The Peas and Carrots Series Boxset 1, page 58
part #1 of Peas and Carrots Series
Eric swilled his glass around. The drink was cola, but he had poured it into a whisky tumbler in the hope that it would lessen his desire for something stronger. It helped a little. After the meeting with the head he desperately wanted a drink, but thoughts of Abi pulled him back. Twice he opened his mouth to respond to Yvette’s question, before closing it again. On the third time he managed to speak.
‘It’s not good,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve been looking at it as well. And now we’re going to have to factor weekly counselling sessions into it too.’
‘I just don’t want to dip into Suzy’s money. Her royalties are meant for Abi. For her future.’
‘But without her money there’s no income coming in, so what do you suggest?’
He returned to swilling the cola, before lifting his eyes away from the glass and up to his mother-in-law.
‘I’m not sure. I’ve been thinking that maybe the best thing we could do is sell up and head back to London. I’ve spoken to Jack. He says there’s a job there waiting for me if I want it.’
‘What?’ Yvette said, unable to disguise the surprise in her voice. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Then why didn’t you say anything?’
Eric took a draw from his drink. The ice clattered against the glass.
‘Because I’m not sure it’s the right thing to do. Not right now. What do you think?
‘Me?’
‘One day I think a fresh start is exactly the thing Abi and I need. No school problems, no memories of this place. The next day I think uprooting her is only going to cause more stress.’
Yvette slowly scratched her head.
‘I’m inclined to think the latter. You going back to that job, working all hours isn’t going to help her in the least bit.’
‘But the upkeep on this place is massive. And money is money. We need some. More than we’ve got at least.’
‘That is true.’
‘And we don’t need all this space. You know the ridiculousness of it is when Suzy was alive, and you were living here, the place felt so busy and cramped all the time. Like I could barely find an inch to myself. Now it feels like a bloody castle, it’s so empty.’
‘I know,’ Yvette agreed. She picked up a teaspoon from her saucer and began to stir the tea. The bag had already been removed and Yvette never took sugar in any of her drinks, but she stirred away, eyes lost in the moving liquid.
‘I did have another idea,’ she said. ‘It’s not ideal, but it’s an option.’
‘I’m willing to hear anything,’ Eric said.
‘No.’ Five minutes later and Eric’s whisky tumbler now had a very large shot of whisky added to it. Yvette was still nursing her cup of tea, although her posture was far less relaxed than it had been a few moments before.
‘No way,’ he repeated. ‘Absolutely not, under no circumstances.’
‘It makes perfect sense.’
‘We’ll find another way. I’ll work part time. I’ll get a job at the Co-op.’
‘Eric listen—’
‘No. That is Suzy’s office. Suzy’s space. There is no way I am letting it out to some … some yuppie for a few bucks a week.’
‘But it’s good money. Commuters would pay a lot for a room in a place like this. And it’s not like her room is being used. It’s just there, collecting dust, hanging over this place like a shadow.’
‘No.’
‘When was the last time you went in there then? Tell me that? Even if you don’t let it out, the place needs sorting. You can’t just leave all of her things there, pretending nothing’s happened.’
‘You think that’s what I’m doing?’
‘When it comes to that room, yes. And don’t get me started on her clothes in the wardrobe. It’s not doing you any good holding onto those things.’
‘What are you suggesting, that I just throw everything away?’
‘No. Not all of it. But, Eric, you’ve got to see sense. A lodger would bring in extra money. You would be able to take your time, find a job you want to do down here, and Abi wouldn’t have to be uprooted.’
Eric shook his head. ‘What kind of person would want to lodge in a house with a nine-year-old girl living in it? I can tell you exactly what sort.’
‘Then let the room to a woman.’
‘And look like I’m running some brothel?’
‘Eric, you’re being ridiculous.’
‘My answer is no.’ Eric finished his drink and slammed the tumbler down on the table. ‘If you want to get a lodger, find your own bloody house to live in.’
He took the bottle upstairs with him and didn’t even bother with the glass. His only intention had been to get drunk enough that he didn’t have to think about things. He certainly hadn’t planned on going inside that room. But now all he could think about were Yvette’s words. How it needed cleaning, how it was a waste of space. How he was holding on and ignoring things. He pushed her words down with another gulp of whisky. It could never be a waste of space, Eric thought. It was Suzy’s space.
The door creaked open, pushing against the carpet the way it always did.
‘It’ll be fine in a couple of months,’ Suzy used to say. ‘The carpet just needs to wear down a bit.’
‘I could always trim it with scissors,’ Eric would reply.
‘You could bloody well not.’ Suzy would laugh and then she would reach up her hand and wrap it around his neck and plant a kiss on his lips. But he never let it last long enough, he realised. He should have forced her to let him stay there with her. He should have forced her to stay. Visions of his wife, head down over a laptop, or else book in hand, scribbling away, swelled in currents through his mind as he bypassed the light switch, moved across the room and switched on the table lamp. He gave his eyes a second to adjust.
Yvette was right about one thing at least. The room had been collecting dust. Six weeks since Suzy’s death and the spiders had claimed official squatter’s rights. Dense cobwebs hung from the coving and a not-insubstantial layer of dust had settled on all the books. Her laptop, closed, was dull with its dusty veneer. A crack lengthened in Eric’s heart. Suzy had always said she would write a horror novel one day; this would have been the perfect setting.
He pulled out the chair and slumped down in it. The seat was warm as if she had only just been sitting in it, and the longer he sat, the stronger the scents of lavender and pencil lead became. If he closed his eyes he could just imagine that she had popped out for an evening, perhaps gone up to London for a conference or something. No matter how tight money was, letting out this room was simply not an option, Eric told himself, and as long as he was the owner of this house it was going to stay that way. That meant there was only one other option on the cards.
Eric felt like a money grabbing whore. Like some black widow who had deliberately murdered his wife in a bid to pocket her fortune. The day suited the mood perfectly. Heavy back clouds closed in around the street as he waited for the bank to open. More than once he considered heading home and coming back down in the afternoon when the rain had eased off a little and the bank would definitely be open. But he didn’t. If he headed home, he knew there was more than a fifty-fifty chance of his cracking open a bottle of whatever he had hidden away from Yvette and not coming back out again for the rest of the day. And the fact was he needed to be there.
‘Not long now,’ he said to Lulu as she tugged on her lead. She was clearly confused by the detour to their usual routine.
Despite the conversation with Yvette, the sudden disappearance of digits in his bank account had come as an unexpected shock. To start with, there were the funeral expenses. While Eric’s father and mother – the only two funerals in which he had a personal insight to – had both prepared in advance for the impending departure, Suzy had not. No money was set aside for such an event, no insurance policy set to pay out. Now that seemed ridiculous. So many times he and Suzy had had the discussion about this exact situation, but there had always been something more important to do, another bill that took priority, a new car, a new sofa. A new holiday so that they could all unwind a little. Add that to the fact they had clearly thought themselves invincible. Not anymore though. Eric had never been more aware of his own mortality.
His mainly inebriated state in the days immediately following Suzy’s death meant that all purchases to do with the funeral had fallen on Yvette. Clearly not wanting to scrimp on her daughter, and despite having no funds of her own, she went all out. Eric hadn’t asked for an exact figure, but he had noticed the increasing dent whenever he went to the cashpoint to withdraw more for his next drinking binge.
Then there were the house renovations. While their new bathroom suite was advertised at a reasonable two and half grand, Eric had learnt that that – fairly reasonable – figure had been entirely absent of everything other than the toilet, taps, and bath itself. It didn’t include delivery or labour let alone the tiles, specific non-slip, high durability flooring, and major re-plumbing work that took over the entirety of their first floor. Thus, over the last few months his savings had taken a battering and with no job to replenish them, he had to make the decision to transfer all of Suzy’s money to his account.
His nerves bubbled away as Eric took yet another glance at his phone. He was holding a briefcase. Brown leather, with a smell and patina indicative of a far wealthier time in his life. It had been an anniversary gift from Suzy although he couldn’t for the life of him remember what year it had been for. Five years perhaps? Was that leather? Maybe it was ten. In the end, he decided it didn’t matter and gave up thinking about it.
There was a time when holding a briefcase had felt like the most natural thing in the world to Eric; possibly even more natural than holding Abi’s hand. But that was the old Eric. Now holding a briefcase felt awkward and clumsy, like he was wearing a costume he no longer fit into. After placing it down on the ground and stepping a little further under the eaves, he went back to staring at his watch, wishing that there was some way to swallow back the sea of trepidation that was currently swelling around his insides.
It wasn’t like he was doing anything wrong, he told himself for the umpteenth time that morning. Suzy’s will had specifically said everything would be left to him. And even if it hadn’t, legally he was entitled to it. But that was semantics. He wasn’t actually meant to spend Suzy’s money. The plan was that he would put it away somewhere safe until such time that Abi needed it. University fees, a deposit for her first house, that was where Suzy’s money was meant to go. All Suzy’s years of toil and endless royalties had been intended for that. Now they were needed just to keep the lights on.
Just one more thing for Eric to feel shit about, Suzy was even providing for them from beyond the grave. He would have laughed had it not been so utterly heart-breaking.
At three minutes to nine, a rotund gentleman with equally round glasses and a small metal name tag bearing the name Dennis Hopkins appeared at the door.
‘Rather keen today, sir?’ he said, turning the lock and pulling the door inwards to let Eric in. ‘Some exciting cheques to pay in?’
‘I need to see to my dead wife’s account,’ Eric responded.
The man’s cheeks coloured to a perfect cherry red.
‘Oh, I am sorry. Mr Sibley, isn’t it?’
‘It is.’
‘Christian Eaves said you might be coming by.’ There was a short pause, during which Eric tried to look as impassive as possible. Of course the lawyer had mentioned to the bank manager that Eric would be coming. He had probably done it over a plate of hash browns and black pudding at The Shed; after all, this was Burlam. Everyone knew everything.
‘If you’d just like to come this way,’ Hopkins said, leading Eric to one of the small partitioned offices at the back of the building. ‘We’ll get all this sorted for you. Have you got all her account numbers?’
Eric sat down and opened the small briefcase before pulling out a small bundle.
‘This is everything I could find,’ he said. ‘All the other accounts are joint.’
‘Not a problem, I can change those over to you too. Assuming you’ve got all the legal documents?’
Eric nodded and pulled out another plastic envelope filled with papers. He wasn’t even sure what they said, only that Eaves had insisted he sign the bottom several times before he told Eric he would need to take them to the bank.
After ten minutes of tutting and tapping, Hopkins looked from his screen to Eric. ‘I’ll just get these things printed off for you to sign,’ he said, then disappeared only to appear less than a minute later with a ballpoint pen and a stack of papers.
‘Just at the bottom of this one.’ Hopkins pointed to a line below an awful lot of small print. He whipped out the sheet before the ink had even dried. ‘And if you can initial this one.’ He pointed to another line. ‘This one needs your initials and a signature. And if you could date this one. That one needs your name printed in capitals.’
It felt like an eternity of signing. No one ever told you that, Eric thought as he signed away. You expect it to feel like the world has ended when your spouse dies. You expect the loneliness and the hollowness and the endless supply of mediocre casseroles that people insist on bringing around at whatever time of day they feel appropriate. You expect the mass of flowers. None of that had come as a surprise. But the signing, that was a surprise. And endless.
‘Great.’ Hopkins stood up from his desk. ‘Well that’s it. We’re all done here. The old accounts have all been shut down and everything has been transferred to a brand-new savings account in your name.’
‘Thank you,’ Eric said.
‘It may take a couple days before you can set up internet banking and see the numbers for yourself, but if it’s not all sorted by the end of the week, come in and we’ll have a look at it.’
Eric’s stomach squirmed. He really didn’t want to say what he was going to say next. Not in the slightest. What he desperately wanted was to find some way out of it, some way to thank the bank manager, turn around, and deal with the whole financial mess in the privacy of his own home. But he knew he didn’t have a choice.
His tongue felt like it had swollen to double its size as he attempted to get out the words.
‘Would it be … could I, I mean is it possible—’
‘Yes?’ Hopkins’ eyes were magnified in his round glasses as they peered at Eric expectantly.
Eric swallowed and tried again.
‘Would it be possible to see the statements now?’ he asked. ‘I mean, I know you said I’ll get the details through this week, it’s just so I have a bit of an idea how much there is. I don’t mean to seem crass, it’s just, you know, with the funeral expenses and the house—’
‘No need to explain.’ Hopkins waved Eric’s bumbling to a close. ‘No need to explain. Of course, of course. Hold on one second, and I’ll get those printouts for you now.’
Hopkins returned with a small stack of paper. Eric stared at the numbers on the bottom, his mouth growing drier by the second.
‘Are you sure this is correct?’ he asked. ‘This doesn’t make sense.’
Yvette had purchased some dandelion and burdock drink at the local farmer’s market. It was a disgusting beverage, sickly sweet and medicinal yet at the same time savoury and cloying. Her hope had undoubtedly been to alleviate some of Eric’s desire for alcohol, although the only similarity it had with a decent Scotch whisky was the way it was most certainly destroying brain cells. Nonetheless, Eric took another sip. The vileness of the taste at least distracted from the spinning currently going on in his head.
‘Well surely there’s some mistake?’ Yvette said, the reams of paper spread out across the dining room table in front of them all. If anyone had walked in, they would have been forgiven for thinking Suzy was on one of her editing sprees. That was unless they looked too closely and saw that the red ink had been used to highlight numbers and not words.
‘It’s not a mistake.’ Eric assured her, hands around the burdock bottle. ‘I asked for the statements too, every one for the last two years. They’re over there.’
Yvette gave the pile a quick skim.
‘What about other accounts? Did you ask about other accounts?’
‘No other accounts,’ Eric said. ‘I got him to double check.’
‘What about other banks then? She might have used another bank.’
Eric shook his head, momentarily forgetting what he was holding before taking a sip and being forced to fight down a gag.
‘You know Suzy, she liked things simple. Ordered. One bank, that was it. No heading round town to every street corner or having to remember twenty different pin numbers just so you could check which account to pay for the shopping from.’
‘Then what does this mean?’ Yvette asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Eric admitted. ‘But there were credit cards too. Mostly paid off, but still a bit on them.’
The fact the numbers on Suzy’s bank statements were barely any healthier than his own was only half the shock. More concerning was the lack of money going in.
‘I’ve been through it all, and from what I can tell, the last time she had any sort of payment from the publishing house was nearly six months ago,’ Eric said. ‘Surely that can’t be right, can it? I know they work on funny times in the book world, but six months? They can’t expect a person to go that long before being paid, surely? How do they expect them to survive?’
Yvette shrugged. ‘Maybe they froze her earnings when the accident happened?’ she suggested. ‘Could they have done that?’
Eric scratched his head. ‘But that was nearly two months ago? And surely someone would have said something to me first?’ He picked up one paper and then the next, hoping that the reasoning behind Suzy’s distinct lack of funds would become obvious on the twentieth reading.
‘So, what are you going to do?’ Yvette said, coming to stand beside him and placing a hand on his shoulder.
Eric sighed, puffing his cheeks out as he blew.
