The weather outside has worsened, providing a soundtrack of rain tapping at the windows, and the candles sometimes flicker when the wind howls. My mother and Rose help to clear the table, before Nana reveals one of her famous homemade chocolate cakes, and takes her favourite champagne saucers out of the cupboard. They look like they’re from the 1920s, because they are. Dad does the honours, expertly opening the bottle as though he does it every day, and Nana stands up, holding her glass and looking like she might make one of her speeches.
‘I just want to thank you all for coming to Seaglass to help celebrate my birthday tomorrow. It means the world to me to have the whole family here together, and you’ve made an old woman very happy. Eighty is going to be a big birthday for me, and if the palm reader in Land’s End was right, it might be my last! You are the only people I wanted to spend it with. Here’s to the Darker family,’ she says, raising her glass.
‘The Darker family,’ everyone repeats, almost in unison, before Nana continues.
‘I also want to thank Amy and Ada, for providing us with a delicious dinner tonight.’
‘Who the hell are Amy and Ada? I thought she cooked the meal,’ Dad whispers to Rose, taking another sip of champagne.
‘The chickens,’ Rose whispers back. ‘She named them after Amy Johnson and Ada Lovelace, two of her favourite inspirational women, remember?’
Frank almost chokes as Nana continues.
‘Amy sadly passed away on Monday. And Ada died three days later. An act of widowhood if ever I saw it. That little chicken died of a broken heart . . .’ I feel as though the whole room stares in my direction again when she says that, and glance down at my hands.
‘Is it safe to eat a ten-year-old chicken?’ my mother asks, looking nauseous.
‘I suspect so,’ Nana replies. ‘Safer than jumping off a cliff at any rate. On a related subject, I don’t want to be the richest woman in the graveyard, and I’m sure you all want to know what happens when I die. I’d like us to enjoy the time we have left together this weekend. So, rather than keep you in suspense any longer, I have decided to share my will with you tonight.’
Seven
30 October 9:45 p.m.
less than nine hours until low tide
If Nana didn’t have everyone’s attention before, she does now. Dad leans in, my mother sits up, Lily puts down her phone, and Rose stops making an origami bird with her napkin.
‘This is my final will and testament,’ Nana says, putting an envelope on the table, and staring at each of our faces as though committing them to memory. ‘My solicitor witnessed me signing it earlier today and has a copy. I promise that I’ve thought about all of this, and all of you, very carefully, and I’m sure it’s for the best. Before I begin, I’ll remind you what I wrote at the start of my favourite book: The future is a promise we can still choose whether to keep. The past is a promise we’ve already broken. I meant those words, and I believe that the present is my only chance to protect this family’s future.’
She turns to face my dad. ‘Frank . . .’
‘Yes, Mother?’
‘I have left you my clocks, all eighty of them, in the hope that you might use the time you have left more wisely.’
His mouth falls open, but Nana continues without waiting for any words to spill out of it.
‘Nancy, my beloved daughter-in-law, you gave me three beautiful granddaughters, for which I will always be grateful. I am leaving you my drinks trolley. Like you, it’s now an antique but still good for holding liquor.’ My mother’s face is a picture I wish someone would paint, a beautiful mix of shock and outrage. My sisters are both grinning like the naughty school girls they used to be until Nana turns to them. ‘Rose, I am leaving you my unpublished artwork and brushes, in the hope that you might paint a happier future for yourself. Lily, when I die, all the mirrors in this house will belong to you, in the hope that you might see what you’ve become.’
Nobody is smiling now, including me. I’m terrified of what Nana might say next.
‘Daisy is the only person in this family who never asked me for a penny,’ she says, smiling in my direction. ‘I plan to leave a sizeable sum to her favourite charities.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, and Lily pulls a face.
I am grateful, really I am, but I confess that I always secretly hoped that Seaglass might be mine one day. I don’t think anyone in this family loves this place the way that I do. Nana takes a sip of her champagne before carrying on.