Finders, Keepers by Sabine Durrant

Author:Sabine Durrant [Durrant, Sabine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781473681675
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2020-07-08T18:30:00+00:00

The date of their summer party crept up without me really noticing. She mentioned it a few times – who was coming, who was doing ‘the nibbles’, how annoying Delilah was being about the flowers – but I didn’t pay that much attention. Until the last minute, I wasn’t even sure I was invited. In fact, I don’t think my attendance was intended. It was accidental.

The day before the date in question, a Friday, a man came to my door. He was wearing a black suit, his hair slightly damp; under his arm he was carrying a small brown attaché case. ‘Miss Baxter,’ he said in a tone that was both profoundly serious and cheerful, almost skittish. ‘If I may. I’ve just come from a meeting round the corner with your neighbours, the Swinsons – do you know them? No? And I said to myself Pete, it would be remiss not to check in with Miss Baxter, so here I am, just wondering whether you had time to think any more about my proposal?’

‘How do you know my name?’

‘We met once before, do you remember? Peter Caxton from Equity Release Freedom dot com?’

He must have seen something in my expression, a hesitation, because he snapped open his attaché case and, balancing it on one knee, started handing me pieces of documentation on which figures were printed in neat lines. I took them. He was talking still, listing the reasons why it was a good idea, how beneficial it would be at this point in my life, how I would maximise my advantage, my profit, how I would be realising my assets.

He must have come to the house in the weeks when I was first here alone; it was all quite a blur. You lose your brain a bit after a bereavement; things drop through the holes.

I could see from the leaflet in my hand that he was offering something called ‘a home reversion scheme’. I’d get a lump sum; they’d get the house, though I could live in it ‘for my lifetime’. He was still talking, spinning his spiel, and words and phrases reached my brain: ‘ready cash’, ‘an opportunity to do something for oneself’. And I had started thinking. ‘An extremely viable proposition’: yes, maybe it was. In Ailsa’s hands, the house no longer felt as safe as it had. Perhaps I could leave it behind me. I could travel. Not a cruise, as he was suggesting. But there were places in the UK I’d always wanted to visit. The Lake District. I could go on one of those organised hikes Fred was always advocating. Hell, maybe I could even apply for a passport and join Sue and Maeve on one of their antique-buying trips to France.

‘Hello there?’

Ailsa pushed the gate open with a clang, and came towards us. Caxton clunked shut his briefcase. ‘Right, I’ll leave that with you,’ he said and began to back away. ‘Afternoon, ladies.’

As he passed Ailsa, he cocked his head – if he’d had a hat, he’d have tipped it – turned left and was concealed by the hedge.

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