Her Mother's Will

Antonia had not entered her mother’s flat since her death. She had no wish to now, not for the reasons other daughters might have, where clothes and perfume could stir distressing memories. Quite the contrary, this place would have nothing but unpleasant reminders of a woman who had been the cause of so many tears for all the wrong reasons.

Whilst her mother had planned her own funeral that had the pageantry of a royal, nevertheless as the only child it fell to Antonia to sort through the inevitable bureaucracy that the departed leave in their wake. She knew that her mother’s flat would need attention, not least the clearing of her effects, before placing it on the market.

So, she called upon her friend Jenny for moral support. She had never taken to Valerie and had always stood firmly in Toni’s corner. The two women pushed the front door open against a litter of letters. The sitting room was fusty. Jenny threw open the French windows that lead onto a small balcony.

“Where do you want to start?” she asked, gazing round the room that resembled a high end antiques’ shop. “We have to itemise the good stuff,” replied Antonia, gathering up the post. Whilst Jenny made a start in the bedroom with paper and pen, Toni began to sift through the mail, curating it into junk, bills, and correspondence from old friends. One letter, however, seemed anomalous. It was a large white vellum envelope. She examined the front and recognized the name of her mother’s solicitor stamped in the top left hand corner.

Once released, the contents sprang out and landed on the floor. Toni stooped and picked up the thick document. She saw at once it was a new will, written about a month prior, and sent for her mother’s approval and signature. The details robbed her of breath. Broadly it annulled all previous wills, snatching her mother’s estate away from her in favour of Valerie’s grandsons.

As she stared at it, all colour left her face, she found herself unable to think or move. Her friend was suddenly beside her. “Toni, what is it, you look dreadful.” Antonia silently handed her the new will. Jenny had guessed the contents after the first few lines. “Bitch” she snapped. “What on earth made her do this?”

Antonia’s body suddenly felt very heavy as she envisaged more years struggling on an income that was little more than a stipend. Now seventy, she was not sure she had the strength for this unceasing ducking and weaving to make ends meet. She sank onto the sofa.

Her troubles with money had begun with her marriage to the charming but irresponsible Stephen. In the early days he had made his money as a professional gambler at the various London casinos. And he was successful. But the thrill for him lay not in the money but the jeopardy. This was fine as a single man, but he was now married. Antonia was pregnant.

Matters came to a head when having given birth to their son in an exclusive clinic, he arrived scattering charm amongst the nurses, ostensibly to take his new family home. However, he whispered to Antonia, “Sorry darling, I can't pay the bill, I lost the lot last night.” Antonia, brimming with hormones, burst into tears. This time his kisses did not have a placatory effect. “Listen, just fake an infection, I’ll win it back tonight.” True to his word he was able to settle the bill the next day.

But standing in the hallway of their Knightsbridge home, infant in arms, there was a show down between Toni and Stephen, with the ultimatum he gave up the tables or she would walk. Reading the resolution in her eyes that was motivated now by a need to protect her child, Stephen saw he was on the cusp of losing his family so gave up the gambling.

There was no doubt Stephen had a knack for making money. He built up fortunes like a Genga tower, which he would knock down when he grew bored and saw the challenge of a new venture. Offers were made that might have secured his fortune, like an invitation to invest in a nascent company called ‘Microsoft’ but he always rejected them as dull. His febrile brain sought the next financial adventure. In a way, such speculation became a substitute for gambling.

So, their married life was one of boom and bust. One minute they lived in Kensington and partied at Tramp, the next bailiffs were knocking on the door. Toni learned to use her Julie Christie looks and cut glass accent to charm them. But she also became savvy enough to squirrel money away for the kids’ school fees.

Her husband’s luck ran out at 58 when cancer was found to have overwhelmed his body. Like all gamblers he had scorned life insurance. Prior to his prognosis he had staked all their savings on a deal that his swift death effectively annulled.

She did not blame Stephen for the financial disaster that was his legacy. Instead, when the grief had dialled down a notch, she rolled up her sleeves to deal with the situation. The family home was sold and, after settling the outstanding mortgage, she was left with a small nest egg. She moved into her own cottage that she had insisted Stephen buy her some years before when he was particularly flush. However, Toni still needed an income. Her friend Jenny had introduced the idea of becoming a theatrical landlady. The cottage had two spare rooms and Canterbury possessed several theatres. All it involved was providing clean beds and breakfast the lodgers could help themselves to. The income would be just enough to cover her expenses. Her considerable jewellery collection became her ‘disaster fund.’

She was not ashamed to admit that what sustained her throughout the penny pinching of the last twenty years, was the knowledge that inevitably her money concerns would be alleviated. To put it bluntly, she knew that on the death of her mother she would inherit her late father’s fortune. Now it seemed that at the eleventh hour that relief was to be snatched away from her.

Jenny read the document thoroughly and reaching the end cried “Hang on a minute, she hasn’t signed it yet. “Her friend glanced at the date; it had arrived posthumously. “The will won’t stand, Toni,” she sat down beside her. “See for yourself” With vision blurred by shock she peered at the empty line that awaited her mother’s signature. Hope flared like a struck match. “Does it invalidate”? It seemed too good to be true. Jenny put an arm around her “Come on Toni. Where’s your spirit? “Antonia smiled weakly. “I will ring George. He’ll know what to do.” George was her solicitor of countless years who had helped Stephen through his many scrapes and was no fan of Valerie.

His secretary informed them that he would be in court until two. She did, however, detect the urgency in Antonia’s voice. “I’ll message him to ring you as soon as he’s free.” Toni knew that she would be true to her word but, looking at her watch, she saw it was still only noon. At least two tortuous hours to wait. Jenny had poured large glasses of brandy. She had also spied a deck of cards on a side table and suggested they play whist. Antonia nodded, “You’re a good friend in an emergency.”

They played cards with the will curled on the table like an asp. Beside it sat Antonia’s phone. Every now and then Toni glanced at it as if begging the mobile to ring. As they played, Jenny allowed Antonia to chew over her relationship with her mother. A nanny and then boarding school meant that Valerie’s social routine of bridge, dinner parties, and shopping was not disrupted by her young daughter. Never one for gestures of affection, kisses when they came were blown rather than bestowed. “In my view some women just aren’t cut out for motherhood,” pronounced her friend, as she grimly shuffled the deck.

However, when Antonia turned nineteen, Valerie became more interested in her not as an individual but more as an asset. She manoeuvred to arrange a marriage between her daughter and the son of a newspaper magnet.

But boarding school had made Toni independent. Instead, she was introduced to Stephen at a party. Every woman’s eyes, married or single, had followed him about the room, dazzled by his racing driver's good looks. But the moment these two met, it was clearly a case of coup de foudre.

When Toni returned to her flat in the early hours she declared to her flatmate, “I’ve just met the man I’m going to marry.”

Her friend had giggled, “Not the boy whose name you keep forgetting, with bags of money that Mummy wants you to marry, then?

Stephen, in fact, had a better pedigree than either her own background or the newspaper millionaire. He came from an old family whose fortune, regrettably, had long since been squandered by profligate ancestors. His mother was a successful actress and his father a busy theatrical agent. Together they had put Stephen through public school and Cambridge.

The pair both knew that Valerie would try and destroy the relationship. She would paint Stephen as a chancer, only after Toni’s trust fund. But this was no heist of a naive young woman’s fortune. On the contrary Antonia, although in love, had not lost her head entirely. She was a savvy judge of character. If anything, the two were in cahoots. So, a month later they eloped. The two of them blowing the money in five years of fun and adventure, where the world became their playground and no country was off limits.

“What a blast,” said Jenny, taking a swig of brandy. “She loved hearing Antonia’s stories from this time, which seemed improbable but were, in fact, the unembellished truth. Smuggling diamonds in Cyprus to dealing with pirates off the coast of North Africa.

“Yes, it was.” Antonia's eyes, for the first time, emptied of sadness and shone with the reminiscence.

The conversation inevitably turned to Stephen, this man who had shaken up Antonia’s life like a cocktail. Jenny had known him well. She had found that behind his charisma lay a kindness devoid of side or snobbery. He had that rare talent for making the person he was addressing, male or female, feel absolutely valued. His appeal lay in his genuine interest in others’ lives. He could chat for hours about cricket with the Sultan of Brunei who he was at school with but also pass the time of day with the local vagrant whom he frequently treated to a full English breakfast in a greasy spoon round the corner. Consequently, on their return, poor in pocket but ripe with experiences, her father did not chide but took to Stephen unreservedly.

Valerie, of course, wanted to hate him. However, Stephen had the measure of her even before they had met. He flirted with her from the off, sussing that her beauty was her weakness. He caught her off guard with compliments. “Valerie, I’ve met Elizabeth Taylor, and she has got nothing on you.’’ Toni would watch with amusement as the flattery gave her mother a champagne flush of pleasure.

Coincidentally, when he died, her mother had been widowed just three years before. However, her circumstances were entirely different. Valerie’s own background was modest. She had trained as a nurse and, during the war, had nursed Antonia’s father, who happened to be the son of an earl, back to health. He had been bewitched by her dark beauty. Marriage made her Lady Bedgebury. She revelled in both the title and his considerable fortune. On his death, she became a very wealthy woman.

“I thought it would bring us together, both being widowed,” Antonia remarked as she examined her cards. God I was naïve.” She had neither asked for nor expected any financial support from Valerie, but she would have welcomed moral support. “I thought we could share the awfulness of losing a partner.” Jenny remembered the effects of Stephen’s untimely death on her friend. Antonia had crept about as if in physical pain. Grief had lain waste to her beautiful face. Tellingly, Valerie’s demeanour did not change. She seemed to revert to nurse mode, regarding her husband's death as merely closing the eyes on another patient.

Toni sighed at the memory. “Without Stephen in my corner, my mother could finally settle old scores.”

She recalled their first private conversation after Stephen’s funeral. Pouring tea into elegant Victorian cups her mother observed, “Well, my dear, he’s left you high and dry, as I always predicted.’’ Antonia inwardly winced at the criticism. ‘’I’ve only just buried him, mother,’’ she said, realising that even his premature death could not satisfy Valerie.

“Oh, it’s sad no doubt,” her tone was glacial, “but the fact remains, he was irresponsible. Got bored too easily. Your fortunes went up and down like a temperature.” Antonia accepted the cup that was handed to her, but emotion made her hands shake and much of the liquid slopped into the delicate saucer. She stared at her mother. Words crowded her head as she strove to defend him. “He showed you nothing but kindness.”

Valerie smiled mirthlessly. “He was charming alright. But I never really trusted him.”

Her daughter looked in horror. “You think he was going to make off with the Gainsboroughs?”

Valerie regarded her with large blue eyes that seldom held warmth and now were downright frosty. “Well, he made off with you, didn’t he?”

Antonia, winded by this spiteful remark, could not speak. Her mother pressed her point.

“I’m merely stating that he encouraged you to squander your trust fund.”

Her daughter found her voice again; it was raised in volume. “That was thirty years ago, Mother and anyway, it was mine to squander.”

Valerie tutted and shook her head whilst selecting a piece of shortbread. "Well, it must have crossed your mind that he was only after your money.” Her opinion came as no surprise to her daughter. She knew from family and friends that behind the couple's back, this was the slander Valerie had spread.

So, Antonia had her answer. “Well, if that was the case he would have bloody well left me when it ran dry.”

A smirk grew across Valerie’s immaculately lipsticked mouth. She did not reply immediately, but bit into the biscuit as if giving herself time to change tack. “Of course it's my two grandsons I pity.”

Knowing the glorious childhood her sons had enjoyed, playing football with Georgie Best, who was a neighbour, running wild in the grounds of her half-brother’s stately home, the extensive travel, Antonia was at a loss as to her mother’s meaning.

“Your poor sons have nothing for their future. No money to help buy a first home.”

It made the boys sound like deprived children from a sink estate when, in reality, they had completed university and were now embarked on lucrative careers. Antonia was exhausted. Tears of frustration threatened to spill, and she would not let her mother see her cry. She gathered up her handbag and jacket and left.

But this conversation set the tone for the next twenty years. Her mother would never tire of the theme. She developed a knack of inveigling Stephen into any conversation. When Antonia’s ancient Peugeot needed repairs, she would tut, “Well if he had left you better provided for…” and Antonia would sigh “Are we really going to do this again.’’ Unsurprisingly she came to baulk at visiting her mother. Only performing filial duties such as chauffeuring her to the Drs, shopping, and weekly bridge parties where Valerie used her bone structure and title to enchant everyone. Her smile switched off as soon as she got back into her daughter’s car.

The friends continued to play cards. Jenny dispensed more brandies. At length Antonia’s phone sprang into life. She snatched it up. George’s tone was reassuring “What’s up, Toni?” Antonia’s heartbeat seemed to reach up to her throat. Words threatened to tumble out in an incoherent mess. But she strove to explain the facts slowly so as not to leave anything out.

Her solicitor listened, calming, asking questions, and taking notes. Finally, he pronounced. The will did not stand because it was unsigned. She received the news with eyes closed in relief. Luck, it seemed, had been on her side. Then a thought occurred to her. “But if the boys contest?” George had navigated countless such cases before.

“They could try but, in my experience, it wouldn’t do any good. Whatever your mother’s revised intentions were, the fact remains the will is unsigned, therefore not legally binding. The first will remains legitimate.” Antonia knew George was a canny solicitor and his advice was always sound. He advised her not to speak of this second will to anyone. “No need to stir up ill feelings before the funeral.” He instructed her to package the document up and send it to him to deal with.

Despite George’s reassurances, Antonia was robbed of sleep for weeks. When she did doze, she was plagued by dreams of the money being snatched from her. During the daytime, her body felt permanently clenched. Antonia had never had any intention of squandering this legacy. She knew that, given her parents had lived into their nineties, longevity obviously ran in the genes. Therefore, the money must last her at least 20 years.

But it would banish the constant financial niggles. Give her a better life. It meant she could have the heating on in the winter. The ramshackle Peugeot could be replaced with something dependable. Her only plan that might be considered extravagant by some would be an extension to her bedroom, making it larger with an en-suite that meant she did not have to troop downstairs to pee or take a shower. In fact, the expansion of the pokey room into a proper master bedroom would add value to the cottage. And food, she could treat herself to camembert, lamb, tiramisu….

At the same time, her mind was also grazed by other thoughts. Specifically, the unkindness that lay behind her mother’s actions, that as it transpired would now be her last memory of Valerie. It wasn’t just the withdrawal of funds but the callousness, the lack of any maternal care that lay behind the act. Antonia often envied her friends’ relationships with their mothers which, although not perfect, were still fundamentally based on mutual affection.

The changing of the will was also the last move in her mother’s plan to drive a wedge between Antonia and her sons. An ambition her mother had worked towards for years. Antonia had never prevented her boys from visiting granny. But she guessed that over whiskies one or other of them would listen to their grandmother, querulously complaining “She never visits me. I know she screens my calls.”

Antonia knew too that her mother had constructed a false narrative concerning her daughter’s finances. “Frankly, I don’t believe your father left her that broke.” Toni helplessly watched as her mother’s insinuations seeded. Ben and Tom’s attitudes towards her hardened. They seemed to believe that she dissembled about her financial struggles, insinuating that there existed a fund she had hidden from them. And she had no way of disproving the lies.

Part of the problem lay in Antonia's ability to disguise her impecunious state. The central heating remained off all winter. She would take to her bed in the evenings with a hot water bottle. She ate modestly and shopped at the cheapest supermarkets, elbowing single mums out of the way to plunder the mark down counters. Antonia did treat herself to new clothes to keep her spirits up. However, she no longer held accounts at Harrods or Harvey Nicols. Instead, she shopped the sales and discovered Primark. Her trademark blond hair was coloured at a local hairdresser’s training day for a fraction of the price.

Valerie’s funeral was a tense affair for Antonia. Knowledge of the second will had killed off the last vestiges of feeling for her mother. Her sons however were either in the dark or concealed their awareness of it behind tears for granny and glad handing attendees. Antonia went through the motions, greeting family and friends. Nodding without comment at their recollections of Valerie. “A loyal friend” “such fun.” Characteristics that were contradicted by her own experience of the woman.

George accompanied Antonia to the reading of the will. They sat together on the soft green leather seats, beneath chandeliers, the walls clad with oil paintings of former partners and Scottish landscapes. Glancing round him, George commented wryly in an effort to keep Antonia’s spirits up “Rather over doing the decor, positively Victorian.”

She shrugged in agreement, “It’s what my mother’s generation expected from their lawyers.”

Toni sat with her legs and body twisted tight as a rolled umbrella. She knew that the invalidation of the second will, if George was correct, would be like a hand grenade going off. Whether her sons were cognisant of the document or not, the result would be the same, their grandmother’s fortune would be snatched from them in her favour. The whole business had a contradictory effect on her. She dreaded her son’s wrath but at the same time she dreaded the possibility that the money might be taken from her.

It was unclear whether her sons would attend the reading. But when they suddenly entered the waiting room Antonia felt her stomach drop with dread. George whispered to her that their presence was significant. They had either been left bequests or were confident that Valerie had signed the new will.

At the sight of George, the sons exchanged puzzled looks but said nothing but a curt, “Good morning Mother,” and a nod in her lawyer’s direction. They elected to sit in the chairs opposite Antonia. No small talk was initiated but the sons spoke in undertones to each other. Seated in the lawyer’s chambers, which was a smaller copy of the grandiose waiting room, Antonia managed a veneer of calm that belied the turbulence in her mind.

George was entirely correct. The second will was acknowledged by her mother’s lawyer but then dismissed as invalid. She was the full beneficiary, apart from some generous bequests to Tom and Ben. Antonia showed no jubilation in case it might prove even more incendiary. She saw her sons exchange furious looks and shake their heads. Toni guessed they already had knowledge of the second will's existence. Evidence of this betrayal made her feel as if she had lost rather than won.

As the proceedings came to a close, her sons jumped to their feet, tossed the chairs aside to reach her, and snarled in their mother’s face. “Well, you’ve got what you wanted now. Don’t get too used to it, we’ll contest, of course. Granny clearly wanted us to have it.”

Antonia flinched at this display of verbal violence. George stepped in and drew their anger onto himself. He coolly pulled them up on their conduct, reminding them to act with some dignity. But the sons had lost all control. They accused him of somehow being involved in “stealing granny’s money from us” and threatened to have him disbarred.

George merely smiled, at which they unleashed a salvo of expletives. Other clients, not used to such scenes disturbing the old fashioned decorum of their solicitors, began to shake their heads and whisper. Two security guards appeared, obviously reserved for such eventualities. Their presence made her sons regain a degree of composure and they stalked out.

The episode had left Antonia feeling unsteady, so she and her solicitor walked slowly out to their cars. She sighed, “I don’t know where they get this greed from. They are so unlike their father.”

“Families and money are a toxic brew, “replied George. “I see it all the time.”

Her sons attempted to contest the will immediately. However, their lawyers advised against it. They began a campaign of bullying, trying to force her to surrender the fortune. The two men would arrive together like a pair of German pinschers. Once in the house there would be no preambles or pleasantries, they got straight onto the subject.

“Granny meant us to have her money.”

“You’ll squander it.”

“There'll be nothing left for your grandchildren.”

Her kitchen became the setting for these encounters. All three stood. Antonia did not deviate from the script George had given her to navigate these meetings. The second will did not stand. She could do what she liked with her money. And she would not be manipulated by them threatening to deny her contact with her grandchildren.

It was not just the script that got her through. Antonia found a new confidence now that she was no longer on the back foot financially. And years of struggling had made her tougher than she knew. There was a new firmness in her tone. Frustrated by her unwillingness to capitulate, one Sunday morning her sons lost all control and screamed their grievances at her. Antonia did not respond at first. Observing the greed contorting their faces, her sons seemed like strangers. When she found her voice, she spoke calmly.

“This money was, in fact, my fathers and he intended that I eventually have it.” And in a move that made the sons gape, “Now I must ask you to leave. Do not come back again if you intend to continue bullying me in this fashion.”

They left, slamming the doors and revving the engines of their Mercedes in fury. Her edict did not stop them calling again. And when she refused them entrance, they hammered on the door, even resorting to shouting abuse through the letter box.

Finally, George sent letters of restraint which seemed to curb them. In private Toni wept for their fractured relationship. She suspected this was a breach that could never be healed. They would certainly not forgive her all the while she kept the money, perceiving themselves as aggrieved and wholly in the right. The moral compasses which she knew they had once possessed had now sheared their bearings.

As probate made its way with glacial pace, death duties were met and the flat put on the market. Antonia began to feel that the legacy was unequivocally hers now. even though she had not seen a penny yet.

One morning George rang. “When you’ve a minute today, look at your bank account.” She could sense his eyes twinkling with pleasure. Ending the call, Antonia got out her laptop and logged on. There in her account that for decades had been trapped in the red, was a figure in black so large it took her breath away. She could not stop smiling. After gazing at the numbers for a while, she suddenly reached for the phone. “Andy, I think we can go ahead with the extension now.”

Article © Fiona Sinclair. All rights reserved.
Published on 2025-11-10