Chapter 12
‘Logan Quick married Amanda Holt,’ Jason announced. ‘I’m sure I remember her in the Olympics. Horse rider.’
Sabri was staring down at the left-over chicken, wondering whether, if she cut it into smaller chunks, the family might not notice how little there was. What they were all going to eat tomorrow night, she had no idea.
‘I want a pony,’ thirteen-year-old Bethany told her father.
‘Can we move house?’ Darren asked. ‘If it’s real. Can we have our own pool?’
There had been a time when coming home from work had caused the knots inside Sabri to loosen.
She could forget the drug-crazed morons who’d punched or slapped her, the drunken twats who pissed inside her ambulance.
In the warmth of the family room, making dinner while the kids and Jason chatted and laughed and watched TV around her, it was as though none of it had happened, not really.
‘She was in that cross-country event thing at Greenwich, along with Zara Phillips,’ Jason said. ‘Back in 2012. Do you remember, Sab?’
Something had changed these last few years, and the cosy feeling of plenty had slipped away.
Money didn’t stretch the way it once did.
The kids, older now and social-media savvy, always wanted better and more of what was better, blaming her if it wasn’t provided.
Even Jason seemed to have handed over to his wife responsibility for steering the family ship.
She sometimes wondered if Ask your mother was the single most frequent phrase to come out of his mouth.
Because if she was in charge, then when it all went wrong, it was her fault.
‘We could go away for Christmas,’ Maddy said. ‘Sadie’s family are spending Christmas in the British Virgin Islands.’
Sabri divided the chopped chicken between four bowls, leaving her own empty.
‘Where are the British Virgin Islands?’ Maddy asked.
Jason, who should know better, was intent on his laptop. Maddy had commandeered Sabri’s iPad, while Darren, the middle child, sat at the family computer. Bethany was leaning over her older sister’s shoulder.
‘He was forty-one at the time.’ Jason seemed fixated on Logan Quick’s private life. ‘She was twenty-six. A real babe too. That’s money for you. No wedding pics.’
Sabri gave the onions a stir before adding diced sweet potato and red lentils. The curry was a mid-week staple and she’d already had to face down requests that they eat out for once, or at least order in pizza, because they could afford it now, couldn’t they?
‘He divorced her,’ Maddy chipped in. ‘Five years later. So, he wouldn’t leave her his money, would he? She’d have had – what do you call it? – a divorce settlement.’
‘Two kids,’ Darren added. ‘Ludo Quick, born in 2013, so he’ll be twelve, and Coco Quick, born in 2015. Which makes her ten. Why would he leave his money to a total stranger and not to his kids?’
‘He wouldn’t,’ Sabri answered, knowing no one was listening. They were all entirely caught up in the dream of unexpected riches.
‘So, can I have riding lessons?’ Bethany asked. It was something she begged for regularly. Not usually twice in one evening, though.
‘Who calls their kids Ludo and Coco?’ Jason said.
‘It says a share of his money.’ Bethany had current possession of the letter.
‘Net worth, five billion,’ Jason said, in a much more subdued tone. He gave a low whistle.
Jason had commandeered the token itself, sparking a family row about where the safest place to keep it would be.
‘Maybe he’s left some to them and some to us,’ Bethany suggested.
‘Why would he leave it to us, though?’ Darren had spun round on his stool to face his sisters. ‘We don’t know him. Dad, I don’t think you should keep the token in your wallet. It’s the same size as a ten-pence piece. You might spend it by accident.’
‘We need a safe,’ Bethany agreed. ‘We can keep our jewellery in it.’
‘You want jewellery now?’ Her father reached out and wound his hand around his youngest daughter’s long, black hair.
‘Maybe Mum saved his life one day.’ Maddy looked like she’d discovered a new element. ‘That has to be it. Think back, Mum. Have you ever saved anyone?’
‘I like to think so.’
Jason accidently spending the so-called token could be the best thing to happen; bring this nonsense to an end once and for all. Why couldn’t the letter have been an invitation to a new job? That would have been a realistic dream, one they could all sensibly get behind.
A picture came into Sabri’s head, too quickly for her to erect any sort of mental block against it: the five of them on a Caribbean beach, dazzling colours and a scented breeze, surf tickling their bare feet, warm hands clasping her own.
‘Your mother’s been a paramedic since she was twenty-five,’ the children’s dad reminded them. ‘She’ll have saved countless people. The question is, did anyone announce themselves as eccentric billionaires when you restarted their stopped heart?’
‘Is anyone planning to eat tonight apart from me?’ Sabri asked. ‘Because I don’t see a cleared table, never mind cutlery.’
‘Maybe you saved one of his children.’ Maddy wasn’t letting it go. ‘If one of his children was dying, say if they’d accidentally swallowed something really poisonous, like … what’s really poisonous, Dad?’
‘Red Bull,’ Jason replied.
Maddy rolled her eyes.
‘Bleach,’ Darren told his sister, as Sabri spooned the curry over the chopped chicken in four of the bowls and into her own empty one.
‘Say his little girl drank a bottle of bleach and she was dying and you saved her, Mum,’ Bethany chipped in. ‘And then he said to himself, one day, I’m going to leave that lovely woman all my money.’
‘I’m not sure I could save a child who’d drunk a bottle of bleach, sweetheart. OK, dinner’s ready. Jace, will you get that laptop off the table and find some knives and forks because I think our children have collectively lost their brains.’
‘I know what we can do, if it’s real,’ Darren said.
‘It’s not real.’ Sabri put the last bowl on the table. ‘Sit down, everyone.’
‘New car would be nice,’ Jason said, as he moved his laptop to the counter. It was still open on Logan Quick’s Wikipedia page. ‘Nothing fancy. Maybe one of the small Teslas.’
‘No, Dad, a Ferrari,’ said Darren.
‘We can go to India,’ Maddy said. ‘Find out where we came from.’
‘You come from Devon,’ Sabri told her. ‘The Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital. All of you.’
‘You know what I mean,’ Maddy argued.
‘Can I please have a pony?’ Bethany asked.
Another unbidden vision came into Sabri’s head: her bowl with its scant portion of food being hurled across the room, striking the window and falling with a broken clunk to the floor, because nothing short of that dramatic would convey to these idiots that she really, really wasn’t in the mood for this crap, tonight of all nights.
Only the sure and certain knowledge that only she would clean it up stayed her hand.
‘No, come on, guys, I know what we can do.’ Darren grabbed the rice bowl and started spooning it onto his plate. He’d take all of it if he wasn’t careful.
‘What, Darren?’ Sabri hadn’t meant to snap, but enough was enough. ‘What will we do in the entirely impossible event that a billionaire we’ve never heard of before today has left us some money?’
Darren’s eyes opened wider; his face took on a pinched look, the one his mother recognised from when he was much younger. When he was about to cry.
‘I only meant …’
‘What?’ she snapped again, too angry to back down.
‘You could go back to medical school,’ he finished. ‘Be a doctor, like you always wanted.’