‘Dan said much the same,’ I said, tears suddenly smarting in my eyes. ‘And that my chocolate fudge cake was to die for …’
I looked down and realized I was now trying to cram a milk jug into an overflowing box. Only part of my brain was doing rational things, while the rest was desperate to retreat somewhere dark, and howl.
‘Look, why don’t you come and stay with me and Mum for a bit?’ Jen suggested, just as she had after we’d heard the terrible news about Dan.
‘You’re very kind, but I feel I’d like to get right away. I’ll phone my friend Edie in a bit – you know, the one with the guesthouse? She called me after she saw the news and invited me over there for a change of scene after the funeral was over. She can probably put me up until I find another job.’
Back where I started, skivvying for others in a kitchen somewhere – up the ladder and down the snake. The chimera of marrying andhaving children and a forever home of my own shivered and vanished into the air.
Whatever I wrote in my stories, in real life Princess Alice was destined never to have her happy-ever-after ending.
I said so to Lola when she called me, as she’d done every day since I’d had the news about Dan.
‘I shouldn’t say that, whenyouhaven’t either,’ I said contritely, for Lola had been suddenly widowed two years ago and had moved back to her parents’ smallholding, with her three children.
She’d been absolutely devastated by the suddenness of her loss and I’d spent as much time as I could in London, supporting her through the funeral and helping her to pack up afterwards.
‘But your situation is entirely different: I found and married my soul mate and we had our happy-ever-after, even if the after didn’t last as long as we’d hoped,’ she assured me.
Then she urged me again to go and stay with them, even though the cottage was now bursting at the seams with people, until the annexe they were building was finished. But going back to Shrewsbury, even though the Wicked Witch had long decamped to London, would have been even more of a return full circle.
You know those metal bangles made out of a snake eating its own tail? Well, I felt just like one of those.
I left phoning Edie until early next morning and by then I’d searched Dan’s papers again for a will I knew didn’t exist. His idea of filing had been to shove everything into the big roll-top desk in the corner of the sitting room and his long-suffering accountant would come over once a year and stuff it all into a box and take it away to sort, so that narrowed down the search area.
I had trouble getting out the words, because my throat felt as if something had been tied tightly round it – my heartstrings, possibly – but once Edie had grasped the situation she offered me one of her three guest chalets for as long as I needed it.
‘There’s one in need of a bit of renovation that I will nae get round to till next year, so I’ll not be losing money by it,’ she said, businesslike as ever.
‘But I could rent it – I’ve got savings,’ I suggested, for Lola had been wrong about the market for adult fairy tales. A year earlier I’d put a novel and a couple of my novella-length stories out as e-books, with my own artwork for the covers, and the sales had been quite good. I’d bought a nice new laptop on the proceeds.
‘You’ll do no such thing!’ Edie declared. Then she added, ‘You know, you were lucky that woman didn’t press charges for assault; she sounds the type.’
‘She might have done, if Jen and the other staff hadn’t told her they would swear they never saw any assault if she tried it,’ I said. ‘I can’t imagine how Dan came to marry her in the first place … or why he never told me he wasn’t divorced.’
‘He was a nice man, but a feckless creature when it came to anything other than climbing mountains,’ she observed. ‘Like that Robbie you used to know down in Cornwall – sweet nature, but never quite made the leap into adulthood.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ I said. ‘Though it turns out that Dan wasn’t totally feckless, because I’ve just found a life insurance policy … and it named me as the beneficiary. I think when he signed up for this documentary he must have had to have it.’
‘Oh? That’s something then, at least. How much was it for?’ she asked, very brisk and practical.
‘I don’t know. I don’t suppose it’s a lot,’ I said disinterestedly. ‘I’ll read the documents later when I can think straight. I’ve packed them with my stuff.’
He’d probably had the insurance forced on him, but at least he’d cared what happened to me enough to name me. He really had loved me and this must have been what he meant when he said he’d see me right if anything happened to him.
I could feel grief poised to spring out of me like an unloosed jack-in-the-box, but crammed the lid firmly back down.
‘Shall I come over and pick you up?’ Edie offered.
‘No, I know you’re busy and I think the old car has one journey left in her before she needs some urgent mega repairs. I’ve got everything packed so I can load it up and drive over early this evening, after thefuneral tea at the café. I – I’d just finished doing the baking for that when his wife turned up. I was going to cut the sandwiches and leave them in the fridge under a damp tea towel, but Jen said she’d make them this morning, instead.’
My mind seemed to run automatically along catering lines, even at a time like this.
‘That old car of yours should have been scrapped long since,’ Edie said.
‘I can’t bear to, I’m attached to it after all these years. I’m sure it can be fixed and it’s so old, it’s probably collectable.’
‘Only to someone really keen on rust, and hand-painted flower-power bodywork,’ she observed drily. Then she offered to come and support me through the funeral, but I knew she was busy in the guesthouse, so I assured her I’d be among friends.