The Legacy by Caroline Bond (e book reader for pc .TXT) 📕

in the kitchen, no one feeling inclined to accommodate anyone else’s tastes or timings. Having laid everything out ready for them, Megan had disappeared, again. She was like a shoemaker’s elf, silently and, Liv suspected, grudgingly catering for their needs. After they’d eaten, they drifted off into separate rooms. Liv and Angus remained in the kitchen with the washing-up. They couldn’t leave it all to Megan. As they cleared away the plates, Liv became aware of how quiet the house was. ‘Where are the boys?’

‘Noah offered to take them out to run off some energy. His way of saying “sorry”, I guess. Freddie was delighted.’

‘And Arthur?’

‘Oh, you’d have been proud of him. Still holding a grudge. He’s switched allegiance to Chloe. She offered him a game of Snakes and Ladders. I’m not sure he even knows it’s a board game, so I suspect that odd hissing noise you can hear is him pretending to be a python.’

‘Where’s Noah taken Freddie?’ Liv liked to know where her children were at all times.

‘Down to the sea front. Noah said Freddie could spend his pocket money in the arcades.’

‘Where was I when all this was agreed?’

Angus picked another mug out of the dishwasher. ‘You were on the phone.’

Was there a touch of reproach in his comment? Liv suspected there was. She’d been calling work – following up on the staff rota for the coming week. Life didn’t grind to a halt just because they were caught up in some weird Gordian knot of her father’s making. Her irritation with Angus, with Noah, with the whole stressful situation came out in her voice. ‘Oh, great. Life lessons with Uncle Noah, just what Freddie needs.’

Angus stopped drying the mug in his hands and looked at her, his face expressive, and not of agreement.

Liv rowed back on the sarcasm. ‘Sorry.’ She was. It wasn’t Angus’s fault that she had a hundred and fifty things winging around inside her head, instead of the usual one hundred and one. ‘Too sour, even for me?’

The tea towel squeaked in the mug again. ‘A tad. And maybe it’s just what Freddie needs.’

Suitably chastised, Liv pulled out a stool, conceded Angus’s point, but kept the focus of the conversation on her brother. ‘Don’t you think Noah’s behaviour is a bit erratic at the moment? One minute it’s like he’s competing for some Best Uncle award – all the roughhousing and reading them bedtime stories – and the next he’s too hungover to be bothered, or he’s yelling at the kids like a total dick. He’s wired.’

Angus smiled. ‘Stop worrying. If Noah’s happy to keep Freddie out of our hair for a few hours, and Freddie’s happy to be with his favourite uncle—’

‘His only uncle,’ Liv chipped in.

Angus finished his sentence, unperturbed, ‘Then I, for one, am not going to complain.’ He fished a handful of cutlery out of the dishwasher and walked over to the drawer. Each knife and fork was individually dried and polished before being put away. A marriage of opposites. Angus deliberate, unhurried, placid. Liv, well… Liv knew that she was none of the above.

She stretched and laid her hands on the counter, relishing the cool granite against her palms. Angus continued with his task, methodically. It felt odd to Liv to have so much to do and yet be sitting around doing nothing, but there was nothing she could do until Noah deigned to re-engage with the small matter of their father’s will. She was stuck – because, for the first time in many, many years, she was dependent on the cooperation of her siblings. What the hell had her dad been thinking?

In place of being able to move forward, she went back to nibbling away at her suspicions about Noah. ‘Has he said anything to you about why Josie’s not here?’

‘You mean, man-to-man?’ Angus raised his eyebrows, mocking. ‘Since when did your brother confide in me?’

Liv acknowledged with a shrug the unlikeliness of such a heart-to-heart taking place. Noah and Angus weren’t close. They were too different – in personality and tastes and morals, and football fandom and, well, in everything really. Liv also recognised that her husband’s view of her brother had, very probably, been badly skewed by her own fraught relationship with him.

She picked an apple out of the fruit bowl and rolled it from hand to hand. She had no intention of eating it. Her stomach was already fighting with the sandwich she’d forced down at lunch. ‘You’d think Josie would want to be here – be involved in the decisions, I mean, even if it is just being in Noah’s ear, calming him down.’

Angus had moved on to the glassware. ‘Text her, if you’re that bothered.’

‘And say what?’

It was Angus’s turn to shrug. ‘No idea.’

Liv’s gaze flicked around the kitchen. The units, lighting and decoration were new, but it was the same layout as in her childhood. The fridge still opened awkwardly; it was positioned too close to the back door, and the floorboard that ran down the middle of the room still didn’t lie flush, thereby creating a tiny but very real trip-hazard. And much of the crockery was the same. Last night’s meal had been eaten off the same plates they’d had their teas off as kids; only the lumpen bowls were new. And there were fewer of those now – after Chloe’s little accident.

Her eyes snagged on a bundle of letters wedged in the rack on the countertop near the microwave. Death generated a lot of correspondence. Angus’s presence prevented her from standing up, fetching the stack and flicking through it. She had no intention of reading the contents of any of the letters addressed to Megan – obviously – but it would be helpful to know which of the banks and financial institutions were represented in the pile, just to double-check that the solicitor’s list was complete.

‘Liv?’

‘Sorry – what?’

‘Are you all right? I know how difficult all this is for you, on top of grieving for your dad.