Free One Last Summer (2007) by Catrin Collier

all?’
    ‘Thank you for your concern. I have enough left to live on.’ She deliberately chose to misunderstand him. ‘The residue, such as it is, will be distributed in personal bequests.’
    ‘May I enquire to whom?’
    ‘Does it matter? I’ve already told you that it’s not going to you or Erich. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to leave. It’s been a long day.’
    ‘You want to call Samuel?’
    ‘Please.’
    He handed her the telephone. She dialled and spoke briefly to Samuel’s housekeeper before returning the receiver to Jeremy.
    ‘The car will be here in ten minutes.’ She left the uncomfortable chair. ‘You won’t contest the will?’
    ‘I’ll have to read it first and discuss the implications with Marilyn.’
    ‘If you take this to the courts, Jeremy, the lawyers will benefit at your expense, and your family won’t get a penny more than I’ve already given you,’ she warned.
    ‘I didn’t say that I wouldn’t sign. Merely that I was going to discuss it with my wife.’
    ‘How is your father?’ Charlotte asked as he opened the door for her.
    ‘Failing, but M ...’ He faltered in embarrassment.
    ‘You have every right to call Judith Mother, Jeremy. She’s been more of one to you than I could be.’
    ‘She looks after Father very well.’
    Charlotte gripped the doorpost for support. ‘Jeremy, I didn’t want to leave you. You do know that?’
    ‘I wouldn’t have been happy in Germany.’
    Like his father before him, he kept her at arm’s length. How did he know he wouldn’t have been happier living with her in Germany than in England with his father? But then, her relationship with her German son, Erich, was no closer or better. Perhaps it was a mother’s fate to bear sons for men whose influence eventually superseded and eroded the maternal bond. It had certainly been hers. Now, when she looked at the two children she’d borne, she saw strangers she didn’t like and could quite cheerfully ignore if it hadn’t been for the cherished memories of their babyhoods.
    ‘Will you be staying long with Erich?’ he asked, when they stepped into the hall.
    ‘No, I’m anxious to get home – to Poland.’ Even as she offered the excuse she shivered at the thought of Erich’s house, as cold and formally polite as this one, for all its luxurious furnishings.
    ‘When do you have to go back to America?’
    ‘Soon,’ she replied vaguely.
     ‘You will give Erich, Ulrike and young Erich our very good wishes.’
    ‘I will.’
    ‘I’m sorry we couldn’t go to the States for Claus’s wedding last year, but Marilyn’s parents are elderly and Father –’
    ‘Luke and Laura went to represent you.’ She looked at him. ‘It’s all right, Jeremy. It really is.’ She held out her hand and he shook it briefly, insensible to the warmth she’d intended.
    ‘You’ll call in on us on your return.’ He lifted her wrap from the hall cupboard.
    ‘I won’t be travelling back this way.’
    ‘You’ll be taking a direct flight from Poland to America?’
    ‘I have no firm plans.’ She sat on the hall chair.
    ‘You would have been able to negotiate a discount if you’d booked your return flight the same time as the outward one.’
    ‘It’s a little late to try to organize me at my time of life, Jeremy.’
    ‘Probably,’ he conceded. ‘But I can’t help wishing that the artistic temperament hadn’t manifested itself quite so strongly in Laura.’
    ‘She’s grown into a fine woman, Jeremy. I’m very proud of her and everything she has achieved.’
    ‘You are?’ he said in astonishment.
    ‘You’re not?’ She was even more shocked than him.
    ‘When she took her degree I hoped she’d teach, not go in for all this journalism nonsense. The programmes she works on are positively left-wing – and she can’t keep a boyfriend. Not that I’m surprised, given her personality. I keep telling her that men don’t like forceful, strident women.’
    ‘Perhaps “forceful,