Chapter 6
‘What a gorgeous cottage. I can see why you loved coming here.’
Abigail shot her a look as they were getting out of the car.
Lili apologised. ‘Sorry, but it is a nice place.’
Abigail sighed. She knew her friend only had her best interests at heart. ‘Don’t keep apologising, Lili. I appreciate you helping me out by bringing me here.’
‘You do? I thought you didn’t want to come. I kind of feel I twisted your arm.’
‘You did, but now I’m here …’ Abigail stood by the van in the driveway, staring at the cottage with its whitewashed walls, pretty wood-framed windows under a slate roof, and ivy creeping up around the little storm porch with its apex roof. The detached cottage sat at the end of a single-track road, although it was only a fifteen-minute walk back along the clifftop that led down to the beach huts and the start of the promenade walk into the Suffolk Coastal town ofSouthwold.
‘I like it,’ commented Lili.
Abigail stole a glance at her friend. She had it on the tip of her tongue to say,well, if you like the place so much, why don’t you buy it?She knew Lili could afford it now. Abigail wasn’t the only one who’d come into a surprise inheritance – except that Lili’s surprise had been more than her inheritance. It had been the family she’d never known she had.
Abigail pursed her lips, thinking of her husband’s unexpected legacy and the two trustees who must know the reason it was given to him. Was Lili right: had Toby had a connection with Somerville Hall? Had he been Lord Somerville’s love child? Although Abigail didn’t know the Somervilles personally, she had grown up in a little village near Southwold, and everyone there had heard of the Somervilles and Somerville Hall. As wealthy landowners whose fortune had been passed down the generations, they employed people from the local community – cleaners, housekeepers, cooks and gardeners – in the Hall and large estate. It reminded Abigail of the sort of National Trust properties she always enjoyed visiting.
Thinking of employees, Abigail asked Lili, ‘What’s Lord Somerville like?’
Lili shrugged. ‘I don’t have a clue. I’ve never met him. I think I might have seen him once, from a distance, while he was walking in the grounds, but that was it.’ Before Abigail asked, she added, ‘It was the head gardener who employed me on the family’s behalf to landscape the gardens. Why do you ask?’ Lili answered her own question. ‘You’re thinking of what we talked about in the car, on the way here, about who Toby’s father might be.’
‘Yeah – I guess.’ Abigail changed the subject. ‘So, you like the place?’
Lili looked about her. ‘What’s not to like?’
Abigail smiled to herself, thinking that perhaps she wouldn’t even have to put the place on the open market and go through all that. Although she was intent on remaining emotionally detached from the cottage, it crossed her mind that this place had a special place in her husband’s heart, so it would be nice if it went to someone they both knew, like Lili. She stood there staring at the whitewashed cottage, recalling what Toby had once said. He’d spent the happiest time of his childhood in the cottage by the sea, before everything changed and he had a new stepdad, and they moved away to London to start a new life. Although Toby’s stepdad was a gentle man who had loved his stepson to bits, Abigail knew that her husband had always held some resentment towards him for taking him away from this idyll; from it being just him and his mother living in their little cottage by the sea.
Abigail knew all about resentment. She’d grown up resenting her stepfather for being there instead of her father, and resenting her little half-sister, Emily, because she had to watch her grow up with her own father present. Abigail recalled the close relationship Toby had with his half-sister; he didn’t resent her one bit. Abigail looked back on her teenage years, when she’d been mean to her little sister and her stepdad, and realised he’d doted on her as much as he had Emily. She felt terrible for the way she’d treated them – and all because she’d been jealous of something she couldn’t change. Her older brother, by contrast, had no resentments whatsoever.
Abigail didn’t want to think about that. She turned to Lili, who had opened the van door and had started unloading Abigail’s luggage. She handed the rucksack to Abigail and picked up the suitcase. Perhaps Liliwouldbuy the cottage. All she had to do was ask, but she knew what Lili would say:give it time. You might want to stay. Abigail knew how much her friend loved it here, but she had no intention of returning permanently. She’d decided she was here to sort out the cottage, see what needed to be done – perhaps a spring clean, some new furnishings – in order to put it on the market.
Lili was already making her way along the paved path, which had a lawn and flower borders on either side. There was an apple tree in the front garden on the right. She’d almost reached the front door when she noticed that Abigail wasn’t following. She turned around. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I’ve just had a thought. I don’t know if the place is still furnished. What if they have emptied her stuff out?’
Lili shrugged and stepped onto the porch. ‘There’s only one way to find out.’
Abigail nodded. She reached inside the car and picked up a bag of groceries they had stopped to buy in the local supermarket on the way through Southwold. She slammed the car door shut with her foot and walked down the path, the bag in her arms, trying not to think about the last time she’d been there. She’d had no idea that her next trip would be on her own – how could she have done? Abigail would never have imagined she’d become a widow at her age. Unlike Toby, Abigail always erred on the side of pessimism, but this …perhaps it was just as well we couldn’t see into the future.
As Abigail approached the cottage with the door key, she was having second thoughts about looking into Toby’s past. The pessimist in her felt it might not lead to good places. She thought about taking the solicitor’s advice about just enjoying the cottage for a time.
Abigail put the bag of shopping down in the porch, and with a shaky hand, she put the key in the lock. She wished she wasn’t thinking about what it would have been like, the two of them coming to see the cottage together. For a moment, Abigail thought,I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be here.
She felt a gentle hand on her shoulder. ‘I want to say it’s going to be all right, Abigail, but I can’t,’ Lili said. ‘But in time …’ she trailed off.
‘It’s okay.’ Abigail noticed she seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time when she was around other people who knew her trying to make them feel better. She knew it was quite ironic. That was the reason she’d been avoiding people since the funeral. It was quite exhausting putting on a brave face just to make them feel better. She knew why she did it; so she didn’t add to their grief.
Her thoughts turned to Sidney. She didn’t want to think about that bridge and the circumstances of how they met, but it had proved a refreshing change to meet someone who had no clue who she was or what she’d been through. Abigail thought she must phone him or at least text to see how he was. And how his sweet dog, Ulysses, was.
‘Abigail?’
‘Oh, sorry.’ She realised she’d been standing there staring at the door, lost in thought.
‘Do you want me to open the door?’
‘No, I can do it. It’s a bit quirky. You have to wiggle the key a bit.’ Abigail opened the heavy wooden front door, which had a little opaque rectangular glass window inset about eye height. She couldn’t see properly through the glass window, but she could make out shapes in the cottage, suggesting it wasn’t empty.