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The Judge raised his hand. ‘Yes, and make it quick, lad. My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut. And this one’s no help. She’s starving me, I swear it.’
The boy didn’t bother to smother his grin as he looked from The Judge to Emily. ‘This one?’
‘Is called Emily. Pleased to meet you.’ She leaned a little closer. ‘I don’t think he has an inside voice. So apologies in advance. Black coffee for him and a cappuccino for me, please.’
‘Tom. Pot collector and general dogsbody.’ He thrust out thin fingers. ‘And we all know Judge Evans, no need to apologise. His voice is bigger than his bite.’
Unless you’re in any way related to him. ‘Nice to meet you, Tom.’
He let her hand drop and his face brightened. ‘Who are you? A new carer? New… er… wife?’
If there’d been coffee in Emily’s mouth Tom would have been wearing it. ‘I’m his daughter.’ It still felt so strange to say that, but it was easier than giving everyone she met her whole life story.
‘He has another one?’
‘You haven’t heard about me?’ Why would he have? It was old news. Everyone had moved on; the only person who cared about her past was Emily. Clearly. ‘It’s like a reverse Cinderella: the evil youngest one and the gorgeous, harassed and saintly older two.’
‘Evil? No. What? Sister? You’re Tamara and Matilda’s sister? Blimey.’ He whooshed the milk in the frother while the coffee machine made spluttering noises. There was a sudden and delicious smell of coffee in the air. ‘You don’t look much like them.’
She fiddled with a beer mat while Tom made the coffee. It was good to see that not everyone here held a grudge against her. Either he was too young or too innocent to have heard the details of her misdemeanours. Or… maybe she’d blown everything out of all proportion and things hadn’t been as bad as she remembered? He was still looking at her with a bemused expression. ‘Without going into too much boring detail – we’re a stepfamily. My mum married Judge Evans. A long time ago, obviously.’
Placing the cups onto a tray Tom nodded. ‘Yes, steppies – I get it. I’ve got a couple of them myself, plus two half-blood sibs and one full-muggle brother. That’s too many people trying to play happy families in one house, and also why I’m here and not at home – couldn’t wait to get out, to be honest.’ He rang the price up on the till. ‘Four-fifty, please – I’ll let you know the price of the tart later. Liam, my brother, runs this place so, if I’m not at college, I try to doss upstairs in one of the B and B rooms. Which is all too much information. If you don’t mind my saying, Emily, you’re not a bit like the other two.’
‘That is definitely a compliment. Now, I’d better take these over before he dies of starvation – because that can happen, you know, after a double serving of scrambled eggs on toast less than an hour ago. Can you tell me the Wi-Fi password, please?’
‘No problem, it’s here...’ Tom handed over a piece of paper. ‘Here’s the spiel I have to say: no illegal downloads; no large files; no longer than thirty minutes, if possible.’
She took the paper and glanced up at a noticeboard on the wall. ‘Hot yoga classes at the community hall? Zumba? Wow, Little Duxbury is moving slowly into this century. And what’s that? Oh, really? Do you still have that quaint country fair? Do people still come to it?’
‘No, ‘fraid not.’ Tom shrugged. ‘That’s why they’re asking for volunteers for the committee. It’s died a death and they either need to stop it altogether or ramp it up a bit to attract new people.’
She laughed, remembering the sad little home-made chutneys, drop-stitched, crocheted doilies and donkey rides. ‘It was old-fashioned twenty years ago. But it was very popular, must have made a mint for the stall holders.’
‘Not any more. Not a lot of interest in knitted toilet-roll holders these days. Don’t suppose you’re interested in helping out? Jazz it up a bit?’
She laughed. ‘No. Sorry, I’m back in New York at the weekend. Otherwise I’d have loved to help.’
‘Liar.’
She raised her hands. ‘Yes. You got me. Really not my kind of thing.’
‘Don’t suppose it is, being all New York and everything.’ Grinning, he lifted the bar hatch and walked through. ‘Right then, at least I tried. The boss said I had to ask around. Done my bit; now I’ll go get that tart.’
‘Thanks!’ So that was the second person in Little Duxbury who seemed friendly. Two out of three wasn’t bad.
She punched in the password. Held her breath. And…
Wi-Fi! Never had a black triangle in the top corner of her laptop been so damned welcome. ‘Back in the land of the living, Judge. Right here.’
She scrolled to the email she wanted to read first;
<brettfallon@baddermans.com>
Babe,
I hope the Brits are making you welcome. Although, from what you’ve told me about them, that may not be happening. Hang in there, it’s only a week.
Don’t worry about your clients, I’ve asked Martha and Gez to take some on board, so if you could liaise with them that’d be great.
Let me know when we can touch base. Mum and Dad send their love – I still haven’t mentioned anything so it’s all hush hush until we see them. Hopefully that’ll be real soon.
Miss you.
BF x
Miss you, too. Emily pressed her thumb and finger on the bridge of her nose and tried to control the emotions whirring around her. The rock was still on her finger, glinting brightly in the pub wall lights. She ran her fingers over the sharp edges.
Her heart ached at the thought of him, but there had been times she’d been so consumed with her current problems that he hadn’t flickered across her radar.
Was that a bad sign?
Her laptop pinged with more incoming messages, including one from Tam.
<TamaraPForrester4727@hotmail.com>
Emily,
We hear you’ve landed in LD. Thank you for coming at such short notice.
We know everything will come as a shock to you. We’ve been trying to cope but our father is becoming very hard to look after and we’re at our wits’ end. He refuses to allow us to make any decisions with him and he’s determined to stay at The Hall. To be honest, that’s not an option as you will probably know by now. Apart from the fact he’s not safe on his own, the house is falling apart and we just don’t have the money to renovate it. The cost of roof repairs alone is astronomical.
You should know, too, that Daddy’s been the victim of several scams over the last few years. Before we knew he was ill, he had handed out his password to computer scammers. Twice! Next thing, he paid someone upfront to come fix the roof – ridiculous amounts, you wouldn’t believe – but they took the money and never came back. Not surprisingly.
We’ve got control of his accounts now but there isn’t much left in the pot, and the rest of it is tied up in trusts for us when he dies. Unless we have a miracle or win the lottery we’ll have to sell The Hall just to pay for proper care – and it won’t bring much given the state of disrepair it’s in.
So now you know. It’s a terrible state of affairs and we’re totally lost as to what to do.
Daddy gets worse at night, so you need to make sure all the doors are locked or he’ll get out.
Oh, and keep him away from the new neighbour, Jacob Taylor. He seems very shifty and we think he might be hatching some kind of scam. Daddy is a prime target for that kind of thing as we know.
Don’t do anything silly. Please.
Tamara and Tilda
Brilliant. Just brilliant. A weight settled on Emily’s chest, thick and dark and bordering on the panic she’d felt earlier. The neighbour is a scammer. The house is falling down and The Judge is a liability.
Great. Just great.
After ordering a restorative pot of tea, and finding The Judge a pencil for the cryptic crossword, she took a deep breath that wasn’t anywhere near as helpful as she’d hoped… and replied:
What’s his routine? What do I actually need to do for him?
How much are the roof repairs going to be?
Is there really nothing we can do?
Sell some of the land off? We do have a lot and we don’t need it.
Have you actually asked for professional advice either for the roof or for The Judge?
What about a nursing agency?
Couldn’t we get daily help?
A sleepover companion?
Security?
How’s Sylvie?
HELP!
She crossed the last word off. She didn’t need their help, just some answers. Plus, she was starting to rue ever finding the damned Wi-Fi in this village. There was a lot to be said for living in the Dark Ages; blissful ignorance for one.
She asked Tom to pop over and buy a vanilla slice for herself and wondered about Face Timing Brett, but decided to do it when she didn’t have an audience.
Another incoming… a surprisingly quick reply from Tam and Tilda:
Just sit with him, basically, and tell him what to do and when. His tablets are in a box marked with the days of the week, kept in a cupboard above the fridge in the kitchen.
Can’t afford to pay for daily help, sleepover companions or long-term nursing care. The roof repairs were estimated at almost a hundred thousand. There’s no money.
We could sell some land – good idea. But not to just anyone, and not to that Jacob Taylor.
Sylvie is going in today. She’s quite worried, as is Tilda. I’m fine, of course, holding everyone together as usual.
Will be in touch.
T
Emily glanced over at The Judge who was staring through her, the tip of his pencil in his mouth, completely lost in his own world. When he sensed her watching him his thick eyebrows rose and he gave her a gentle smile that was at odds with the way she was feeling. She was stuck here trying to deal with the fallout from years of neglect on the heels of years of arguments. She couldn’t remember a time when he’d ever smiled at her, when she’d ever appeared to generate in him any kind of fatherly pride or pleasure. But now he didn’t know who she was, he seemed to quite like her. Go figure.
But, maybe it was better if he didn’t remember who she was. Remembering what they’d said to each other would probably just upset him all the more.
And just sit with him? It didn’t make sense. Surely he needed to be stimulated, as Mr Taylor had said? She made a note to look into that and make a call to the local GP. She hoped old Dr Shepherd had left, because she had a few bad memories that lingered there, too.
Funny how none of her youth had mattered at all for the last however many years; she’d put the whole bad teenage behaviour thing behind her and moved on. Until now. Every time she walked past a house or a shop here she expected someone to haul her in and tell her off.
As they meandered back to The Hall, carrying shopping bags loaded with fresh vegetables and chicken for a healthy home-made soup, Emily’s panic began to abate. She would Skype Brett. She would call a realtor… what did they call them here? Estate agent, yes… and get a valuation of The Hall. She could do a lot of her work offline from there, too, and then wander down to the café for email updates. Most of her clients need never know she was even out of the country. She had a little money set aside, she could use some of it to sticky-tape this whole disaster together until the girls came back.
It’d be fine. She’d sort it all out. Wave her magic wand or something.
Although, with him hobbling beside her, muttering about that missing dog again, her magic touch suddenly felt a little underqualified.
But, she had a plan. That was a start. Wasn’t it?
They’d just about reached the Duxbury Hall driveway when a dark car drove by and turned into Jacob Taylor’s driveway. The Judge raised his stick and waved.
‘What do you know about Jacob Taylor?’ she asked him, dropping the shopping bags and letting the blood flow back into her fingers as she craned her neck to peer into the back of the car. But she saw absolutely nothing but glass. ‘Who is he? What does he do?’
‘What does who do?’
‘Jacob Taylor?’ The scammer. Her heart began to thud. She’d need to keep an eye on him.
‘Who?’ The Judge couldn’t even remember two seconds ago.
‘Never mind.’ She hauled the bags up again and made towards The Hall. ‘I’ll work it all out for myself.’
Just like she always had.
***
‘Shoot! No. No! Not again! Why is this so bloody hard?’ Working things out for herself was proving more difficult than she’d thought it would be.
It was Wednesday morning and Emily was fixing a breakfast of pancakes, berries and natural yoghurt. At least, that had been the plan. What she hadn’t accounted for was the batter sticking to the bottom of the pan and burning, not once, not twice, but three times.
Pancakes had seemed like an excellent idea when she’d absentmindedly picked up the ingredients, her mind on so many other things, but now she was down to the last dribble of lumpy goo and her head was starting to throb. Mainly, she assumed, because she’d gone from mildly hungry to absolutely starving in the time it had taken her to use up all of the batter ingredients and fail each time. ‘Damn and double blast! Nigella, where are you when I need you?’
‘Oh, hello there.’ The Judge wandered in wearing the same clothes he’d had on for the last three days: a khaki shirt and baggy trousers. Something red had spilled all over his shirt between last night and this morning, and his hair was scruffy and wild. He looked like an extra from a zombie movie. ‘What are you cooking, er…?’
‘Emily.’ Remember? Squishing down the tang of frustration that he still couldn’t remember her name or who she was, she surveyed the damage made by the splodges of crusty batter mix across the Aga top, the slightly squashed berries and insipid-looking yoghurt.
If only her mum were here, she’d know what to do about the food, The Judge, everything. If only her mum had had the time to teach her to cook. If only her mum had had more time, full stop. If only. There were so many if onlys. Too many. God, she still missed her, especially here in this too-large place filled with memories. Em swallowed back the lumps in her throat. ‘How does burned goo on toast sound?’
‘Lovely. I’ll have two, please.’ The Judge took his usual place at the large table and waited, knife and fork primed. She imagined he’d done this all his life – been waited on, looked after, nurtured, either by wives or daughters or housekeepers or harried secretaries. And yet, he’d somehow been unable to pay that forward.
She wondered how that felt – always knowing there was someone to care for you, even if not to care about you. And she told herself to stop being maudlin. Her parents were gone and The Judge had never cared either for or about her, but she had Brett now, all those miles away, waiting anxiously for her return. Funny thing was, he hadn’t flitted into her thoughts much at all yesterday.
Admittedly, she’d been busy trying to write a proposal for an account while chasing down The Judge and answering emails in the pub. The afternoon she’d spent stripping all the beds in the twelve bedrooms, assessing damp damage, ceiling patency and generally trying to dry everything out. She had a list now of everything that needed doing – it was so long it gave her heebeegeebees just looking at it.
Guilt worried its way into her head. Why hadn’t she thought about Brett until now?
She pushed all that away, promising to contact him later, and concentrated on the more pressing matter of her grumbling stomach. ‘Actually, none of this looks lovely at all, Judge. It looks, frankly, like a hot, inedible mess. And that’s because it is. Let’s eat out. My shout. And while we’re at it, we’ll get you a haircut. You look like a hippy.’
‘Right you are.’ He scraped his chair back and fastened a loose-fitting beige cardigan over the stained shirt. Unfortunately, there was plenty of stain – what the hell was it? – still visible. ‘The pub?’
‘No. We’ll try the café today seeing as you had top pick the last two days. But don’t you think you should change your shirt? You look like you’ve murdered someone.’
