Page 91 of Waiting for a Bright New Future

“Sit down,” he said to Lillian.

She sat down and shuffled on her bottom to the edge of the inflatable where Jim caught her and helped her with her shoes.

Stuart walked to the front door with Jayne and Lillian.

“I’ve had a lovely time,” Lillian said. “You and Florence worked like Trojans. You’re good together. I can see why my Jayne is worried.”

Jayne’s face was stone and she said nothing.

Stuart tried to defuse the situation by leaning over and kissing his fiancée. She turned her head slightly and he caught only her cheek.

Chapter Forty-Two

In the days after the party, Jayne was cool towards him but Lillian made it her job to sing his praises. Florence called to the house once with a bottle of wine and a note from Shayne, written in a laborious hand and accompanied by a picture in smudged felt-tip entitledMy Bouncy Castle Party.Stuart was grateful for the title and Florence’s visit but she refused to come over the doorstep, insisting she was in a hurry to be elsewhere.

The fallout from the party wasn’t what he’d expected. He’d agreed to the idea mostly because he’d wanted fun in the house, but also because it would please Florence, and he’d hoped Jayne would be won over in all the merriment. The event had succeeded in very temporarily enlivening his home but had failed on both the other counts. Florence seemed to be rapidly loosening the strings of their friendship and he was having to work hard to regain Jayne’s favour, despite Lillian’s constant comparisons between him and a knight in shining armour.

“Jayne, this one is such a keeper,” she would say. “He’s a prince among men.”

Stuart would try to catch Jayne’s eye and then look heavenward as if to say he knew that Lillian was exaggerating. But Jayne wouldn’t give him the comfort and confidence of that silent communication. He realised that she had intuited the hazy connection between Florence and himself, even though it was unspoken, unacted upon — apart from the kiss that should never have happened — and definitely not practical under both their circumstances and probably wouldn’t work in the long term even if it was.

Veronica was finding him plenty of stand-in carer work and, despite the haphazard hours, he liked having a purpose back to his days and a reason to rush about. The postman arrived one lunchtime as he was heading out to see an elderly lady who needed a hot meal and a spot of housework.

“Can you sign for this, please?” He handed Stuart a long white envelope and pushed a computer tablet in front of him “Just signing with your finger tip is fine.”

Stuart glanced briefly at the letter as he flung it onto the passenger seat of the car. It was embossed with the name of a local solicitor’s office but he was late and it would have to wait. He stayed longer than necessary with the old lady; she had a wealth of tales about the cats who criss-crossed her garden and gave her company during the long hours alone. It seemed rude to walk out when he had nowhere else to immediately be.

He remembered the letter when he’d put a toad-in-the-hole in the oven at Jayne’s and he rushed out to the car for it. His fiancée arrived home from work just as he was easing his finger under the flap of the thick envelope.

“Looks interesting,” she said.

The sheet of paper he pulled from the envelope matched it in thickness and quality. The contents of the letter made him sit down. He read it again to make sure he’d fully understood what it said and that it was actually addressed to him.

“Well?” Jayne was standing over him. “What is it?”

“William’s left me some money in his will.”

“Wow. How much?”

“Two hundred thousand pounds.”

Jayne sat down as well. “That is significant,” she said slowly. “We could move to a bigger house. Or extend here to create a granny flat and go on a world cruise.”

The words washed over Stuart. He was thinking about Andrea and the way she and William had fallen out, about the visit of William’s solicitor, about the way Andrea had been cool towards him on the phone and at the hospital. His meeting with Veronica was starting to make sense. Stuart didn’t like the way the pieces were falling into place. He didn’t want to take money that had caused a family rift. He had no idea of the total value of William’s estate, nor how much Andrea herself had inherited, but she must have been left with very little. This was like blood money and he wanted no part of it.

“I can’t take it.”

“Of course you can.”

“This should’ve gone to his daughter but for some reason, after he met me, he decided to deprive her of it. That’s not fair. I’ll tell the solicitor that William can’t have been of sound mind when he changed his wishes.” He wondered if Veronica already knew what he’d inherited. This would be another black mark against his name.

Jayne took the letter from him. “You will not. Things have a way of working themselves out. This compensates for missing out in your father’s will. This money means we can push the boat out for the wedding. Have a bigger do. It’s short notice but not impossible.”

Stuart was still thinking about Andrea. However they looked on the windfall, it wouldn’t make it any more acceptable.

“I’ve never had so much money,” Jayne continued. “There were no luxuries with Carl and you don’t earn . . . I’m going to phone to see if they’ve got late availability at the Hilton.” Jayne was on a roll now. “And we could afford for Mum to have a short spell in a residential home while we have a proper honeymoon. Where’s hot and sunny at the beginning of April? Somewhere we could relax by the pool all day.”

Rein her in, bro. This is getting out of hand.

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