I tell my cousin, “Thanks. Talk to you tomorrow.” Then I tell Dair, “Don’t sign it. And don’t start listing anything here on Marketplace.”
Dair huffs, defeated. “Because no one wants my secondhand tat?”
“Tat? That’s what the other firm told you all this is?”
“This and all of Alice’s other collections,” he says glumly.
“Collections?”
He gives me a tour of more rooms dedicated to whatever took his ex-employer’s fancy. “She loves a car boot sale.Loved,I mean. Was always on the lookout for more dogs.” He tells me that in a room crammed with chintzy armchairs where a mantelpiece holds blue and white ceramic examples. “Spaniels were her favourite.”
“So I see.” I pick up a matching pair of mantel dogs similar to ones I bid on for Flynn that were a finishing old-money touch to fool some new investors. Dair picks up another and shows me the maker’s mark.
“Is it worth anything?”
“No idea. Cabinetry is more my thing.” And there’s plenty of that to distract me, even if a lot of it shows a lifetime of usage. So does every room I look through. They’re all cluttered, but cosy. Clean and tidy, if dated. Cared for, and I can’t lie, I’m kinda glad Flynn fucked off. It means I get to see more of Dair’s relief from close up in another bathroom where I tell him, “I can help you figure out what to do with it all.”
“You can?”
Perhaps that relief is overwhelming. He turns away to dig through a medicine cabinet like he promised and takes a suspiciously long time before turning back. “Will this be okay for you?” The medication he offers is familiar, the box covered in bees and flowers.
“Yeah, thanks.”
I go to take it from him. Before I can, Dair says, “You do need to know this first.” He clutches the antihistamine instead of handing it over, and I assume his professional role has kicked in and he’s about to read out a list of contraindications.
He actually warns me about himself.
“I can’t pay you up-front for your help. Especially if I can’t sell any of it.” He’s so bleakly honest. “But I’ve taken on some more care shifts, so I will have some cash by the time I have to clear out of here, even if I do have to take it all back home with me.”
I know what Kev would charge for removals between here and Scotland, and I can’t help wincing.
He notices. “You don’t think I should take it all home? I mean, I really don’t have room for any of it, but what else would you suggest?”
What would I suggest? It sounds like he’d believe anything I told him. I start with what I can’t hold in any longer.
“I’d suggest you get a better lawyer instead of one who let you get fucked over.” A hot-looking flush stains his throat, and I dial down my nark. “Charles mentioned that your client?—”
“Alice. Her name was Alice.”
I nod. “He said Alice left you this place. Property in Kensington gets snapped up as soon as it goes on the market.”
Dair goes taut, like a guitar string tuned too tight and close to snapping, so I aim for joking.
“You sure you didn’t find your lawyer on Marketplace? Because it doesn’t sound like they knew what they were doing.”
His tension releases, and he huffs gently. “No. I didn’t find him on Facebook.”
“You sure? Because this place?—”
“Is worth a lot?” He nods. “It is.” Dair scrubs a hand through hair that doesn’t gleam with hidden fire now. It’s dull. Somehow muted. “I just wanted it to stop. All of it.”
“So, the legal advice you got was to hand over the keys to this place?”
His jaw clenches. “I can make my own decisions. Believe me, after the court hearing, I know all about that. And about whether or not someone has the capacity to make up their own mind.” He lifts his chin to meet my eyes. “Because that’s what the family disputed. Family I never saw once the whole time I cared for her.” His breath catches. “C-Charles told you all about that? That I was her sole beneficiary? How Alice left everything to me? All of it.”
I glance around an antiquated bathroom. Picture all those tea sets, dinged-up cabinets, and china spaniels. “Yeah, he did.”
“Well, there was just enough wiggle room to dispute Alice’s capacity. And something about trusts. It was…” His eyes turn glossy for a second time this evening. “It was a lot. And I didn’t know she’d made any of those changes to her will until after she was gone. It got complicated in a hurry. And there were…” He struggles for the right vocab the same way I do while sitting in the wings at meet-ups. “The family put up roadblocks.”
