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

‘Jessica, firstly I’d like to thank you for organising the funeral, though I think it should really have had a proper vicar leading it.’ Martha looked around the empty car park. ‘I thought there might be a few more here to see her off, but then again, she wasn’t the most popular of people.’

‘She outlived all those who would have wanted to be here, Grandma,’ replied Jess.

‘I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,’ Martha replied. ‘Now, listen, Jessica. We need to have a talk about the future. I’ve had a letter from a firm of solicitors representing my mother and it seems there is something for both myself and Marjorie in her will. I have to admit I’m quite surprised by this news, but I sort of knew she’d see sense in the end.’

‘She’s seen sense,’ echoed Marjorie, who had been under Martha’s spell from the day she was born.

‘I haven’t seen a letter, but then again, I haven’t been back to my flat since Nana died. There might be something waiting for me there.’

‘There might not be, Jessica, don’t be disappointed if there isn’t, maybe my mother did the decent thing after all.’ She narrowed her eyes and looked hard at Jess. ‘Let me know if you do get one though. We can all go to the solicitor’s together.’

With that she turned tail and strode purposefully across the car park to Nicola’s battered old Ford. Marjorie trotted along behind.

‘Don’t forget. Let me know straight away if you receive a letter.’ Martha slid into the back seat of the car and slammed the door behind her.

‘Well, I’m surprised at that, Jessica,’ Gwen looked puzzled, ‘Alice always said that her daughters would never see a penny.’

‘I don’t mind, Gwen,’ Jess replied. ‘It’s only money, though what my grandma would do with it at her age is anyone’s guess.’ She walked across to her Toyota and opened the passenger door for Gwen. ‘I think she just likes to be in control of everything. She’ll be thinking she’s the head of the family now.’

‘I just think it’s sad to see families split over money.’ Gwen slipped inside and shut the door behind her. She fastened her seatbelt as Jess climbed in alongside. ‘When do you get her ashes and what are you going to do with them?’ she asked.

‘I should have them in a couple of days, Gwen. As for what I’ll do…’ she smiled and tapped the side of her nose. ‘I’ve got a cunning plan,’ she said.

Chapter 2

Jessica stepped through the lychgate and strode purposefully along the grey-slabbed path that divided the graves at the front of the Norman church. She nodded to an old couple who were sitting on one of the memorial benches that lined the path and made her way down the side of the church to the even larger collection of graves at the rear. She smiled as the warm October sun peeked out from behind a patchy cloud, it was a perfect day for a second funeral.

Jessica flicked her head so that her dark, shoulder length, chestnut curls fell away from her face, and strolled amongst the mostly, ancient gravestones until she reached a set of two, set side by side under a huge oak branch that hung over the stone boundary wall. Jessica looked over her shoulder to ensure she wasn’t being watched, then knelt between the two graves and pulled an oblong, cedar box from inside the hessian bag she had carried carefully into the churchyard.

‘Here we are, Nana,’ she whispered, looking over her shoulder again. ‘I won’t tell if you don’t.’

Jessica put her hand into the bag, pulled out a small, gardening trowel and dug a neat hole about a foot deep in the centre of the gap between the graves. She opened the box and took out a plastic bag containing the cremated remains of Alice Mollison, her great grandmother. Jessica took a metal nail file from her handbag, pierced the bag, then dragged the file across to open up one end. Picking up the bag carefully, she tipped the contents into the hole and laid the empty bag on top of the ashes.

‘I hope you met your mum and dad again, Nana, but just in case you didn’t, I’m putting you in here so that you’re reunited, on earth at least.’

Jessica fished around in her bag until she found a silver locket that Alice had given her as an eighteenth birthday present. It contained what on a casual inspection, was two photographs of the same young woman, but if one was to look a little closer the differences, though slight, were distinctive.

‘And here’s the both of us together, forever, Nana.’

Jessica dropped the locket on top of the ashes and backfilled it with the trowel, then she stamped the newly dug earth down and stood for a few minutes thinking about Alice. Not the dreadful events in her life that she had described so vividly in her memoirs, but the happy times, the weekend sleepovers, the birthday surprises and the loving, sage advice that she had passed on.

‘Bye Bye, Nana. Sleep softly,’ she whispered as she stowed away the garden trowel and stepped away from the grave. ‘I’ll pop back now and again. I hope you’re happy, wherever you are.’

Wiping away a tear, Jess retraced her steps and walked back through the lychgate, onto the main road. As she reached her little Toyota car, her phone rang. The number wasn’t listed on her contacts.

‘Hello.’

A deep male voice with an educated accent, replied.

‘Hello. I’m trying to contact Ms Jessica Griffiths.’

‘You’ve found her,’ said Jess, wondering if she was about to receive a scam call.

‘Ah, that’s good,’ said the man. ‘My name is Bradley Wilson of Wilson and Beanney Associates. We are a firm of solicitors. We sent out a letter a couple of weeks ago but we haven’t had a reply as yet. Your mobile number was listed as next of kin in the case file. I wonder