Page 68

Chapter 68

August 2011

The next day, exactly a month after the last grey envelope, there is another one.

The mail falls onto the doormat on the same day as the spice parcel from Sally Soodles and this time it’s Georgia who picks it up.

She studies the envelope for a moment and then carries both items through to the freshly plastered kitchen where the new smooth finish is a sun-kissed pinky brown, and not yet completely dry.

The way the old lumpy walls, pockmarked with rawl-plug damage and a hundred nail holes, have been transformed into this completely flat surface seems almost magical, and Georgia is eagerly awaiting the day when the first coat of paint can go on.

She stands in front of the window where the enamel sink had previously been and looks out along the garden to the chairs under the plum tree, and wonders if she should open the envelope.

When there had been a lot of official envelopes a few years before, she had been respectful and not asked about them, seeing it as none of her business.

But eventually, after her last lodger left, there had been a final letter from the Sheriff Court.

She puts Tess’s envelope on the high mantelpiece above the now gleaming range, and goes down the two steps to the scullery.

Instead of the old stone divided sink, once used for laundry as well as washing dishes, there is a stainless-steel model with a mixer tap, something Georgia has secretly coveted for a couple of decades.

She wonders what Isobel, who was still visiting the house well into her seventies, would have thought about this new look, and about having an automatic washing machine instead of the old twin tub, and the mangle before that.

There are now two long stretches of worktop running almost the length of the scullery on each side, and a fridge freezer, and a separate hob and a waist-high oven which means she doesn’t have to bend down any more.

And there is a radiator.

The height of luxury.

In the winter, the heat from that new radiator will rise up to the maid’s room above, where her office is now.

Isobel must have been terribly cold, she thinks.

*

Tess doesn’t notice the envelope when she arrives back from her walk with Baxter.

She smells the gorgeous spicy aroma coming from the Instant Pot and resists the urge to lift the lid and see what’s for dinner.

Georgia comes down the stairs from her office and stands, arms folded, with a rather different demeanour from usual.

‘Tess, I need you to sit down. I have something to ask you.’

‘OK.’ She sits.

And so does Baxter, which normally makes them both laugh, but Georgia is not laughing today.

‘It’s about this.’ Georgia reaches up to the mantelpiece and retrieves the envelope.

Tess’s face falls. She looks at Georgia and then at the envelope in her hand and then at the floor and then finally back at Georgia.

‘I need to know what this is about. I know that you shredded one of these letters and used it to light the fire in the drawing room, I saw it with my own eyes. Is this the second letter? Or maybe the third?’

‘I will sort it out.’

‘Not before you tell me exactly what is going on here.’

‘I said I will sort it out.’

Tess gets up to take the letter from Georgia but it is snatched out of her way.

‘No!’ Georgia doesn’t budge.

‘I want you to open that letter right now and show me what it says.’

‘It’s private.

’

Georgia lifts her diary from the table and searches for the correct page.

‘Does this ring any bells? Almost six feet tall, left-handed, mole above left eye, neat fingernails, signet ring.’ She looks up at Tess.

‘Oh my God!’

‘Is this the person the letters are about?’

‘You’ve seen him?

Oh shit! He’s been here, hasn’t he?

’

‘Yesterday.’

‘What did he say? I am so sorry.’

‘He said that if you do not respond to the letters he will come back, and that he wants compensation.’

‘Right. This is terrible. I am so, so sorry.’

‘What exactly is he wanting compensation for?’

Tess looks up at the newly plastered ceiling.

‘It could be for a number of things.’

‘I think it’s time you opened that envelope and let me see what’s inside it.

’

Tess resists one last time.

‘I promise I will sort it out.’

‘I’m sure you will, but you see I’ve been on the wrong end of letters like this before because of a previous lodger, and I’m not going to be put in that position again.

So you’ll forgive me for wanting to know exactly where I stand.

This is my house and I cannot have it put at risk.

’

Tess knows when she is beaten.

‘Just open it. I don’t suppose it says anything different from the last two.

’

‘Two?’

‘Sorry.’

Georgia puts a kitchen knife under the flap and slices the paper neatly.

Dear Ms Dutton,

Please respond to our client’s request for compensation for the following items:

One iPhone: ￡400

One spalted ash coffee table, handmade: ￡1,200

Payment of the enclosed invoice regarding reinstatement and repairs to the garden at 72 Craiglockhart Green, Edinburgh: ￡1,800

Sundry items: ￡300

Georgia studies the invoice.

‘This is from a gardening company. Landscapers.’

‘I know.’

Georgia looks at her watch.

‘It’s a little early, but I would like something to drink.

A small whisky is in order, I think.

’ She opens the tall cupboard beside the range and takes out a bottle of Glenkinchie and two glasses.

‘You need to tell me what’s happening.

Don’t leave anything out.

’

Tess doesn’t drink whisky, but she makes an exception.

Slowly, she proceeds to tell Georgia everything.

She explains about living in Europe, about coming to live with Patrick in Edinburgh, and about the text messages from Xander.

‘I blamed myself to start with. I told myself that if I really loved him, I should have noticed that he wasn’t happy.

But I was wrong. If someone wants to hide something, they will.

I just hadn’t realised there were questions that needed to be asked.

’ She swirls the last of the whisky around in her glass and drinks it.

‘It’s made me quite cynical about relationships, I think, because people can tell lies, even to those they care about, without saying a single word.

I talked to Fiona about it once and she said it’s called “lying by omission”.

’

Tess can feel her throat getting tight as she tries not to cry.

‘I was a mess. We had been together for ages. I loved him so much. And everything just changed in a matter of minutes. My world disintegrated. For the first few days I couldn’t function, I couldn’t sleep or eat or anything.

’ She takes a deep breath.

‘And then I super-glued his phone onto his very expensive handmade coffee table, and I got his electric drill, and I bored a hole right through the app where all the messages were, and into the wood.’ She stops, remembering.

‘And then I did something very silly.’

Georgia waits.

‘He is, or he was, very proud of his garden, even though he hadn’t been living in the house for years.

It was written into all the tenancy agreements he drew up when the place was rented out that the garden had to be looked after, and he always arranged for a neighbour to let him know if it wasn’t happening.

’ Tess rolls the empty glass between her palms.

‘Go on .?.?.’

‘I got the five-litre canister of weedkiller out of the shed and poured it, almost neat, into the watering can, and I wrote something on his ever-so-perfect front lawn, where all the neighbours would see it.’

‘What did you write?’

‘Nothing sweary or rude.’

Georgia raises an eyebrow.

‘I wrote “LIAR”, because he had been lying to me for months. Maybe for years.’

Georgia lifts the whisky bottle, pours two more drinks, and tops them up with water.

She raises her glass.

‘Magnificent.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Magnificent. I would have done the same if I had half your imagination.’

‘It was a crazy thing to do. And it left me with all sorts of problems. I can’t bear to use a smartphone.

Our relationship was bracketed by loving text messages and funny things we had seen and taken a picture of and sent to each other, and calls from far-away places and apps for booking flights and finding nice places to eat.

I know I eventually caved in to your suggestion and bought that really basic one, but I still don’t use it unless I have to.

And my business was toast because I didn’t have the energy to be creative any more.

I used to organise things, mostly for business people.

They would message me and ask me to arrange for flowers for their mum twice a month or buy birthday presents.

One family got me to buy children’s party gifts on Amazon and have them sent gift-wrapped so their child could take them to whatever event they’d been invited to.

I booked travel, hotels, arranged cleaners, organised dog walkers.

I was like an online housekeeper and personal assistant and substitute wife all rolled into one.

And now look at me! It took me a considerable amount of effort just to film your attic.

You should have seen my hands shaking.

’

‘But you managed it, and it was a great help to me that you did.’

‘I was completely broken.’ The silence stretches into the nooks and crannies of the kitchen, filling every tiny space.

Eventually Tess finds her voice again.

‘After I did the weedkiller thing, I thought I’d be fine.

But I wasn’t. It’s been six months, but he’s in my head almost every day, and I’m still pretty wrecked.

I’m just better at hiding it now.

’ Tess looks down at her left hand.

‘Maybe I’ll always feel like this.

’ She takes another sip of whisky and rubs her ring finger, unable to continue.

Georgia nods. So many of her lodgers had similar experiences.

Unfortunately, she was never able to provide them with a route map back to normality which might have helped them.

‘I know it’s hard.’ She pauses, thoughtful.

‘Let me help you deal with this solicitor of his. I know just the person to speak to.’