The Stranger in Our Home. Sophie Draper

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       CHAPTER 2

      The phone rang.

      ‘Caro?’ It was Steph. She’d promised to ring before she left the UK. I was back home in London and hadn’t heard a thing for days and now suddenly there she was.

      ‘Hi.’ I could hear crackling over the phone line.

      ‘Fancy a curry? My treat.’

      I caught my breath. ‘That sounds great. When?’

      ‘Tonight? We need to talk.’ She named a restaurant.

      ‘Sure, what time?’

      ‘Seven.’

      ‘Okay.’

      I put the phone down slowly. It felt strange talking to my sister like that, as if we were friends.

      We met up, Steph and I, in a curry house behind Leicester Square. We chatted about not very much, avoiding anything to do with the funeral or our childhood.

      ‘My office is amazing, in one of those skyscrapers overlooking Central Park. I thought I’d faint when I first looked out of the window and realised how high we were!’

      I found myself following each word, each lift of an eyebrow, each smile, wondering what Steph was really saying as she talked about her work, her apartment in New York, the glamour of Fifth Avenue boutiques and constant traffic, flashing advertising boards leaching light into a sleepless city sky. Look at me, she was saying, how fabulous my life is, how lucky I am – unlike you, my little sister. That’s what she was really saying, wasn’t she? I caught my bottom lip between my teeth. I didn’t want to feel like this. I wanted Steph to be my friend, to be my sister.

      It was the end of the meal when Steph finally brought it up.

      ‘What about the house?’ she said.

      ‘Larkstone Farm?’

      The house where we grew up. I couldn’t call it home. The waiter was hovering, leaning in to whisk away a plate, his eyes sliding down towards Steph’s long legs.

      ‘Yes. It’s sitting there empty. It’s not good for the place. And someone’s going to have to go through all that stuff, sort out the paperwork, ready the house for sale. Unless you want to move back up there?’

      ‘I don’t understand.’

      ‘It’s ours. Except I don’t want it. Why would I ever want to go back to that place!’ She sounded bitter. ‘Besides, my home is in the States now. I’m seeing this guy … But you – you could go back and live there.’ She hesitated. ‘If you wanted.’

      ‘Ours? I don’t get it. I mean, Elizabeth had a cousin, didn’t she? It wouldn’t come to us, surely? We were only her stepdaughters.’

      ‘No, that’s not how Dad arranged it. I went to see the lawyer. When Dad married Elizabeth, he set up a trust. Elizabeth didn’t own the house after he died. She had use of it whilst she was alive, but it reverts to us on her death.’

      My sister’s words sank in. And then the thought flashed into my head: she’d been to see the lawyer, on her own? But then hadn’t I been avoiding it myself? I hadn’t wanted to think about the house, all that stuff that had once been Elizabeth’s, that had once been my dad’s.

      ‘We’ll inherit the house?’ I said. The two of us?

      I sat up. I couldn’t quite believe what she was saying.

      ‘Yes. Except, like I said, I don’t want any of it. It’s been on my mind a lot ever since I found out, I didn’t know what to say to you. But I realise now that I really don’t need it. My life’s in New York and I have more than enough money. It’s the least I can do. Besides, the funeral was bad enough, I couldn’t bear to go back to the house itself, even for a short while.’

      She fell silent. There was a moment when I thought she was going to say something else.

      ‘I don’t know what to say.’ My eyes searched hers.

      She shrugged and then smiled.

      ‘It’s not much of a place, as I recall – probably in desperate need of attention, in the middle of nowhere. I don’t have time for a project like that. It’s yours, honestly. Sell it, keep it, rent it out, move in. I don’t mind. Whatever you want to do with it.’

      Larkstone Farm. Compared to London, it was the middle of nowhere. In the wilds of Derbyshire. It wasn’t a working farm, not any more; I couldn’t remember whether it still had any land. Steph leaned across the table and topped up my glass of wine.

      But live at Larkstone Farm? It seemed incredible that this should happen right now. I was effectively homeless, bunking down with my friend Harriet, except she’d already left for her new job in Berlin. I had a few more weeks till the notice on her flat ran out. She’d done me a favour, but I was still struggling to find somewhere else affordable.

      ‘I …’ I tried to gather my thoughts. ‘What did the lawyer say, did you tell him?’

      ‘I did. It’s entirely up to us what we do with the place. But whether you move in or sell up, it has to be cleared of all her stuff. And someone really should be there whilst that is happening, if only to keep an eye on things. If you want it, it’s yours, that’s all I’m saying. And I’d be glad not to worry about it.’

      My mind leapt ahead. I could sell it, buy something smaller, closer to London, giving me some cash to fall back on when the commissions slowed down. Or I could live there whilst I decided what I wanted to do. Now that Elizabeth was gone, why shouldn’t I stay there? It was just a house. To live rent-free would be a huge relief. Did Steph really want to waive her inheritance?

      And besides … Maybe I needed to go back, to see the place just one more time, to put the past behind me once and for all. Elizabeth was dead. I was never going back to Paul and I’d had more than enough of London with its sky-high rents and unaffordable houses. I could work wherever I was, couldn’t I?

      The thought was exciting, the timing perfect.

      ‘Why don’t you think about it?’ said Steph.

      Elizabeth had married my father when I was a baby, not long after my real mother died. I should have been young enough to think of her as my mother, but somehow I never did. She used to say how I screamed and screamed in her arms, wriggling to get out. Perhaps it was my fault. I had rejected Elizabeth before she’d ever rejected me. Then my father had died too, barely four years later, leaving Steph and me with Elizabeth, growing up at Larkstone Farm. Just the three of us.

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