Clearance

This will now be the sixth time I have met Kathy at the house and I am determined not to cry again.

It has taken us many months to get even this far and we are not finished yet.

Perhaps part of the problem is that neither of us lives very near. She is less far away, actually, but I guess my journey is more straight-forward because I don’t have cross the city.

We have always got on well enough, perhaps not “always always” if you know what I mean but certainly since we both left home. She’s five years older, so even now, although we are both adults with jobs or careers, I can’t help deferring to her. Big Sis. Not that we don’t agree on most things. Well,sort of...

We don’t agree on this, though - she keeps telling me that I was dad’s favourite. I tell her not to be so silly. “He loved us both equally,” I insist. Equally is perhaps not the right word. Differently would be better but I haven’t said that, have I.

I know from my own children that you love them for whom they are, not on any score card.

Nevertheless, as we now are going through his things, she frequently comes back to it. “He never wore this once,” she says, accusingly, when she opens a drawer in the bedroom. It’s a cashmere scarf she gave him years back, still in tissue paper. “He would have if you’d given it to him,” she challenges.

“I don’t think he often wore a scarf”, I say, half laughing, to placate her. Oops! That was the wrong thing to say. I didn’t mean to suggest that I knew him better, but maybe she thinks I’m implying that it was a silly present. Luckily she doesn’t flinch or repond, but that doesn’t mean much because she’s a dab hand at hiding her feelings. Perhaps it’s why she’s so good at her job.

The truth is I don’t really want to be here at all. After the funeral, I suggested that we just went once to the house together, took a couple of things that were special to each of us and then called in a house clearance firm.

“Don’t be silly, Shar,” she said. “There’s some valuable stuff there.” (She’s the only one who calls me Shar – has done since I was very little and Charlotte is a bit of a mouthful, I suppose.)

She was right of course. I didn’t know anything about the value of things in the house, really, even though we both lived there with our parents ‘til we each left home.

Just to underline that, the third time we met at Number 14 she brought a dealer she knew. He walked round making notes and offered us quite a lot for the bureau in the study and a couple of other things I wouldn’t have thought were of any real value. I never liked that Chinese vase, anyway, so I would have probably given it to a charity shop, or even bunged it on the tip. Nasty grey thing. Apparently, it’ll probably go for thousands!

Come to think of it, this was more-or-less a repeat of what happened years earlier with mum’s jewellery. It had to be all carefully valued. Some pieces fetched quite a lot, I believe. I didn’t want any of them. I am really happy just to have the silver the bangle they gave me for my eighteenth. Back then Kathy told me she didn’t want me to think she was doing me out of anything, but she could have had the lot as far as I was concerned. I wouldn’t have minded then and I don’t mind now, to be honest.

No, but she insisted we had to be here together. She’s probably right but I really hate going through his things.

Of course, Kathy is super-organised. No wonder she’s a senior partner.

Four piles every time: ‘Sell’, ‘Keep’, ‘Give Away’, ‘Throw Out’. She’s made labels. I’m happy to let her take all the decisions about what goes on which pile and anyway, I’ve never argued with her. (I did quietly put a small item in my bag last time from the ‘Give Away’ pile which I thought Tom might like to remember his grandad by. Fortunately Kathy never noticed.)

Now we sit on the sofa side by side and she tries to explain about the complications of probate. Her firm is handling all that. I quietly nod but it is a bit of a foreign language as far as I am concerned.

Kathy was always really good at figures. She did financial maths at Uni while I was still at school. She got a first. There was that framed photo of the four of us at her graduation. I wonder where that is now?

I make us a cup of tea with the milk and tea bags I brought with me – the kitchen cupboards and fridge have been cleared. I notice that there’s my pony-design mug in the cupboard but I make the tea in two plain ones to avoid further ‘he loved you more’ complications.

“How many more times…” I start to say, as I look at the four piles in the hall.

“Two more”, she says. “Then I’ll get Wilkins and Kings to do the rest”.

I have no idea who Wilkins and Kings are, but I’m relieved that we only need to come again twice.

Kathy gets out her smartphone and looks at her calendar. “I can do the nineteenth next month and the seventeenth in July”, she says. “Both Thursdays, about 2.30 here.”

It’s not a question. “That’s fine,” I say without looking at the dates - I can manage Thursdays if I swap things round.

As we sip our tea, she asks me about Chris and the children. I get the impression she’s going through the motions, but perhaps that’s unkind. “They are fine…”, I say and would like to tell her about worrying changes at The Medway, but she cuts me short.

“Graham is going to have an operation”, she says. “Down there…” she mouths in a low voice. I ask her for more but she won’t elaborate. “I know you’re a nurse and all that but…” and her voice trails off. I don’t press her further.

We have been in the house now for more than three hours and I help her pack the ‘Sell’ and ‘Give Away’ piles into the back of her car. She has already stowed away the ‘Keep’ items. I put the two black sacks of ‘Throw Away’ things in the boot of mine.

We hug loosely and she goes back in to lock up. I get in my car and back out of the drive.

I go left then left again onto the main road, and despite what I promised myself, I start to cry.