Cambridge Blue - Alison Bruce [66]
Goodhew refused to take at it. ‘No,’ he said, then realized how sharp his voice had sounded. ‘No, thank you,’ he said more softly.
‘One of your properties is the house in Park Terrace.’
‘I own my flat?’
‘Yes, and the rest of the building beneath it.’
‘This is ridiculous.’
She selected a different sheet and tried to pass it to him. ‘This is the current valuation.’ She waved the paper. ‘I know you’re phobic about money, but just read it. Please.’
‘I’m not phobic, I just don’t want it,’ he said quietly.
‘It’s already yours. And it’s part of your grandfather’s legacy. Not taking it would be letting him down.’
‘What about Debbie?’
‘That’s your half only. She’ll receive a similar settlement when I think she can deal with it.’
‘I don’t understand. I thought everything was left to Mum and Dad.’
‘No, only some of it, otherwise we couldn’t be sure that any of it would ever reach you and your sister.’
‘Because of my mother?’
‘It doesn’t matter why.’
Goodhew collected the dice and returned them to the backgammon box. It was obvious that they would not now be completing the game. He fought to overcome the lump in his throat and waited until it felt safe for him to try to speak. ‘I interviewed a witness yesterday, his name’s Bryn O’Brien and we were at primary school together. As we were talking, I suddenly had this huge flashback. I was in maths class. I loved maths normally, but I couldn’t concentrate and I knocked my pen on to the floor. I watched it bounce then roll under the next desk. I went to get it, then looked up and the headmistress was at the classroom door. I knew at once something terrible had happened, and I was sent home because Granddad was ill.’
His grandmother nodded, as if she remembered too. ‘And you never went back.’
‘Then you went away.’
‘It was the best way for me to deal with his death.’
‘We understood that. Yesterday reminded me of how much damage that money caused. Once Mum started spending, she stuck us in that school. Debbie and I barely saw each other, and when I did manage to speak to her, she just cried all the time. We were homesick and didn’t fit in with the other kids.’
‘But that’s just it, Gary. It was your mum in combination with the money that caused the problem.’
‘We lost touch with all our old friends, then at the end of term we came home to find Dad on the edge of a breakdown, while Mum and the money were getting up to who knows what. I’m sorry, I know this isn’t the response you wanted, but I’m very conscious of the parts of my life that are going well and I’m not going to jeopardize them just for money.’
‘It doesn’t have to change anything,’ she said.
But her expression betrayed her, for they both knew that wasn’t true. He scratched around for the right words and, in the meantime, heard himself say, ‘You hid it from me.’ It was a thought he shouldn’t have spoken, since he already realized that she knew how he felt and he knew that she was sorry.
She placed one page on the table and left him alone then. Afterwards all he could remember was the clock ticking loudly and his stomach growing tighter and tighter. He rested his elbows on his knees and pressed his face into his cupped hands. He stayed like that for almost a minute, then blew out a long breath, and looked at the paper. As far as he was concerned, money was trouble.
He suddenly remembered Ratty’s theory about trouble: Touch it and it stains you.
He pushed the paper away, so it slid off the far