Page 25 of The Stranger in Her House

‘You don’t havea room.’

‘Well I can’t sleep on the landing.’

‘Why do you need to be here?’

‘Gwenny kindly invited me while I’m in between homes. I haven’t been around for a few days because I’ve been packing up and selling my house. But I won’t be exchanging on my new place for a couple of weeks.’

‘You’re not moving in here. No way,’ I say and shake my head. ‘You can’t be trusted around Mum.’

His show of offence is as phoney as his need to stay here. ‘I’m sensing a little hostility,’ he says.

‘You’re taking advantage of her and we both know it. Half the time she doesn’t even know who you are. She thinks you’re my dad.’

I swear he is the only person who can fire me from nought to sixty in a heartbeat. I snatch the paintbrush out of his hand and hurl it on to the plastic sheeting covering the carpet. ‘I’m onlytelling you this once. Get the fuck out of my mum’s house. Now!’ I square up to him, almost daring him to retaliate. If he does, I will be straight on to the police. But instead he gives me a sour smile, then looks over my shoulder.

‘I don’t know who you think you are but I’d like you to leave right now,’ comes a frail, trembling voice behind me.

I turn around. Gwen’s brow is taut, her lips pursed. ‘Mum, I’m your daughter.’

‘You’re not—’ I know what’s coming next as she’s said it dozens of times before, so I cut her short.

‘He’s a conman. You can’t trust him.’

‘Don’t talk about Bill like that!’

‘He’s not Dad, he’s Paul,’ I snap. ‘And he’s not staying here.’

‘But he’s my friend and this is my villa, not yours.’

Paul interrupts. ‘Thank you, Gwenny, but I don’t want to come between the two of you.’

Like hell he doesn’t. His focus locks on to her and her cheeks flush. A twinkle appears somewhere deep in those milky eyes. And not for the first time, I have a bad, bad feeling about this.

‘Please leave my house,’ she directs to me, more firmly.

‘Mum!’ I protest.

‘You have no right to call me that,’ she says. ‘Bill, tell her to go.’

‘Let’s go downstairs and talk about this in private,’ I say.

‘I don’t need to talk about anything. If you can’t accept my friends then you’re not welcome here.’

I take a deep breath and glare at her. I know her well enough to recognise there’s no use in trying to talk her around to my way of thinking when she is in this mindset. I’d normally give her space, let it run its course, and later, she’ll have forgotten why she was so angry in the first place. But if I do that now, I’ll be leaving her with Paul. That’s the last thing I want. ‘Mum?’ I say again, but she’s not listening. To her, he is the only person in the room.

So with no choice but to leave, I do just that. I make my way back downstairs, but before I go, I open the cupboard doors at the bottom of the bureau in the lounge and remove a concertina box of files. Among her bills, insurance policies, the deeds to the house and pension is her most recent will.

I open the envelope and make sure the document is still there. But instead of replacing it, I slip it into my pocket to take home with me. With Paul around, I don’t just need to protect her, but my own interests too.

CHAPTER 19

CONNIE

When my roles as next of kin and carer come to their inevitable conclusion, I’m thinking of offering my services to Steven Spielberg. Because over the last ten days, I’ve been putting in an Oscar-winning performance following our falling-out over her invitation to allow Paul to stay at her house. But if the only way I can safeguard her is by pretending to regret my outburst, then I’ve no choice but to keep my mouth shut. If there was another confrontation, I fear she’d again choose him over me.

Neither Paul nor I have made reference to our fight, but it hangs so heavy in the air it sticks to my clothes like glue. He’s under no illusion how deep my hatred for him runs. He’s a malignant presence, a cancerous tumour I need to remove before it becomes terminal.

I’m not exaggerating when I say he’s a permanent feature in her life now. The fox in the henhouse slinks from room to room, leaving behind him the stench of gloss paint and wallpaper paste. He might as well be pissing up the walls to mark his territory. He finished redecorating the landing yesterday, and this afternoon, he announced his next projects will be the lounge and dining room.Of course she readily agreed when he told her he wants to paper a feature wall and affix wood panelling to another. But it’s far too contemporary for someone her age and I’m sure it’s more his taste than hers. And wasn’t the point of doing all this work to make the house feel more like hers than the previous owners? I can only hope that he can’t keep this pretence up forever and that I’m here when he reveals his true colours.

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