A Place of Hiding

Frank had taken her hand into both of his, saying, “There’ll be time to think about all this later. Don’t worry about it now.”


Then he’d gone, leaving her to deal with Ana?s next. Shell shocked popped into Ruth’s mind when she was at last alone with her brother’s lover. Ana?s sat numbly on the same love seat she’d taken during Dominic Forrest’s explanation of the will, her posture unchanging and the only difference being that she sat there now alone. Poor Jemima had been so eager to be dismissed that when Ruth murmured, “Perhaps you might find Stephen somewhere in the grounds, dear...?” she’d caught one of her great large feet on the edge of an ottoman and nearly knocked over a small table in her haste to be gone. This haste was understandable. Jemima knew her mother quite well and was probably foreseeing what was going to be asked of her in the way of filial devotion in the next few weeks. Ana?s would require both a confidante and a scapegoat. Time would tell which role she would decide her gangling daughter was going to play.

So now Ruth and Ana?s were alone and Ana?s sat plucking the edge of a small cushion from the love seat. Ruth didn’t know what to say to her. Her brother had been a good and generous man despite his foibles, and he’d earlier remembered Ana?s Abbott and her children in his will in a fashion that would have relieved her anxiety enormously. Indeed, that had long been Guy’s way with his women. Each time he took a new lover for any period longer than three months, he altered his will to reflect the extent to which he and she were devoted to each other. Ruth knew this because Guy had always of necessity shared the contents of his wills with her. With the exception of this most current and final document, Ruth had read each one of them in the presence of Guy and his advocate because Guy had always wanted to be certain that Ruth understood how he meant his money to be distributed.

The last will Ruth had read had been drawn up some six months into her brother’s relationship with Ana?s Abbott, shortly after the two of them had returned from Sardinia, where they’d apparently done very little more than explore all the permutations of what a man and woman could do to each other with their respective body parts. Guy had returned glaze-eyed from that trip, saying, “She’s the one, Ruth,” and his will had reflected this optimistic belief. Ruth had asked Ana?s to be present for that reason and she could see by the expression on her face that Ana?s believed Ruth had done so out of malice.

Ruth didn’t know which would be worse at the moment: allowing Ana?s to believe that she harboured such a desire to wound her that she would allow all her hopes to be dashed in a public forum or telling her that there had been an earlier will in which the four hundred thousand pounds left to her would have been the answer to her current dilemma. It had to be the first alternative, Ruth decided. For although she didn’t actually want to be the recipient of anyone’s antipathy, telling Ana?s about the earlier will would likely result in having to talk about why it had been altered. Ruth lowered herself to the seat. She murmured, “Ana?s, I’m terribly sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

Ana?s turned her head like a woman slowly regaining consciousness. She said, “If he wanted to leave his money to teenagers, why not mine?

Jemima. Stephen. Did he only pretend...?” She clutched the cushion to her stomach. “Why did he do this to me, Ruth?”

Ruth didn’t know how to explain. Ana?s was devastated enough at the moment. It seemed inhuman to devastate her more. She said, “I think it had to do with Guy’s having lost his own children, my dear. To their mothers. Because of the divorces. I think he looked at these others as a way of being a father once again when he couldn’t any longer be a father to his own.”

“And mine weren’t enough for him?” Ana?s demanded. “My own Jemima? My Stephen? They were less important? So inconsequential that two virtual strangers—”

“Not to Guy,” Ruth corrected her. “He’s known Paul Fielder and Cynthia Moullin for years.” Longer than you, longer than your children, she wanted to add but did not because she needed this conversation to end before it reached ground she couldn’t bear to cover. She said, “You know about GAYT, Ana?s. You know how committed Guy was to being a mentor.”