‘So Kate wasn’t pleased about moving out,’ I said.
‘This is the first time I’ve been able to have a proper look at the place. Every time I called round before she told me to bog off.’ Neela rolled her eyes. ‘I was just doing my job. It’s not my fault her aunt wants to sell up. I know she’s dead, but she could have been a bit nicer about it.’
‘Do you have a phone number for Phyllis Charnock?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, of course.’ She flicked through her folder of notes and found a page of contact information. ‘But don’t tell her I gave it to you, OK? She’s a difficult client and I’m doing my best to stay on the right side of her.’ A dazzling smile. ‘So far so good.’
Within two minutes of starting a conversation with Phyllis Charnock (‘Miss Charnock, please’) I’d revised my opinion of Neela Singh from ‘good at her job’ to ‘miracle worker’. Miss Charnock had apparently been waiting all morning for the chance to pick a fight with someone, and I was offering her a golden opportunity.
‘It is impertinent of you to ask why I want to sell my property. It’s my house and I am entitled to do exactly what I wish with it.’ Her voice grated in my ear, granite-hard.
‘Yes, of course. I was just wondering if there was a specific reason for selling it now. You haven’t lived in it for some time, I gather.’
‘I’ve never lived in it. I’ve barely even seen it. I don’t like London. I inherited the house from my godmother.’
My godmother had left me a pair of earrings. I tried not to mind that it hadn’t been a million-pound house.
‘That was quite a legacy.’
‘It was kind. Then again, she had no one else to leave it to. And of course I was grateful, at first, in spite of the tax implications. I rented it out for a time but that was a disaster. I thought it was quite a stroke of genius to invite my niece to live in it. After the failure of her marriage she had nowhere else to go. It made it much easier to have a tenant who could be trusted to keep an eye on the house.’
‘Of course,’ I murmured, looking around the living room at the tasteful wallpaper, the expensive curtains and the carpets that had to have been laid in the last couple of years. ‘Was Kate paying rent?’
‘Certainly not.’ She sounded truly affronted at the suggestion. ‘She was my only living relative and I felt it was my duty to help her. In return, she kept the house in a good state of repair and made whatever improvements she felt might be necessary.’
‘She must have spent quite a lot of money on it.’ More than rent, I thought. A lot more.
‘That was her choice.’ Her voice became even more severe. ‘I never asked her to invest in the house. There was no suggestion on my part that she could look forward to owning the house one day. I helped her out of charity and family feeling, and it was a great shock to me that she didn’t feel the same way.’
‘Did Kate know you were planning to sell it?’
‘She said she had no idea. She was living in a fool’s paradise if she thought she could just keep the house. I set her straight.’
‘She must have been very upset.’
‘Oh, she was furious. She had the nerve to say she deserved half of whatever it fetched.’ Miss Charnock snorted. ‘I was very quick to tell her that she had no legal claim over it whatsoever.’
‘But if she put in a new kitchen—’
‘There was a kitchen already. And a perfectly good attic, which apparently she turned into a bedroom.’ She said it as if no one had ever done a loft conversion before. ‘Two of them living in the house and four bedrooms.’ A sniff. ‘Ridiculous. Her trouble was that she had champagne tastes and a lemonade income.’
Whereas you are bitter lemon all the way. ‘When did you tell her you were planning to sell the house?’
‘April. I gave her six months to find somewhere else to live. She’d had years to save her money,’ Miss Charnock said peevishly. ‘She might have known she would need a deposit for a house one day. But she spent the lot. Easy come, easy go. My brother was the same. He was penniless when he died. Kate was only a child. One might have thought that growing up in poverty would have taught her to be more careful about money.’
I winced, imagining Kate coming up against this implacable lack of sympathy. ‘Six months isn’t a long time.’
‘It was plenty of time. I had waited long enough. Her daughter is an adult now. I had done what I could for them. And there was no question of letting the daughter inherit it.’
‘You mean Chloe.’
‘I think that was the name. I only met her once, when she was eight or nine.’ From her tone, Miss Charnock hadn’t enjoyed the experience. ‘A very unmanageable little girl.’
‘Miss Charnock, you may not know this and I’m sorry to break the news to you over the phone, but Chloe died two days ago.’
‘Oh.’ She absorbed the news for a moment while I waited in respectful silence. ‘Well, thank goodness for that.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Her mother always said she found life difficult, that she couldn’t cope on her own. If she couldn’t be independent, what quality of life could she expect as she got older? And of course because of what happened to poor Kate she was in a very difficult position. She was slow, you know. She should have been in a home. That’s what I said to Kate, when she said she wasn’t able to live on her own.’
I frowned. That wasn’t the impression I had had of Chloe. It seemed to me that everyone who knew Chloe – except her mother – thought she was far more able than Miss Charnock was suggesting. And Kate had had her own reasons for wanting Chloe to be dependent on her. I found myself thinking of all the specialists she had visited and discarded when their version of Chloe didn’t fit in with Kate’s narrative. She had remade her world to suit herself and the facts of her financial and personal situation had seemed like nothing more than an inconvenience.
‘Chloe was a beautiful girl,’ I said.
‘Looks aren’t everything. I couldn’t let my inheritance go to an imbecile. If Kate had had a normal child it might have been different, but no.’ Her voice sounded fretful all of a sudden. ‘I have no one, you know. I’m on my own. My income has been very badly affected by low interest rates in the last few years. My investments aren’t performing as well as I expected. I have to think of my future.’
‘Of course.’
‘I had thought – I mean, I expected that Kate would come down to look after me. But she made it very clear that she wouldn’t do anything of the kind. After all I’d done for her, too. She needed to be with her daughter, she said. No family feeling for me whatsoever. I thought it was the least she could do, but she told me I could afford to pay for a nursing home.’