Page 7 of Waiting for a Bright New Future

Attaboy! You’re a brother to be proud of.

When he got home there was a message on the answering machine in Robert’s lawyer voice. The meagre contents of their father’s bank accounts would no longer be available for Stuart’s living expenses. As a gesture of goodwill, Robert and George would subsidise him for one month, on condition that receipts were produced. After that he was on his own. The contents of their mother’s jewellery box had been noted on the day of the funeral and would be collected next time his brothers were in the area.

The black Zeppelin inflated further, blotting out the shiny feeling his cycling success had created.

The next morning, he sat at the kitchen table trying to brainstorm a way forward. An income was needed, and fast. Lillian walked past the window and knocked on the door. Stuart didn’t want to make small talk, but the old lady had already seen he was in.

“Happy Easter!” She held up a large foil-wrapped chocolate egg, suspended in a gaudy red-and-yellow open-fronted cardboard box.

“Thank you. But there was no need.”

“Nonsense, there was every need. You are a boy who needs cheering up.” She gave him a hug and a kiss. “Even middle-aged men are entitled to some indulgent, brightly coloured fun. Chocolate always makes the world feel better. Now, tell me what happened at the will-reading.”

Stuart hesitated. Broadcasting family business felt disloyal. But Lillian had always been almost family.

“We need a plan,” Lillian said when he’d finished.

His spirits rose a little. A problem shared and all that.

“You and Jayne, you’re both like homeless cats. She’s moved back in with me now, you know. She says it’s to keep an eye on me, she thinks I’m going doolally, which is complete nonsense of course. I can function as well as the next person. Between you and me, she’s moved back because her flat is so tiny. A studio she calls it, with everything in the same room. A bedsit I call it. It’s all she could afford after the divorce. He was a gambler, you know.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“She tried to make it work as long as she could but his debts meant they were always living hand to mouth. It didn’t suit my Jayne; she likes nice things. I don’t mean she’s extravagant but she saves up to buy quality.”

Stuart remembered the gold pendant sitting on the bare skin of Jayne’s collarbone at the funeral. “She’s lucky to have you to take her in.” He wished he’d been brave enough to accept Jayne’s invitation to dinner. That’s what someone with a bright new future would have done.

“By pooling my pension and her salary and only having one roof over our heads we’ll both be a bit better off. That’s what she says anyway. Now banks are all on computers, I don’t keep an eye on the money like I used to. I could cope with that little book that you took to the building society but now . . .”

Lillian’s face fell. Behind that capablefaçadeshe hid her own worries and confusion.

“Chocolate.” Stuart broke open the egg and placed the pieces between them on the foil wrapper.

“You and she are at a crossroads. As an old woman who loves her only daughter and is very fond of the boy who grew up next door, it would give me peace if you got together.” Lillian put a lump of egg in her mouth. Her next words were mangled by the chocolate. “Do you still hold a candle for Jayne?”

Yes. No. Was there a right answer? When Jayne had touched his hand at the funeral and kissed his cheek, there’d definitely been a connection. But he’d been a monk for twenty-five years; it was impossible to know anything except that he didn’t want to be on his own for ever. He made a show of chewing a piece of egg before speaking. “It was a long time ago. People change.”

“My Jayne hasn’t changed. She’s still got her head screwed on properly. I told you she was a legal secretary? She might be able to get you a proper share of the house — after all, it’s what your dad wanted. That was the plan I came to tell you about.”

A better man might pick up the cudgel and prepare for battle. There was no doubt a guaranteed roof over his head would rapidly shrink that black Zeppelin. But getting there would eat into the mental reserves also needed to propel himself out of the shadows of merely existing into a brightness of being. He didn’t have the stamina for both. And maybe, if his brothers put up a fight, which they would, the house would have to be sold anyway to meet the legal bills. But he couldn’t throw Lillian’s whole plan back in her face — he had to pick up at least part of it. And it would be very nice to see Jayne again.

“I can’t cope with fighting the will. But perhaps Jayne might like a catch-up for old times’ sake. Have you got her mobile number?”

Lillian’s face broke into a grin and from her pocket she handed him a piece of paper with the number already prepared. “She does yoga. That’s how she stays slim and walks so lovely. I did it too when I was younger.”

Stuart smiled at the old lady’s attempts to sell the charms of her only daughter.

As Lillian stood to leave, Stuart remembered the light he’d seen in the early hours the previous day.

“Were you struggling to sleep?”

A shutter dropped over Lillian’s face. “Something like that.”

This closing down of a subject was out of character for the lady who’d known him since childhood and Stuart felt a pang of anxiety. That, and the often-missing shoes, made him think there might be some grounds for Jayne to be worrying that her mother was going ‘doolally’.

Chapter Six

Stuart kept Jayne’s number under his jar of change on the worktop, trying to work up the confidence to do something with it.

---