how?’ Neve blurts out, her voice too loud. ‘I mean, how can she have given me a fucking cottage? Sorry. But how? She didn’t even know me.’
Laura nods patiently.
‘It’s a special type of bequest,’ she says, ‘that can be made separately from a will. It applies when someone dies intestate, like Isabelle did, and is known as donatio mortis causa.’ She pauses. ‘Basically, it’s a deathbed gift.’
Their eyes meet and both look away at this uncomfortable term then Laura continues crisply. ‘There are a few basic requirements for this to be legally binding,’ she says, ‘and they have all been met, however unusual the circumstances may be.’
‘But why me?’ says Neve after a moment.
Laura sighs. ‘We can only guess that she wanted to make this bequest to the last person she saw before she took her life.’
Neve thought of the envelope, clutched in Isabelle’s thin, white hand.
She never even saw it fall to the ground when she’d dropped it a couple of minutes later. The shock of the other woman climbing up and throwing herself into the cold, dark water had thrown it violently from her mind. ‘What exactly was in the envelope?’ she says.
Laura lifts a coffee cup to her lips and takes a sip before placing it carefully back on its coaster.
‘It contained the deeds to the cottage, plus a written note. You may remember she also recorded a message into her phone, confirming your name, just before …’ she clears her throat ‘… just before she did it.’
‘God,’ says Neve quietly. ‘I don’t know what to say.’ After a moment, she adds, ‘Did you know her?’
Laura seems to lose her professional veneer for a moment and makes an anguished face.
‘We were at school together, years ago, but we weren’t really good friends. She was …’ she pauses. ‘She ran with a bit of a different crowd. I hadn’t heard from her in years. Then … well, then we received this.’
Neve chews her lip.
‘I can’t take it, anyway,’ she says.
‘Why not?’ Laura slightly tips her head to the side.
‘Because!’ Neve lets out a humourless, stressed laugh. ‘Because it’s not right. And what do her family say? Don’t they mind?’
Laura looks down at her skirt and brushes something off before looking up at Neve again. The shutters are back down now.
‘She only has a brother,’ she says. ‘And …’ she pauses. ‘I have no idea whether he wanted it or not.’
Neve shakes her head in wonder.
‘I just can’t understand why someone would do this though, with a complete stranger. I mean, why not leave it to, I don’t know, Barnardo’s, or Battersea Dogs Home or something? Why a random person on a bridge?’
Laura sits back in her seat with a sigh.
‘We can’t possibly know what was going through her head now,’ she says, wearily. ‘But she clearly had a desire not to be alone when she killed herself. Maybe she just wanted to say thank you, retrospectively.’
‘Well, it’s the saddest bloody thing I’ve ever heard.’ Neve’s eyes fill with hot tears and she swipes them away, furiously. ‘I wasn’t even that nice to her,’ she says. ‘I was impatient to get home. All I did was say I’d stand her a night bus and ask where her coat was.’
‘Well,’ says Laura, her gaze fixed on Neve’s face. ‘All we can assume is that this is more kindness than she would have had otherwise. Maybe it was enough.’
There’s a pause. Neve swallows and finds a tissue in her handbag, which she uses to blow her nose, more loudly than she intended.
Laura pushes an A4 padded envelope across the table towards her.
‘This really is happening quite legally, Neve,’ she says in a gentle voice. ‘You own Petty Whin Cottage and everything in it. It’s all yours now.’
Neve walks robotically back to the station afterwards, all thoughts of having a wander around Salisbury and finding somewhere cheap for lunch forgotten. She has a strong desire to get straight on a train and try and make sense of what has just happened.
She’s lucky with trains and is able to run for the Waterloo-bound one that is just leaving.
Finding a table to herself, she begins to investigate the contents of the envelope. There’s a bundle of papers, including the details of a lease. At the bottom of the envelope there is a small keyring in the shape of a dog, with a grubby suede covering that is worn away in patches, revealing carved wood underneath. It looks ancient, thinks Neve, spreading out the lease document and studying the address.
Petty Whin Cottage
Briarfield
Stubbington Lane
Cador
Near St Piron
Cornwall
Neve reaches for her phone and taps the Google app, before typing the name of the cottage into the search box. There are no entries for the property, but she learns that the odd name comes from a yellow flowering plant native to the area.
Cornwall.
She’s never been there. She’d wanted to ask Laura Meade if the cottage was by the sea, but it didn’t seem right. It might have sounded as though she actually wanted it. But the very word makes her picture blue skies, roses climbing up the front of a whitewashed cottage. Healthy sea air. Her heart rises a little, despite herself.
There isn’t anything much online for Cador, except, worryingly, a headline from the Cornish Times about a drugs bust. Neve assumes it is too tiny for mention, but St Piron seems to be a small town that’s a few miles from Truro.
Next she Googles the name ‘Isabelle Shawcross’ and after a couple of unhelpful entries about an American law professor she sees a news story from a site called West Cornish Life.
Christmas Suicide of Local Woman
A woman has died after apparently jumping into the Thames on 21st December. Isabelle Shawcross, who grew up in the St Piron area of the county, was 34 years old and left no husband or children. It is believed she had been living in Australia for some time before returning to the UK. The police say they are not treating the death as suspicious, but the coroner has yet to fix a date for the inquest. Her brother, local landowner Richard Shawcross, was unavailable for comment.
Searching further, she finds only a black American woman called Isabel Shawcross on Facebook and nothing else.
Bizarre. Isabelle
