No reply came to her call and Billie sighed, as she put her bag down on an empty armchair.
Assessing the living room, she saw plastic boxes of photographs from the shed had managed to make their way inside, but the lid had been lifted and now snapshots of Billie’s childhood lay sprawled across the wooden floors. Photos of her and her father, and her mother, photos with her and her mother’s parents, family friends, parties, but no one else. She knew nothing of her father’s past, or his family, and loyalty to her mother meant she didn’t pry into the past.
‘Billie.’ She heard her mother say her name and she pulled herself away from the photos.
Dropping the photographs back onto the table, she looked up to see her mother standing in the room, phone in hand.
‘How’s it all going?’ she asked, already knowing the answer.
‘Henri’s mother has died,’ came Elisabeth’s reply; her face went its usual shade of ivory whenever she mentioned Billie’s father’s side of the family.
‘Oh, shit. I guess she was pretty old,’ said Billie casually.
‘Don’t swear when you learn of someone’s death,’ admonished Elisabeth.
‘Why not? I didn’t know the woman,’ said Billie with a careless shrug. ‘It’s not like she made any effort to see us after Papa died.’
Billie never asked about her any more. When she was younger, she had asked a few questions, but Elisabeth’s answers were short and angry, using words such as ‘toxic’ and ‘corrupt’, and Billie, who grieved her father deeply, needed someone to blame, so her father’s family from France seemed a likely reason. She trusted her mother’s opinion and so she joined her in hating them and getting on with their lives as a form of revenge.
‘I know, but she was still your father’s mother. That accounts for some respect,’ said Elisabeth. ‘That was her lawyer on the phone. A lovely man, very kind and discreet. He didn’t ask me about Henri at all; I assume he knows what happened.’
‘OK,’ she said slowly, trying to read her mother’s face. Elisabeth seemed stressed and worried, as though things were all out of place, which they were, thought Billie, but this was more than just moving house.
‘He wants you to go to London for the reading of the will,’ she said, surprise showing on her face.
‘London? Me? You also?’ asked Billie, aware she was speaking in staccato but unable to piece together the thoughts jumbling in her mind.
‘Just you, not me. He said it’s vital,’ Elisabeth stated, clearly saddled with the importance of the message.
‘I don’t want anything of hers,’ said Billie, bending over and picking up the photographs and stuffing them back into the plastic box they had escaped from.
‘He said it was vital,’ her mother repeated, her eyes widening at the last word.
‘I doubt it. Probably some old relic she wants to be passed to me,’ said Billie. ‘I’m not interested in anything they want to give me or you.’
Elisabeth paused as though about to speak and then deciding against it.
‘Go on, say what you were thinking,’ said Billie, crossing her arms.
The house felt cold, and the dust was making her eyes itchy.
‘Billie, the thing is, you father . . .’ Her voice trailed away.
‘What about him?’
‘He was from a good family in France, they have money.’
‘I don’t need money,’ said Billie.
‘No, I know, it’s just that, well, when your father died, I changed our names to March, to try to take away the legacy of his family.’
‘So what is his name?’ Now Billie felt that everything was out of place. She was Billie March. All her documents said so, and it was her mother’s name. She had just assumed they were Marches.
‘Le Marche,’ said Elisabeth, looking ashamed.
‘OK, Le Marche. And what else do I need to know that you might have omitted from my past?’ Billie felt her arms cross and she tried to uncross them, but she felt like everything was coming at her at once.
‘The Le Marches own a successful skincare company across Europe.’
Billie stared at her mother, trying to understand.
‘They are very, very wealthy, and I think your father would like you to have what Daphné has left to you.’
‘You told me my entire life that they were next to evil in terms of family, and now you’re telling me to go there and take whatever trinket or cash they have left me? Do you realise what a hypocrite you sound like?’
‘I thought it would be good to find out what it is. It might have something to do with Henri,’ Elisabeth said in a flat voice.
Billie knew her mother wasn’t a manipulative woman, but she was also not without demands. While Elisabeth would never ask Billie to do anything she wasn’t comfortable with, there was always something around her husband’s death that made her lose all sense of herself.
But she was as selfless as she was generous, which now made Billie now feel terrible.
Since her father’s death, Billie had watched Elisabeth try to get on to the best of her ability without her beloved Henri and, to the outsider, she had succeeded. As a well-respected professor of French poetry, and a poet with a few volumes of her work published, a new husband and a daughter who had a degree in chemistry, she had done well as far as the benchmark of success indicated.
What others didn’t see was the toll that came from coping with a death she didn’t see coming, and one that she wondered every day if she might have prevented. The anniversaries of Henri’s death where Elisabeth wouldn’t get out of bed. The man missing in the photos at Billie’s birthdays and at Christmas that caused Elisabeth to shed a tear in the kitchen, where Billie had found her many times, weeping over the sink.
But now Billie was furious. ‘Why didn’t you tell me who Dad’s family are?’
Elisabeth swallowed a few times. ‘I didn’t want you to leave me for them,’ she said. ‘The lure of money can be very enticing.’
‘Did you think I would do that? God, Mum, you don’t know me at all.’
‘I’m sorry, I just hate them,’ said Elisabeth passionately, and then she burst into tears.
‘Mum, I don’t want anything from them, even if it is Papa’s. He’s gone, we’ve all got lives now that are successful away from the Le Marches.’
Elisabeth looked down at the phone in her hand and slowly nodded. ‘Of course, you’re right, I will let the man know that they can send you anything via mail, or ship it, whatever it is.’
Billie saw the disappointment in her mother’s face and she knew the real reason she wanted her daughter to attend the will reading was to see if there was a final clue to Henri’s death. Something, anything, to tell her why it ended the way it did.
‘It will be an old painting or something, Mum, honestly, they’re not going to give me anything valuable. No doubt the family would have got their hands on anything worth money by now.’
Elisabeth raised her dark eyebrows and rolled her eyes a little.
Billie felt better seeing her mother’s scorn replacing her bewilderment.
‘You’re right,’ she said, looking relieved.
‘Of course I’m right, I’m a realist,’ said Billie. ‘You can try so many different ways to get a different result but often end up with the same outcome. That family is exactly the same. No matter what