Unforgettable (Gloria Cook) - By Gloria Cook Page 0,4

Stale smells permeated everything like a desolate living force despite Finn keeping as many windows as possible open. Some windows, upstairs and downstairs, were boarded up, smashed at some point during the property’s long years of abandonment. The straggling cottage was as dark as winter, made worse by the wooded ground that surrounded it. Finn leaned against the cold, flaking whitewashed wall and threw his dark head back in despair. In a few short weeks he had lost everything, even the second half of his surname, dropped in the hope that his father’s disgrace would not become known in this backwater location. He loathed this place but it had been this or nothing and he was thankful it had been offered rent-free to Fiona by one of her old friends.

It was only when the bailiffs had turned up that Fiona had made the frantic telephone call for help to Guy Carthewy. Aidan Templeton-Barr’s enormous debts had been a terrible shock to Finn but not to Fiona. Her disbelieving state over her husband’s conviction had led her to ignoring the warning letters from the courts for repossession of their home and belongings. Finn was furious that Aidan had left them in such dire circumstances. The bailiffs had claimed the two cars, the valuables, the paintings and porcelain, Fiona’s jewellery and furs, even Finn’s bicycle, which would be handy now for speeding along the lanes to the village shops and to get quickly to and from a job – if or when he got one. It was a worry to be away from his mother for long; he was afraid that in her despair she would hurt herself. But he had to bring some money in soon or they would starve. He had been left a small legacy by his grandparents but was unable to access it until he was twenty-one, five long years away. He and Fiona had been allowed to keep some of their clothes and a few personal possessions. How the hell was he supposed to cope with all this? Living in a dump with barely a decent stick of furniture and a few basic things found lying about in it. Guy Carthewy had apparently inherited Merrivale years ago from some eccentric old relative but had yet to decide what he would do with the property. He had supplied his own spare bed linen and curtains but those, like everything else here in the dank joyless cottage, had taken on the pervading mouldy smells. Guy Carthewy had promised to see about making improvements but after he had dropped them off here he had been called away on some serious family matter. Finn had been denied his studies and his dream of becoming a graphic artist; he was shunned by relatives for his mother’s devotion to her misdemeanant husband, dropped by so-called friends, and was crushed to be brought down from his comfortable, privileged, upper-middle-class lifestyle. Resentment bubbled up in him that there would soon be a bawling baby stealing the last of his mother’s failing energy.

Earlier this morning, while fetching Fiona’s uneaten breakfast of porridge (all they could afford now), he had sighed impatiently at her curled-up lethargic form in the lumpy bed. ‘Mum, have I got a clean shirt somewhere?’

When in this room Finn’s head felt heavy and his nose blocked up. Fiona insisted on keeping the curtains shut and the electric light overhead gave off a murky orangey glow. Discarded clothes lay heaped on the floor. Dust fuzzed the dressing table and the neglected make-up, brush and comb. The door of the built-in wardrobe, next to the boarded-up fireplace, had burst open, spilling out his mother’s few tossed-in clothes and shoes like flotsam on a seashore. Fiona had refused to sweep the scuffed floorboards or to allow Finn to do it and they were so strewn with fluff and grit he might actually be standing on a shingle beach.

Another blow was his mother’s loss of interest in bathing. ‘Mum, will you listen to me for once!’

‘Don’t raise your voice at me, Finn,’ Fiona had muttered vaguely, hardly stirring in the sagging Victorian brass double bed.

‘I have to raise my voice at you,’ he’d cried, tugging hopelessly at his thick dark brown hair. ‘You’ve practically stayed hunched up in this bed the entire two weeks we’ve been here. The only time you made an effort was when you arranged for the midwife to call. It’s the only sensible thing you’ve done since we arrived here. Mum, you’ve got