The Legacy Read Free Page B

house. He’ll love it. He doesn’t know . . . Well. He’ll have a blast, I’m sure he will—there are so many nooks and crannies to explore.”
    “A bit big and empty, though, isn’t it? A bit lonely, perhaps? It might depress him.”
    “Well, you could tell him to bring a friend. Why don’t you? Call him tomorrow—not for the whole of Christmas, of course. But some of the working parents might be glad of a few extra days’ grace before their little homewreckers reappear, don’t you think?”
    “Hmm.” Beth rolls her eyes. “I don’t think any of the mothers at that school do anything as common as work for a living.”
    “Only riff-raff like you?”
    “Only riff-raff like me,” she agrees, deadpan.
    “Ironic, really, since you’re the real thing. Blue blood, practically.”
    “Hardly. Just as you are.”
    “No. I think the nobility skipped a generation in me.” I smile. Meredith told me this once, when I was ten. Your sister has the Calcott mien, Erica. You, I fear, are all your father. I didn’t mind then and I don’t mind now. I wasn’t sure what mien meant, at the time. I thought she meant my hair, which had been chopped off short thanks to an incident with bubblegum. When she turned away I stuck out my tongue, and Mum wagged a finger at me.
    Beth rejects it too. She fought with Maxwell—Eddie’s father—to allow their son to attend the village primary school, which was tiny and friendly and had a nature garden in one corner of the yard: frogspawn, the dried-out remains of dragonfly nymphs; primroses in the spring, then pansies. But Maxwell won the toss when it came to secondary education. Perhaps it was for the best. Eddie boards now, all term long. Beth has weeks and weeks to build herself up, shake a sparkle into her smile.
    “We’ll fill up the space,” I assure her. “We’ll deck the halls. I’ll dig out a radio. It won’t be like . . .” but I trail off. I’m not sure what I was about to say. In the corner, the tiny TV gives an angry belch of static that makes us both jump.
    A lmost midnight, and Beth and I have retired to our rooms. The same rooms we always took, where we found the same bedspreads, smooth and faded. This seemed unreal to me, at first. But then, why would you change the bedspreads in rooms that are never used? I don’t think Beth will be asleep yet either. The quiet in the house rings like a bell. The mattress sinks low where I sit, the springs have lost their spring. The bed has a dark oak headboard and there’s a watercolor on the wall, so faded now. Boats in a harbor, though I never heard of Meredith visiting the coast. I reach behind the headboard, my fingers feeling down the vertical supports until I find it. Brittle now, gritty with dust. The piece of ribbon I tied—red plastic ribbon from a curl on a birthday present. I tied it here when I was eight so that I would know a secret, and only I would know it. I could think about it, after we’d gone back to school. Picture it, out of sight, untouched as the room was cleaned, as people came and went. Here was something that I would know about; a relic of me I could always find.
    There’s a tiny knock and Beth’s face appears around the door. Her hair is out of its plait, falling around her face, making her younger. She is so beautiful sometimes that it gives me a pain in my chest, makes my ribs squeeze. Weak light from the bedside lamp puts shadows in her cheekbones, under her eyes; shows up the curve of her top lip.
    “Are you OK? I can’t sleep,” she whispers, as if there is somebody else in the house to wake.
    “I’m fine, Beth; just not sleepy.”
    “Oh.” She lingers in the doorway, hesitates. “It’s so strange to be here.” This is not a question. I wait. “I feel like . . . I feel a bit like Alice in Through the Looking Glass . Do you know what I mean? It’s all so familiar, and yet wrong too. As if it’s backwards. Why do you think she left us the house?”
    “I really don’t