Me, Myself and I

By Simon Fraser

What would you if you discovered your mother was not the shrinking violet you thought she was? What would you do if you found out she'd been a close friend of one of the leading rock stars of the 1970s? Richard Fairless is about to find out and he's about to uncover a very guilty secret.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9780244193980

Book preview

Me, Myself and I

Me, Myself and I

A novel by

Simon Fraser

Chapter 1

Richard Fairless turned the key in the front door of his mother’s house and let himself into the dimly lit hall. Or rather he tried to. He’d only got the door open six or eight inches when it refused to budge any further. Looking down, he spotted the reason; a surprisingly large pile of post lay on the mat and was now wedged under the bottom of the door. Bending down he stretched awkwardly around the door, all the while thinking this isn’t going to do my back any good, and grabbed the envelopes he could reach. With a bundle of post in his hand, he stood up and opened the door fully. He stepped into the hall and closed the door with a firm slam. The door had been difficult to shut for years, and despite his cajoling, his mother had never done anything about it. Really, Richard should have done it himself, but he’d never got round to it. Distance, time, lack of opportunity and regularly forgetting to bring some tools with him had been his excuse.

Richard picked up the remaining post from the mat and stood silently leafing through it. The inevitable junk mail from credit card companies and charities, a white blank envelope (probably from some solar energy company wanting to cover his mother’s roof with solar cells), gas bills, a bank statement or two, nothing of great interest. He put the pile down on the hall table and, for the first time, realised that the house felt different. The atmosphere was quiet, and strangely oppressive. It was as though the house had acknowledged his presence and resented it. The air was stale and still. He needed to open a window and let a breeze blow through.

It’s a strange feeling letting yourself into someone else’s house when they aren’t there. Somehow it feels like trespassing, even if the owner is a close relative and you have keys, and therefore permission. If you had the inclination, you could rummage through drawers and cupboards and discover who knows what. You could explore every room, look under beds, open up boxes and chests, but you resist. It would be a betrayal of trust and even if the owner never found out, you would know.

Richard didn’t want to be standing in the middle of his mother’s hall. If truth be told, he would rather have been at work. Yes, it was a grind and there was the constant battle with interruptions and email, but it was routine and Richard liked routine. He liked the certainty of it, the predictability. To be jolted out of it was disconcerting, because he hated the feeling of being out of the loop. Even missing a couple of hours could throw him into a minor panic for fear of what had happened in his absence. Decisions might have been made, conversations taken place, and the resultant effect was that he, from then on, felt he was playing catch up, even if there was actually nothing to catch up on.

So, to be standing in his mother’s hallway on a Monday morning with a pile of her post in his hand wasn’t playing well with Richard Fairless. He looked at the clock on the wall. Eleven fifty. He checked his watch. Nine thirty three. His mother’s clock must have stopped. Yesterday? The day before? Who knew when the battery had died? Anyway, he wasn’t going to replace it now. What was the point?

As he walked down the hall, he caught sight of himself in the mirror. Jesus, you look tired. He leant in closer for a better look, squashing his cheeks with both hands to create a pouty look and then pulling at the lower lids of his brown eyes to see how quickly they would spring back into position. He’d always had a malleable face. Facial contortions finished, he sighed and walked down the hall to open the kitchen door. It was a small room with a window overlooking the back garden, a back door and a serving hatch into the dining room. An antiquated free-standing cooker with eye-level grill stood in the corner. The units and worktops must have been installed in the nineteen seventies and really should have been replaced long ago. Maybe now was a good time to do it. He was sure the estate agents would recommend it.

Three plastic shopping bags stood on the Formica. Cereal, bleach, washing up liquid, some tins of soup, general groceries. Putting the post on the table, Richard took a look in the fridge and surveyed its unappetising contents. An open bottle of milk, gone off. A new packet of bacon, unopened, and a new pack of chipolata sausages. A block of mild cheddar and a packet of butter, all new. Some salady bits in the salad drawer - his mother had always referred to it as a salad crisper, a misnomer given the state of the half iceberg lettuce currently in residence. In the door was a half bottle of diet tonic and a bottle of Australian white wine. Richard took the milk out and poured it down the sink. It took a couple of shakes to dislodge the blockage of cream and then the watery liquid swirled down the plughole, a stale smell filling the air. With distaste Richard forced the lumpy bits down the drain with his fingers and ran the tap to flush them away.

Wiping his hands on a tea towel, bought he remembered on a holiday to the Isle of Wight about thirty years ago, he filled the kettle and switched it on. Leaving it to do its thing, he went outside to his car, a second-hand Ford Focus, returning with a selection of flat pack boxes and a roll of bin liners. On his second trip he brought in a collapsible aluminium step ladder which he would need later to get into the loft. His mother’s wooden one wasn’t tall enough and he knew from bitter experience that using it to get into the loft was a dangerous business. He propped the step ladder against the wall at the foot of the stairs. He’d get his overnight bag later.

He found a jar of instant coffee in the cupboard above the kettle and took a mug from the mug tree on the worktop. Then with his black coffee - he would have preferred white - he wandered into the living room and sat down heavily on the sofa. It was a familiar room, with furniture and ornaments that hadn’t changed for years, but it wasn’t what you’d call comfortable. Whenever they’d moved, and they had done so with irritating regularity, the furniture had come too. The faded chintz sofa and armchairs had been in at least seven sitting rooms to Richard’s recollection, each time arranged in a roughly similar way, floorspace permitting. Television by the fireplace, real or fake, sofa facing it, armchairs either side. The curtains had come too, and been shortened or lengthened as required. Richard was sure that there were at least a couple of feet of turn up at the back of them, held up by pins.

The mantelpiece, above which was a large but horrible gilt-framed mirror, was adorned with a selection of ornaments arranged in an order that had never changed. Reading from left to right, a silver candlestick, a pair of china doves, a broken silver table cigarette lighter, a framed photograph of a small boy, a teak tea caddy, and the other candlestick. Richard gazed at the photograph. It was of him aged three. He looked at it with mixed feelings. When growing up, he’d always hated it. His mother said he looked angelic in it; Richard just thought he looked wet and pathetic. Now, from the grand old age of thirty four, with his thatch of unruly dark hair, he thought he could understand why his mother loved it so much - it was because he was her baby and despite the passing of the years, he always had been.

Sipping his coffee, he surveyed the rest of the room, mentally noting all the items he’d have to deal with. A pine desk with a hinged lid stood in the corner by the window and Richard knew it would be stuffed to the gunnels with rubbish, all of which would have to be gone through, sorted, saved or binned. He could see the corners of bits of paper poking out around the bottom edge of the hinged lid. That meant there was an avalanche of paper hiding within. The drawers would contain older items. Finished or partly finished cheque books, probably. Richard often wondered whether failing to use the last cheque in the book and then starting a new one would send a bank into a minor panic. Probably not. Besides, they don’t want you to use cheques anymore, not that it stopped his mother.

In the bottom drawer Richard knew he would find his mother’s photograph albums. Many of the older photos had become detached from the black pages, the gum on the hinges perishing, making a casual browse impossible. Turn the page and you simply got a pile of eight or ten photos jammed into the spine.

What else? His old school exercise books, some birthday cards and a wide assortment of paper serviettes. It was one of his mother’s eccentricities. Even though the desk had always lived in a completely different room from any surface suitable for eating, the serviettes had always lived in one of the drawers.

Moving on, Richard glanced up and down the bookcase beside the fireplace. His mother hadn’t been a great reader. Richard had once bought her a Maeve Binchy for Christmas, but to his knowledge, it had never been read. There was an old Concise Oxford Dictionary, an ancient edition of Pear’s Encyclopaedia, a rhyming dictionary and some romantic novels, published in the nineteen eighties. They’d all have to go. Not even eBay would be interested. Her books on music might be of interest to a collector.

He finished his coffee and grimaced. He couldn’t survive on this stuff. He’d have to pop out and get some proper ground coffee later. And some milk. But now there was work to be done.

He put the television on for comfort and began the long, depressing process of methodically going through his mother’s possessions. He knew he would have to try and remain emotionally detached if he was going to get through it - he’d been putting this off for several days - but now that he was finally getting on with the grisly business, he realised it wasn’t going to be quite as bad as he’d thought it would be. He knew that he had loved his mother and that she had loved him, but he had always been slightly remote from her. Maybe he never understood her, couldn’t get his head round her contradictory behaviour. On the one hand, she had always been restless, moving house God knows how many times, and yet still carting the same old pile of possessions with her, never throwing things out.

It was with these thoughts and many other random ones about his childhood bouncing around in his head that he made a start on the desk. Despite the purpose for which the item of furniture had been built, a complementary chair had never stood in front of it, so he collected one from the kitchen, got his roll of bin liners at the ready, pulled out the wooden supports on either side of the desk and opened the lid. Immediately, the avalanche of paperwork slid towards him. Despite both elbows and his best efforts to stem the tide, the assortment of envelopes, leaflets, receipts and scraps of paper defeated him and cascaded onto the floor.

Oh, that’s a great start, he out loud. Thanks, Mum. He looked up and stared at the porcelain shepherdess perched on top of desk in front of him. He reached forward and picked it up, turning it over to look at the base. If it was a name he recognised he’d keep it, perhaps sell it on ebay. Compton and Woodhouse? Never heard of them. There was a copyright symbol with a date next to it. 1987. Hmmm. Hardly an antique. He chucked it in a bin liner. One item down, a lifetime to go.

As he worked his way through the paperwork in front of him and on the floor around his feet, Richard found he started getting into a rhythm. Pick up, unfold, peruse, chuck. Pick up, unfold, peruse, keep. Pick up, unfold, peruse, chuck. His progress was often impeded by many unopened envelopes. After opening the first few with his fingers and becoming irritated that the ripped envelopes would no longer lie flat on his keep pile, he got a knife from the kitchen and started to slit them more carefully. He remembered reading a book in which a man always opened his post with a knife so that he could reuse the envelopes in case of war. Richard couldn’t remember the title of the book or the author, so the quest for the identity of the man was added to the other thoughts in his head.

After an hour of work, Richard had finished with the top section of the desk. Once he’d cleared the paperwork, he’d uncovered a rich assortment of bits and pieces. Rolls of Sellotape, scissors, a letter opener (how ironic), a pencil box, a tape measure, a box of paperclips, an old marble cigarette lighter. The small drawers and pigeon holes yielded nothing of interest, just oddments his mother must have stuffed in there many years ago.

The three drawers were equally disappointing. Writing paper, some used and unused candles (bought not for romantic dinners but in case of power cuts), a collection of used cotton reels of assorted sizes, a pair of faded and slightly stained tablecloths with familiar patterns. The desk was the repository for all fine dining accessories. It all went in the bin liners. I don’t want it, and I’m pretty sure no one else does and if you think I’m going to get up at five o’clock on a Sunday morning to take it all to a car boot sale you can forget it.

Richard picked up the three bin liners and took them out to the boot of his car, mentally reminding himself to check whether the nearest recycling centre was. He had no intention of driving around in circles trying to find it.

Back inside, he decided to risk another coffee. Blowing on his mug he headed back to to the living room where he unfolded a number of the cardboard boxes and made a start on the book case. Within minutes, the top three shelves were clear, their contents now packed neatly into the boxes on the floor, their destiny the local Oxfam bookshop. Richard had put a few books to one side, partly out of sentimentality, partly because he thought they might be valuable and worth a punt on eBay. As he had packed, Richard was surprised to find that whilst he recognised the spines of many of the volumes, their covers, front and back, were new to him. It was like discovering an old friend had a hidden secret, that they had a side to their personality he had never seen before. Not exactly surprising or unpleasant, but unfamiliar nonetheless. A few of the books had yielded a bookmark or two, sometimes improvised, like the old envelope in a book on the Lake District or the ancient shopping list in a well-thumbed Jackie Collins, sometimes genuine, like the faded and cracked crimson leather bookmark with gold graphics and the legend We’ve visited York Minster. Richard could remember that trip. He recalled being bored out of his mind the whole time.

Another book yielded a white plectrum. Richard held it in his hand and stared at it. How bizarre. He remembered he had taken guitar lessons for a couple of terms whilst at school - his mother had been resistant to the idea, but had eventually relented - but had no recollection of using a plectrum. He had given up the wretched instrument after his exasperated teacher had told him that if he couldn’t actually tune it, there was little point persisting. Even the six note tuning whistle had been of no help. Richard vaguely recalled blowing it and randomly turning the little handles - their technical name was lost to him - at the left hand end of the fretboard, listening with interest to the note of the string change, but unable to decide at which point he could achieve a perfect, and some would say necessary, match. He was never sure if his mother was disappointed at his failure to become the next John Williams. He chucked the plectrum into a bin liner.

The bottom shelf of the bookcase was shared by his mother’s record collection and the compact stereo system on which she had played them. The collection didn’t exactly cover the waterfront of the music industry’s output; his mother had had quite particular tastes. She had preferred music with a tune where you could hear the instruments, stuff you could whistle. Judging from the collection, she had been Beatles rather than Stones. Most of the Fab Four’s prodigious output was there, including Sergeant Pepper, Rubber Soul and the so-called White Album. She had also had a preference for singer-songwriters of both sexes. Joni Mitchell, Carole King, James Taylor, early Elton John. Most of the albums were in surprisingly good condition. Richard picked up his mother’s copy of Elton John’s Madman across the water and gently eased the disc from its cover and inner sleeve. He held it up to catch the light of the window. Of course, it wasn’t in mint condition - no collector was going to go into raptures over this one - but it was okay.

Sitting on the floor in front of the bookcase flicking through the records with his right forefinger, occasionally pulling one out to admire the artwork or read the sleeve notes, Richard wondered when these albums had last been played. As a child, he could remember his mother listening to music on the radio at all times of day, occasionally remarking  on the quality of a particular song or switching the radio off quickly when the disc jockey had the temerity to play something that she didn’t like. This was usually accompanied by an exclamation of dreadful song or I can’t stand this. Occasionally, her comments were more analytical, her favourites being Here comes the key change and Lazy lyrics. Now and again, she’d just reach for the switch without comment, as if insulted by a song or as though she’d just decided that listening to the radio was suddenly something she didn’t want to do anymore.

With regard to the albums, Richard could recall his mother playing them on her Fidelity record player, a wooden box he hadn’t been allowed to touch. When she had put one on and turned the volume up, the music had filled the house. Even with his bedroom door shut, the vocals and instruments had found their way under the door. Lego towers were built, Whizz Wheels Grand Prix were won and lost and Action Man saved the world to a soundtrack provided by James Taylor and Billy Joel.

Looking at his watch and noting with surprise that it was already half past one, Richard went into the kitchen to make a sandwich for lunch. He’d bought a loaf of white bread, some butter and a packet of ham from the corner shop near his home, plus a six pack of Stella Artois. As he unpacked the plastic bag (No, I haven’t got my own bag, he had irritably informed the cashier) he kicked himself for not remembering to put the lagers in the fridge when he had arrived. Even a quick blast in the icebox wouldn’t make a noticeable difference, not if he wanted to eat and drink immediately.  He put five cans in the fridge. With two rounds of sandwiches and can six, he went back into the living room and sat down on the sofa. He grabbed the remote, found the BBC news and turned the volume up.

Not that he took any of it in at first. As he munched his first sandwich, he went into that strange unfocused trance that seems to overcome people during the first few mouthfuls of a handheld meal. The body, suddenly realising that nutrition is on the way, shuts down all unnecessary systems - focussing, hearing, conscious thought - so that it can focus on breaking down and absorbing the food, regardless of its nutritious value.

After a couple of minutes, his body, now content with some fuel on which to get to work, released him and Richard was able to watch the news and take in what was going on in the world. Which was the usual mixture of predictable, banal and appalling. The lead stories were the financial crisis, a flood in the Asian sub-continent and the aftermath of a psychopathic gunman’s rampage in Lincoln which had left nine dead, including the gunman himself. According to the reporter standing at the end of a cordoned-off street, the man’s motives were unclear. Neighbours said he lived alone and kept himself to himself. Always the ones to watch, thought Richard. Bet he’s got an obsession with guns and likes to dress up in camouflage gear and parade around in front of the bedroom mirror. The banal bit was provided by a Premier League footballer’s messy separation from his celebrity wife. Recriminations all round; he’d been seeing some hooker, she’d locked him out of the house and torched his Ferrari as a result and the entire relationship implosion had been broadcast to a salivating world via the front pages of the tabloids. And now, these two accidents of fortune who had sold the rights to their wedding to Hello! for £500,000 and coverage of the birth (yes, the actual birth) of their twin sons to OK! for a million, were appealing for some privacy. Oh dear, thought Richard. Will you dreadful people ever learn?

He switched the television off in disgust and headed into the kitchen with his plate and empty beer can. For a moment he considered opening one of the other five which should now be cooled to something approaching satisfaction. He decided against it. Now, what next?

Rather than continue with the sitting room, Richard took a wander through the house, mentally noting the tasks that lay ahead. Much of the furniture he would send to auction. Little of it was of any value. The contents of the kitchen he would take to the tip. Surely there wasn’t much of a market for 50 year old aluminium saucepans?

Moving upstairs, he went into his mother’s bedroom, pausing for a moment in the doorway. This was probably as personal as it got, he thought, emptying out her chest of drawers and her wardrobe, her bedside table and her dressing table. He opened the top drawer of the chest. It was surprisingly neat; bras on the left, knickers in the middle, socks and tights on the right.  Well, that should make things a little easier, he thought. At least, it wouldn’t be like a jumble sale in a village hall. He closed the drawer and moved across the worn, peach carpet to the dressing table and sat down. He opened a drawer at random, smiling at the the sound of the loose-fitting drawer and the feel of of the wobbly handle between his fingers. If he twiddled it slightly it would, yes, fall off just as he remembered. Hadn’t he panicked the first time  this had ever happened to him? Embarrassed and slightly scared to be caught in his mother’s bedroom, he had frantically tried to reattach it without success. He had left it on the floor, hoping his mother would assume that it had simply fallen off. Richard never got so far as to establishing a reason in his own head why a drawer knob should suddenly jump out of its socket - earthquake maybe? vibrations from the road? - and fortunately he had never had to. His mother had never mentioned it and the next time he looked, the knob was back in its place. However, the embarrassment of knowing that his mother knew that he had been in her room had stayed with him for several months afterwards and his mother’s bedroom door had been firmly shut at all times. Never locked, but the message was clear.

He opened the wardrobe and was immediately enveloped in a cloud of his mother’s scent. She had never used it excessively, but application of the same fragrance over thirty years had inevitably resulted in every garment bearing its signature. Below the assortment of dresses, coats and jackets were a pile of shoe boxes, plus his mother’s sewing machine. To Richard’s knowledge, she hadn’t used it for years, but he could recall her working at it, mildly cursing as she tried to thread the needle and the bobbin for the umpteenth time. She had made some of her own clothes then, and Richard’s own were constantly being repaired and patched. His school trousers were always bought far too big. In the first few months, even during their first year of wear, they had to be ruthlessly gathered in at the waist by a snake belt, the bottom of each leg weighed down and made inflexible by several inches of hidden turn up. Over time, the belt would be slowly eased and the turn ups reduced inch by inch. When Richard was finally the appropriate size and height, each trouser leg bore a series of shameful parallel lines running from just below his knee to the ankle. No amount of ironing could erase them.

Back on the landing, Richard looked up at the loft hatch. Up there was history, box upon box of assorted junk, long since hidden from daylight. Given that his mother never went up there, even the standard items found in the average loft, Christmas decorations, suitcases, old photo albums, had found homes in the main body of the house. The tinsel, baubles and Christmas lights were under the stairs; his mother’s suitcase was under her bed.

Richard went downstairs to collect the stepladder and assembled it on the landing.   He gave the top platform a firm thump to lock it into place, and climbed up the rickety steps. Standing on the third step, he pushed open the heavy hinged door, bending his knees for some extra leverage. As expected, the loft smelt musty and stale. It was a typical loft, thought Richard. Why should it have a unique smell? He pushed the door open so that it leant against a joist and went downstairs to find the extension cable his mother kept under the stairs. Plugging it into the landing socket, usually reserved for the exclusive use of the vacuum cleaner, he attached the other end to his mother’s bedside lamp and carried it up into the loft. He placed it just inside the hatch and then climbed into the void, an ungainly procedure which involved hoisting himself up backwards so that he was sitting on the edge of the hatch and then, with the help of joists as splintery handholds, swinging his legs up. He picked up the lamp and moved it around to try and find the optimum place to put it. Eventually he decided to take off the shade, much better, and hook the flex over a protruding nail. The lamp swung backwards and forwards, shadows moving all around.

The loft had never been properly boarded out, but there was a reasonable area in the middle where some panels of chipboard had been roughly laid down, presumably by a previous owner. Laying chipboard in lofts was man’s work. All around, balanced carefully on the beams, were cardboard boxes of different sizes. Richard’s heart sank. Oh God, Mother. What the fuck have you been keeping up here? And more to the point, why? Richard opened the nearest box. Inside was a collection of books he had never seen before. The volumes on the bookcase in the living room had been familiar. These were strangers. Richard concluded that these unfortunate books had spent most of their life in his mother’s attics. Each time she had moved, they had simply been carried down ladders and stairs only to be subjected to a reverse journey at the other end. Never destined to be removed from their cardboard prisons, let alone read, they had passed their days in an unlit, lofty purgatory.

The next box was stuffed full of small packages wrapped in newspaper. Carefully picking up the topmost one, Richard pealed off some pages of the Daily Mail dated 3rd March 1977. Contained within was a delicate, coffee cup with a floral pattern. Apart from the occasional glance at the Antiques Roadshow which had taught him that, more often than not, the general public’s prized possessions are actually worth far less than had been hoped, Richard knew nothing about antiques. He generally tried to follow William Morris’ famous maxim which went something along the lines of everything in your home should be either beautiful or functional. Richard looked at the tiny cup. Functional, yes. Beautiful, not in his book. He rewrapped the cup, carefully replaced it and closed up the box.

The third box contained more china with the same floral pattern. This time, the pieces were larger; plates, serving dishes and soup bowls. Richard’s hopes momentarily lifted. If this was a complete or nearly complete set, it might just be worth sticking on eBay. God knows how much it would weigh and cost to post. Even if he added a recommend local pickup only plea, it was almost guaranteed that the winning bidder would live several thousand miles away. The thought of packing up a complete dinner service so that it could survive a trip half way round the world without sustaining any damage filled Richard with dread. Hmmm. Maybe the local Oxfam might be a less stressful, though less profitable, option.

The fourth box took Richard by surprise. Underneath half a dozen ancient copies of Woman’s Own, was a pile of his post. The envelopes were addressed to 21, Benskin Road, a house his mother hadn’t lived in for thirty years. The postmarks, those of them that Richard could read, were all dated 1976. None of the envelopes had been opened. Richard took a handful of letters out of the box and went through them one by one. Some had first class stamps (6p), some second class (4 1/2p). Most of the stamps were definitives, but Richard recognised a few of the special issues released by the Post Office. Some of the envelopes had corporate logos, many of which had been long since replaced, some twice. Richard knew many of them, but was puzzled why his mother had never opened them. He could understand not wanting to open a bank statement. Prior to internet banking and text messaging that offered you a daily opportunity to be reminded of the disastrous state of your finances, it was frighteningly easy to lose precise track of your money. Your statement would merely provide confirmation of your worst fears. Much easier to chuck it in a drawer. However, some of the unopened envelopes were handwritten. This was personal correspondence his mother had been ignored and left unopened. He opened a handwritten envelope at random.

Rose Trees

Brighton Road

Bexhill-on-Sea

7th March 1976

Dear Mary,

Thank you so much for your letter. It was so kind of you to think of me, especially with everything you’re going through. My ankle is so much better now that they’ve taken the cast off. That’ll teach me to try and negotiate our french doors while holding a tray of drinks!

Do give me a call when you have a moment. Roger and I have decided not to go to Weston this year as Enid is not well and I’m not sure how long this ankle will take to heal.We’ll just have to make do with the garden.

All my love

Gwen

So, it was Auntie Gwen’s french doors that were to blame. She’d used that ankle as an excuse for years afterwards. I would help you with the washing up, but my ankle’s playing up something rotten. Richard, fetch my handbag from the hall would you? I can’t move for this ankle. Richard vaguely recalled that Enid was his Aunt Gwen’s mother.

Richard put the letter into one of his bin liners and opened up another handwritten envelope, this one postmarked Redhill. He could barely read the writing which was in bright turquoise - a Parker speciality - and fiercely italic. From what he could deduce, the sender of the letter owed his mother twelve pounds, for which a cheque was enclosed. The cheque was drawn on the Tonbridge branch of Barclays Bank, the account name was H. Rafferty. Richard had never heard of him or her. He didn’t expect the bank would cash a cheque payable to a deceased person over thirty years after it was written. Besides, twelve pounds was hardly worth it. Letter, cheque and envelope went in the bin liner. He opened another envelope, this one a little more bulky than the others.

The address on the envelope was neatly typed; there was no stamp, but the envelope had been franked, so presumably the correspondence was from a business of some sort. Inside was a letter on crisp laid paper and a crimson passbook from the Dawlish and Dean Building Society. Opening it up, Richard was surprised to see that the book was in his name, Richard David Fairless, with his mother named as trustee. On the opening page, the first and only entry was dated 14th March 1976. It recorded a deposit of five hundred pounds. Richard tried a little mental calculation. Five hundred pounds, thirty years, interest rates at an average of, say, five percent, that worked out at...well, five per cent of five hundred was twenty five, times thirty was seven hundred and fifty. So twelve hundred a fifty quid plus the compound interest less tax, did children pay tax on their savings? Well, it was going to be a tidy sum whatever it was and as the passbook was in Richard’s name, presumably it wasn’t going to be form part of his mother’s estate, so no problem. Delighted with this unexpected windfall, Richard opened up the accompanying letter.

The letterhead was appropriately austere; navy blue embossed type plainly stating Parker, Andrews and Andrews, Solicitors. The letter was signed by Ronald Parker, Senior Partner and was, as might be expected from such a man, professionally concise.

Dear Mrs Fairless,

As requested by my client, we have opened an account in the name of Richard David Fairless, with yourself named as trustee and with an opening balance of five hundred pounds (£500). I have been advised by the building society that in accordance with the terms and conditions of the account, you will need to visit your local branch of the Dawlish & Dean Building Society to sign the book in their presence. This will enable you to withdraw and deposit monies into the account as you require.

I remain,

Your humble obedient servant.

Ronald Parker

Senior Partner

Richard re-read the letter and frowned. So, someone had opened a building society account for him in March 1976, when he was just a few months old, and given him five hundred pounds. It was the kind of thing grandparents might do on the occasion of a christening of grandchild, set up a nest egg. However, his maternal grandparents had both died while his mother was a teenager and he had never known them. And with no father in his life, well, not one that he had known, that put paid to paternal grandparents. Maybe it was a godparent with a little imagination and generosity beyond the typical standard silver tankard. Richard thought of his two godparents. If the benefactor was one of them, surely they would have mentioned the account at some stage. That would have sent his mother scurrying to find the passbook with a mixture of embarrassment and greed.  Also, five hundred pounds was a considerable amount and neither of them were that wealthy. First there was Roger, his mother’s brother, husband of ankle-sufferer Gwen. Roger had been something in civil engineering and was now retired. Given the thought that had gone into the Christmas and birthday presents Roger and Gwen had usually sent him, not forgetting the limited extent to which Roger had opened his wallet, Richard doubted Mr and Mrs Roger Buxton were the mystery account-openers. Besides, his mother had never had a close relationship with her brother. You could almost say they were estranged.

And then there was Annie, his mother’s best friend. She was a lovely lady and Richard had been quite close to her over the years. At his mother’s funeral, she had sat in the pew behind Richard and his girlfriend Beth. When he was growing up, she had been shown his school report at the end of each term and rewarded him with a shower of praise, regardless of what Richard’s teachers had to say on her godson’s achievements, and a five pound note. However, a gift one hundred times that size seemed unlikely, even if it was for his christening.

But even if it was one of his godparents and everyone had conveniently forgotten to mention the account over the intervening years, why would they get a solicitor involved? Surely it would be more natural to wrap the passbook in some pretty paper and hand it over personally? Then you would be there to witness the delighted smiles and gratitude firsthand. It didn’t make sense.

However, in the letter, Mr. Ronald Parker had referred to his ‘client’. Richard wasn’t an expert on confidentiality, but it seemed rather strange that the man or woman who had chosen to go to the trouble of opening a building society account and make a gift of five hundred pounds to a small baby hadn’t been referred to by name. Maybe their anonymity was part of their instructions to Mr. Parker, but why? Were they lurking in the shadows for fun or were they a Magwitch-type figure who did not wish to reveal themselves because of a dark secret?

And how old would they be? If they’d been in their twenties or thirties when they opened the account, they would be in their late fifties or sixties today. Maybe they were dead.

Of course, if his mother had actually opened the letter instead of ignoring