Page 13 of The Price of Love
‘You’re sex-starved. I know which I’d rather be.’ With that he hefted his synth into his arms and walked off. I think he might have been grinning, but that could have been his goatee slipping.
* * *
Date: Monday morning. Time: Nine fifteen. Place: Council offices — Roads Department. I know, not exactly glamorous, not exactlyMission Impossible, but what were you expecting? If you’re looking for people jumping out of aeroplanes and defusing bombs, you aresoin the wrong place.
I was sitting on a badly designed chair, swinging my legs. Katie had gone in search of a coffee machine, and when the door opened, I thought it must be her coming back. I’d ordered a Kit Kat and was beginning to pine.
But it wasn’t Katie. It was a woman I vaguely recognised, carrying a pile of buff files, which she lowered onto the desk and turned, with an expression which only missed being loathing because she didn’t have the right kind of face for it. She had oneof those pretty-pretty insipid faces which start off when they’re young being peaches and cream, but rapidly degenerate into whisky and ginger.
‘Oh my God, it’s Nadine, isn’t it? Nadine Mitchell?’ The face stared back. Although she showed no sign of acknowledgement, I had the feeling she recognised me. ‘You were up at York with Katie and I. We did English and you were doing Drama. Remember that performance ofThe Crucible? When everyone got riotously drunk and Tituba fell off the stage?’ Still absolutely nothing. Behind me Katie came back in.
‘Oh! Hello, Nadine. I haven’t seen you since that night at St John’s. Did that poor guy ever get his wig back, do you know?’
To my horror, Nadine’s eyes were suddenly overflowing. For a couple of seconds, she stared at Katie and I, tears making canal tracks through her stiff make-up, then she flung an arm against the pile of filing and shot out of the office making little snuffling noises.
‘Whoa, distressed pig alert.’ Katie handed me the long-overdue Kit Kat.
A woman came into the room and eyed us suspiciously, as though she suspected us of having poked Nadine until she cried, in some bizarre local government testing experiment. ‘Miss Cayton?’
‘That’s me.’
‘My name is Vivienne Parry. I apologise for Nadine. She’s been a little unwell lately. Very highly strung. Now, what can I do for you?’
I unfolded my paper. ‘My grandfather, Mr Edward Cayton, he left me this, in his will.’ I pushed the crinkled sheet forward. ‘I was wondering, can you tell me what it’s about?’
Vivienne Parry, who was the approximate shape and colour of a cottage loaf, bent her head over the page, then reached behind her into the filing pile and pulled out one of the card files.On it was my grandfather’s name, crossed out, and mine written over the top. She opened the file.
‘Again, I can only apologise,’ she said. ‘Nadine has typed up the letter, but clearly forgotten to post it to you. You should have been emailed with the details, but, well, as I said, Nadine has been unwell lately, do accept my apologies for that too. Here, maybe this will answer your queries.’
Together Katie and I hunched over the headed paper, scanning and then reading the words properly, letting them sink in. After the third time, Katie let out a little squeal.
‘God, Will, looks like you’re a rich bitch!’
I couldn’t get the words to settle in my head. As soon as I thought I’d made sense of them, another paragraph would come along and panic them all into the air again, whirling and twittering. ‘I think it says that Icouldbe. Eventually. When they finish testing?’
The gist, because I know you’ll be agog to find out, was this. My grandfather had patented a new form of road-surfacing material. It was simple, easy to produce and, above all, considerations for local councils, cheap. As far as I could tell from the associated paperwork, it seemed to consist of a substance like sequins being introduced to the tarmac before laying, which caused the entire road to reflect oncoming headlights like millions of tiny cats’ eyes. The council was currently testing the material, and was prepared to pay an initial sum of (and this was where my eyes swam around) fifty thousand pounds. Upon successful completion of said testing, they would pay an additional four hundred and fifty thousand pounds for the rights to produce and market the material. Preliminary testing, continued the letter, looked extremely encouraging, with night visibility on treated surfaces being increased by up to thirty-five per cent.
‘Gah,’ went my mouth.
‘This is soooocoooool!’ shrieked Katie, as though the previous twenty years had never happened and she was twelve again. ‘You’ve got loads of money, Will. What are you going to do with it?’ Then a short pause for oxygen before, ‘Well, we’ll clean out the designer shops, obviously. Ooh, and there was that bag, that pink one, remember, the one you said you’d give up eating for?’
I couldn’t seem to process it, was still waiting for the catch. Still waiting, I suppose, for the gift horse to turn around and bite my hand off.
‘We can transfer the initial payment into your account today.’ Vivienne was businesslike, despite having an overexcited mother-of-two gyrating around her office. ‘You only have to sign some paperwork. Most of the formalities were dealt with by Mr Cayton before he . . . er . . . passed on.’
‘All right.’ I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that this was all a huge joke. When she handed me a pen I stared for ages into the ballpoint end, waiting for a little flag to pop out with ‘sucker’ written on it.
Nothing, as they say, continued to happen.
‘I thought you were going to refuse to sign in there for a minute,’ Katie said afterwards, as we enjoyed a celebratory pack of Thorntons Toffi-Chocs on a bench in the middle of town. ‘What were you waiting for, divine guidance?’
‘I don’t know. I was thinking, I suppose.’
‘Thinking? Someone says here’s a cheque for half a million and you say, hang on, I need to think about it? In what universe is that normal behaviour?’
‘It’s not half a million, it’s only fifty thousand.’ Then I grinned at her, a lunatic grin. ‘Listen to me, “only fifty thousand”. What am I like? That’s more money than we’d make in, what, three years? Even if you take off tax and my overdraft and these Toffi-Chocs, I’m still left with—’
‘Loads.’ Katie stuffed another sweet in her mouth. ‘So, whatwereyou thinking about?’
