The Legacy: Trouble Comes Disguised As Family (Unspoken Book 2) by T. Belshaw (the best books to read .txt) 📗

won’t go into them here but please believe me, my love, they are there to protect you as much as the house and the money.

Regarding my funeral.

I’d like you to organise this Jessica as you are the only person I can trust to do as I ask. If you don’t feel up to it, please let my solicitors know and they will arrange everything.

I’m not expecting great crowds to turn up to see me off, you’ll be lucky to see half a dozen people if I’m honest and I don’t really care anyway. I don’t want a religious service, though I know they’ll still sing a couple of hymns and the vicar will wax lyrical about the afterlife. I’d like to be cremated. I don’t see the point in me taking up space on the earth when my consciousness has long left it. I’d be happy if you could sprinkle my ashes somewhere close to my mum and dad’s graves though. If the powers that be won’t let you do that, then just chuck them around what’s left of the farm, though I’d appreciate it if you didn’t dump me anywhere in the vicinity of the old milking parlour foundations.

I’m sure I only lasted as long as I did because of the love you showed me, Jessica. Our bond is sincere and secure and nothing, not even death, can break it. Please don’t worry when your own end is in sight and you begin to see the misty light, emanating from the tunnel in your dreams. When you arrive, you’ll find me waiting to take you inside. This I promise.

Goodbye, my darling. I wish you luck and happiness every day for the rest of your life. We both know it won’t be like that, it never is, but I wish it for you nonetheless. I also hope that before too long you’ll see what a louse Calvin is. Please be careful, Jessica, that man is dangerous.

I also wish you good luck in your future choice of men, though as you are pretty much a clone of me, I’m not going to hold what little breath is left inside of me. We can’t really help ourselves, we are attracted to ‘bad boys’, they fascinate us, we have to know if we can tame them. Well, we can’t. I finally gave up trying and I’ve no doubt that one day, you will too. Until then, just be as careful as you can, enjoy the fun times but don’t allow the bad times to get out of hand. One slap is one slap too many. Don’t fear being lonely, Jessica. Solitude has its benefits.

Sending you all my love from this life and the next (if there is one).

Your loving great grandmother,

Alice.

Jess read the letter twice before opening the envelope to slip it back inside. Stuck in the bottom of the envelope was a cheque for two thousand pounds, made out to Gwen. On the back of the cheque Alice had written a note.

Don’t dare refuse to take this money you silly, wonderful woman. You deserve every penny, and more. I don’t know what I’d have done without you. Love, Alice.

Jess dragged the coffee table back to its usual spot, laid the cheque in the centre and sat her empty mug on top of it so that Gwen would easily find it when she came back to clean up.

She was about to leave when she remembered the, as yet unread, 1939 memoir that Alice had slipped into the drawer of her bedside cabinet. She pulled it out, held it to her chest and spoke aloud.

‘I wonder what other secrets you have for me to discover… what was it that Amy called you… Alice, Hussy?’

Jess dropped the letter and notebook into her bag and left the house.

The funeral passed off as well as could be expected. The autumn weather was glorious and no one needed to wear a top coat. As she walked into the crematorium chapel, Jess thought back to Alice’s memoir, where she had described the day of her father’s funeral…

It was the perfect day for a funeral, if you can have such a thing. In the films and in books, a funeral is always held in foul, wet, windy, weather, as though the deceased was playing a final practical joke on the mourners. My father, it seemed, had ordered wall to wall sunshine for his funeral. This made me happy for two reasons. One, I wouldn’t have to stand around, shivering while water dripped down my neck from the branches of the old oak, and two, the blue sky gave me the crazy idea that the sun was celebrating his reunification with the love of his life. This thought cheered me, and I clung on to it all the way through the service.

‘You ordered up some beautiful weather for your big day too, Nana. I hope you’re reunified with your mum and dad now,’ Jess whispered.

Alice was remarkably correct in her prediction of the number of people that would attend. There were six, including the man holding the service.

Gwen sat on the front row with Jess while Alice’s daughters, Martha and Marjorie, sat at the back along with Jess’s mum, Nicola who slipped in just as the service was getting underway.

They sang along to the same hymn that had been sung at Alice’s father’s funeral all those years before. Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam and All Things Bright and Beautiful, which Jess had chosen, knowing Alice wouldn’t have minded. The funeral celebrant, conducting the service, kept God out of it in the main, but he did slip in a prayer for Alice after Jess read out the eulogy that she had written herself. She did hear Martha and Nicola splutter when she waxed lyrical about Alice’s generosity.

At the end of the service, the curtains closed in front of the coffin and Jess whispered her final goodbye. She left the chapel with Gwen, to find Martha, Marjorie and her own mother waiting