Читать книгу In a Cottage In a Wood - Cass Green - Страница 15

‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,’ says Neve five minutes later. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to swear. Sorry.’

She picks up the glass of water she was offered on arrival into the office and puts it down again, sloshing a little onto her trousers as she does so.

Laura Meade regards her with an expression she can’t quite read.

‘I assure you, I’m not,’ she says. ‘Look, I appreciate this is a shock. It is why I wanted you to be here in person. I thought this had to be a face-to-face conversation, rather than being discussed by letter or over the phone.’

‘But how?’ Neve blurts out, her voice too loud. ‘I mean, how can she have given me a fucking cottage? Sorry. But how? She didn’t even know me.’

Laura nods patiently.

‘It’s a special type of bequest,’ she says, ‘that can be made separately from a will. It applies when someone dies intestate, like Isabelle did, and is known as donatio mortis causa.’ She pauses. ‘Basically, it’s a deathbed gift.’

Their eyes meet and both look away at this uncomfortable term then Laura continues crisply. ‘There are a few basic requirements for this to be legally binding,’ she says, ‘and they have all been met, however unusual the circumstances may be.’

‘But why me?’ says Neve after a moment.

Laura sighs. ‘We can only guess that she wanted to make this bequest to the last person she saw before she took her life.’

Neve thought of the envelope, clutched in Isabelle’s thin, white hand.

She never even saw it fall to the ground when she’d dropped it a couple of minutes later. The shock of the other woman climbing up and throwing herself into the cold, dark water had thrown it violently from her mind. ‘What exactly was in the envelope?’ she says.

Laura lifts a coffee cup to her lips and takes a sip before placing it carefully back on its coaster.

‘It contained the deeds to the cottage, plus a written note. You may remember she also recorded a message into her phone, confirming your name, just before …’ she clears her throat ‘… just before she did it.’

‘God,’ says Neve quietly. ‘I don’t know what to say.’ After a moment, she adds, ‘Did you know her?’

Laura seems to lose her professional veneer for a moment and makes an anguished face.

‘We were at school together, years ago, but we weren’t really good friends. She was …’ she pauses. ‘She ran with a bit of a different crowd. I hadn’t heard from her in years. Then … well, then we received this.’

Neve chews her lip.

‘I can’t take it, anyway,’ she says.

‘Why not?’ Laura slightly tips her head to the side.

‘Because!’ Neve lets out a humourless, stressed laugh. ‘Because it’s not right. And what do her family say? Don’t they mind?’

Laura looks down at her skirt and brushes something off before looking up at Neve again. The shutters are back down now.

‘She only has a brother,’ she says. ‘And …’ she pauses. ‘I have no idea whether he wanted it or not.’

Neve shakes her head in wonder.

‘I just can’t understand why someone would do this though, with a complete stranger. I mean, why not leave it to, I don’t know, Barnardo’s, or Battersea Dogs Home or something? Why a random person on a bridge?’

Laura sits back in her seat with a sigh.

‘We can’t possibly know what was going through her head now,’ she says, wearily. ‘But she clearly had a desire not to be alone when she killed herself. Maybe she just wanted to say thank you, retrospectively.’

‘Well, it’s the saddest bloody thing I’ve ever heard.’ Neve’s eyes fill with hot tears and she swipes them away, furiously. ‘I wasn’t even that nice to her,’ she says. ‘I was impatient to get home. All I did was say I’d stand her a night bus and ask where her coat was.’

‘Well,’ says Laura, her gaze fixed on Neve’s face. ‘All we can assume is that this is more kindness than she would have had otherwise. Maybe it was enough.’

There’s a pause. Neve swallows and finds a tissue in her handbag, which she uses to blow her nose, more loudly than she intended.

Laura pushes an A4 padded envelope across the table towards her.

‘This really is happening quite legally, Neve,’ she says in a gentle voice. ‘You own Petty Whin Cottage and everything in it. It’s all yours now.’