Page 14 of One Last Thing
He swallows. ‘If you wouldn’t mind following me to the office, I can explain.’
6
DAWN
Drink in my hand, laptop in hers, we get up and follow Nico.
It’s the sort of situation so strange and awful, it seems hilarious. I wouldn’t dare laugh about it though, not in front of Megan. She has a distinct aversion to humour in any case, but especially not when it comes to her beloved father. Nor when it comes to me.
She looks much better than when I last saw her, the day of the funeral. Not that she looked bad then –she carried herself beautifully, not a whiff of unravelling about her. No one is ever going to look their best at their father’s funeral, but Megan still managed a pristine façade, a deep unhappiness pricking beneath it only visible to a mother’s eye. How she managed to look so measured after the loss of her father which coincided with the breakdown of her long-term relationship I’ll never know. It made me feel sad for her, to be honest. I can only imagine the lumbering amount of effort it took to be fine.
I was disappointed that she broke off her engagement with Dominic earlier this year. As far as I could tell, they were well-suited –both ambitious and hard-working –and I thought she was happy with him, but clearly in the end he didn’t measure up. She hasn’t told me a thing about the break-up except to say in a bizarrely indifferent mannerthat she realised it wasn’t meant to be. She said it in such a way that I knew better than to ask any further questions. She’s still wearing the ring, I see. Not on her ring finger, but it’s there on her middle one, the over-the-top emerald glinting in the sunshine. It’s beautiful. I can understand why it would be hard to put a gem like that back in a box. But really, she can’t wear an engagement ring if there’s no engagement anymore. It’s not fair on either of them.
She seems perfect as ever, sitting across the table from me wearing a full face of flawless make-up and expensive-looking sportswear that shows off her toned physique. I would never have worn sports kit in public the way people tend to do now –if you’re on the way to the gym or to a sports game, then it makes sense, but now it’s the sort of thing people wear to go for a drink or out for dinner. A passion for health and wellness is something to be flaunted these days, unlike twenty years ago when it was all about clubs and cocktails. I confess I was a little stunned that Megan hadn’t changed after whatever workout she was doing this morning, but it’s not a bad look on her in the slightest.
Something confirmed by Nico’s expression whenever he looks her way.
There always was something between these two. Megan hated it when Henry and I teased her about it, so we learnt not to, but anyone could see it from a mile off. I wonder what she thinks of him now. She hasn’t given away any signs of attraction towards him so far, but Megan never gives away any signs about anything.
I don’t remember her always being like that. She was quite a fun and easy-going child, full of adventure and creativity. But during her teens things changed. She began to take herself very seriously and she hardened, learning howto control and pummel down emotion. Needless to say, she didn’t get that from me.
Nico leads us to the ‘office’, a small room behind reception with a round table in the middle and a desk to one side. He encourages us to take a seat at the table, before placing a laptop in the middle of it. An email is already up on the screen with a link in the body and when Nico leans over to click on it, he begins a video call.
‘Nico, what in god’s name is going on?’ I demand to know.
Before he can respond, the call is answered and Alan, Henry’s lawyer, appears on the screen. He’s fiddling with the top of his laptop, adjusting the angle of the lid. We’ve met before, when he ran through the terms of Henry’s will with me, and I liked him instantly. He must be in his fifties or sixties, with his thinning dark hair and a round, boyish, friendly face. It didn’t take me long to get him chuckling, despite the seriousness of the occasion, and he had such a lovely, cheeky chortle that he seemed to me the sort of person you’d be sat next to at a dinner party and at first you might be a tad disappointed, but then you’d get chatting and find yourself going out of your way to make him laugh for the rest of the evening.
‘Hello, can you hear me?’ he begins, sitting back in his office chair.
‘Alan,’ Megan says, her voice hoarse.
‘Hi, Megan. Hello, Dawn,’ he responds with an appropriate smile – kind, familiar, not overdone. ‘How are you both?’
‘A tad confused, if we’re honest,’ I say.
‘Yes, I can imagine,’ he says, neatening his tie. ‘I’ll get straight to it. Do you remember, in the one-to-one meetings I had with each of you, when we spoke about Henry’s will,I mentioned that there were some final bits and bobs to clear up at a later date?’
Megan nods. He may have mentioned something like that in the meeting I had with him, but I was so thrown by the request to take Henry’s ashes to France, I don’t recall many details.
‘Thisis the later date,’ Alan clarifies. He shifts in his seat. ‘Nico? If you wouldn’t mind.. .’
Nico – who has been leaning back on the desk to the side, his arms folded across his chest, head bowed as though apologetic for merely being present – jumps to action. He picks up two envelopes from behind him and holds each one out for us to take. They are addressed to us individually, our names written in ink in Henry’s terrible, scrawled handwriting. I smile to myself, acknowledging that he used his posh pen to write these. When he wrote anything day-to-day, he’d use biro, but when he wrote thank you letters, I’d tease him about how he had to use his ‘posh pen’. He was so wonderfully odd. How I miss him.
‘There’s no address on these,’ Megan observes, looking up at Nico with a puzzled expression. ‘He gave these to you personally.’
‘Yes, when he was here earlier this year.’
‘He came out here thisyear?’ she asks in surprise, a flicker of hurt crossing her expression. ‘He didn’t . . . he didn’t tell me.’
‘If you open those envelopes, you will find a printed-out pamphlet of a house in the town of Collioure and a private letter for each of you detailing the conditions to obtaining it,’ Alan tells us, as Nico steps back.
‘I’m sorry.’ Megan begins to unfold the stapled pamphlet. ‘What house? What is—’
She must stop because of the photos. I’m engrossed in them myself.
‘Alan,’ I croak, unable to look up from the pamphlet, ‘what is this?’
‘Last year, Henry purchased this house in Collioure, which I believe is not too far from where you’re currently staying. He made it clear to me that he’d rather it wasn’t sold, but that he wanted you to have it.’ Alan pauses. ‘He mentioned that you’d be familiar with the property.’
