11 The Teashop on the Corner Read Free Page A

around her whilst she tried to make sense of this. Martin wasn’t that duplicitous. Living that sort of
double life took a level of cunning and cleverness that Martin couldn’t have aspired to: he was far too simple a creature. Every Monday morning, Martin had set off with his suitcase of
cleaned and pressed clothes for the week. Every night he rang from Exeter or Aberdeen or wherever Suggs had sent him to sell paper. Every night he said the hotel was okay, nothing brilliant, but he
was going to get something to eat and then have a good night’s sleep. She’d never questioned it, she’d never had grounds to. And every Friday, when he got home, he’d given
her a measly sum of housekeeping money. There was never anything left over to bank. There was a freeze on wage increases, he’d said. And all the time he’d been sitting on his share of a
million pounds?
    Naw. She didn’t believe it. Martin would have gone out and bought himself the new iPhone if he’d had any money at all, that much she did know. She’d found his mobile in his
pocket after his death and it was one which cost him ten pounds from Asda. There were few contacts on it when she’d checked it: Domino’s Pizzas, The Happy Duck Chinese takeaway, Andrew,
work, herself, but no record of Julie, nor any texts.
    ‘Obviously, I’ll give you some time to get your things together before you leave the house. You can have the furniture,’ said Julie. ‘A month okay with you?’
    ‘What?’ said Carla.
    ‘The house. Obviously it’s mine now.’
    ‘My house is yours?’ Now it was Carla’s turn to laugh, but Julie wasn’t smiling. Her granite features were set in a very serious expression.
    ‘Martin’s house. It’s in his name, I do believe. My husband’s name.’
    Martin’s house was indeed in his sole name. He had inherited it from his mother the year that Carla had met him and they’d never bothered to change the name on the deeds, or write
wills. After all, they had no children and what was his was hers as a married couple . . . except that she was now finding out that it wasn’t.
    Then Julie said a sentence that made Carla’s stomach lurch.
    ‘That house is our son’s rightful inheritance.’
    Son. Our son.
    ‘Do you have a child?’ Carla stammered. ‘With Martin?’
    ‘What do you think this is – wind?’ said Julie, flicking open the two buttons on her coat and sticking out a surprisingly prominent stomach. ‘I’m five months gone.
And yes he’s Martin’s. And they’ll never see each other because of you and your fucking dressing table.’
    Carla’s Martin had said he didn’t want children. And because she loved him, she had sacrificed her desire to be a parent for his wish not to be.
    Through her tears, Carla could see that Julie was savouring each twist of the knife. It was sick, cruel.
    ‘You’re enjoying this aren’t you? How can you? I didn’t know any of it.’
    Julie’s small sharp eyes hardened.
    ‘Because he should have died with me, not you. Because if he hadn’t been heavy-lifting your tatty furniture, he wouldn’t have had a fucking heart attack and left me. Because
you arranged his funeral and not me. Because I had to find out about my husband’s death from a story in yesterday’s bleeding newspaper.’ She opened her bag again, pulled out a
page torn from the
Daily Trumpet
and proceeded to read it.
    ‘“Paper salesman dies suddenly trying to shift wife’s hand-painted furniture from garage into house”. How’s that for a snappy headline?’
    Carla gasped. ‘I didn’t even know it was in the newspaper.’
    ‘They reported the wrong funeral time and the wrong church. And they said that Martin was seventy-four. And that his grieving widow was called Karen. I’ve been ringing no end of
churches and funeral parlours this morning trying to find out what’s bloody happening.’
    She wiped a tear that fell from the corner of her left eye and despite everything, Carla felt a too-kind surge