glanced, disapprovingly, I thought, around the living-room artefacts. There were rather a lot of them and most of them had a story – a memento from a holiday or a gift from a friend. His glance rested for a second on the bronze Greek statue with an oversized penis on the mantelpiece. Anna had given it to me five years ago after a date had gone disastrously wrong and I had told her I was giving up on men. Anna brought the statue to make me laugh. And it did.
‘Satyr with penis rectus, a classic example of the ithyphallic. Some say it was Dionysus, others that he was one of the wood satyrs said to have been a companion,’ said Michael. ‘In contrast to the sleek beauty of so many Greek statues, its vulgarity conveys a strong image, don’t you think?’
Stuck-up prick, I thought, then almost got the giggles when I realized how apt that was in the circumstances. ‘Also known as the wahey, look what I’ve got,’ I blurted. I don’t know what made me say it, but he had sounded so pompous.
He didn’t laugh or ask to look around any further, and I was glad to see him to the door.
‘I’ll be in touch to arrange valuations,’ he said after he’d taken my email address and I his. He made his way through the small front garden and out to his car, a black Jaguar which was parked opposite, outside Anna’s cottage. Before he got in, he turned back to take another look at the house, but saw me still standing on the doorstep. ‘Er … good to have met you again.’
Yeah sure, I thought. You just want me out and your money in the bank. ‘And you,’ I said and gave him my most charming smile. With knobs on. Greek ithyphallic ones.
*
I went through to the kitchen, sank into a chair and blinked away tears. This wasn’t my home any more, it belonged to the Harris brothers. My ginger cat, Max, stared at me from his place on the windowsill. An image of the Buddha looked down at me from one of the many postcards and photos I’d pinned to a notice board next to the cooker. He was half smiling, eyes closed, his expression serene. Smug bastard, I thought. I don’t suppose you had to pay rent for your spot under the banyan tree.
A montage of my life was pinned up on the board: my daughter, Lucy, as a toddler in a red bathing suit, paddling in the sea in Goa, again at nine years old dressed as Charlie Chaplin for a fancy dress party, a wedding photo with Andy, my first husband and Lucy’s father – the twenty-four-year-old me at our wedding wearing a crown of cream rosebuds. Another photo showed Nick, handsome, adventurous, the free spirit. Everyone had adored him, but neither family life nor commitment were for him – at least not with me. Halfway down the board was a photo with someone cut out – that would have been John, my last partner. We were together for six years until I had an epiphany at a dinner party. He was a well-regarded local artist and was rattling on in his usual superior manner and it was like the blinkers came off and I saw him for what he really was – a pompous bore who had sponged off me all the time we were together. I later found out that he’d never been faithful. Back then I took the prize in the ‘Love Is Blind’ contest. I’d had a symbolic cutting up of all his photos, then I’d burnt them with Anna’s help. I’d felt like an old witch as I watched his self-satisfied face shrivel and disappear into flames then ashes.
Further down the board, there was a photo showing my cats, Max and Misty, wearing Santa hats; lots of photos of Mum over the years, some in fancy dress – she loved to dress up for any occasion. She wore reindeer jumpers at Christmas, dressed as a fairy princess on birthdays, the Easter bunny in spring and, one Halloween, she put a sheet over her head and pretended to be a ghost. I was only six and screamed the place down. My dear mad mother. Other photos showed friends at barbecues, dinner parties over the years. Most of the photos were taken at No. 3 Summer Lane: my home, my safe place, through good times and bad.
It isn’t just the house I love, I thought as I gazed out of the window, it’s the whole area and the people in it. I knew everyone, was friends with most of them. I couldn’t go out to the postbox without meeting someone for a chat and a catch-up. We were a community who supported each other through all weathers.
I fell in love with the Rame peninsula the first time I came to attend a music festival up on the cliffs. It’s a hidden gem just over the River Tamar on the other side of Plymouth. There are the twin villages of Kingsand and Cawsand, both picture perfect, with narrow lanes lined with cottages painted pink, blue and ochre, leading down to the three beaches in the bays, all easy to get to for holiday-makers wanting an ice cream, pub or pasty to follow. On the other side of the peninsula is wild, unspoilt coastline with beaches that are harder to reach without a long climb down a winding cliff path. At a third point is Cremyll, where the small passenger ferry docks. It’s a wonderful way to enter the area, the boat chugging in through the yachts moored on the Plymouth side, to see the stately home of Mount Edgcumbe up on the hill with lawns in front stretching down to the sea.
‘Dear God,’ I said. ‘I need five hundred thousand pounds and I need it fast.’ I turned to Max. ‘Where am I going to find money like that in the next few weeks or months? I can’t wait a year until I’ve fulfilled Mum’s requests whatever they may be.’ Max blinked and turned away. God was probably bored with requests like that too.
At least I had the presence of mind to ask Michael Harris for time, I told myself. I’d learnt the ‘can I get back to you?’ trick years ago from Rose though, being the people-pleaser I am, usually forgot to put it into practice. I didn’t need to go over my finances at all. I knew exactly what I had – four hundred pounds in the bank. I had a part-time job teaching art at the local secondary school and I ran workshops in the evenings in the winter months. Both jobs paid a pittance. I earned enough to pay my bills and, with the occasional painting I sold, have some sort of a life. Though in recent months, I’d had no new ideas or inspiration to do my own work. I had no pension plan or savings either; like so many of my generation, we thought we’d never get old. Of course, I’d get my inheritance in a year if my sisters agreed to go along with it but would the brothers Harris wait? Somehow I thought not.
Wednesday 2 September, late afternoon
‘Genius,’ said Anna when she’d finished reading Mum’s letter. ‘Have you any idea of what you’ll have to do?’
We were sitting in her kitchen and catching up over a pot of Earl Grey tea. Like me, Anna had been out gardening and was dressed in an old T-shirt and jeans, her short dark hair tucked away under a blue and white polka dot hair band. I’d known her since art college and been friends ever since. She shared my love of Cornwall and when the cottage opposite came up for sale ten years ago, at the same time she was separating from her husband, she didn’t waste any time buying it with her divorce settlement. Her proximity was one of the many reasons I didn’t want to move. I couldn’t imagine life without her. We even had keys to each other’s house so we could drop in on each other anytime.
I shook my head. ‘None. Just that we have to meet some man that Mum hired as a PA to organize it all. He’ll give us our instructions at the beginning of every other month.’
‘Starting when?’ she asked as she cut a slice of her home-baked lemon drizzle cake, put it on a plate then handed it to me.
‘Next month. October. Mr Richardson will let us know where to be, when and what with, then this mystery man will take over.’
‘Exciting.’
‘God only knows what she’s devised for us all.’
‘I can just imagine her glee when she was thinking this up. How’s it going to be funded?’
‘All taken care of from funds from the sale of the family house.’
‘So while you thought your mother was living a quiet life and letting you get on with yours, she was busy scheming up a “kicking the bucket list” for her wayward daughters.’
‘With the help of her friends, Martha and Jean. Fleur’s already called them to see