indoors, coffee made, Carla sat at the kitchen table and started to make a list of the things that she needed to organise. Emptying the house and getting it ready for sale would be her first priority. Clothes and books – charity shop; furniture eBay or local second-hand shop? Perhaps joining a local Facebook Buy and Sell group would be the easiest option. No, getting a house clearance firm to come and take the lot would be better.
She’d need to check with Maddy about the white goods – she might like the fridge for her new flat. Once the house was empty and clean, she’d contact some estate agents and get it on the market. The three or four boxes of papers and photos she knew were in a cupboard upstairs she’d put in the car and take home with her. Go through them, deciding what needed to be kept and what could be thrown away, in the comfort of her own home. Then there was the question of where to scatter Amelia’s ashes.
Carla stopped and glanced through the door at the urn on the mantelpiece – looking for all the world as though it had been there forever but where it obviously couldn’t stay. Another memory flashed into her mind. When her dad had died, Carla had asked Amelia if she could be with her when she scattered his ashes, to say a final goodbye.
Amelia had shrugged. ‘Too late. Done the day I got them. I threw them in the river.’
Carla had never hated her mother so much as she did then. Not because of scattering her dad’s remains in the river (the frustrated sailor in him had always loved being down by the river) but because she’d kept silent about what she was doing and denied Carla the chance of a last goodbye. Hadn’t deemed it important enough to ask her to go with her.
But where to scatter Amelia? She wouldn’t appreciate the river. Maybe Maddy would have an idea. There was no rush. It would be sometime yet before everything was finalised.
Her mobile rang. Mavis. The manager of the charity shop where Carla volunteered three mornings a week.
‘Hi, everything all right?’
‘Carla, I’m so sorry to have to ask, and I’ll understand if you can’t help, but I don’t suppose there’s a chance of you being available this afternoon?’ Mavis asked. ‘I’m one short and there’s piles of stuff to sort through out the back of the shop.’
‘Two o’clock okay? I need to talk to you about some of Mum’s stuff too,’ Carla said.
‘Great. See you then. Thanks, lovely,’ Mavis said.
Carla put the phone back in her bag. Looking out of the kitchen window at the grey day, she had a sudden longing to be somewhere else. Living a different life to the one she got up every day to exist through. David had never wanted her to work, insisting her job was the family, which when the twins, Ed and Maddy had been young was true. Her life had revolved around their needs, her social life around fundraisers for the PTA, brownies, scouts, ballet, football. You name the club, she had probably baked cakes for it. But these days that was all gone. With the twins away and David busier and busier with the business, she was spending a lot of time alone.
As she put her bag over her shoulder and picked up her keys ready to leave, Carla came to a decision. Once her mum’s affairs were all settled she was going to change her life and start enjoying it again. Just how she would accomplish that she had yet to decide, but one thing was certain, she would insist she and David spent more time together.
*
The days were lengthening and the spring bulbs in the front garden were beginning to flower before No. 29 was finally clean and empty. Carla instructed the local estate agents who arrived to measure up and take photographs, ready for the house to go on the market once probate was finalised.
One evening in early March, Carla sat at her own kitchen table with the last box of her mother’s papers and photos to sort. The previous five boxes had been uninspiring, but this one contained more photographs than paperwork and Carla had saved it for last deliberately. Secretly, she was hoping the photographs would give her a silent insight into the largely unknown history of her maternal French family.
Faded black and white photos of mysterious foreign relatives standing staunchly arm