Читать книгу The Secret Wife: A captivating story of romance, passion and mystery - Gill Paul, Gill Paul - Страница 13

At first Kitty thought the letter was junk mail and was about to toss it in the bin. It was written on expensive-looking watermarked paper from a company called Inheritance Trackers Inc., and as she skimmed the first paragraph her eye was caught by the name Yakovlevich. She was pretty sure that had been her Grandma Marta’s maiden name, so she went back to read it properly. It said that she was the great-granddaughter and only living descendant of Dmitri Yakovlevich, who had died in America in 1986, and that his estate had not been claimed. Should she wish Inheritance Trackers to reunite her with this fortune, they would handle all the legal work and would take a fee of only fifteen per cent. There was a thirty-year deadline for claiming lost estates and if she did not act soon, the property would be forfeited to the government.

Kitty was instantly suspicious: this was an era of scams, when you were offered millions of pounds if you would only advance a couple of thousand to help get someone through customs in an African country; when boiler rooms located in the Bahamas claimed they could quadruple any investment within a year. Besides, Grandma Marta had been alive in 1986, so why had she not inherited Dmitri Yakovlevich’s money? Why had Kitty never even heard of him?

Marta had been a fun grandmother, who kept delicious sweets in her pottery rabbit candy jar, and was always happy to get down on the floor and play Hungry Hippos or Mouse Trap. Kitty couldn’t recall her mentioning her father, but then Marta had died when Kitty was eight. She would probably find pictures of him in the old suitcase of family photos she had stowed in the bedroom closet after her parents passed away. She must take a look some time.

She rang the number on the company’s letterhead and was put through to someone called Mark, who told her that the inheritance concerned was worth over fifty thousand dollars in cash. There was also a cabin on Lake Akanabee in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York state, which had been uninhabited since her great-grandfather’s death, and royalties for some books he had written. He was an author! How intriguing.

‘So what do I have to do to claim it?’ she asked carefully, picking up a pen.

‘We’ll send you some forms to fill out,’ explained Mark, ‘and you return them to us, along with a copy of your birth certificate – and a marriage certificate if you’re married – and we’ll do the rest.’

‘Do I have to pay anything upfront?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘Legal fees or anything?’

‘No, we take our cut when the money and the ownership papers for the cabin come through,’ Mark told her. ‘Do you want me to send you the information?’

‘Why not?’ she agreed.

She forgot to tell Tom that evening, but when the paperwork arrived confirming the totals, she showed it to him. He didn’t seem particularly impressed.

‘Fifty K minus fifteen per cent is forty-two and a half thousand dollars and at today’s exchange rate that’s about twenty-seven thousand quid. Better than a poke in the eye. Do you want me to give you the number of a financial advisor who can give you some ideas on investing it?’

She looked at him across the table and wondered about this stranger she had married. The Tom she had known back in college would have suggested blowing the windfall on a round-the-world trip for two, or perhaps buying a yacht and learning to sail. They were only in their mid-thirties, they had paid off the mortgage thanks to the inheritance when her parents died, neither of them wanted to have children, and now all Tom could think of was saving for the future? She felt she was seeing him through different eyes than she had a decade ago; or maybe she was the same person and he was the one who had changed. It was hard to tell.

Back then he’d wanted to be a composer and had spent most days writing songs on his keyboard and sending demos to record companies. After they failed to leap at the chance of buying his creations, he chucked it all in, took an accountancy course and was now working as an auditor for the City Council. He had become serious and precise, leaving home at the same time every morning in a neat predictable suit, the kind of outfit no one would ever notice. If he committed a crime and witnesses were asked to describe him they’d struggle to come up with anything because he was so nondescript: short brown hair, hazel eyes, medium height, grey-blue suit, no unusual features.

Kitty made fun of him for his plain ties that were always in the same shade as his plain socks, for his trousers that were hung in a trouser press overnight so the crease fell in exactly the right place. It made her want to raid his drawer and leave only mismatching socks; or to get him drunk and drag him to a tattoo parlour to have a gothic emblem etched on his forearm. She found it irritating that he drank sensible decaf coffee and brushed his teeth for exactly two minutes; she was bored with the weekend sex routine of an orgasm for her, one for him, invariably achieved the same way.

He was a good provider – they were lucky not to have money worries – but at some point they had stopped having fun and she couldn’t think when that had happened. The holiday in Costa Rica the previous autumn had been glorious; Christmas with his extended family had been nice. But since then life had felt monotonous, with nothing interesting on the horizon.

It didn’t help that her own career had stalled. She’d studied journalism at college and always imagined herself flying first-class to LA to interview celebrities for Vanity Fair, or breaking the story that David Cameron had a secret lover in a Guardian exclusive, but instead she reviewed theatre for the local paper in their part of north London. She earned a pittance and had to sit through dire shows at least three evenings a week then churn out five hundred words of lively copy that didn’t betray how deeply disenchanted she was with theatre as an art form.

Her mother’s oft-repeated view that writing was a hobby, not a reliable way to earn a living, kept echoing in her head. She’d wanted Kitty to study law, but memorising all those endless judgements sounded unbearably tedious. Should she have listened? Or should she push herself harder to succeed as a writer? There seemed no urgency when Tom earned enough for them both. She kept planning to write a book but changed her mind about the subject before managing more than a few thousand words. If she couldn’t maintain an interest, how could she expect to hold her readers’ attention?

‘You’ve always had a lazy streak,’ her mum used to say. ‘You get it from your dad’s side.’ Perhaps it was true.

She wondered what kind of books Dmitri Yakovlevich had written. She vaguely remembered that Grandma Marta had Russian roots; the surname certainly sounded Russian: perhaps his work was all in his native language. She’d find out when the royalty statements came through.

There was nothing that seemed suspicious in the Inheritance Tracker forms so she signed on the dotted line and sent them back with the required certificates. She and Tom vaguely discussed what to do with the cabin in upstate New York, and he was in favour of selling it.

‘After it’s lain empty for thirty-odd years, the level of repairs needed to make it habitable would cost more than the thing is worth,’ he said with his business head.

‘It might be a good investment,’ Kitty maintained. ‘We could renovate then rent it out through a local agency.’ She had a flair for DIY. Her father had taught her carpentry skills and she had already done up three properties in London: two she sold on at a profit and one in which they still lived.

‘We’d only be able to rent it three months of the year,’ Tom said. ‘No one wants to holiday in the Adirondacks in winter, and it wouldn’t cover its annual costs on the summer rental alone.’

Kitty yawned. He didn’t seem to see the romance of owning a cabin in the American wilderness. Why had Dmitri bought it? She imagined it must be very beautiful. And then it slipped to the back of her mind over the next few weeks as she wrote her theatre reviews, had lunch or an early-evening drink with friends, took her yoga classes and ran the household she shared with her sensible, risk-averse husband.