‘I know, Mummy. Believe me, I’m grief-stricken too, but how could I refuse Chester’s proposal? It means everything to me. It doesn’t alter how much I miss Father or how you must feel.’
‘But to tell me now, while I’m pulled down with grief.’
‘I’m sorry. And I know how you are grieving but please, Mummy, be happy for me.’
She broke off, realizing how insensitive her words must sound, how they must have pierced her mother’s heart. Immediately mortified, she knelt before her while Chester stood awkwardly by.
‘It was going to happen some time soon, Mummy,’ she tried to placate.
‘Why today of all days? Was your engagement so urgent that you couldn’t delay it a few months?’
But a few months would not have made any difference. The blow of losing her daughter to marriage would have been just as hard to bear later. Julia knew her mother, almost knew her next words would be the same come next month, next year: ‘I have been left all alone. Your dear father has been taken from me, now you’re leaving me…’
‘You’ve still got Virginia and Stephanie,’ Julia reminded her. ‘And James.’
‘James!’ she heard the desolation in her mother’s tone. ‘He’ll be at university – and much he cares for me, his mother. Like his father…’
Victoria broke off suddenly. She hadn’t meant to say that. The pent-up frustration of years of hiding the loneliness she had so often felt, her hurt at finding herself put aside, her need for his companionship ignored by her husband, had burst out in those three last words.
Immediately she tried to make amends with some sort of explanation.
‘This whole family survived the terrible flu epidemic two years ago when so many loved ones died. I would tell myself I should be grateful for that during those times I felt forsaken; all those evenings when your father left me here on my own while he entertained his business colleagues. Now I have lost him altogether and that is a judgement on me for being so self-pitying. Not that I ever complained to your father’s face. And now you are saying that you too will soon be leaving me – that too feels like a judgement on me.’
Her words must have raised some small prick of conscience for Julia had thrown herself into her mother’s arms. ‘I didn’t know, Mummy. But it’s going to be all right, honestly it is. I shall make sure I’m always here for you.’
Futile words! Victoria had caught a glimpse of Chester standing a little apart from them, his features tight, and had instantly read his expression: ‘As my wife she’ll be there for me, not here for your every whim.’
Turning her eyes away from him, she had found a little courage to vow that from now on she would never lower herself to ask for Julia’s help if her daughter didn’t offer it of her own accord; never again would she do anything to earn another look like the one Julia’s future husband had just given her.
With her small family beside her, Victoria sat opposite Mr Grantham, her deceased husband’s solicitor, at the dining room table.
A letter from him earlier had mentioned an urgent matter that he needed to discuss concerning her late husband’s estate. For some reason it had instilled in her a feeling of apprehension which wasn’t soothed by the man’s grim expression now as he shuffled through the papers he’d extracted from his leather briefcase.
After what seemed an age, he looked up, his gaze resting momentarily on Julia. She was the only one here sitting bolt upright, her head held high, while her mother and two sisters still drooped in grief. But it was right that he address the widow of his deceased client.
‘My dear Mrs Longfield,’ he began. He had acted on behalf of her late husband’s business from the time Charles had inherited it from his father, Edgar James Longfield, for whom he’d also acted in that man’s later years. He himself had then been a very young solicitor. Yet in all those years he had set eyes on Victoria Longfield on only one occasion; exactly when, he couldn’t recall.
‘My wife is a very retiring person,’ had been Longfield’s excuse in response to Grantham’s invitation to dine with him and his wife soon after the man had inherited from his late father. ‘I shall be pleased to accept, Grantham, but my wife feels she must decline.’
He had never offered again; business had been done either in Longfield’s office or his own, at his club or in a restaurant.
Sitting opposite the thin, gaunt-faced widow, who seemed ready to break down at any moment, he felt uneasy at the news he was about to impart to this small gathering.
Julia frowned at the pause that followed Mr Grantham’s opening words. His expression was solemn and he leaned towards her, his forearms resting on the table, as if to soften the blow of what he was about to say.
‘My dear Mrs Longfield,’ he said again, his tone lowering, ‘before we begin I must tell you that what I have to say could be somewhat unsettling news. I am not quite sure if you are aware, Mrs Longfield, but regrettably your late husband never got round to making a will despite my warnings of the peril of not doing so.’
Julia reached out and took her mother’s arm as she slowly realized what this news might mean, her hand going to her lips in dismay. She spoke for her mother. ‘He was a businessman. He must have made a will of some sort. Maybe it was years ago when he and my mother first married?’
The solicitor looked faintly irritated by her interference. ‘I assure you, my dear Miss Longfield, no will has ever been made.’ He turned his attention back to her mother. ‘I urged your husband to do so many times over the years but he always said that everything would automatically go to you as his wife and
