Chapter 4: The Solicitor's Office
Her name was Patricia Vane, and she had handled my grandmother's estate.
I had met her once before, at the reading of the will, in a quiet office above a tea shop on Merchant Street.
She had silver-streaked hair and a way of listening that made you feel the room had gone completely still.
I called her at eight forty-five the next morning.
"Ms.
Hale," she said.
"I've been expecting you might call."
I stopped on the pavement outside my flat.
"Expecting me?"
"Your grandmother," Patricia said, "left me a letter.
To be opened in the event that certain things came to light." A pause.
"I think you should come in."
I was there by ten.
Patricia set the folder from Atelier Fontaine on her desk alongside a sealed envelope I had never seen before.
My name was written on the front in my grandmother's handwriting.
"She gave this to me eighteen months ago," Patricia said.
"She said: if Juliet ever comes to you about the money or the gown, give her this first."
My hands were steady when I took it.
I don't know how.
Inside was a single folded letter, two pages, written on the cream notepaper my grandmother used for everything.
*My dearest Juliet,*
*If you are reading this, then something has gone wrong that I hoped would not.*
*I want you to know the full truth of what I left and to whom.*
*The thirty thousand pounds I deposited with Atelier Fontaine was drawn from my personal account on the fourteenth of March.
It is recorded in my estate documents as a gift-in-kind to you, Juliet Eleanor Hale, for the specific purpose of your wedding gown and associated bridal costs.
It was not left to your mother to allocate.
It was yours.
I made that as clear as the law allowed me to.*
*I also want you to know that I spoke to Patricia about the Ashcombe Glasshouse booking.
That venue was reserved in your name, with your deposit, through funds from the account your father set aside for you before he passed.
Your mother was not a party to that account.
She had no legal standing to transfer that booking.*
*If she has done so, Patricia will know what to do.*
*The gown is yours, Juliet.
Every lily.
Every stitch.
I sewed sixty of those hours myself, on the three Saturdays I spent at Atelier Fontaine, while you thought I was at my reading group.*
*I am sorry I will not be there to see you wear it.*
*All my love,*
*Nora*
I folded the letter on the second page and held it in both hands.
Patricia waited.
"The Ashcombe booking," I finally said.
"Can it be reversed?"
"I've already drafted the letter," she said.
"I was waiting to confirm whether you wanted to proceed."
"And the deposit at the atelier?"
"Also protected.
Your grandmother's estate attorney filed the gift documentation before she passed.
Your mother would have been advised of this at the reading of the will." She paused again.
"She knew, Ms.
Hale."
I looked at the letter in my hands.
At my grandmother's handwriting.
At the word *Juliet* written at the very top, underlined once, gently.
"She knew the whole time," I said.
"Yes," Patricia said.
"I believe she did."
The room was warm.
The window behind Patricia looked out over Merchant Street.
A woman was walking a small dog below, moving slowly, unbothered.
"My sister is still wearing the gown," I said.
"Then we send Atelier Fontaine formal notice today that no alterations may proceed under any name other than yours.
Margot will comply.
She has already telephoned this office once this morning."
I looked up.
"Margot called you?"
"At eight fifteen," Patricia said, with something that was not quite a smile but close to it.
"She said, and I am quoting directly: *I don't know what that family did, but someone should know the truth.* She's prepared to provide a written account."
My grandmother had chosen that atelier for a reason.
She had chosen carefully.
All of it.
The gown.
The deposit.
The solicitor.
The letter.
The three Saturdays she had spent at a worktable pretending she was at a reading group.
She had known that something might go wrong, and she had built a road back to me anyway.
"Send the letters," I said.
Patricia reached for her pen.
"There's one more thing," she said, without looking up.
"Your grandmother also left a second envelope.
Not for you." She set it on the corner of the desk.
"For your mother."
The name on the front was written in the same hand.
*Carol.*
Just that.
No surname.
No softening.
*Carol.*
"When does she receive it?" I asked.
"When you decide," Patricia said.
I looked at my mother's name in my grandmother's handwriting and felt something I couldn't name.
Not satisfaction.
Not yet.
Something quieter.
The sense of a door that had been open for a long time, finally within reach of closing.
May you like
"Not yet," I said.
Patricia nodded and put it in the drawer.
