“I’ll pay him back,” Mark said. “Every penny.”
“Where is it?”
He glanced at Vanessa.
“Some of it went toward debts.”
“How much is left?”
Neither answered.
Julian came back into the room. “My bank is attempting a recall. I’ve reported the transaction.”
Vanessa’s face changed. The pleading expression disappeared so completely that I wondered how often I had mistaken it for feeling.
“You were happy enough with a bargain,” she told him.
“Yes,” he said. “I ignored advice because I trusted you and wanted the property. I’ll have to answer for that decision. It doesn’t make those signatures real.”
He sat across from Mark.
“Why did you invite everyone here?”
“It was a team dinner,” Vanessa said.
“You insisted I bring the agreement. You said Eleanor wanted to thank me for making things easier.”
I remembered her fastening the clasp of my necklace before the guests arrived. Her smile reflected beside mine in the hallway mirror.
Just smile. Don’t correct me.
She had needed my face at the table. My silence. A grateful old woman who would make every doubtful thing appear respectable.
Ruth set the water jug beside me.
“I heard her say you were delighted with the arrangement,” she told Julian. “At work this morning. I’ll give a statement.”
Vanessa turned on her. “You don’t even know what arrangement we were talking about.”
“I know what I heard.”
Mark raised his head.
“Mom, please. Let us undo it before you call anyone.”
For one terrible moment, I wanted to.
I could almost see the old version of the evening returning: guests gone, plates washed, an ugly family argument locked behind the door. I could recover the house, make him repay the money, tell myself that nobody needed to know.
My hand hovered over my telephone.
“What did you think would happen when I refused to leave?”
Mark’s lips parted.
Vanessa answered instead. “You’ve been confused about things.”
Ruth went still.
“Which things?” I asked.
“Paperwork. Dates. You forget conversations.”
“Name one.”
She looked at Mark.
He bowed his head, and I realized this accusation was familiar to him.
Julian opened his email on his telephone. His finger stopped on a message.
“I was told there had been an assessment.”
“There hasn’t,” I said.
He passed me the screen.
The message said I could become agitated when asked about finances. It said discussions should be handled through Mark. It said my difficulty remembering agreements was one reason the family needed a quick sale.
My son’s email address appeared in the copied recipients.
Below it was his reply.
Understood. Please keep arrangements through me.
I put the telephone down carefully.
“When?”
Julian told me the date.
Three weeks earlier.
Three weeks in which Mark had brought me tea, asked whether I needed anything from the shops, kissed my cheek before leaving for work.
“Did you believe I was confused?”
“No.”
“Did you think I’d signed?”
His shoulders began to shake.
“Vanessa showed me the letter. I knew you hadn’t.”
The room seemed to narrow around his chair.
“She said we could clear the debts and explain once the money came through. That you’d agree if it was already settled.”
“Tell her the rest,” Vanessa snapped.
He covered his mouth.
“Tell her whose business loan I was trying to pay.”
He had never mentioned a business loan. The venture he had called a small investment had failed months before they moved in. There were personal guarantees, credit cards, interest piling on interest. Vanessa had debts too. Between them, they had kept pretending that the next month would fix everything.
It explained the desperation.
