Part One

August 9th 2011

“Miss Brown, if you could sign here, here and here, I'll be on my way,” he says, pointing to three spaces on the form.

Accepting his pen, a heavy fountain one with a snowflake emblem on the top, I sign and date where requested.

“Thank you. Now if you need any further information, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Goodbye, Miss Brown and good luck.”

I shake his hand, close the door behind him and turn to survey my inheritance.  I can't help but laugh; these last couple of months have been beyond surreal.   One minute I’m threatened with eviction for not being able to pay the rent.  The next minute I get a call from a probate research company telling me that I am the sole heir to a small end-terrace house in the middle of the Norfolk countryside.  For twenty-four hours, I was convinced I was the butt of someone’s joke, or that I was about to be asked to launder £50 million pound in a foreign money scam. My email is unfortunately full of such spam. But then Mr Lake of Cooper, Cooper and Lake, turned up at my door and showed me a ream of legal documents.  A simple check of my ID followed and with that my luck changed.

Unsure what to do next, I remain standing.  The silent house is cool and dark; goose pimples pop out on my bare arms.  My great aunt apparently died over a year ago and the house has been unlived in ever since. I shiver, and this time it has nothing to do with the temperature.  I realised that I have, in the last few minutes become the last curator of the museum of my estranged family’s life.  This small house is filled with a lifetime and more, of stuff.  Pictures of old and unfamiliar people arranged on every dusty surface.  Boxes of documents, certificates and such like, sit open on the floor, having been examined in detail by the probate company to try to find evidence of a living trustee.  I have no idea where to begin, or indeed where I wish it to end. 

A noise at the window draws my attention.  A fat bumble bee repeatedly bats against the dirty glass window.  After a few moments, it finally gives up and flies away.  Outside, I can see the warm, lethargy of summer.  Fields of rapeseed, its cloying aroma heavy in the air, lay arranged in a rolling, golden patchwork, waiting patiently for harvest.    The sun is high in the cloudless sky and the small road leading to the next village seems to shimmer in the distance. The contrast between this perfect summer’s day in Norfolk and the wet, grey London I left behind yesterday is marked.

The urge to get outside into the fresh air is undeniable.  I grab my purse and the set of keys Mr Lake left on the round, oak table and head out.  The heat hits me like I've opened an oven door. My car is sitting on the small gravel drive beside the house and I open it and search for my sunglasses.  No matter how many times I tell myself to put them back in the case in the glove compartment, I invariably don’t.  After some searching, they appear, as if by magic, on top of my pink rain mac and under a couple of magazines and a McDonalds’ food bag in the foot well.  My car, or should I say my automated refuse bin was, until today, the only thing I owned of any value, and I am not really sure if you would call a 1999, V-plate Ford Fiesta something of value. 

I grab the glasses, wipe the lenses on my t-shirt, put them on and look back at my newest, most valuable possession. A small plaque in the middle of the row of four terraced houses shows that they were built in 1875.  Each house has two windows at the front- one up, one down and a short wooden door, with a black ringed-knocker.  The walls are covered in pebble dash, the stone taken from somewhere off the North Norfolk coast.  The three houses adjoined to mine now have garishly white UPVC window frames.  My house has what looks to be the original wooden frames.  They are swollen, peeling and neither of the two windows look like they can close properly.  The front door only yields when brute force is applied.  The front of the house borders the path which runs along the main road through the village.  I haven’t yet looked behind the house but Mr Lake assures me that it is an area of great potential. 

 A white van hurtles past, heading into the village and I follow it for the want of something better to do.  Mr Lake, kindly arranged for the electricity to be reconnected and switched on the fridge earlier, so with that in mind, I decide to go on the hunt for provisions.  The path towards the village is narrow, the road too.  On the right of me are the rapeseed fields and further on woodland.  To my left and further up on the right are a succession of houses and cottages.  Some are like mine, with pebble dashed exteriors, others are painted in a rainbow of colours, all typical of what you would expect from a quaint, ‘chocolate box’ Norfolk village.  As I near the centre of the village I pass a tall, three-storey house.  What strikes me as unusual, is the unkempt nature of it.  The garden is in need of harsh prune, the paint work is far worse than mine and it has an unloved look about it, so unlike any other homes I have passed.  Cheltwell prides itself on its appearance and is a regular runner up in Britain’s Best Village or so Google told me when I did some research a couple of days ago.  My observation or should I say my appraisal of the house does not go unnoticed and a curtain twitches in the centre downstairs window.  The house is set back from the road a little, but I can definitely see that someone is there.  Embarrassed by my nosiness, I scurry away.

A few minutes latery I reach the village.  At the centre stands The Queens Head, the village’s only pub.  The beer garden is full of happy people and raucous laughter.  I envy their cold drinks and familiar chat.  Reluctantly I walk on and come to the village Post Office which appears to double as the local grocery shop, tea room and second-hand store.  The window display is an odd arrangement of its wares and I see it’s quite possible to buy stamps, soup, scones and old slippers inside.  Should the need ever arise.

“Hallo, can I help you?” A stout, friendly-looking woman behind the counter asks.

I remove my sunglasses and return her smile.  “Could I get a loaf of bread, a pint of milk, a packet of ham and … a bottle of pink wine?” I add sheepishly.

The woman smiles, then fetches everything and places it in a  brown bag. 

“That’ll be £9.90.”

I open my purse, expecting (hoping) to find some money.  There is none; I used it to buy the burger and magazines on the way up from London.  I check my purse again but sadly nothing has materialised out of thin air.  Crap.

 “Can I use my card as I don’t seem to have any cash on me?”

The woman gives me a grave look.  “Are you Dorothy Brown’s great niece?”

I look at her as if she is talking a foreign language, but then realise that I am the niece in question.  I’ve never been referred to as someone’s niece before; I haven’t been anyone’s daughter for the last twenty years either.  No parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins.  All of them were gone by the time I was two years old. 

“Yes, I’m Alice, Dorothy’s..er.. niece”, the words sound even stranger as I they fall from my lips.

“Well it's very nice to meet you.  Don’t worry about using your card; come settle up the next time you're passing.  Your aunt had an account with us, so I’ll write it down on there.”

“Thank you,” I stumble, not used to such antiquated shopping practises. 

“Funny woman, your aunt.  Shopped here nearly every day for the last thirty years and never mentioned you once.   I knew her sister passed away, years ago, but I thought that was that.”

“I didn’t know I had a great aunt until a few months back and I don’t think she knew about me either.”  I prefer this to the idea that she knew of my existence and yet did nothing about it. 

“So are you going to be staying round these parts? Or, are you going to sell up and give away another one of our houses to them London types who come up here once a month for a night and a day.  Bloody lot!  Never take part in anything, get Waitrose to deliver their bloody shopping, they drive too fast on these roads and they push up the prices of the houses so much that our own kids have to buy elsewhere.”  Her little question- turned rant has worn her out and she takes a deep breath and waits for me to answer.  I know the answer she wants, I'm just not sure that I want to give it to her.

“I’m not sure yet.  I'm a little inbetween houses right now, and jobs come to think about it.  I think I'm going to stay awhile and then decide.”

“That house of yours is going to need some work.  Your aunt didn’t like to spend.  Bet she's has left you a tidy sum too.”

I think carefully about how I should answer that question.  I'm clearly already the talking point of the village.

“Enough to tide me over,” is my reply. “Well I best be off, got a year’s worth of dusting to do.”

“Well it was nice to meet you, Alice.  There's a barbecue at the pub on Sunday.  Why don’t you come along and I’ll introduce you to the nice young men of the village,” she chuckles.  “Unless you already have a nice young man, that is.”

I laugh off her question, not quite what the answer is.  James and I haven’t spoken for a week since I announced my trip up here.  I’m not sure if he was pleased to see me go or angry that I was leaving. 

“Bye, err…,” I realise I don’t know her name.

“Betty,” she volunteers.

“Bye, Betty and thanks,” I wave the carrier bag at her and head out of the shop.

“Bye, Alice.  See you on Sunday,” she calls after me.

Back in the baking heat, I make my way back to the house, having seen pretty much everything to see of the village.  I approach the pub again and open up my purse.  In amongst the shrapnel, I find a shiny £2 coin.  Decision made.  I walk over to the pub and in through the low beamed front door.  The brightness of outside, temporarily blinds me in the dark interior of the pub.  I blink a couple of times, get my bearings and head over to the bar.

“How can I help?”

A young-ish man, probably late twenties, jumps up from behind the bar and I give a small squeak in surprise.

“Sorry ‘bout that, what can I get ya?”

“Well, umm…, a diet coke, but only if it comes to no more than £2.11 and if it does, then a pint of tap water instead please?”

“A diet coke then.”  The guy smiles at me and fetches a glass from the rack behind him.  He puts a scoop of ice cubes into the glass and pours the coke on top. I wasn’t feeling that thirsty a few minutes ago and yet now, as I see the glass slowly fill, I feel parched. 

“That’ll be £2.11,” he says with a wink.

“Thank you.” My cheeks burn in embarrassment at not being able to pay fully for the drink.  Which is silly really, I should be used to not having any money by now. “You can’t afford pride, when you have nothing”.  The words of my last foster father ring in my ears.  He was so fond of saying that, and yet he seemed to do alright from the money he used to get from the council for having me in his home.  Although, all that changed when I turned sixteen.  The council stopped paying them and I swiftly found myself without a foster family. 

“New to the village?” he asks.

“Yep,” I reply.

“Are you Dot Brown’s niece, the one everyone's been hearing about?”

I sigh. “Yes, that’s me.”

“Talk of the village, you are,” he says loudly and then in a quiet voice, leans forward and says, “it really is that boring round here.”  He rolls his eyes.

I laugh and take a seat on the bar stool.  “So, if everybody is talking about me, what are they actually saying?”

“Well, Mrs Collins, the vicar’s wife reckons you might be setting up a crystal meth factory in old Dot’s house and Mrs Jackson reckons you are going to sell the house and your soul to the London set and then bugger off.”

“Is Mrs Jackson called Betty by any chance?”

“Ah, you’ve met her then.  Not much gets passed her.”

“And is there any chance that Mrs Collins been watching Breaking Bad box sets recently?”

He laughs.  “Tommy.”

“Alice,” I reply.

We spend the next hour casually chatting whilst he serves the occasional drink.  I learn he’s single, that the pub is owned by his parents and he is helping out for the day, whilst his parents have a day out at the seaside.  He tells me that by day he works in a computer shop in Kings Lynn, but at night he gigs around the local area with his band.  I drain my drink and he offers to get me another one on the house, but I’m not good with hand outs, so I give my apologies and leave.  Only after I promise I’ll go to the barbecue on Sunday.

 I head outside and the heat seems to have lifted a little.  As I walk, I start to think about what is the least amount of cleaning I can get away with doing today. I feel completely drained; I haven’t slept properly in days.  Who am I kidding?  I haven’t slept properly in years.  I decide to clean the fridge and the kitchen surfaces.  Then I’ll do the bathroom and finally the living room.  I've brought an air bed with me.  I really don’t fancy sleeping in either of the two beds there.  I know she didn’t die in the house, but still…

 “Jet!” I hear a voice shout.

I am approaching the three-storey house with the scruffy garden and see a large black dog lying down on the drive way, stomach exposed, sunbathing.

“Jet, “Come here boy.”

The dog turns his head to the owner of the voice and then casually back to me.  His tale lifts up and then thumps back down to the ground. He really is the happiest dog I've ever seen.

“Jet.  Now!”  The elderly man moves slowly forward, using a cane to balance himself.

The dog lets out a big sigh and I swear it smiles at me.  I can’t help but giggle.  The man’s head snaps up and he stares directly at me.  I smile and give a stupid, little wave.

“Great dog,” I offer.

“What?” He shouts.

“I said great dog,” I raise my voice in case he is a little hard of hearing.

“You,” he shouts again. “You, go away.  Just go away.  Leave me alone.”  He turns and hurriedly hobbles back inside.  I'm left reeling by his reaction and can't help but stare at the house and think I see movement in the middle window again.

“Rude old bugger,” I shout back to the house and set off for home, annoyed that my first day in Cheltwell, which had been going so well, has been marred a little by a grumpy old man.

AN  Dedicated to @Astronaomi for my lovely new cover and for having the patience of a saint xxxxxx