Читать книгу Jenny Valentine - 4 Book Award-winning Collection - Jenny Valentine - Страница 35

Bob said something to me the other day.

He said that if Dad did it for the money, I could take comfort in the fact that she didn’t leave him everything after all.

I said, “What do you mean?” or “How do you know?” or something, and I was thinking about the portrait she left the dentist, because that was in her will.

And Bob said that he read an obituary about a month after she died, a long and fawning one written by a music librarian at York University. The obituary said that Violet was survived by her only son who inherited her entire estate, including houses in Australia, New Zealand, London and the US.

“She didn’t have a son,” I said.

“Yes she did,” Bob said. “And I remember his name because it was unusual. It was Orlando.”

I felt sick with rage and excitement, because Violet invented Orlando Park. I knew that from the tape, and so did my dad.

Suddenly, after loving him and looking after the hole he’d left and trying to grow up without him, I knew where Dad was.

And I knew he wasn’t dead, the bastard.

He was rich as sin, however rich that is, living off Violet’s money in the sun.

I went to my room and I punched a hole in the wall, but I didn’t cry.

I felt weirdly happy. Angry happy.

And I did something that I didn’t tell anyone about; not Bob, not Martha, definitely not my mum. I can’t work out if it’s the start of something or the end of it and I’m trying to stop my brain from going there. I did it and I’ll wait and see what happens before I tell anybody.

I sent a parcel to Orlando Park at Violet Farm, Turungakuma, South Island, New Zealand. I found him on the Internet. He’d been there the first time, the time I’d checked for Violet. I’d looked straight through him.

I sent him Violet’s empty urn, the one he’d collected from the crematorium and left in the back of a cab.

And I stuck a little note on it, round the other side from Violet’s name.

It said

PETE SWAIN1958-2002RIP

Who knows if I’ll hear anything back? It seems unlikely.

Thanks to Violet, that matters a hell of a lot less than it used to.