Page 35 of A Scottish Love Story
‘Your clothes are still in the wardrobe where you left them,’ Gilda replied sullenly. She tried to shut the car door.
‘I didn’t mean clothes! Where is my sewing table? My little desk? My other small pieces of furniture? What have you done with them?’ Roxanne knew her voice was rising, but she couldn’t help it. Gilda glared back.
‘It was only furniture,’ she muttered. ‘I wanted some cash. I don’t like dark-coloured stuff,’ she added.
‘They were all in my room. You didn’t need to look at them. Where have you put them? You — you haven’t painted them for a nursery for the baby?’ Roxanne asked faintly.
‘Let me shut the door!’ Gilda jabbed the car key at the ignition but it wouldn’t fit. She realised she had grabbed the key for Tommy’s car in her hurry. She hadn’t thought Tommy would send for Roxanne, or that she would ever come back. She had destroyed his mobile phone, making sure he had lost Roxanne’s number so he couldn’t contact her, unless he used her employer’s landline phone and she knew he wouldn’t want to do that. Before that, she had, accidentally on purpose, deleted mostof the email addresses from the computer. Tommy had been angry over that because she hadn’t realised a lot of them were business email addresses, as well as friends’ and Roxie’s.
‘Where are my antique pieces?’ Roxanne asked again, holding the car door open.
‘I sold them. So there!’
‘S-sold them! You sold my antique table? I can’t believe this. Who to? When?’
None of them noticed Tommy coming across the yard towards them.
‘What’s going on? You!’ He stared at Gilda with contempt. ‘What are you stealing this time?’ he asked icily.
‘Who bought them?’ Roxanne demanded sharply. Gilda was a captive in the car. She had no option but to answer.
‘A man in a white van,’ she muttered.
‘Surely not those people who travel round the countryside looking for bargains?’ Roxanne gasped in dismay.
‘That’s right,’ she said jubilantly. ‘He hadn’t room for the bigger stuff from your room, but he paid me for it,’ she added exultantly, casting a defiant glance at Tommy. ‘He’s collecting it next week, except the wardrobe. He said that was too big to go with the things he plans to send to America.’ Roxanne was leaning against the car, white-faced and shaking, before becoming aware of Tommy, who was staring at them both.
‘How could you let her sell my precious sewing table?’ Roxanne asked in a shaking voice. ‘You knew it belonged to our great-grandmother. Grandma Horne left it especially to me in her will, and my little desk, and... and...’ The woman’s voice almost broke in her distress and she was clearly struggling to hold back her tears.
Gilda had never believed Miss Roxanne Carr of Willowbrook could get emotional. Even at her father’s funeral she had been pale-faced, but composed. She had acted with dignity, greetingmany in the crowd of folk who had packed the church. Later that night, Gilda had sneered to herself when they had heard her sobbing in the privacy of her bedroom, but Roxanne had been up the next morning as usual to milk the bloody cows.
* * *
‘What are you talking about, Roxie?’ Tommy asked. It was Lucy who told him what had upset Roxie so badly.
‘You can’t have sold Roxie’s things! All her treasured pieces were in her own room!’ he said, staring incredulously at Gilda.
‘You promised we would have a new house with modern furniture, not an old barn of a place.’
‘Don’t speak to me about promises!’ Tommy said through gritted teeth. ‘What did you need the money for? When did you sell them?’ He knew how much his sister had cherished the family heirlooms from their grandmother. He had inherited his grandfather’s gold hunter watch and chain. The memory of his father came back as though he was standing beside them.
‘It is worth a lot of money, but it is unlikely you will wear it unless such things come back into fashion. I will take it to the bank. It will be safe there in case you do need it sometime. I wouldn’t like to think that girl’s father might get his hands on it and sell it for beer money.’
Tommy remembered how furious he had been at the time, not because he’d wanted the watch, but because he’d known his father had had no respect, and no trust either, for Gilda or her family.
He had learned several hard lessons since then. How he wished he had listened to his father. He sighed heavily and looked unhappily at Roxie.
‘‘We shall never be able to trace him to get my things back,’ she said dejectedly. ‘I can never replace them. It’s thesentimental value as much as...’ She broke off, biting back a sob.
‘Wait a minute,’ Lucy said. ‘Didn’t you say he had paid for some bigger items, Gilda? If he is coming back to collect them, he must have left some sort of invoice or receipt? Maybe that will have his name?’
‘It’s nothing to do with you!’ Gilda screamed at Lucy hysterically.
‘You’re right, Lucy,’ Tommy said. ‘He must have given you an invoice and kept a copy himself to claim the other items. When were you here? Did you arrange to meet him? Did he come the day I was at the auction mart making arrangements for the sale? That is the only time I have been far away from the farm recently, at least long enough for a van to come in and take things away. Show me the receipt.’
‘Don’t know where it is.’
‘You must know. How else can he prove he paid for the rest? Gilda, I want that receipt.’
