Codicil

There was no speaking in that place. The silence was both a blanket and an armour. Many things could be said but not right there or just then. Jeremy looked at Alice with the same blankness he accorded all strangers. He had never had to defend himself before he met her but defending himself had become the thing he needed to do to stay alive, to breathe some semblance of normalcy into his days.

Time passed slowly in gentle clicks. The steamy nights were firmly behind them. Shadows of the romance they had shared had vanished in the light of time. Jeremy absentmindedly touched the soft arm of the leather chair between them and out of habit begun humming his favourite Mike and the Mechanics song. Alice pushed in her earphones a little further and fidgeted with her phone.

There was some movement at the door and then the soft thud of it closing. A young man, possibly not even in his thirties yet, sauntered to, and sat behind, the grand desk that swallowed some of his girth.

“Good afternoon. I’m glad you both responded to my request to be here this afternoon.”

Jeremy nodded but Alice was too engaged packing away the earphones. The smoothness of the patent leather handbag exposed her inattentiveness to moisturising her own skin. Her elbows, like parts of her beauty, were reminiscent of what was left after a beautiful bonfire. The same could be said of the lovers who met every chance they could, in places nobody could find them and parted only when necessity demanded it. Wild times, Jeremy thought and smiled to himself. Marriage and their jobs had dealt their interaction with each other a blow they had somehow never recovered from.

The lawyer who had been blabbing somewhere in the background handed them each bound copies of a slim document, no thicker than 6 or 7 pages. Alice’s eyebrows did that thing they always did when she didn’t understand what she was looking at; they drew closer together.

“These are slightly unusual circumstances for us to be gathered together,” the lawyer said, “however there was a special request from my client that this meeting be held separately from the main reading of the will.”

Alice turned nervously to Jeremy and then back to the lawyer who unsuccessfully gave her a reassuring smile.

Jeremy read the contents of his folder for a few moments before he looked up at the lawyer, unconsciously imitating the knit-eyebrows look that Alice had given him. “Are these my father’s instructions?” He asked disbelievingly.

It was the lawyer’s turn to look uncomfortable. “Yes sir.”

“But it says in here that my share of the property be split between myself and my brothers, 25% a piece…I don’t understand!”

Alice put her own folder on the desk and crossed her legs.

“Yes, your brothers aged 7, 5 and 3”

“I don’t know of any siblings that young. This doesn’t make any kind of sense.” Jeremy flipped through the papers to be sure he was reading from the same script as the lawyer.

It was Alice’s turn to speak, “Our children, Jeremy. Those are the ones he means.”

Confusion electrified the space between Jeremy and everyone else.

“But…” Jeremy started before a double interruption assaulted him from the lawyer and Alice.

“Not in the way you think..!” The lawyer was faster.

“Remember when you were posted to Gaborone?” Alice began, cautiously at first and then gathering marginal courage as she went on, “- you wanted children so badly. So so badly but it was never happening, uh, naturally. I had a problem and it didn’t make sense to tell you…”

Jeremy stood up, unsure what to do with his hands, much less his face. He buried his hands inside his pockets and stared straight at Alice.

“I didn’t sleep with your father!!” She yelled defensively, hands out in front of her blocking an imaginary attack.

“Then what did you do?!” His voice thundered, bouncing off the walls and destroying every thread of composure he had managed to put together.

“Your father helped us, uh, adopt three infants.”

A dark silence descended upon the room, squeezing itself into even the tightest corners. Nobody had the courage to challenge it, so it simmered for a while.

“I know my father. None of those could have been straight deals.” Jeremy winced, not turning away from the window he had wandered to.

“I can only say the deals cannot be challenged in court. You bear the same names as your father and the midwives who helped were handsomely compensated. There are no loose ends.” The lawyer spoke with less conviction than he had wanted.

“Why are you telling me now?” Jeremy broke a prolonged silence, still staring into some barren spot between the neighbouring high rise buildings.

It was the lawyer who broke the silence.

“Your father wanted no more secrets.”

Jeremy now turned to look at Alice first and then the lawyer, puzzled by the late entry of morality into the room.

“Does my mother know about this?”

Alice looked away and the lawyer flipped a few pages.

“Your father specifically requested that she know nothing of this. It is in consideration for her frail health.” The lawyer said, compassion finding a spot in the midst of his words.

“For my own health and wellbeing I am going to need to know whose children those are and that is final.”

“I’m sorry Sir. I am unable to share the details of those transactions with you.”

“Alice?!” Jeremy barked

“She was not present at any of the meetings. She only met the babies in hospital.” The lawyer defended Alice.

“That means she knows the midwives.”

“It is a network Sir. You cannot trace a single source.”

“Then this was never about honesty. This was my father sticking it to me one last time.”

Jeremy heard his father’s raspy voice echo in the recesses of his memory, ricocheting off different walls, first childhood, then adolescence and his first years in business “Everything you have, I gave you and I can take back any time I want.”