Sealing THE DEAL

When it came to revenge, Margaret had it down to a fine art

-  Ginny Swart

Margaret and her son Alan sat silently at the table, finishing the tea and cake, until finally Margaret sighed and nodded.

‘All right, dear, I'll do what you so sensibly suggest. You've always been the practical one in this family. I'll sell up and go and live at Green Oaks. The available garden flat we viewed looked nice. I know it’s silly of me to want to stay on in this big house all by myself.’

‘Really, Mum? I’m relieved to hear it,’ said Alan. ‘Once I’m back in the States it will make me feel much happier, knowing you're living somewhere safe and secure.’

Margaret smiled. ‘I'll have fun buying modern things for my new place. I can't wait to sell our old furniture. We inherited most of it from your dad’s family and, of course, he wouldn't part with it, ever. He was such a traditionalist and kept everything. All those heavy oak wardrobes, so dismal, with the mirrors all speckled. Even with pretty curtains, the bedrooms looked dark and gloomy.’

‘And Dad's pictures?’

Those awful paintings. The biggest bone of contention in all their 40 years of discordant marriage. Geoffrey would get angry every time she complained about him locking himself away in his studio with his canvases and paints.

‘You'll thank me in the end,’ he always said. ‘Those paintings will be a nice little nest egg for you when I'm gone.’

She didn’t doubt it. While he was alive, Geoffrey would regularly pack up one of his masterpieces and send it off to his agent in New York, who would sell it for a tidy sum.

‘The last of your father’s pictures?’ she said to Alan now. ‘I'll sell them. Much as I hate to. I'd rather throw them away, but that wouldn't be practical, would it? They're worth a lot of money to some people. I'll phone the usual courier tomorrow and they can send them off to the States.’