Unspoken: A story of secrets, love and revenge T. Belshaw (good books to read for beginners txt) 📖

the room to a round table where he deposited his briefcase, offered his hand and a friendly smile. He also noticed my bump.

‘Congratulations,’ he said, nodding to my stomach as I shook his hand. ‘How long before the little one is with us?’

‘Early June,’ I replied.

‘A summer baby, the best time of the year to be born, or so I’m told.’

I waved a hand in the general direction of a chair, but Mr Wilson waited for me to sit first.

‘So,’ he said, opening his briefcase. ‘Let’s get this business started.’ He produced a few pages of headed notepaper and a beautiful fountain pen that my mother would have killed for. He unscrewed the top and began to write, talking to himself as he went along.

I didn’t understand half of the words he spoke as he wrote, but I did pick up, Deed of Name Change, which was what he had talked about on the telephone the day before. When he had finished questioning me and writing out the legalise, he asked me to provide my birth certificate and my parent’s marriage certificate. I retrieved them from the tallboy drawer in the kitchen where we kept all our important papers.

He read the proofs of identity carefully, made a few notes, asked me to confirm my age and date of birth and then asked me to sign the document. He signed it himself before folding the certificates up in the sheet of paper he had been working on, and dropped it into his briefcase.

‘This application will now go before a judge to authorise and countersign. Once that is done you will legally be known as Alice Mollison and the name change will be published in the London Gazette.’

‘Published in the papers!’ I repeated with alarm. ‘Not our local one, surely?’

‘The London Gazette is a newspaper published by the government,’ Mr Wilson explained. Amongst other things, it lists new companies that have been formed, the names of newly appointed Lords and Ladies, or any other award granted by the King or Parliament. It also lists changes of name by any member of the public who has done what you are about to do. To be honest, I really can’t see anyone around here getting it pushed through the letterbox by the paperboy. I have a regular copy delivered, but I need to have it for the business, and to make sure they’ve spelt your name correctly.’

When he smiled at me my knees went weak. He really was a handsome man.

‘And now, we come to the matter of the legal trust,’ he said.

Mr Wilson spent the next half hour explaining to me how a trust worked. Who could have one, who controlled it, how money was dispersed via the trust, and a lot more legal stuff that I couldn’t remember ten seconds after I heard it.

Basically, I could set up the trust, but it would need my father’s consent. The trust would need three trustees, one of which would be Mr Wilson himself, acting on behalf of his law firm. I couldn’t be a trustee until I reached my majority at twenty-one, but the other trustees could act at my behest providing the actions stipulated, were both reasonable and legal. At twenty-one, I would have the final say on all matters, even dissolving the trust if I saw fit. The trust would protect the farm, and any money belonging to it, from any business or marriage partner, or anyone else who wanted to get their hands on the farm’s assets. I could add children to the trust’s beneficiaries at any time and pass the assets to them after my death or on the beneficiary coming of age. The farm would stay in the family trust, unless or until there were no surviving relatives. The assets would, in that case, be left to a farm worker’s charity.

The only problem was, as I wasn’t yet the legal owner of the farm, my father would have to set up the trust. Mr Wilson took one look at him and shook his head.

‘As he’s not fit to sign, I can’t go through with the process. We can talk again if… anything, erm… remiss, should happen to the property owner.’

Mr Wilson tidied up his papers, shook my hand again and promised to get on with the matter of my Deed of Name Change.

He picked up his briefcase and walked towards the door. He stopped when he reached my father’s side, he looked down sadly at the figure slumped in the chair.

‘Such a shame.’ He opened the front door, stepped outside and put on his hat. ‘Goodbye, Miss Tansley. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.’

I looked across the drive to his Alvis car. It looked like the one I’d seen in the Cagney movie. I decided that Mr Wilson was a gangster at the weekends. I could have happily become his moll.

I watched him drive away then I sat down at the kitchen table to think about everything I had just learned.

Before the baby is born, I will have become Alice Mollison and my child would have the same surname, thus convincing any prying busybody that Frank and I are, actually married.

As a result, the child will have the Mollison name when we register the birth and later on when it attends school, thus avoiding any embarrassing questions about its parents.

The trust idea was a disappointment, but that didn’t really matter. Frank didn’t know that it hadn’t been set up. I could tell him it was and he’d be none the wiser.

If I decided to marry him in the future, it could be a problem, but not if I waited until I was twenty-one. In essence, all I had to do was remain single for another three years. It sounded simple enough but, what if my handsome gangster, Mr Wilson, came calling?

Chapter 50

Calvin

Calvin walked slowly down to Tania’s front door feeling as though he had been treated in a similar way to her druggy, low-life, ex-boyfriend.