The Carer by Deborah Moggach

Author:Deborah Moggach [Moggach, Deborah]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781472260475
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2019-07-08T23:00:00+00:00

Robert

Robert had a private income. So what? Plenty of people did, it was nothing to be ashamed of. The money came from his mother’s side of the family – coal mines near Stockport, long ago. It wasn’t a vast amount, but enough to save him from stacking shelves in Tesco, which at his age would be a bit tragic. Farida was the money-earner in their marriage and, now his hopes of a novel were dashed, would continue to be for the foreseeable. But she too had had the benefit of a hefty leg-up in the past, thanks to her father. They had both been fortunate.

But pity the poor kids. They’d been priced right out of the property market. London had become a pension-pot for foreign investors – Chinese, Malays, Russians, they were all at it, buying up flats in hideous skyscrapers that cast their neighbourhoods into darkness and destroyed their communities. Young people hadn’t a hope in hell of getting onto the housing ladder. Even rentals were way out of their reach.

So he and Farida had been determined to help their children; it was one of the few topics on which they agreed. Alice wanted to buy into a flat-share in Homerton – once a Slough of Despond but now apparently a hipster hotspot. They needed to sort out the legal side, so Robert rang Jonty Cummings, his family’s solicitor in Oxford. They had been to the same school and had remained friends; nothing bonds two fellows like wanking together behind the bike sheds.

Jonty was a jovial chap and, for a solicitor, gratifyingly indiscreet. After they’d discussed Alice’s flat he said that he’d seen Robert’s father only the other day.

‘Looking quite spry, I must say. Had a carer-person with him. Quite heroically plain, isn’t she? Big knockers, though.’ He paused. ‘And bigger tummy.’ Robert asked him why his father had come to see him and he replied breezily: ‘Oh, to fiddle with his will.’

Robert’s heart hammered against his ribs. ‘Er, in what respect exactly?’

‘Ha! My lips are sealed.’

Robert rang off. Oh God.

His suspicions had been lurking, of course. The Droitwich business, the bedroom business. Mandy’s sometimes weird behaviour and probing questions. But the confirmation still shocked him to his bones. In fact he felt physically sick.

Farida was in the kitchen unpacking an Ocado delivery. He heard the clack-clack of her heels as she walked from fridge to larder and back again, to and fro on the limestone floor. Her shoes beat a military tattoo that rallied his thoughts into marching order. I must find out more, I must find out more. I must talk to my sister.

He went into the living room, out of earshot, and phoned Phoebe. Her gasp was gratifying. Suddenly they were conspirators. Their differences were forgotten in the face of the common enemy.

She told him she’d seen their father the day before, and that Mandy had behaved oddly. ‘They were both odd, as if they had something to hide. I was going to ring you about

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