She stared at the page in front of her, at the sales details for a house she knew well, a house she had been in a very short time ago. Mim’s house.
Heart thudding in her chest, she carried her laptop through into the living room where Mim was sitting beside the fire, drinking her own cup of tea and eating a piece of cake. She set it down on the coffee table and swivelled it towards her aunt.
‘What’s going on?’ she said. ‘Why is your house for sale, Mim?’
Her aunt looked like she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. But only for a second. Then her expression changed to one of consternation.
‘Oh, honestly,’ she said, tutting. ‘Trust you to spoil the surprise. You were just like that as a child, tearing open tiny corners of your Christmas presents to peek inside.’
‘I did not!’
‘Oh yes, you did,’ replied Mim, laughing. ‘Your mother had to hide them in the loft because she knew it was the one place you were too scared to look. And not justyourpresents either. Don’t you remember the year when you said “you can open your pyjamas now, Auntie Mim”?’
Peg did remember – they had teased her about it for years. She shook her head. ‘That’s not the point, as well you know. What’s going on, Mim?’
Mim gave her a coy smile. ‘Well, isn’t it obvious? It’s not Henry who’s moving, it’s me.’
‘You?’
‘Yes, me. I’m buying a flat at Athelstone House.’ Mim folded her hands in her lap and gave Peg a triumphant grin.
Peg shook her head. ‘But how on earth did you manage that? You?—’
A creak on the stairs behind her gave the game away. ‘You’d better have a good explanation for this,’ she said without even turning around.
‘Actually, itispretty sound,’ said Henry, moving into her line of sight. He at least had the grace to look a little ashamed.
He took a seat on the sofa, eyebrows raised, and she frowned. Was he mocking her now?
Swallowing, she sat down opposite him and indicated the computer screen. Well…start explaining then.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ muttered Mim, rolling her eyes. ‘Your generation think you’re the only ones who can organise things, with your laptops and your mobile phones.’
‘To be fair, Mim, we did borrow Peg’s laptop, and we did use my phone,’ said Henry.
‘Don’t split hairs,’ Mim replied. ‘The point is that I can remember Dot’s phone number, herlandlinenumber, without the aid of all these fancy gizmos, and she has a key to my house, so?—’
‘Of course she does,’ murmured Peg.
Mim ignored her, darting her niece a fierce look. ‘And so I rang her and told her that a nice young man from the estate agency would be calling and she was to give him the key.’
‘And what did he say, this nice young man?’
‘That I have a very desirable property which he thinks will sell quite quickly. He was particularly taken with the garden, apparently.’
Peg stared at her, desperate to find some fault in Mim’s statement, but it was clear she’d been comprehensivelyoutmanoeuvred. ‘But you always said you didn’t like old people. You said that Athelstone House wasn’t your cup of tea.’
‘I don’t like old people. But Blanche isn’t bad, I rather like her. As for it not being my cup of tea, I wasacting, dear.’ She leaned forward to pat Peg’s knee. ‘Have youseenthe place? It’s like Downton Abbey. They even have a proper dining room where you can order a fancy dinner if you don’t feel like cooking, and they have wine with their meals. And a lady who comes in and does hair and another one who does nails. Blanche gets hers done every fortnight.’
‘Does she?’ said Peg, shooting Henry a look. ‘That’s all very well, Mim, but how can you even afford it?’
‘Because my Bernard left me quite a lot of money, dear, which you must remember, because you were the one who sorted everything out for me – the executor thingy, of his will, whatever you called it. Anyway, I’ve had nothing to spend my money on for all these years, so what do you think I’ve done with it?’
It was true, Peg had been the executor of Bernard’s will, but Mim’s husband had died fifteen years ago. She just assumed…She checked herself. That’s exactly what she had done –assumed. ‘I didn’t think there’d be any of it left,’ she said. ‘I thought you needed it.’
‘What for?’ asked Mim. ‘There’s only been me, and I don’t eat much. The birds don’t eat much either. So it’s stayed in the bank, in some fancy account or other where the lovely lady who works there said I should put it. So now there’s rather more than when I started. And it’s plenty enough to buy a little flat. I don’t want anything bigger because you know me, dear, and I hate dusting.’
Peg allowed herself a small smile.
