Cecelia Ahern - How to Fall in Love

‘I should leave,’ I whispered to Adam.

‘You’re staying,’ he said firmly, not bothering to whisper. All heads turned to look at us.

We all sat fidgeting nervously: Adam and me on one brown leather couch, and on the other Lavinia and Maurice, whose lawyers had got him out on bail only an hour or so earlier. He appeared to be on the verge of a coronary; his eyes were red and raw, his face sagged with exhaustion, and his skin was dry and blotchy.

The reason everyone was nervous was because while Adam believed, and had been told, the job would go to him, now that the eldest child, Lavinia, was home she had prior claim. Plus there was no knowing what she might have done to secure her future while her father was on his death bed. So now Adam wanted the job and Lavinia wanted it more than ever.

Arthur May, the lawyer, cleared his throat. A seventy-year-old with long wavy grey hair, slicked with gel and tucked behind his ears, and a beard like a musketeer, he had attended the same boarding school as Dick Basil and was one of the few men that he’d trusted. There was a moment’s silence while he looked around to ensure he had everyone’s attention, then he began reading the will in a clear, crisp, authoritative voice that made it clear here was a man who was not to be argued with. When he reached the part where, in accordance with Richard Basil’s wishes and in compliance with the last will and testament of the late Bartholomew Basil, Adam Richard Bartholomew Basil was to take control of Basil’s and become its CEO, Lavinia jumped up out of the couch and screeched. No words in particular, just a banshee wail, as if she were a woman who’d been accused of witchery and tied to a burning stake.

‘Impossible!’ she spluttered, suddenly coherent again. ‘Arthur, how could this be?’ She turned and pointed an accusing finger at Adam. ‘You tricked him! You tricked a dying old man.’

‘No, Lavinia, that’s what you tried to do,’ Adam said coolly. He was utterly calm. I couldn’t quite believe it; here he was, completely at peace with the decision and the role, when only a week or so earlier he had been threatening to jump off a bridge.

‘This bitch had something to do with it!’ She pointed her manicured nail at me. My heart hammered at suddenly being the centre of attention in another family’s mess.

‘Leave her out of it, Lavinia. It’s got nothing to do with her.’

‘You’ve always been the same, Adam – pussy-whipped by every woman you’ve ever been with. Barbara, Maria, and now this one. Well, I’ve seen your funny little bedroom arrangements and I can guess what’s going on!’ She narrowed her eyes at me and I recoiled. ‘What, she won’t sleep with you until you’re married? She wants your money, Adam. Our money – and she’s not getting it. Don’t think you can fool me, you little bitch.’

‘Lavinia!’ Adam exploded in that terrifying angry voice. He shot up from the couch as if he wanted to rip his sister’s head off and eat it. Lavinia was immediately silenced. ‘The reason Father left the company to me is because you stole five million from him. Remember?’

‘Don’t be so childish!’ Tellingly, she looked away as she said this. ‘He gave it to us to invest.’

‘Oh, it’s us now, is it? Pity Maurice has to face the music on his own, isn’t it, Maurice?’

If Maurice had looked to be a broken man before, he seemed close to disintegration now.

‘That’s right, Lavinia,’ Adam continued, ‘Father gave the money to you to invest – in your villa in Nice, in the extension to your house, in all those fancy soirees you hosted to get your face in magazines and raise money for charities that I’m beginning to wonder even existed.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ Maurice said quietly, shaking his head and looking at the ground as if reading the words from the carpet. ‘It wasn’t like that at all.’

He’d probably been repeating the phrase continuously since the police took him in for questioning. He lifted his eyes to the lawyer, his voice still worryingly subdued. ‘What about the children, Arthur? Did he include them?’

Arthur cleared his throat, put on his glasses, happy to get back to the point. ‘Portia and Finn are to receive their inheritance of two hundred and fifty thousand apiece on their eighteenth birthdays.’

Lavinia’s ears pricked up. ‘And what about me? His daughter?’ She’d lost out on the big prize of running the company, but what was behind door number two? Perhaps she could save herself yet?

‘He left you the holiday home in Kerry,’ Arthur replied.

Even Adam was stunned. From the expression on his face he was veering between finding it amusing and feeling guilty for his sister who wanted and wanted so much that eventually she’d attracted her fears and lost everything.

‘That house is a shit hole!’ she shouted. ‘A rat wouldn’t holiday there, let alone live in the dump.’

Arthur looked at her as if he’d seen it all before and was tired of the histrionics.

‘And what about this house?’

‘It has been left to Adam,’ he said.

‘This is a fucking disgrace!’ she spat. ‘Granddad’s will is perfectly clear: in the event of Dad’s death, the company falls to me .’

‘If I may explain …’ Arthur May took off his glasses slowly. ‘Your grandfather stated that on your father’s death the company should pass to the eldest sibling, which indeed is you, Lavinia. But there was a clause, of which you may not be aware, stating that if the eldest child were to be convicted of a felony or crime, or declared bankrupt, the company would pass to the next in line.’

Her mouth fell open.

‘And I believe,’ Arthur continued, giving her a long look with dancing blue eyes, which made me think he was rather enjoying this, ‘that, leaving aside the recent criminal charges and whatever other actions may be pending, you have recently declared yourself bankrupt.’

‘Jesus, Lavinia!’ Maurice leapt to his feet, suddenly animated. ‘You said that this would be okay. You said you had a plan. That it would work. I don’t see it bloody working, do you?’

It was obvious from Lavinia’s reaction that this was rare behaviour from him.

‘Okay, darling,’ she said in a calm, measured voice. ‘I understand. I’m surprised too. Daddy gave me his word, but I think now he set me up. He told me to come home. Let’s go somewhere to talk about this. People can hear .’

‘I have spent the entire day, the entire day being harassed and interrogated over and over—’

‘Okay, sweetheart,’ she interrupted nervously.

‘Do you know what they said I could get?’

‘They’re only trying to scare—’

‘Ten years.’ His voice trembled. ‘The average sentence is ten years. TEN YEARS!’ he yelled in her face, as if he didn’t think she’d grasped the importance of what he was telling her.

‘I know, dear.’

‘For a crime I was not alone in—’

‘Okay, darling, okay.’ She smiled nervously, reaching for his arm in an effort to usher him out of the room. ‘Clearly Daddy has tried to have his last laugh.’ Her voice trembled then. ‘But that’s okay, I have a sense of humour too and I’ll have my last laugh. I’ll contest this will,’ she said, composure fully gathered.

‘You don’t have a leg to stand on,’ Adam said. ‘Give it up, Lavinia.’

I barely recognised the man I had seen trembling on the bridge, the man who had been silenced in his father’s presence, who had retreated into his shell as soon as we’d driven through the gates of his home. Nor did Lavinia, evidently, because she was looking at him as if he had been possessed. But it didn’t stop her getting in one last killer insult: