Chapter 42
Emma clung to the edge of the window seat with fingers which were white and aching. She sat rigidly for the reading of Anton’s final wishes, her head bowed so her eyes saw only the reddened wood of the floorboards in her immediate vision. Occasionally she saw Anton, his ready smile as he chastised or mocked her for some minor infringement, the intensity of the Andreyev blue eyes and the lightness of spirit which was always his. Emma’s tears fell unchecked as Kieran read in a voice which didn’t waver in the discharge of his peculiar duty.
“...I have ordered the house to be stripped and the proceeds from an auction of the minor pieces put into a fund. We never shared artistic taste, Em. Some of it was too good to dispose of...the best furniture will be restored and returned after you take up residence...it’s up to you what you do with it.”
Kieran read on, detailing a trust fund for Nicky to remain untouched until he was twenty-one and numerous investments she would need to learn to manage, a theatre company into which Anton had placed a manager. “...Henry Macey will contact you at the direction of my solicitor...yours to do what you wish with...”
“Stop!” Emma held a hand up in front of her eyes and Kieran ceased his monotonous rendition. Her face was streaked and sticky, her dark eyelashes speckled with tear drops which glinted in the light sneaking through the wooden shutters. “I can’t do this,” Emma begged. “I can’t take anymore.”
Kieran reached into his pocket for the packet of tissues and then slumped down onto the seat next to her. The vast bay window would have fitted a junior soccer team into it with room to spare. “I’m sorry. It’s a lot to take in. Mr Allen was meant to do this part and I would be here in case you fainted or needed clarification. It just took so long to find you and he’s not in the country. I have to say though, I love Mr Andreyev’s final words to you.” The solicitor smiled and looked down at the paper in his hand. “Can I just read this last bit? I really wanted to.”
Emma nodded as Kieran handed over a tissue and glanced around the empty room, as though seeking an audience. He puffed up his thin chest and spoke to the empty room. “To my dearest Printsessa Emma. Everything I have achieved, I lay at your feet. It is all for you; from Russia, with love. Just like her, we will be bent, but never broken.”
Emma let out a wail and sobbed into her hands. It was Anton’s gay joke, bent but never broken. Emma saw his coy, mischievous smile and missed him with a physical, gnawing ache. ‘From Russia, with love.’ Russia gave Anton to her, but death stole him back. Russia gave her Rohan too, once upon a time, but not to keep. Her gifts were empty gestures.
“Is there someone I can call for you?” Kieran shifted the paper in his hand and flapped it towards Emma. “I think I’ve read all the parts which required it. I don’t wish to cause you any more distress. I have two copies for you to sign to acknowledge receipt, one for you to keep and one for Mr Allen. Then I can leave you to it. It’s all yours. Call the number on the business card once you’ve collected your thoughts and we’ll transfer the money from the estate.”
“But what am I going to do with all this?” Emma held her arms out sideways to encompass only a tiny corner of the enormous mansion.
Kieran shrugged, hints of a well disguised Welsh accent sneaking through as an undertone. “Sell it, live in it or restore it properly to its former glory. You’ve got the money to do any of it.” He poked at a fleck of paint on the window seat. “Personally, I’d like to see it restored to how it used to be. But you’d need a historian to know how to do that.”
Emma’s mouth dropped open in surprise. Kieran looked nervous and shifted around on his bottom. “Bloody hell!” Emma gasped. “Or an archivist. The cunning git!” Then she laughed, shaking her head and giggling at Anton’s perfect fix for her life. When the laughter stopped, the tears ran again until Kieran grew eager to leave.
He produced a beautiful ball point pen for Emma to sign her signature on the two sheaves of paper. Then he folded his copy and poked it into his inside jacket pocket. He held out his hand. “Lovely to have met you, Mrs Andreyev. I hope you’ll be happy. Please get in touch with us if you require further assistance. Allen, Holdsworth and Bowes have considerable expertise in all legal matters and Mr Bowes deals with investments, covenants and trusts. I’m sure we’ll be able to help you.”
Emma took his cold fingers in hers and nodded her thanks. “Nice to meet you too,” she muttered, stumbling over her words. Kieran placed the key with its paper tag on the seat next to her and left the room after telling her all the other keys were in an envelope on the mantelpiece. Emma nodded woodenly and listened to his footsteps tapping away across the hall and then the slam of the front door. She sat for a while, absorbing the calm of the old building, feeling the stillness comforting her. With everything gone, it was as though Anton had deliberately removed any trace of himself and Emma felt the gnawing grief again. There was no funeral, his will stated that, just a private cremation with nobody invited and his ashes scattered on the grounds of the old house by his solicitor. Kieran didn’t know where.
Emma walked slowly over to the huge fireplace, seeking warmth in the cold dark grate and knowing even before she got there, how futile that was. Part of her wanted to revisit the blue room upstairs and see if it was still as Anton left it, but a bigger part feared that it wasn’t and Emma’s fragile sensibility meant she wouldn’t cope. Her fingers reached up and touched the envelope leaning against the wall on the mantel, tutting as it tipped forward with the clang of myriad keys. She experienced a flash of anger. “Why did you do this?” she shouted into the empty room. “I’m an archivist, not an interior designer! I wouldn’t know what I was doing!” She imagined Anton’s high snort of laughter at her expense. “It’s not funny!” she yelled at his ghost.
The sound of a car firing up caught Emma’s attention and with a flash of horror she realised her mistake. She rushed to the windows, hauling back the shutter nearest to her and hammering on the glass with the flat of her hand. “Come back! I don’t have a ride back into town.”
Kieran Miles’ car slid out of the gates and indicated left, heading out on the road to Northampton. Emma groaned out loud and sank onto the seat. “Nicky!” She ran her hands through her curls and heaved a huge sigh. “It’ll take me ages to walk!” she grumbled and stamped her foot on the floorboards. The old house groaned around her.
“Aye, maybe.”
Emma jumped at the sound of Christopher’s voice. He leaned against the doorframe with casual ease and acknowledged her with a slight upwards tilt of his head. “Your front door was open.”
“I thought you left.” Emma stood, wanting to run to him with relief but unsure suddenly.
“Aye. I had a wee job up north with a school teacher who couldn’t seem to keep his hands to himself. It’s a great pity what a fall down stairs can do to a set of dirty fingers what won’t stop touchin’ things that don’t belong to them.”
Emma gulped. “There are no stairs at the school.” Her words sounded stupid even to her. Christopher smiled.
“Aye, an’ it was my job to be extra inventive, so it was.”
“That’s terrible.” Then Emma smirked. “Do you think I should send him a get well soon card?”
Christopher shook his head. “Na. I’d be stayin’ well away from that estate if I was you.”
Emma sighed. “I decided to go back there. I thought if I agreed to shag him occasionally he might give me my job back.”
“Aye right.” Christopher’s dark face remained impassive. “Well, I didn’t wanna mention the other kind of accident he might also have had.”
Emma sat back down and put her face in her hands. “Why is my life so complicated?”
“It’s not!” the man scoffed. “You’ve made it that way. Anton left yer this house and a business. Just fetch yer wee son up here and make somethin’ of it - and yerself for that matter.”
“Do you think God puts people in your path exactly when you need them?” Emma asked, star
ing around the room.
“Dunno.” Christopher shrugged. “Maybe.”
“It’s just that the solicitor made an odd comment. He said if I stayed here, I’d need a historian to help renovate this place properly.” Her companion raised an eyebrow in question and Emma cocked her head. “I think Anton meant me to do it but it’s completely out of my league. Then recently I met this elderly lady who’s a local historian. She married one of the Ayers sons brought up in this house.” Emma bit her lip. “She’d be perfect. Freda would remember the house how it was in the 1920s.”
“Well get on with it, then!” Christopher opened his arms wide to take in the surrounding pile.
“I can’t!” Emma snapped. “I can’t get back into town.” She raised her eyes hopefully in Christopher’s direction. “Please could you give me a ride?”
Emma locked up the front door and followed Christopher round the side of the house. She looked up at the darkened windows and struggled to deal with the responsibility of it all. Christopher kept his hands in his pockets, trudging along slightly ahead of her. “Oh!” he pulled out a long key ring adorned with silver keys of varying shape. “You’ll be wanting these back after.”
Emma frowned. “After what? And what are they all for?”
Christopher stopped in front of her and bit his lip. “I came here often so I had my own keys. Anton lent me a room over the old stables and I kept my gear in the shed underneath. I cleared out when the executors came and moved into the motel in Harborough. It’s not my proper base but it was somewhere to come when I needed it.” He smiled. “It’s all yours now.”
“You could stay?” Emma said softly, framing the question in her brown eyes.
Christopher laughed and shook his head. “What and cosy up in the middle of you and yer husband? No thanks!” He sounded bitter, striding off towards a long building with an apex roof over the centre of it. He clattered over the cobbles under an archway leading into a stable yard which looked derelict.
“But me and Rohan aren’t...” Emma gave up and followed, her mind doing somersaults. Christopher was right. Rohan was Nicky’s father and would resent his influence being diluted by the larger than life Irishman. Their enmity was clear. Besides, something told Emma a relationship with Christopher would wield a world of hurt. He was too fly-by-night, definitely not a one-woman-man.
Emma touched a hand to her breast. She didn’t need any more heart damage. “Did Anton leave anything for you?” she dared to ask. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“I wasn’t his lover, if that’s what yer askin’,” Christopher snapped, his dark eyes flashing with injustice.
Emma halted. “I...that never even occurred to me.” She tilted her head like a quizzical bird. “I suppose it should have.”
“Well, I wasn’t! We were just friends. But yes, he did leave me something.”
“Oh, good.” Emma’s eyes filled with curiosity but it felt inappropriate to ask what. Christopher opened one of the stable doors and went inside and she hovered in the courtyard, whirling around and taking in the silent, brooding atmosphere of the place.
“Here!” Christopher thrust the motorbike helmet into Emma’s hand and her eyes widened in alarm.
“What? No!”
“It’s a fair ole walk back to town. Suit yerself.” He disappeared back into the stable. Emma gulped as he pushed the gleaming machine out into the daylight. It glittered like the male equivalent of bling.
“Is this yours?” She reached out and touched the sparkling chrome handlebar.
“T’is now.” Christopher grinned like a maniac. “It was the first thing Anton bought when his investments paid off. That’s what happens when you’ve a mathematical genius as a brother; you get to play stockbrokers with the big boys. He got too sick to ride this beauty in the last year so I ran it about, just as a favour you understand.” Christopher glowed as he mounted the Harley Davidson and pushed his helmet down over his face. “He left me this and the money for chasin’ you indefinitely. It’s ironic how his solicitor then engaged me to find you.”
“Cunning. Paid twice for the same job.” Emma smiled. Any doubts about Christopher as a bed partner evapourated. There was no suggestion he wouldn’t invoice the solicitor and Emma knew the payment would come out of Anton’s estate, her estate. She shook her head.
“You gettin’ on or what?” Christopher’s voice sounded muffled under the helmet. With great reluctance, she fitted the tight head gear over her delicate ears and brushed her hair out of the front so she could see.
“I thought this was a mid-life-crisis sort of bike,” she shouted over the deafening throb of the engine.
Christopher turned his brown eyes on hers and slapped her backside hard as Emma walked past him. “You definitely wanna walk,” he yelled, his eyes curving into a smile, his lips hidden behind the bar of his helmet. Emma clambered onto the bike, using Christopher’s strong torso to hold onto. She settled herself, the machine vibrating beneath and through her, praying she arrived home before Nicky did and in one piece. Something about the sight of the handsome Irishman in his helmet jarred with Emma’s memory and she wrestled to bring it forwards. His brown eyes sparkled as he looked back at her and Emma’s brow knitted in confusion.
“Hey!” Christopher turned his head to talk sideways to her and Emma leaned forward, bumping helmets awkwardly. “I’ll take care of you,” he promised in a half-shout which conveyed his sincerity. He reached behind him with one long arm and wrapped it around Emma, scooting her forward on the seat so her breasts touched the back of his jacket. His fingers lingered on her waist and Emma understood his promise, the weight falling from her chest to her stomach in one fell swoop.