Chapter 46
ELOISE FOUND herself wanting to clap. It was such a bravura performance. The mouse that roared. The look on each of their faces was priceless. ‘Megan!’ Eloise hurried out of the room after her.
Megan stopped at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Yes?’
‘That was really quite… impressive.’
She rejected the compliment, turned and began climbing the stairs.
Eloise felt a strong urge to stop her. ‘I don’t suppose you fancy getting out of here for an hour or so. Leave them to it? I don’t know about you, but I could do with some fresh air.’
Megan stopped for a few seconds, her back to Eloise, before she said, ‘Yes. Why not?’
Chapter 47
THE SIBLINGS did not speak.
They listened to Megan and their mother talking in the hall. Heard footsteps up and down the stairs. Then the rattle of the front door. The sound of a car engine starting up and fading away up the drive.
The silence in the room was heavy.
Chloe looked from Liv to Noah, expecting one of them to break the impasse. Neither of them did. She waited. Still nothing, but the odd look in Liv’s eyes and the drumming of Noah’s fingers on the table told her it wasn’t over.
Noah coughed.
That was the trigger.
Liv pushed her chair back away from the table. It made an awful scraping sound. ‘I’m done with this.’
‘What do you mean?’ Chloe asked.
Liv’s voice was steady, but flat – blanched of any emotion. ‘It seems we’ve finally fulfilled Dad’s wishes, after a fashion. We’re agreed on a three-way split. So be it. I’m fine with that. And I’m happy for you two to do as you want, with regards to the charity donation. Do whatever you want. It’s all absolutely fine with me.’ She stood up. She looked anything but fine.
Chloe glanced nervously at the fat file of paperwork that squatted on the table. A mountain of work. ‘But, Liv, there’s still lots to sort out.’
Liv nodded. ‘Yes, there is.’ She put her hand on top of the file and shoved it, hard, in Noah’s direction. It hit his arm and skidded onto the floor, spilling sheets across the polished floorboards. ‘But I’ll not be the one doing it.’
‘What?’ Chloe could feel the panic rising in her chest.
‘You’ve both made it very clear that you find my approach’ – she paused – ‘or is it just me, overbearing, bossy, insufferable. Well, you don’t have to suffer me any more. The will named all three of us as executors. It’s your turn now.’
And with that, she walked out.
Chapter 48
ELOISE SET off driving aimlessly. Where to? One thing was certain: they needed to get out of Scarborough. On a whim, she headed through the town and out onto the A171. Very quickly the neatness of suburbia gave way to the wildness of the moors: wide open skies, a lot of blackened heather and a few weather-beaten sheep. The scenery had resonance. Megan sat beside her in the passenger seat, her head turned, looking at the view. Neither of them said anything and the longer the silence endured, the more seductive it became.
Eloise realised it was the first time she’d ever been alone with Megan.
They shared so much, but none of it overlapped, except Jonathan.
It was oddly soothing to drive and not speak. After the cacophony of noise over the past two days, Megan’s silence made a welcome change. Eloise concentrated on the twists, dips and hidden hairpin bends in the road. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to see the road as a metaphor. Thank God she was driving. She wouldn’t have wanted to put her trust in someone else on a route this twisty.
As they climbed up towards Fylingdales, Megan said, ‘I forget how beautiful it is up here.’ It was more an observation than a conversation starter, but that didn’t stop Eloise responding.
‘Yes. Me, too. It’s amazing how you can live somewhere for years and never properly appreciate it.’
‘Do you miss Scarborough?’ Megan asked. Eloise couldn’t detect anything other than a simple enquiry.
‘No. Not any more.’ Eloise checked herself. ‘If I’m honest, not ever. I always found it a little claustrophobic.’ They swung down and up another dip. Eloise relished the brief sense of flying as they crested the hill. Surprisingly Megan seemed untroubled by the speed. ‘It’s a nice place, but there’s no denying it has an “end of the road” feel about it.’
Megan didn’t respond for a few seconds. ‘Why did you and Jonathan choose to live there then?’
‘He never told you?’ Eloise pondered why he hadn’t, and assumed he’d decided it all sounded much too comfortable and bourgeois for an academic whose specialist field was underachieving, working-class white boys.
‘No.’
‘He inherited the house from his mother. As an only child, it all came to Jonathan after she died.’
‘When was this?’
‘A long time ago. The house stood empty for a couple of years after her death. Jonathan refused to sell it or even rent it out, but it didn’t make sense for us to move in. He’d not been teaching for very long, and I hadn’t even settled on what I wanted to do. Then I fell pregnant with Liv, and Jonathan got it into his head that Scarborough, or more specifically The View, was the perfect place to bring up a family. It was completely the wrong time, but he was adamant. Anyway, you know how he is… was; once he got fixated on the idea of his firstborn growing up in the family home, he got all fired up. He applied for, and got, a lowly part-time lecturer position at York University and started to pitch for, and pick up, some consultancy work, so it suddenly it seemed doable – though still not remotely sensible. We argued about it, a lot. We were still arguing about it on the day we moved in. But once we’d moved, we were committed. The house ate money. We had many, many years of being skint, before Jonathan started
