Chapter 23
The next morning Holly was on a roll, and had never been so delighted about having so many no-shows. Normally it was her bête-noire, running figures about wasted time and overhead costs in her head. Today, she simply didn’t care.
Ever since Elsie had casually mentioned that her annual check-up with the stroke consultant had been brought forward, it had been preying on Holly’s mind. Elsie had been decidedly cagey about whether this was simply a case of getting a medical report for her Sarandon Hall application or something more worrying, but either way, everything felt a little out of kilter. Maybe it was her own pregnancy hormones – projecting her nerves about next week’s hurriedly scheduled prenatal scan perhaps? – or maybe it was some sixth sense she just couldn’t put her finger on?
Taking advantage of this unexpectedly free time, she picked up her car keys and, double-checking with Grace that she actually was done for the morning, Holly impulsively headed for Bath. With a bit of luck, she could at least be there when Elsie came out of her appointment with the Big Cheese of Stroke Consultants.
Pulling up outside the leafy Georgian mansion that was the private clinic made Holly pause, wrenching the complaining Golf into reverse and gingerly parking with extra concentration between a Jaguar and a Mercedes. Both of them, she noticed as she climbed out, were sporting Hospital ID badges in the windshield. She tried not to throw her morals and her beliefs out of the window, as her traitorous mind pointed out that this was the very medical path she had always shied away from on principle, the very path that would mean their financial concerns about having this little bean could be a thing of the past.
Even the rarefied atmosphere in the waiting room was so different from the squalling, sometimes even brawling, situation at The Practice that Holly was taken aback. She helped herself to a cappuccino and sat down to wait, flicking through this month’s – this month’s – Country Living magazine. She sipped at the cappuccino, the delicious scent making it irresistible, but gagging slightly as the coffee turned to sawdust in her mouth. Old habits died hard.
She felt unaccountably guilty, as though she were betraying her NHS roots simply by sitting here, decadently flicking through magazines and sipping frothy coffee. She breathed out slowly, her eye immediately caught by the photo shoot on the pages in her lap. A beautiful summer picnic was laid out on a river bank, canoes festooned with flowers, and petals floating on the water. Now that, thought Holly, was the kind of wedding she could get on board with, even if it did rather resemble a scene from a Flower Fairies book. Hardly the stuff that Taffy’s dreams were undoubtedly made of. Although he might be more up for it if they had matching dragon boats and the theme from Hawaii Five-0 belting from the river banks!
The gust of air as the huge double doors from the consulting rooms were pushed open made Holly look up to see Elsie making an entrance, looking decidedly peeved. She clocked Holly’s presence without even blinking and didn’t bother to wait until she was within twenty yards to start talking loudly. ‘Well I always thought you paid peanuts and got monkeys, but apparently these were just more expensive peanuts!’
Holly stood up and walked towards her, laying a finger on her lips in an attempt to get Elsie to turn the volume down. ‘Hello, gorgeous. Surprise!’ She linked her arm through Elsie’s. ‘So, did the doctor you paid tell you what you wanted to hear?’
Elsie gave her a scathing look. ‘It’s my money, darling. I can fritter it away on a second opinion I might actually prefer if I choose.’ She sighed deeply. ‘But apparently even at three hundred pounds an hour the diagnosis is the same. Previous mini-stroke equals high-risk and no bloody fun.’
‘Were you secretly hoping he’d give you a clean bill of health and full permission to do whatever the hell you like?’ Holly asked, voicing the suspicion she’d harboured ever since Elsie had first mooted the suggestion of going private.
‘Well obviously,’ said Elsie with feeling.
The automatic doors hissed open, disgorging them from the cool and rarefied environment into the heat of the car park, where wafts of petrol fumes were trailing in the wake of an expensive sports car.
‘Scuse me,’ managed Holly, before peeling off abruptly and heaving into the shrubbery.
‘Jesus,’ said Elsie, holding out her small bottle of water, ‘are you okay? Is this morning sickness, or should I be giving you a very wide berth?’
Holly put her hands on her thighs and breathed slowly. She nodded. ‘It’ll pass, if last time’s anything to go by. But I’ve been a bit worked up about one thing and another the last few days though. I’m sure that isn’t helping.’
Elsie didn’t look impressed – in fact she was rather piqued at having her thunder stolen. ‘You can take empathy too far, you know.’
Holly nodded. ‘Sorry, Elsie.’ She managed a smile. ‘You go ahead and puke too if you need to.’
Elsie just huffed, as Holly pivoted towards the bushes again. Elsie waved away the luxury sedan that had been idling outside waiting for her, the chauffeur looking incredibly relieved as the retching from the shrubbery continued. ‘We’ll go in your car,’ Elsie announced.
‘Jemima’s protest really made me think about your wedding,’ said Elsie, as they drove into the Market Place. ‘Even with this baby on board, I still think we need to go big or go home.’
‘Well, here we are! Home at last!’ said Holly with a grin, timing it to perfection as she pulled up outside Elsie’s Georgian townhouse. ‘I guess that answers that then.’
Elsie, to her credit, managed a chuckle. ‘I’m not giving up that easily, darling. Oh—’ Elsie stopped and blinked, leaning forward to squint through the rather dirty windscreen. ‘Oh, well this should be interesting.’
Holly followed her gaze, to see a rather alarmingly tanned-to-the-point-of-orange woman in designer clothes standing on tiptoe to peer through Elsie’s sash windows.
‘You’d think I’d get some warning that Hurricane Harriet would be turning up sniffing around,’ said Elsie, sounding suddenly exhausted and not at all pleased.
‘Harriet? Your daughter, Harriet?’ Holly clarified in surprise. Said Harriet seemed to have spent most of Holly’s acquaintance with Elsie in and out of various exclusive rehab facilities in America – it was almost as though this woman enjoyed the process of getting clean, more than the promise of sober living.
‘I know. It’s hardly cause for celebration, is it? I wonder how much she wants this time?’ Elsie popped open the passenger door before turning back to Holly in a rare moment of weakness. ‘Come in with me, darling. I’m not feeling on top form and Harriet’s never an easy person to say no to. Come and be my moral conscience for a while?’
‘There you are, Mummy!’ cried Harriet, as Elsie walked towards her. ‘I was worried I’d missed you and you were already set up at Sarandon Hall!’
For the record, Holly thought, Harriet actually looked anything but worried; thoroughly pissed off might be a more accurate statement.
‘How on earth did you hear about my little visit there?’ Elsie said crossly, as she unearthed her Tiffany keyring from her handbag and let them all in.
‘Visit? You mean, you’re not moving into a home?’ Harriet persisted, by way of a greeting, as they all made their way inside.
‘How lovely to see you too, darling,’ said Elsie. ‘Do join me and Holly for a little lunch.’
‘Lunch with the staff?’ sniffed Harriet, peeling off a delicate cashmere wrap and discarding it on the table, as she glanced around at her mother’s possessions hungrily. ‘Really?’
‘Dr Holly Graham, do meet my daughter Harriet. Please excuse her manners, she’s just stepped off a long flight from California, but I’m sure she’ll remember herself momentarily.’ Elsie fixed her daughter with such a hard look that even the most insensitive of offspring would surely have registered her displeasure.
It seemed to flow over Harriet’s bottle-blonde head like quicksilver. Her lips were plump with fillers and her forehead strangely immobile; indeed the only similarity to her mother was in the striking depth of colour in her eyes. She rummaged through her designer handbag and popped a couple of tablets without missing a beat. They looked suspiciously like melatonin and Holly bristled at the notion of such casual dosing.
‘Dr Graham? I presume you’re here to assess my mother’s mental competency? I gather she’s been frittering away the family possessions with little or no regard as to their true value, or indeed line of succession.’
‘Oh, do get over yourself, Harriet,’ Elsie chided her. ‘We’re not the Royal fucking Family. There is no “line of succession” and we’re hardly short of enough to go round. And by the way, Holly may be a doctor, but she’s also my best friend, so perhaps a slight adjustment in your approach is in order. This isn’t LA, darling. We’re in the Cotswolds, so take a breath, have a cup of tea and, for the love of God, stop popping random pharmaceuticals as though they’re Smarties.’
‘Nice to meet you, Holly,’ Harriet said after a pause, in which mother and daughter seemed to hold eye contact in a duel for supremacy. Harriet turned and stared at Holly with such intensity that Holly actually felt a prickle at the back of her neck, the way she did in Pru Hartley’s house, where the ghost allegedly walked.
‘Pleasure,’ said Holly easily, flicking on the kettle and delighting in Harriet’s displeasure that she was quite so familiar with her mother’s kitchen.
‘But I did get a call,’ Harriet said, like a dog with a bone, as Holly poured the tea. ‘The family solicitor – Arnold something? He specifically wanted me to know your plans. As your next of kin.’ She was whining now, as though she had been promised a treat, only to have it snatched out from under her very nose.
‘Ah, it seems the rustle of money can even cross the Atlantic. Useless man. He ought to know better by now.’ Elsie’s tight control of her voice only served to highlight just how very furious she was.
Holly knew only too well the battles that Elsie had fought with her children over the years, maintaining that being born into a life of money and privilege had actually been the ruination of them. Her darling Ginger had died too young, living fast and loose. Otto, a boiled egg on legs, puffed up by his own self-importance, only featured in his mother’s life when he needed a handout, or to patronise her about how she was running her financial affairs. And then there was Harriet: poor, weak-willed, utterly spoiled Harriet. She was certainly no oil painting, yet the promise of wealth seemed to attract a carousel of unsuitable men, each break-up inevitably triggering another relapse into addiction.
There was something shrewd and underhand about the way Harriet’s gaze skittered about the room though, that made Holly think of that Cash in the Attic programme that Elsie loved so much. At this point, she was mindful not only of Elsie’s blood pressure, but also her own. She was pretty sure that this was not what the doctor had ordered for either of them.
As Holly prepared a simple salad and Elsie fought to keep her temper in check, it was obvious there was no love lost between mother and daughter and Holly couldn’t decide which was worse, leaving the two of them alone, or staying here as the gooseberry at the lunch table.
Harriet wandered around the room, trailing a hand across the furniture as she did so. When she turned it was as though she had flicked a switch from angry and accusatory to sulky and flouncing. ‘I was worried, Mummy. You have no idea what it’s like to get a phone call on the other side of the world that your mother has been moved to a nursing home.’
‘Or that there might be a Georgian townhouse going begging?’ Elsie finished for her. ‘Am I not allowed to plan my estate the way I see fit, Harriet?’
The spoilt pout of Harriet’s enhanced lips, even though she was nearing her fifth decade, clearly indicated that was exactly how she felt.
‘I honestly thought that the property in Los Angeles would keep you and your brother quiet,’ Elsie said sadly. ‘Surely twenty acres of prime Beverly Hills real estate is enough for you two. Find a way to share it, Harriet. And then let me live my life over here the way I want to. There’s nothing here for you.’
‘But this house—’ cut in Harriet, glancing around with a kind of possessiveness that made Holly feel as though she were thoroughly intruding.
‘Is mine to do with as I wish, being of sound mind and body,’ Elsie said sharply. ‘It’s hardly as though you’re going to move to the English countryside, now is it? You’d just parcel it up and sell it off to the highest bidder.’
‘My father—’ began Harriet forcefully and Elsie’s face darkened.
‘Your father gambled away every penny of my savings. Your father left me with three small children and no roof over my head,’ Elsie reminded her curtly.
‘But there must be something left,’ Harriet persisted.
Elsie looked around appraisingly. ‘There’s a sweet but worthless painting in the morning room. One of his own.’
Holly noticed that Harriet made no move to go and look.
‘Or there’s Toby,’ Elsie offered, waving a hand at the ugly-jug that had housed Elsie’s beautiful Montblanc pen collection for as long as Holly had known her. His ugly little face all mushed up reminded Holly of a baby about to launch into a major tantrum and she’d always had rather a soft spot for him. She felt unaccountably annoyed at the very thought of him in Harriet’s clammy custody.
‘He’s ugly but priceless,’ Elsie continued, Harriet’s head shooting up at the word and then sinking back again as she clocked the hideously malformed ceramic features. ‘If memory serves, Toby here was the beginning of the end of my marriage to your father,’ Elsie reminisced. ‘He drove off to a poker game in my gorgeous Aston Martin and came home with Toby here and some chump change instead. I’ve always kept him as a reminder never to let a man near my financial affairs again. Like I said, Toby has value beyond bricks and mortar.’
Harriet’s lip curled and she stood up abruptly. ‘Do I look like a fool to you?’
Elsie turned to Holly, eyes twinkling, sotto voce, ‘Do you think she wants me to answer that?’
Harriet picked up her voluminous handbag and her cashmere wrap and glared at her mother. ‘I’m going to check into a hotel. I can see I’m not welcome here. We’ll talk about the house when you’ve had some time to come to your senses.’
‘You’re welcome to come back when you have control of yourself,’ said Elsie coolly. ‘But for the avoidance of doubt, my love, even over my cold dead body, this house will never be yours. Last chance on Toby here? Are you quite sure?’
Harriet slammed out of the kitchen and sucked the air with her, creating a kind of vortex in her absence.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Holly. ‘I think she’s been watching reruns of Dynasty, don’t you?’
Elsie shook her head. ‘And she was so sweet. Until she learned to talk.’
‘Maybe she was worried, nervous, you know?’ Holly offered magnanimously. ‘She thought you’d moved into an old people’s home.’
‘Hmm. Maybe. Maybe not. Besides, I don’t expect you to dislike her straight away, Holly. You’ve only just met – give it a little time, get to know her, just let it evolve naturally.’ She sighed. ‘I’m all too aware of my failings as a parent every time I see that girl.’
‘But you’re so wonderful to me. Please don’t sell yourself short,’ said Holly with feeling, knowing only too well that, without Elsie’s love and guidance, she herself might not be enjoying this wonderful renaissance with Taffy.
‘Ah, but it’s easy to love you, Holly. You have no drowning expectations, no agenda, no ability to constantly make me feel as though I’m letting you down in some way.
‘My children grew up with a life of privilege and expectation. I ruined them really: all they do is take, take, take and then complain. They have no ability or desire to make their own way in the world. Even with a beautiful property of their very own. The scope for that alone is enormous, but of course it would involve some effort on their part. I always thought it would make a glorious hotel complex.’
‘You know, you’ve never mentioned you had a house in LA, let alone a humongous one,’ Holly pointed out.
‘Didn’t I?’ Elsie replied innocently.
‘And you’ve never even visited, in all the time I’ve known you.’
‘Darling, it’s LA – why on earth would I?’ Elsie chastised her. She sighed and sipped her tea, grimacing at the coldness.
Holly got up to put the kettle on again, feeling herself relax a little and hoping that the worst of Hurricane Harriet had passed. Maybe seeing her mother in fine fettle, rather than dribbling on the damask, would be enough to put Harriet off? Obviously it wasn’t ideal that Elsie had chosen this week to grab a lift home from the fit young police sergeant, feigning confusion, because she couldn’t be bothered to walk across town in her new suede shoes. If Harriet heard about that, then all manner of questions might yet be asked.