Free Charlie Glass's Slippers by Holly McQueen

“I don’t mind, honestly.”
    “Well, I think it’s pretty rude,” says Ferdy, obviously blaming Pal.
    “Me, too,” says Lucy, obviously blaming Honey.
    “I’m telling you, it’s fine . I just want everyone to have something to eat! And I’d bring out the dessert, but I don’t think Pal is going to get along very well with pecan pie and clotted cream!”
    “Oh, is that the pudding?” Honey pulls a regretful face. “I’m allergic to nuts, Charlie! I’m so sorry!”
    Upstairs, the doorbell rings, unexpectedly, for the second time this evening. It’s a mercy, because it means that I can abandon all the nut-allergic, cream-phobic stress and tension for a few blissful moments. Mum and Dad’s dinner parties weren’t like this, were they? Everyone claiming allergies and spurning the food in favor of delivery?
    I open the door to find a pleasant-faced young man I vaguely recognize, wearing a gray suit and carrying a large briefcase.
    “Charlotte Glass?”
    “Yes . . . I know you, don’t I?”
    “Well remembered!” He sticks out a hand. “I’m Oliver Winkleman. Your father’s solicitor.”
    “Oh, yes, Mr. Winkleman!” I met him for all of three minutes, in this very hallway, when he came around for a meeting with Dad last October. It was when Dad was getting bad enough that he was insistent about what people always call, depressingly, getting your affairs in order , and so Mr. Winkleman—actually, Mr. Winkleman’s boss, Dad’s longtime solicitor Alan Kellaway—was summoned to come and help. “You came with your boss, Mr. Kellaway.”
    “That’s right. But your father and Mr. Kellaway had . . . a bit of a difference of opinion that afternoon. So your father appointed me his executor instead.”
    “Yes, I remember him telling me something about that.” Dad’s falling-out with Alan Kellaway was hardly a surprise—Dad could start a quarrel with a paper bag if he really put his mind to it. “But why are you here now, Mr. Winkleman?”
    “Well, I do hope I’m not disturbing you at all.” He glances,uncertainly, at my updo (still resolutely not becoming a down-do; it’s the most successful part of the evening so far). “You look as if you’re going out?”
    “No, no, I’m staying in. I mean, I have . . . people here. For a dinner party. If you can still call it a dinner party when fifty percent of your guests order take-out sushi, that is.”
    “Ah. Your sister said you wouldn’t be busy.”
    “My sister?”
    “Sorry, sorry—half sister!”
    “No, I know that, I mean—which sister?”
    “Mrs. Porter.”
    “Oh, Gaby .”
    “Yes. She’s asked me to . . . er, this is a bit awkward, actually. I mean, didn’t she call ahead at all? To let you know?”
    “To let me know what?”
    “Well, obviously it’s your father’s will reading this coming week, and I think Mrs. Porter . . . well, I wouldn’t usually be doing this on a Saturday night, but she’s extremely keen for me to make a list of all your father’s personal effects in advance.”
    “His personal effects?”
    “Yes.” He shifts his briefcase from the right hand to the left, looking so uncomfortable that I wonder, for a moment, if some probe-wielding aliens might have gotten to him before he showed up. “Anything of value. She mentioned, for example, that he might have some bits of jewelry from his mother and his aunts, and perhaps some valuable candlesticks?”
    I stare at him. “And she wants an inventory? In case . . . what? I stuff them up the chimney for now and flog them on eBay later?”
    “No! Well, I mean, not you . I think . . . well, the reason she’s so keen to get the inventory done so quickly is because she’s a little bit worried that your other sister—Robyn, is it?—might pop round unannounced and start . . . laying claim to anything expensive-looking . . .”
    I sigh. It might be the most depressing part of Gaby’s nature that she feels the need to send around a