Page 57 of The Mother-in-Law

‘What’s going on?’ I ask.

He keeps his head down, which does nothing to ease my anxiety. I think about all the things I know about him—the way he eats his breakfast cereal dry, no milk; the fact that he sleeps naked all year around; his ferocious hatred of celery, so strong that he can tell the moment he walks in the door if it’s been in the house. But clearly, there are a lot of things Idon’tknow about him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers.

‘Why are you sorry?’

Finally he looks up. His face is tear-stained. My mind goes to the very worst places. Actually it goes to one particular place, very quickly. An image of Ollie appears in my mind, pressing a gold-threaded cushion into his mother’s face.

Was it possible? Certainly, Diana made me do things I never thought possible.

Ollie takes a breath. ‘I’m sorry because we’re ruined financially.’

It takes a moment for the relief to come, but when it does, it is a flood. I drop to my knees in front of him and take his hands in my own. They’re sweaty and warm and I kiss them. ‘Oh, Ollie!Nowe’re not. Sure, we don’t have millions upon millions of dollars coming our way, but we’re not ruined. We’ve survived so far, haven’t we? And we don’t need much!’ A beat of silence passes. Ollie keeps his eyes on the floor. ‘What?’

‘This isn’t about the inheritance. Well . . . I’d hoped the inheritance would save us. But . . .’ He drifts off.

My mind reels back, suddenly sticking on the bank statement I opened a few days ago. The huge number, the debt, at the bottom. A panicky feeling starts in my chest.

‘The business?’

Ollie nods.

‘How bad is it?’

‘It’s bad,’ Ollie says. ‘We sunk so much into it the first year, setting it all up. I actually have no idea how we spent so much, the money just seemed to fly out of the account.’

I sit back on my haunches.

‘We kept getting new contracts and I was working my ass off. And weweremaking money. But not enough, it seems. I should have kept a closer eye on the outgoings, but I thought Eamon had it in hand.’ He drags a hand through his hair. ‘When Mum died, I thought we could pay off our debts and leave the business behind once and for all. But now . . .’

‘. . . now we have nothing.’

‘Exactly.’

Silence envelopes us. I lift my hand to my temple. Now, not only are wenotinheriting millions upon millions of dollars, we’re also in extraordinary debt.

‘And Eamon doesn’t have any money he can . . . invest?’ I ask.

‘Eamon was counting on the money too. I’d talked about clearing the debt so he could keep the business operating.’

I close my eyes. I hear the faint sounds ofSesame Streetand the irritating melodic tune of one of Archie’s games on the iPad. ‘And our savings—’

‘Our savings are long gone.’ Ollie begins to cry—real, rolling tears. ‘We are in a huge amount of debt. Dad’s dead. Mum’s dead. There is no one to help us.’

I’m furious with Ollie but I crawl to him and put my arms around his neck. He’s right, there’s no one to help us now. The funny thing is, I realise, this is what Diana wanted all along.

34

DIANA

The past . . .

The truth is, I’d always intended to let Archie swim. I knew what Lucy had said, but I didn’t see how it could hurt. After all, I was going to watch him. Before Archie could talk and dob me in, I used to do even more things I knew Lucy wouldn’t like. I wasn’t doing it to spite her. It was just that she worried about a lot of things that didn’t matter.

‘Make sure he wears his coat,’ she’d always say as I disappeared out of the house with Archie. I’d nod and agree, but when Archie flung off his coat at the park, I wasn’t going to chase after him to put it back on. Natural consequences are better. If the child was cold, he’d put the coat on.

‘Did he nap for two hours at 1 pm?’ she’d demand.