She decided on a different approach: kindness. ‘Are you all right?’ She couldn’t help but think they were echoing her own exchange with Angus. Different people, different roles – the same avoidance of the truth.
‘Yep. Fine and dandy. The sea air agrees with me.’
‘Noah! Please?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘There’s something up. I can tell.’ He always did find it hard talking about feelings, an inheritance from their father.
Noah’s smile disappeared. And the storm clouds gathered again. ‘What, you mean apart from the fact that our dad’s just died of a horrible illness?’
Liv refused to react. ‘Yes, apart from that.’
Noah looked away again. ‘Nothing.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Leave it, Liv. I’m not one of your patients.’
She reached out and put her hand over his and held it there, reminding him that she was his big sister and she cared. ‘I’m worried about you. Is everything okay with you and Josie?’
He pulled his hand away. ‘None of your business, Sis. You know better than to go interfering in other people’s relationships. Or you should do. We’re fine.’
Okay, so that was a dead end. Liv took another sip of tea – it really was too strong. She watched a couple a few tables away share a slice of chocolate cake, each taking a forkful in turn. A scrupulous division of pleasure. Maybe some mea culpa would help. ‘We’re not getting very far, are we?’
Noah wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, as if trying to rid himself of the taste of the over-stewed tea. ‘Oh, I don’t know. We’ve established that I’m a heartless, money-grubbing, selfish bastard; Chloe is clueless; and your application for the Institute of Chartered Accountants stands a very good chance of being accepted.’ He smiled, but this time his joke had teeth.
‘Noah! Please. This is serious. We need to find a way of agreeing something. I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy coming back for another round to get this resolved. We need to sort it out this weekend.’
‘On that, my dear Sis, we agree. Are you saying you’ve given up on the patented Redpath time-served algorithm?’ Liv’s expression must have conveyed her fatigue. He relented. ‘Okay. You know my main issues.’
‘Go on.’
‘I think it’s ridiculous that the carer is walking away with five grand.’
Liv let slip a puff of exasperation. ‘Noah, that’s the only stipulated bequest. There is nothing you can do about that. Forget about it. In the grand scheme of things, it’s an irrelevance. We need to focus on the division of the estate.’
Noah obviously did not view £5,000 as irrelevant. ‘But don’t you think it odd that he left her so much? She was only employed for a few months.’
‘You’re getting distracted.’
‘If you say so. But there’s something fishy about it.’
‘The estate, Noah. We need to focus on the division of the proceeds of the house and Dad’s savings. That’s the big picture.’ Liv wanted to lay her head down on the table and leave it there. It was like Groundhog Day, and she was Bill Murray, the only one desperate to move forward. ‘Noah, I need you to focus! What do we do about Megan? That’s the big issue.’
‘How about we cut the bitch out!’
‘We can’t do that.’
‘But that’s where you’re wrong, Liv. We can. Dad explicitly left it to us to decide. He must have had his reasons for that.’
‘And you think cutting Megan out is fair?’
‘Think about it. If he’d wanted her to have something, he would have put it in his will. It’s a new will, after all. He had the golden opportunity to allocate whatever he saw fit to her – and yet he didn’t. That tells me that, for some reason we don’t know about, he decided she wasn’t entitled to anything.’
It was uncomfortable hearing Noah voice her own suspicions. ‘But she looked after him. Was there for him.’ In ways they had not been. ‘She nursed him at the end.’
‘Did she, though?’ Noah’s eyes were glittery, almost as if he was excited or high. ‘It sounds like she used a lot of his money to pay for carers. How much of it she actually did herself, we’ll never really know.’
Liv couldn’t let that stand. She’d been over to spend more time with their dad than Noah. She’s seen the toll Jonathan’s MND had taken on Megan. She might not like the woman, but she did respect the way she’d coped with their father’s illness – with their father. ‘Noah. That’s not fair. She was here all the time, apart from when she was at work. She had virtually no life. His illness had more of an impact on her than on anyone.’
‘Not more than on Dad.’
There was nothing to say to that.
Noah suddenly leant forward, conspiratorial. ‘I think she’s holding out on us. You said yourself she’s not been very forthcoming with the information you’ve asked for. The silent treatment works well if you’re hiding something.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Noah. Now you’re being ridiculous. She’s in shock. Grieving. She’s lost her… partner, and she’s about to lose her home.’
‘Her home! You mean our home! Jeez, Liv. Why are you being so… hair shirt about this? It’s our inheritance. That’s the way it works. A five-, pardon me, six-year affair doesn’t give you the right to inherit anything, in my book. Megan should leave with what she arrived with. Nothing.’
‘Since when did you become so heartless?’
‘Since Dad died and left us with a decision that will affect my family. I’m a husband and a father now, Liv. I’m not going to be ashamed of putting Josie and Lily first.’
‘So this is all about them, is it?’
‘Yes. It is.’
Which made it all the more strange that Josie and Lily hadn’t come with him. But for the first time ever in her relationship with her brother, Liv found herself not saying what was really on her mind – whether that was
