Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller (best large ereader txt) 📕

“They’ve put a poster up. A week tomorrow.”

“Well, they should take it down. We’re not going to play.”

She’s about to turn to go when Stu picks up the remote control and says, “I remember my mum playing the piano. Classical stuff, you know, but without the boring bits. She died when I was four, and that’s all I ever remembered about her. Not even her, really, just the music and her shoes. Brown lace-ups on brass pedals.”

“That’s a lovely memory, though,” Jeanie says, itching to leave.

“Yeah,” Stu says, sitting down again, staring at the telly. “Except I saw my aunt a few months ago. Another bloody funeral. Hadn’t seen her for years. Told her about Mum playing, you know, and the shoes. She said Mum never played the piano. We never actually had one. It was my aunt I’d remembered.”

20

Pepperwood farmhouse stands face-on to the lane with a grand front garden full of clipped laurel and box kept tidy by a gardener who visits once a week. The house is symmetrical with a central footpath up to the door. Jeanie ties Maude to the wrought-iron gate, walks up the path, and lets the door knocker fall. The thud reverberates deep inside the house.

The previous evening Stu mentioned that the Rawsons had returned from wherever they’d been. Stu had gone with Ed to the Plough, where it seemed to Jeanie that all sorts of information was exchanged and overheard. She wanted to ask Stu if Julius had been in there—her brother had arrived quiet and sober at Bridget and Stu’s after they’d gone to bed—but she didn’t want to rouse Stu’s anger, and she also didn’t want to know the answer.

Jeanie expects a housekeeper to open the Rawsons’ door, had planned on introducing herself and asking for Mr. Rawson. If the nature of her visit was enquired about, she’d practised saying it was a personal matter. Now she stands on the doorstep, heart chafing, the creature thrashing about in its tiny cage. But it is Caroline Rawson who answers the door in her tight white jeans and a leather jacket which wouldn’t save much skin if she fell off a motorbike. Under it, her shirt is tucked in only at the front. She must be a couple of years younger than Bridget, but she has the complexion of a forty-year-old.

“Oh,” Mrs. Rawson says, caught in the moment of poking around in her oversize handbag hanging off one arm. “Jeanie.”

Jeanie is suddenly aware of the cardigan she’s been wearing for at least two weeks, the long thick skirt, tatty coat, and wellingtons. She finds her voice. “I’d like to speak to your husband.”

Mrs. Rawson discovers her phone in her bag and presses a button. “He’s not in, I’m afraid.” She sounds formal, businesslike, but perhaps not as hard and unfeeling as she had been when she came to the cottage. She looks out, down the lane, over Jeanie’s shoulder.

“Well, can I speak to you?”

“Actually, I’m going out. My sister should be arriving any minute.”

“It won’t take long.”

Mrs. Rawson looks out at the lane again, then perhaps good manners take over and she lets Jeanie in. She leads her towards the back of the hall and into a kitchen so light and bright it hurts her eyes. A see-through dining table and eight see-through chairs dazzle under a glass roof and in front of a wall of windows which overlooks a patio and a swimming pool. None of it is like it was when Jeanie was a child. The white kitchen cupboards reach up to the ceiling and have no handles, and in front of them is a long central island made of white granite, with two sinks, each with arcing silver taps. Mrs. Rawson puts her handbag on the island and stands beside it. “If this is about the cottage, that’s my husband’s business. It’s nothing to do with me.”

“But you came to see me,” Jeanie says. “To tell me we owed two thousand pounds.” She almost laughs at how ridiculous that sounds.

Mrs. Rawson drops her mobile phone into her bag in a gesture of resignation. “Well, yes, I did,” she says, and for a moment Jeanie thinks that the woman is going to say it was a mistake, all of it—the money, the eviction—but then she seems to gather herself inwards, stand straighter. “But like I said, what Dot owed is for my husband to sort out. I’m very sorry that you lost your mother and so suddenly, but—”

“You know we’ve been evicted? Turned out of our own home?”

“I had heard that, yes.” When Mrs. Rawson blinks, her eyes stay closed for a second too long.

“Nathan gave you and your husband a full report, I suppose? Paid that young man well to do your dirty work, did you?” Jeanie shakes her head in disgust, thinking now that her mother’s silence in return for the cottage was not worth it. Dot should have gone to the police and told them that Rawson was responsible for Frank’s death. Shown them the bolt that Julius found in Priest’s Field. Let Rawson go to prison. They might have lost the cottage back then, but what’s the difference—they’ve lost it now.

“Nathan Clements is being paid for doing a job,” Mrs. Rawson says carefully. “It’s his choice about whether to take the work or not.”

“Jesus, you people.”

Mrs. Rawson’s smile is hard. “Well, I’ll tell my husband you called round. I’m sure he’ll be interested to know what you had to say.”

Jeanie doesn’t move. She lets her anger sink. She didn’t come here to have a fight with Caroline Rawson or anyone else. “Two thousand pounds, you said? Yes?”

Mrs. Rawson holds out her arm to shepherd Jeanie towards the door.

Jeanie stays beside the kitchen counter. “I have it here. Some of the money. Not all of it, but something.” She takes the envelope with her mother’s handwriting on the front from one of the deep pockets of her coat. She hasn’t