so maybe I had imagined it? Perhaps there had been less in there when I’d seen it, or I was getting confused with another day? Or maybe she’d had the window cleaner round, or put some money in a charity envelope?
Fifty pounds, though?
I looked around the rest of the house, not really sure what I was looking for. Her bedroom had that quiet silence about it that suggested nobody had been in here in some time. The clothes that hung in the wardrobe were old, no longer in regular use: a sparkly cocktail top, heavy with silver beading. A long black skirt. She’d worn this outfit to my twenty-first birthday meal. Why had she even kept it? There was no way she would have worn this again. And other clothes that I remembered her wearing – a blazer that she used to wear to work sometimes, before she retired. Shoes in the bottom of the wardrobe for the woman who never went out of her front door.
The spare room was full of boxes that she’d never bothered to unpack when she moved here all those years ago. ‘One day,’ she’d say, as though she was waiting for all the social engagements and frivolities to die down before she could properly settle in. It all looked undisturbed.
Well. There was no delaying it – as much as I hated confrontations of any sort, this was one I could not put off any longer.
He looked surprised to see me when he opened the door. ‘Everything alright?’ He was chewing on something, and I wondered if it was a sandwich made with Mum’s bread.
‘Hello again. I just remembered, I need to get the key back from you. After all, there’s no need for you to trouble with the house now Mum’s gone, is there?’
‘D’you not want me to check the post? Save you coming up here all the time?’
‘It’s fine, really. I’m not that far away.’
‘What if there’s an emergency?’
‘If there’s an emergency,’ I said, firmly, wondering what on earth such an emergency could be now that Mum was dead, ‘you can ring me, can’t you?’
He looked suddenly crestfallen. ‘Oh. I see. Righto, then. Hold on.’
He left the door ajar and went back into the hallway, leaving me on the step. A cooking smell, not a pleasant one, came through to me on a gust of warm air. The hallway was newly decorated, the wallpaper of that curious furry embossed type – what was it called? A weird name. Ana-something…
‘Here you go, then,’ he said, coming back up the hallway. He was unthreading a Yale door key from a key ring containing several others. I wondered if it was his normal key ring, or whether he just collected the keys to other people’s houses.
I held out my hand and he pressed the key into the palm, hard enough for it to hurt.
‘There’s one other thing, Len,’ I said, dreading this bit but knowing I had to ask. ‘Do you know if the window cleaner came round this week? Or anyone else Mum might have given money to?’
‘No, Ted comes round first week of the month usually. Why?’
Well, he did ask, I thought. ‘Mum had some money in a tin, and most of it’s gone. It was there when I visited her last. Any ideas?’
I said it casually and, as much as he was trying to pull off the ‘kindly old gent next door’ thing, he was eyeing me with bright, suspicious eyes.
‘We did some shopping for her Monday,’ he said. ‘We told her we were going into town and she said she wanted some bits and pieces. She gave me cash and I gave her the receipt. Did you not find it?’
‘What things?’
‘Hmm. Well, let me think. She wanted a steak from the butcher. And batteries for the wireless… oh, and three books of first class stamps. There was some other stuff… I can’t remember it all.’
I looked at the key in my hand and wondered if this was an argument I really needed to be having. It was only fifty quid, after all. ‘Thanks, Len,’ I said. ‘I know she really appreciated everything you did for her.’
‘S’alright,’ he said. ‘You know we were always happy to help. Any time, love. You sure you don’t want us to keep an eye on things next door?’
‘No, thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m going to get the post redirected anyway.’ I wasn’t sure if such a thing was possible when a person was deceased, but I didn’t want