Echo

She didn't answer directly. 'It worries me that Emma will have had so much and you will have had so little. Your father always intended you to have the house, and I made that clear to Emma when I set up the trust. Now she's pressing me to sell the wretched place, put aside a similar amount for you as she's already had, and use the balance to pay for a nursing home.'

'Then do it,' said Deacon. 'It sounds fair to me.'

'Your father wanted you to have the house,' repeated Penelope stubbornly, withdrawing her hand from his in irritation. 'It's been owned by Deacons for two centuries.'

He looked down on her fluffy white hair and had a sudden urge to bury his nose in it as he had done as a child. He suspected he had just heard the nearest thing she would ever make to an apology for tearing up his father's will. 'Then don't sell it,' he said.

'That's hardly helpful.'

'Sorry,' he said with an indifferent shrug, 'but it's no skin off my nose if you bankrupt your daughter and spend the rest of your life with a series of nurses so that I can flog the place the minute you're gone. Let's face it, I've never shared your passion for living on the motorway, so I'd use the money to buy myself somewhere decent in London.' He dropped another sly wink at Terry. 'If anything's pissed me off about my divorces it's ending up in a miserable rented flat after losing two perfectly good houses.'

'Which is a very good reason not to let you have this one,' said Penelope, rising obligingly to the bait. 'Easy come, easy go. That's your philosophy, Michael.'

'Then take that into the equation when you decide what to do. If you want another two centuries of Deacons living here, Ma, then you'd better leave the house to the Wimbledon branch of the family. I seem to remember they gave birth to a son about ten years ago.' He glanced at his watch. 'We really must go, I'm afraid. I promised the sergeant we'd be there in under two hours.'

She smiled a little bitterly. 'As I said, easy come, easy go.' She held out a hand to Terry who had stood up. 'Goodbye, young man. I've enjoyed meeting you.'

'Yeah, me too. I hope things work out for you, Mrs. D.'

'Thank you.' She raised her eyes to look at him, and he was startled by how blue they suddenly became in the sunlight shafting through the window. 'What a pity your mother is lost to you, Terry. She'd be proud of the man her son is becoming.'

'Do you think she's right?' Terry asked, after several minutes of subdued thought in the car. 'Do you think my mum would be proud of me?''

'Yes.'

'It don't make no difference, though, does it? She's probably dead of an overdose by now, or banged up in a nick somewhere.'

Deacon stayed silent.

'She'll've forgotten all about me, anyway. I mean, she wouldn't've got rid of me if I mattered to her.' He looked despondently out of the window. 'Don't you reckon?'

Yes, thought Deacon, but he said: 'Not necessarily,' as he drove up the access road onto the motorway. 'If you were put into care because she went to prison, that doesn't mean you didn't matter to her. It only means she wasn't in a position to look after you.'

'Why didn't she come searching after she got out, then? I were there for nigh on six years, and she can't have been banged up that long, not unless she killed someone.'

'Perhaps she thought you were better off without her.'

'I could go looking for her, I suppose.'

'Is that what you'd like to do?'

'I think about it sometimes, then I get frightened she and me'll hate each other. I just wish I could remember her. I don't want some old tart with a drug problem whose frigging door's always open to any man as wants a shag.'

'What do you want?'

Terry grinned. 'A rich bitch with a fast Porsche, and no one to leave it to.'

Deacon laughed. 'Join the queue,' he said, moving into the fast lane and putting his foot down. 'But I don't want mine for a mother.'

Amanda Powell opened the door of Claremont Cottage and frowned inquiringly at the Kent policeman on the doorstep. The frown deepened as she listened to what he said. 'I don't know anyone called Barry Grover, and I've no idea why he had a photograph of me. Did he succeed in breaking into my garage?'

'No. According to the information we've been given, he was arrested in your garden, but there were no signs of forced entry to any of the buildings.'

'Are the London police expecting me to go back and answer questions about this?'

'Not unless you want to. We were merely requested to pass on the information.'

She looked worried. 'All I told my neighbors was that I was spending a few days with my mother in Kent, so who gave you this address?'

The policeman consulted a piece of paper. 'Apparently Grover gave his name as Kevin Powell of Claremont Cottage, Easeby, when he was first arrested. We were asked to check the address, and we discovered that a Mrs. Glenda Powell lived here. It seemed likely she was your mother.' He frowned in his turn. 'He does seem to have a lot of information on you. Are you sure you don't know who he is?'

'Quite sure.' She pondered for a moment. 'Why might I know him? What does he do?'

He checked the paper again. 'He works for a magazine called The Street.' He heard her indrawn breath and looked up. 'Does that mean something to you?'

'No. I've heard of it, that's all.'