As I walked along the hall on the hard wooden floors, which were covered in rugs that had thinned over the years, I could hear Caitlin in the drawing room, with her granny, Josephine Clemonte. Ava thought she was the lady of the house when she was here, even though it was clear Josephine was in charge. I thought about the funny feeling I got in my tummy when Ava had spoken to me earlier. I felt tense when she was around, as though something bad might happen.
I stopped outside the drawing room, and my foot landed on a floorboard that let out an almighty creak, so much so I almost toppled backwards.
‘Present yourself,’ came the voice of Josephine. I knew not to feel scared of Mrs Clemonte; she had only ever been kind to me since we arrived.
Josephine was a jolly lady, and considering she’d lost her husband, Douglas, only last year, she didn’t seem too down about it.
I peered around the drawing-room door and saw Caitlin leaning on the arm of a worn-out brown and grey chequered armchair. Her grandmother sat opposite her in a dark grey tufted high-back chair; a tired-looking chessboard was perched on a frayed green footstool between them. Pippy and Purdy lay at Josephine’s feet, their heads remained pressed to the floor as their tails thumped out a greeting. A fan whirred softly in the corner.
The first thing I noticed about Caitlin was that she was wearing a long red silk robe over her everyday clothes, and in her hand was a thin instrument, which held a cigarette. I looked Caitlin up and down. I could see that the cigarette was not lit but still the whole attire threw me slightly. It seemed strange how Caitlin was pretending to be a grown-up, even though I did see her family treat her more like one than the child she still was.
‘Hello, dear,’ Josephine said without glancing at me, but the warmth in her voice made up for the lack of eye contact. ‘I’m just finishing up this game. Caitlin is a savage chess player, a total fiend. I will be losing imminently.’
Caitlin remained upright, the cigarette holder poised in between two fingers. She had yet to look at me, in the same way Josephine hadn’t. It was as though she was staying in character, the way we had been learning in my drama class at school. I stood in the doorway, not sure whether to move in further. I hadn’t exactly been invited into the room and from where I was standing, I felt as though I was an intruder looking in on an intimate moment between a grandmother and her granddaughter. As I stood, I thought of the endless Monopoly games I had played with my parents that went on long into the night, abandoned for a few hours’ sleep, ready to be picked up again in the morning.
Caitlin made two moves with a horse then stood up and took a flamboyant bow. Josephine leant back in her seat and closed her eyes. Her hair was silver and pinned up in a French plait, her long, spindly legs poked out from her floral floaty skirt in front of her. She let out a heavy sigh. Finally, she turned to me and looked me square in the eye.
‘That girl will be the death of me.’
Later, Caitlin and I found our way to our usual spot in the clearing in the woods and sat down. Caitlin took out some lemonade; Judith had been making litres of the stuff.
‘So what’s with the get-up?’ I asked Caitlin. She had removed the robe and was in red shorts and a delicate blue patterned shirt with a dainty collar. It looked expensive and not the sort of thing I would have been allowed out to play in.
‘Eh?’ she said, then let out a loud belch after she had swigged her lemonade. I smiled inside, happy that Caitlin could be totally herself with me; this was not something she would have got away with doing in front of her parents. Instead, I pulled a face of disgust even though I was barely offended.
‘The silk robe? Is that, like, how you normally dress?’
‘That? Oh, sometimes. It’s called a kimono. It’s from Japan. My grandfather brought it home from one of his travels. It belongs to my grandmother, but really it belongs to me.’
She passed me the bottle of lemonade and I took a swig. I, too, felt a belch coming, but it barely came out as a pop. I was annoyed because back home in Hackney I had been a champion belcher.
‘What do you mean it really belongs to you?’
‘Well, everything you see from here to the house – the land, this stretch of woods, and, well, the house and everything in it – will one day be mine.’
‘You’ll have a long wait though, won’t you? Surely it gets passed to your mum and then when she… erm, dies, then you get it.’
Caitlin shook her head.
‘No, no, silly girl, that’s not how it works. Me and Granny have a secret.’
She leant in closer to me.
‘I feel I have known you long enough now to tell you. Granny and I, we have a special relationship. Just after I was born, she changed her will. She named me as the recipient of everything.’ Caitlin raised her hands and made two half circles in the air to emphasise her point. ‘When Granny goes, it’s all mine.’
I frowned, momentarily. ‘And you’ve managed to keep this a secret from your own mum?’
‘Yes, she plays the dutiful daughter, thinking one day Granny will give her her share.’
‘Buy why? Why is your mum not in the will, her own daughter?’
Caitlin shook her head and looked out towards the clearing. ‘I don’t know,’ she said wistfully. ‘They had a falling out about something years ago. Just after I was born by all accounts. Neither of them speak about it, but I know
