Free Dolly by Susan Hill

he has been suffering from dementia for the last eighteen months and so I wasn’t able to discuss this with him.’
    He looked up at us both. His face was serious but there was a flicker of amusement there too. He was a good looking, pleasant man with a strong trace of the local accent in his educated voice.
    Leonora sat with one stockinged leg crossed tightly over the other. I tried to imagine her as the mother of a child, but simply could not. I felt sorry for any offspring she might produce.
    ‘Mrs Dickinson left her entire estate, which includes everything I mentioned above – the money, pieces of jewellery and so on, plus Iyot House, with all its contents – with an exception which I will come to –’ He cleared his throat nervously, and hesitated a moment before continuing, ‘to Mr Edward Cayley…’ A glance at me.
    ‘The exception …’
    But before he could read on, Leonora let out an animal cry of rage and distress. I had heard it once before. The voice was older, the tone a little deeper, but otherwise her furious howl was exactly the same as the one she had uttered the night of her birthday when she had opened the doll Aunt Kestrel had brought for her from London.
    Mr Maundeville looked alarmed. I got up, and took Leonora’s arm but she shook me off and raged at us both, her words difficult to make out but not difficult to guess at. He proffered water, but then simply sat waiting for the outburst to run its course.
    Leonora was like someone possessed. She ragedagainst Aunt Kestrel, me, the solicitor, raged about unfairness and deceit and hinted at fraud and collusion. The house should have been hers, the estate hers, though we could not discover why she was so sure. Desire, want, getting what she believed ought to be hers – simple greed, these were what drove her, as they had driven her in childhood and, I saw now, throughout her life.
    In the end, I persuaded her to calm and quieten by saying that whatever Aunt Kestrel had willed, once the estate was mine I could do what I liked and there was no question of not sharing things with her fairly. This stopped her.
    Mr Maundeville had clearly formed a poor impression of Leonora and wanted her out of his sight. He went back to the Will.
    ‘Mrs Dickinson has left one item to you, Mrs Sebastian. I confess I do not fully understand the wording.
    ‘My niece Leonora should have the china doll which was my 9th birthday gift to her and for which she was so ungrateful, in the hope that she will learn to treat it, as she should treat everyone, with more kindness and care.’
    He sat back and laid down the paper. Leonora’s hands were shaking, her face horribly pale andcontorted with fury. But she said no word. She got up and walked out, leaving me to smooth things over, explain and apologise as best I could and follow her into the square.
    She was nowhere to be seen. I wandered about for some time looking for her but in the end I gave up, and drove back out to Iyot House. Of course, I intended to share my inheritance with Leonora. I could not in conscience have done anything else, though she had made me angry and tempted me to change my mind and keep everything, simply out of frustration at her behavior. She was the child she had been and if no one else could bring her face to face with her unpleasant character, perhaps I could.
    But whatever I decided, I was determined that she should have the wretched doll. As I drove across the fen something was hovering just under the surface of my mind, as it had been hovering all the previous night, but when I had heard Maundeville read out the clause about the doll, something had bubbled nearer to the surface, and I had remembered Leonora’s outburst that terrible evening, Aunt Kestrel’s hurt and annoyance, and then something else, something closer to me, or rather, to my eight-year-old self.
    The sun was shining and there was a brisk breeze. As I went towards the gates to the yard, I saw thatthey had been opened already