Free Just a Family Affair by Veronica Henry

double glazing fitted by now. But some years ago Angela had persuaded her husband to cough up for a mortgage so they could buy the house for Elsie, which was worth far more than the council was asking. Angela was shrewd; adept at feathering her own nest and making it look as if she was doing her mother a favour. She’d got the solicitor out pretty quickly as soon as the purchase had gone through, to ensure she was the sole beneficiary of Elsie’s will, and had watched beadily from the other side of the room as Elsie had signed it in her old-fashioned, sloping cursive.
    This particular Monday morning, however, she was trying to get her mother out of her house and into a home. Elsie was riddled, virtually crippled, with arthritis, and could scarcely do anything for herself. Angela couldn’t take the strain any longer. She lived right the other side of Evesham, in a sprawling, ranch-style bungalow with a pair of rampant eagles on the pillars outside, and checking up on her mother in Honeycote was highly inconvenient, especially when she had virtually full occupancy at the kennels twenty-four/seven/fifty-two. The Barkley was the ultimate in luxury canine accommodation, and it was hard work meeting the exacting standards required by pedigree-dog owners these days - air-conditioning, organic food, dust-free bedding and enough homeopathic beauty treatments to maintain the entire cast of Desperate Housewives. The last thing she needed was daily visits to her mother, lugging bags of shopping and taking away dirty washing, thankless and tedious tasks and really quite unnecessary when the answer was staring them in the face. If only Elsie would accept her offer of a place at Coppice House, which she’d had to pull serious strings to get, life would be so much easier. Angela couldn’t understand for the life of her why the old lady wouldn’t cooperate.
    ‘Mother . . .’ she cooed. ‘You’ll get hot dinners, all your laundry done, other people to talk to. They have fabulous social evenings. And a mobile hairdresser.’
    ‘Not to mention interfering nursing staff,’ retorted Elsie. ‘Interfering in more ways than one, if you believe the papers.’
    ‘It’s not a nursing home. It’s a residential home. There’s a difference.’ Angela took one of her mother’s gnarled hands and stroked it. It was all Elsie could do not to snatch her hand away. ‘Can’t you understand I’m worried sick about you? You can’t cope here on your own.’
    ‘Yes, I can.’
    ‘Look, Mum.’ Angela’s voice was low and soothing, the voice she used when she was trying to reassure one of her snappier over-bred guests. ‘Joyce has told me there’s a lovely room coming up next month. Looking over the gardens. Light and airy. She’ll move you to the top of the list if you want it. People wait years to get in.’
    It was typical of Angela, who lived on favours and bribes and backhanders, to have someone willing to shove Elsie to the front of the queue. Elsie knew Joyce Hardiment, the owner of the home. Angela looked after her disgusting pug dogs while she went off to the Bahamas three times a year. Which said it all, really. Elsie was not going to subsidize Joyce’s Caribbean jaunts by taking a room in her horrible establishment, which stank of wee and cabbage no matter what the brochure said. She tilted her chin defiantly.
    ‘The only way you’re going to get me out of here is in a pine box.’
    Angela dropped Elsie’s hand, all pretence of affection over, and lit a menthol cigarette. She sauntered over to the mirror that hung over the mantelpiece and inspected herself. White jeans, tight pink blouse, diamanté belt, freshly extended blonde hair that now fell past her shoulders, and a new set of square-tipped nails. Looking good, she thought to herself. She inspected her arse. Taut as any teenager’s. Roy had been right about that exercise bike. She hadn’t been impressed when he’d bought it off eBay, but she’d done as he said -