Chapter 22
18 September
When Pete pulled up in Spring Hill Square car park the next evening, Laurie’s white Mercedes was already there and he felt quite gladdened by the sight. Maybe because they were both newbies, he reckoned. He didn’t put it down to anything more than someone his own age, going through similar things at the same time.
He walked in on a full house laughing.
‘Ah come in, Peter,’ said Mr Singh, wafting his hand in the air at him as if conducting an orchestra.
‘What’s going on?’ said Pete, his own smile appearing, brought to the fore by the merry atmosphere.
‘We were just having a conversation about people taking advantage of the recently bereaved,’ Mr Singh replied, before blowing his nose on his handkerchief.
‘Well that sounds like dark humour,’ said Pete.
‘Have some coffee and cake, Peter,’ said Molly.
‘I’ll have a bog-standard filter white coffee please and whatever that cake is there with the chocolate buttons on it.’
‘Coming right up, sir,’ said Mr Singh.
Pete said hello to everyone and then sat next to Laurie when Mr Singh had served him. He noticed that Maurice was looking particularly bright this week with a red and green checked waistcoat. Yvonne’s hair was in soft curls rather than hard springs and Sharon had lost that air of melancholy that hung around her like a mist. Laurie greeted him with a warm smile but she looked tired, he thought. There were dark circles around her eyes that she’d obviously tried to cover up with make-up, but not well enough to convince those with keen sight.
‘I was just saying, Peter, that when my grandmother died, about twenty people contacted my mother to say that she’d promised them all five thousand pounds in her will. She had, apparently, gone around to all her friends and neighbours and people in her whist club and even showed them her will to prove it. But she had three hundred pounds to her name and owed four hundred to a catalogue company. Batty as a box of bananas,’ said Maurice. ‘She was clearly insane, but they’d have taken it, if she’d had it.’
‘Alas, people can move in and take advantage, preying on the goodwill and naivety of the bereaved,’ said Molly.
‘Des’s brother said he’d been promised all sorts,’ said Yvonne. ‘I knew he hadn’t because they hated each other, so I told him to waddle off, but in less polite terms.’
‘I had a strange encounter the week after Alex’s funeral,’ began Laurie and then pulled her words up. No, she really couldn’t tell that story. Coffee and cake and this teashop were loosening her tongue more than a bottle of Chenin Blanc would do. All eyes turned to her and she shook her hand, as if to wave attention away from her. ‘Ignore me,’ she said.
‘You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to here, Laurie,’ said Molly.
‘Well I for one am intrigued now,’ said Maurice.
Oh sod it, thought Laurie. It might be good to get some perspective on it. And other opinions rather than Bella’s ‘the wanker’ one.
‘Okay,’ she began, ‘. . . Alex left his best friend, let’s call him Mr X, his music and DVD collection in his will disbursements. I hadn’t even had time or inclination to get them together before he called to pick them up.’ She looked up to find she had a captive audience and really wished again she hadn’t started this tale, but she could hardly stop now. ‘I tried to fob him off and said I didn’t have any boxes but he’d brought some. And I was a little disorientated, so we just started packing them up. Then Je— . . . Mr X asked if I’d make him a coffee. So I made us one and we sat at the island in my kitchen and he asked me if I needed anything, anything at all. I thought that was very considerate of him . . .’ Laurie looked up to find she had them all in the palm of her hand. ‘. . . I said I couldn’t think of anything, not put on the spot like that anyway. Then he asked me if I . . .’ she swallowed as she neared the crux of the story ‘. . . if I needed anything “servicing”. I thought he meant Alex’s car or the gas boiler and I knew neither of them were due. And then he ran his finger up my arm . . . and I realised what he meant by servicing.’
Maurice gasped, Yvonne gasped, Mr Singh’s jaw fell open. Sharon asked, ‘What did you do, Laurie?’
‘I couldn’t move. I just sat there while he carried on doing that thing on my arm. Then something clicked in my head, and I threw my coffee all over him and told him to get out and he did just that without saying another word.’
At the sight of their shocked, frozen expressions, Laurie burst into laughter. She couldn’t stop. She hiccupped through the rest of the story. ‘He just dripped coffee all over the floor. I didn’t know a mug could carry so much liquid.’
Sharon started laughing then, joined by Maurice, Mr Singh, the others. Laurie’s sides started aching. ‘And I haven’t seen him since.’ Tears were rolling down her face. Funny, daft tears as she remembered Jefferson’s white polo shirt stained with coffee, drops clinging to his stupid goatee beard that consisted of about six hairs. The only other person she’d told about it was Bella, who hadn’t seen any mirth in the story at all. Maybe if she had, it would have shattered the awful memory. Blasted it out of her system instead of keeping it sitting inside her like a festering egg.
Eventually the laughter subsided. ‘Oh my goodness,’ said Laurie. ‘I’m not even sure if I should have told you that, but it felt good to share it. I kept wondering if I’d led him on in some way. I know I didn’t really but you start to doubt yourself sometimes because you’re so mixed up. He’s the fiancé of Alex’s sister as well as his best friend, which made things really awkward but luckily his family don’t speak to me because they wanted me to sell our house and give them half.’
Blimey, talk about laying her soul bare. It was rolling out of her now like sewage down a pipe. The frivolity left her voice, dried up as if it had been hit by microwaves.
‘I really liked his mum and dad so I can’t get my head around all this. The same way they can’t get their heads around how a joint mortgage works. They think that because the house was half Alex’s, I should split the equity with them.’
‘That is very bad form,’ said Maurice. ‘The point of a joint mortgage is to keep a partner in their home and gift them security. Did your partner write a will, Laurie?’
‘Yes, Maurice. We both wrote wills to protect each other. His parents are well off. We, on the other hand, had a huge mortgage and no savings so we covered ourselves adequately.’
‘Good that you were both so sensible,’ Maurice said then, sounding more of a solicitor than she was.
‘Greedy bastards,’ said Yvonne. ‘Des never bothered about insurance. Luckily I did, otherwise I’d be on my arse now. I’ve never been as comfortable.’ And she grinned. Clearly the enormity of being a widow still hadn’t impacted fully on her senses yet.
‘Sorry, this is a bit of a confessional booth for me this week,’ said Laurie. ‘With multiple priests present. I didn’t mean to take over.’ She’d given away too much of herself, she wasn’t used to it.
‘You’re in a secure arena. The first rule of Molly’s Club is that you do not talk about Molly’s Club.’ Molly smiled at her and Laurie instantly felt that she hadn’t overstepped any mark. She was safe, no one was judging her here.