Susan sat in the capacious reading-room of the town library, trying to make sense of the pile of books she had to plough through. The library had been partially funded by Opocapopopoulos; one of the first things he’d done when trying to manoeuvre himself into the village and buy everyone’s trust was to promise a brand new, state-of-the-art library complex with an exhibition centre. It would hold over a million books. It would have a space outside where visiting artists would be able to display enormous statues made of bronze, stone and steel. It would have a gift shop.
He’d given a then-still-wary council an initial sum of money to build the structure, which they had, but had then cut off the rest of the funding once he’d moved into Opocapopopoulos House, and bogged them down with legal battles when they tried to ask for the rest of the cash. So the library had rather embarrassingly stood empty for a while, until the university had tentatively asked whether it could use at least some of it to store some of its large amount of books, to which the local council had almost fallen over themselves to say yes to. The result was an enormous, echoing building designed by Richard Rogers or Frank Gehry or Norman Foster or somebody: in one corner, books huddled together for warmth, and the rest of it was gradually being taken over by temporary offices. There was talk that some of it might be turned into executive flats.
Susan had stacked a sizeable percentage of the library’s history section on the table in front of her, and was thumbing through them making notes. Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she dived to take it out before it started ringing. It was a number she didn’t recognise. “Hello?” she said quietly, glancing round to see if anyone else was looking at her with one of those “do you mind? this is a LIBRARY, and you’re not supposed to use your phone in it – if you want to talk, go outside” expressions on. Nobody was.
“Hello. Is that Susan Franks?”
“Speaking,” Susan said, a little uncertainly. “Who’s this?”
“My name is Trent Napkin,” the voice said. “I represent the interests of the late Mr Opocapopopoulos. I am at present engaged in executing his will.”
“Right,” Susan said flatly.
“Are you available to come into our offices this Thursday?” Mr Napkin asked. “We’re reading through the will then. I’ve already read it, of course, but parts of it concern you.”
Susan paused before saying anything. “Er,” she managed, “yes?”
“Thank you,” Mr Napkin replied, and gave her an address. “We’ll see you at two o’clock.”
He was just about to ring off, but Susan said quickly, “He’s not left me anything, has he?”
A microscopic pause. “We wouldn’t be asking you in if he hadn’t,” was all she got. “We’ll see you at two.”
Susan carefully placed the phone down on the table, and took a moment to steady her nerves. Bartholomew was not noted – in as much as he was noted for anything – for leaving people small gifts. If he was at a restaurant and left a tip, it would generally be at least three figures, and sometimes four; the rare occasions (twice in his life, in fact, and nobody knew about the first time) he’d donated any money to charity, the cheque had been a big cardboard one with lots of noughts on the end. He’d been the kind of person to crush the nut of unimportant problems with the giant sledgehammer of money. And the last thing she really wanted, or needed, was money. Paul, she was sure, would love it; he was always trying to think of ways to escape the crushingly dull humdrum of his job and go and live somewhere sunny with a pool that someone else would keep clean for him. But she was quite happy, thanks, with the life she had. She wasn’t sure what she’d do with a huge wodge of cash, anyway – she couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t been overdrawn, and she knew it would only sit there, smugly grinning at her in numbers before a decimal point, every time she used a cash machine.
And yet… her heart was beating faster, even though she didn’t want it to. If he’d left her, say, ten grand, that might be enough for the deposit on a flat, or to stick away in a savings account so the interest could at least pay her gas bill –
No, no, no. She turned back to the Boer War and how it traced a line to the Goon Show. And forgot all about the appointment until ten to two on Thursday, when, deep in a dissection of comic songs related to the Battle of Adowa, she caught sight of her phone lying on the table in front of her in the same way as it had been lying two days before, just after she’d spoken to Mr Napkin, and suddenly remembered. She swore to herself – quietly, because this was a library – and gathering up her stuff as quickly as she could while not making too much noise about it, bundled everything into her voluminous cheap bag (£4 from a nameless high street shop: how were they able to sell something so cheaply and still make a profit – which they obviously were – without exploiting anyone, which they didn’t claim they weren’t?) and arrived at Mr Napkin’s anonymous-looking offices two minutes late. “You’re two minutes late,” said the bored receptionist. “Doesn’t matter, though, nobody else is here yet. Can I get you a drink? There’s a water cooler in the corner,” she continued before Susan had had a chance to speak, “they haven’t come back to collect it yet, so help yourself.”
Susan made a sort of noncommittal “thanks” face, although she couldn’t be bothered to actually say anything, and sat down. She’d finished about half an inch of the cup of water when two other people came in that Susan didn’t recognise; the receptionist picked her phone up, dialled a number and said, “Mr Napkin? I think everybody’s here. Through the door on your left,” she added to Susan.
Susan followed the other two people, who hadn’t introduced themselves, into a small but tidy office which looked almost identical to the reception, but with the addition of a carpet and a drippy-looking woman carrying a leather folder, who sat on a chair to one side. A small but tidy man with a neat moustache stood up from behind the desk as they entered, and shook each of their hands in turn before they sat down. “Trent,” he explained. You must be Susan,” he said to Susan, who nodded, “and you must be Mr Arbuthnot and Mr Rankin – pleased to meet you. Now,” he continued, before Susan could ask why Trent was on first-name terms with her but not the other people, “to clarify, we are here to hear the last will and testament of Bartholomew Opocapopopoulos. Miss D’arblay is an independent witness, who is here to make sure that everything is conducted in a lawful way.”
An alarm bell was ringing in Susan’s head, but she couldn’t place why. She noticed a manila envelope on Trent’s desk, which his fingertips lightly touched. “I shall now read the will,” Trent continued, and pulled a sheaf of papers from the envelope, which he clacked on the desk once to square them up; he then began:
“This is the last will and testament of Bartholomew Opocapopopoulos, of Opocapopopoulos House, Rawndale Drive, Eastwestchester. This expressly revokes all wills and codicils heretofore made by me –“
Susan found herself drifting off; she tried to fight it, but the urge to let her thoughts roam was almost impossible to resist. She noticed a picture of a child on a horse that was pinned to a noticeboard on Trent’s wall: was that Trent, she wondered? The photo was taken from the side, with both the horse and the child looking straight ahead as if they were waiting for something, and looked too posed to be real. She had ridden a horse once, when she was about seven, and from what she could remember they didn’t tend to just stand there like that.
“… to my niece, Susan Franks, I leave my matching pair of Napoleon III ormolu-mounted tortoiseshell pietra dure side cabinets.”
Susan blinked. That was her. She was now the proud owner of a pair of cupboards.
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