
‘No, not quite. I mean, yes, I suppose that is what happened. But I wasn’t planning to look at it. She got a message and it flashed up and got my attention, so I looked at it and I’m glad I did because—’
‘Just stop,’ Frederik says, cutting me off. ‘Can we just agree that you should not have been looking at Haven’s phone without permission, no matter what you might have seen on there? She’s a guest in this house and she deserves to have her privacy.’
‘You haven’t let me tell you what I saw on there,’ I cry.
‘I don’t care! It’s none of our business!’ Frederik fires back. ‘And whatever you may have seen is not the point. The point is you shouldn’t be going anywhere near her private property. How would you feel if she was looking at your phone?’
‘This is different.’
‘How?’
‘Because I’m a mother and I’m trying to make sure my son is okay.’
‘Of course he’s okay. He has a girlfriend and he has just inherited a lot of money. I’d say he’s doing fine.’
‘That’s the problem. It’s the money! What if Haven is only with him because she knew his grandma was going to leave him a small fortune when she died?’
‘I really hope you didn’t go up there and accuse her of that again like you did at the restaurant,’ Frederik says, shaking his head.
‘No, I didn’t,’ I assure him. ‘But I did see a message on her phone from a friend, and it was clear Haven has already been telling people about the money she has just got access to.’
‘Did she see you looking at her phone?’
My silence gives Frederik his answer.
‘Oh, Liane,’ he sighs. ‘That isn’t good.’
‘I know it isn’t, but I apologised to her and Joel and told them I was under a lot of stress lately and I think they understood.’
‘Let’s hope they did, or things aren’t going to get any easier around here, are they?’ my husband says before getting up off the sofa.
‘Where are you going?’ I ask him before he can leave the room.
‘I’m giving you some time to yourself.’
‘I don’t need to be by myself.’
‘I think that you do,’ Frederik says before departing, and the silence that follows is almost as uncomfortable as the conversation I had to have upstairs with Haven.
I get what my husband is trying to do. He wants me to take a break.
Relax. Unwind. Hopefully emerge from this day a calmer, happier person.
But it’s going to take more than a few hours by myself to feel any better about things.
My worries about Haven aren’t just magically going to go away, nor are the consequences of Mum’s death.
In all the craziness and confusion of today, I’ve barely had time to think about the vast sum of money that my mother has left to me and my husband.
It’s genuinely life-changing in so much that Frederik and I could take early retirement now and both of us could spend these next few years enjoying our fifties, rather than just surviving them as we eke our way closer to our pensions.
I know it’s what my mother would have wanted.
Why else would she leave so much to me? But what she would not have wanted is to see that there were cracks forming in her family.
She would not have liked the signs that a domestic war was on the horizon.
She certainly would have hated the idea that me and my son could fall out to the point where we might not speak anymore.
I fear that might be what is going to happen.
There appear to be only three ways that it won’t.
One, I come to realise Haven has genuinely good intentions and my worries are misplaced.
Two, Joel and Haven break up, and that seems unlikely considering how loved up they appear to be.
Or three, I decide to get rid of her myself.
As I sit here on my own and ponder all those possibilities, one of them seems more likely than the rest.
No prizes for guessing which one it is…