Bramblewood

The email came on a Tuesday, which felt wrong somehow. News like that should arrive on a grey Wednesday or a Sunday evening with the radiator ticking and the light already going. Not a Tuesday, which was the most unremarkable day of the week and intended to stay that way.

Eleanor read it twice at the kitchen table, her tea going cold beside her.

From:[email protected]:[email protected]

Subject: Estate of Margaret Rose Hawthorne - Bramblewood, Wychford

Dear Ms Caldwell,

I am writing on behalf of Finch & Calloway Solicitors in the matter of the late Margaret Rose Hawthorne, who passed away on the fourteenth of September.

Please accept my sincere condolences for your loss.

I am pleased to inform you that you are named as the sole beneficiary of Mrs Hawthorne’s estate, which includes the property known as Bramblewood, situated in the village of Wychford. To discuss the details of the inheritance and complete the necessary documentation, I would be grateful if you could attend a brief appointment at our offices at your earliest convenience. The meeting should take no longer than one hour.

Please do not hesitate to contact me to arrange a suitable time.

Yours sincerely,

Edward Finch

Finch & Calloway Solicitors, 14 Church Lane, Wychford

Tel: 01463 882 014

Outside, Ashford continued without any particular interest in the matter. A bus hissed past, someone’s takeaway arrived with a moped’s sputtering complaint and the couple on the third floor of the building opposite moved behind their lit window in the small domestic ballet of people who have forgotten they can be seen.

She read it a third time.

She set her phone face-down on the table. Picked up her tea. Put it down again without drinking it.

She had known Margaret Hawthorne the way you know a place loved in childhood. Imperfectly, in fragments, with a warmth that has no single source. The connection had really been her mother’s. They had written to each other for decades, those two. Proper letters in envelopes. Eleanor had grown up understanding that Margaret was simply part of the fabric of things even if Wychford was six and a half hours away and visits were rare and always slightly epic in the planning.

She had been there perhaps three times as a child. Enough to remember the stone walls and the garden and the tree with the roots that buckled the path. Enough to remember Margaret crouching to her level with an expression of quiet amusement, as though the world was a joke she was too polite to explain.

When Eleanor’s mother died she had written to Margaret without really thinking about it. It had seemed necessary. Margaret had written back, a long letter in handwriting that sloped dramatically to the left and after that they had simply continued. Cards at Christmas. A note now and then. Nothing that demanded anything of either of them.

She had taken Maya once, passing through, Maya still small enough that the visit existed now only in photographs. Margaret had sent a card when Maya started university. Eleanor had not known she knew.

She wished now she had asked.

She called Maya from the kitchen table, her phone still warm from all the reading.

It rang four times. Eleanor was composing herself for voicemail when Maya picked up.

“Mum.” The sound of a car, road noise underneath. “Sorry, long day. I’m just leaving the station now.”

“I can call back.”

“No, it’s fine, I’ve got you on the hands-free. What’s up?”

Eleanor looked at the email still open on her phone then turned it face-down again out of habit. “Something’s happened. Nothing bad,” she added quickly, because Maya had her mother’s instinct for bracing. “Or not bad exactly. Unexpected.”

“Okay.” The focus in Maya’s voice had already sharpened. Eleanor could picture her settling back into the driver’s seat, the tiredness of the day set briefly aside. “Tell me.”

“Do you remember great-aunt Margaret? My mother’s aunt. You met her once, when you were very small. We stopped through Wychford on the way back from -” she paused, calculating. “You won’t remember. You were barely two.”

“The one with all the cats?”

Eleanor felt something loosen slightly in her chest. “That’s the one.”

“I’ve seen the photos. I’m holding a cat that looks furious about it.”

“They were always furious. It was their natural state.” She paused. “She died in September, Maya. And she’s left me her house.”

The road noise continued for a moment. Just the road and the distance between them.

“Her house,” Maya said.

“Her estate. Bramblewood. It’s a big old house in the countryside. With grounds.” Eleanor looked toward the window at the lit building opposite, at the couple still moving behind their glass. “And apparently it’s mine now.”

“Bramblewood,” Maya said, as though testing the weight of it. “That’s a name.”

“It is rather.”

“And she just left it to you? Just like that?”

“There’s a solicitor. I have to go and meet him, sign things. But yes. Apparently just like that.” Eleanor was quiet for a moment. “She wrote to me in January. A proper letter, the usual, three pages in that handwriting of hers. I wrote back in February. I didn’t know she was ill.”

“Mum.”

“I’m fine. I just -” She stopped. Started again more carefully. “She was the last one who remembered your grandmother the way I do. That’s all.”

Maya didn’t rush to fill the silence and Eleanor was grateful for it. It was one of the things her daughter had always known how to do. When to speak and when to simply stay on the line.

“Are you going to go?” Maya asked eventually. “To meet the solicitor.”

“I think I have to.”

“That’s not the same as wanting to.”

Eleanor almost smiled. “No. It isn’t.” She looked at the email again. “I don’t know what I want yet. It’s been about forty minutes.”

“Fair enough.” A pause, the soft tick of an indicator somewhere in Maris Bay. “But Mum a house. That’s not nothing.”

“No,” Eleanor agreed. “It’s really quite a lot of something.”

“You should go,” Maya said. “To Wychford. Not just for the solicitor. Go and see it properly.”

“I’ve seen it.”

“Mum. I was two.”

“You ran through the garden looking for fairies. You were absolutely convinced they lived in the long grass.” Eleanor paused. “You weren’t entirely wrong about the garden.”

“See. You need to go back.” A smile in her voice now, warm and certain. “That was nearly twenty five years ago. Everything will have changed.”

“That’s rather what I’m afraid of.”

“Or it’ll be exactly as you remember it and you’ll know straightaway what you want to do.” A beat. “When did you last do something that wasn’t simple?”

Eleanor opened her mouth and closed it again.

“Exactly,” Maya said, not unkindly. “Go to Wychford, Mum. See the house. See what you think when you’re standing in front of it.”

Outside the bus route had gone quiet. The couple opposite had turned their light off. Eleanor sat in her kitchen in the dark without having noticed the dark arriving.

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

“You’ll go,” Maya said. “Ring me when you’ve booked it.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too. Get some sleep, you sound tired.”

“Look who’s talking.”

The call ended. Eleanor set her phone on the table beside the cold tea and sat for a moment in the dark of her own kitchen, the city doing what the city always did outside her window, indifferent and continuous and very far from anywhere called Bramblewood.

She got up and made toast.