BERNADETTE CYNTHIA HEALY
EPISODE 18
Queue my husband and his love of lost causes. But that isn't worth thinking about. So from the bank she finds out that she is no longer an only child, and this information may or may not mean her parents are still alive. It's strange, though that her parents kept their name, did they never think their daughter would come looking for them? Or looking for graves to say her goodbyes?
But it seems Bernadette Cynthia Healy wrote out her old London family and made herself quite at home as a little Scottish heiress on her return to London. I remember Jonathon telling me that she had no one left in the world, though it wouldn't have surprised me if it was just a line the scheming witch had learnt to spin after being alone for so long.
I have no idea what Bernadette Cynthia Healy did for a living. Jonathon swore he never gave her any money, or at least not enough to live on, though I sure she accepted many gifts off her lover, especially before I found out about the affair. I'm sure it won't be too difficult to find someone who used to be a friend of hers to fill in the blanks, because no doubt her story is also intertwined with her brothers.
It isn't possible for her to die leaving behind such a vast fortune without other people coming out of the woodwork. I wouldn't be surprised if her brother came looking for me, he clearly knew of her existence and ignored it, but now that she's gone he probably, and rightly, assumes the money belongs to him.
I have to stand and walk away from the computer. Does that mean, by searching for Bernadette Cynthia Healy's brother, by accepting her one dying wish, I am depriving the last of her family money that could be used to benefit a family in more need than mine? I hadn't really considered the implications of taking the money away from someone else... She doesn't state who her belongings would go to if I didn't accept her request, but I know, deep down, that blood relatives would stand to gain it all.
I need a coffee. The afternoon has darkened and a spring storm looks ready to unleash its bowels on the clearing London streets. I help myself to the last cake I hid from Polly yesterday, though I know I should probably make myself something a little more substantial than a cake for lunch. I promise myself to a vegetable soup for supper, knowing I have a few of the ingredients needing to be used up.
With my coffee in hand, I walk past the living room and notice the disarray I've left my desk in after I scurried out the house both yesterday and today. My computer is upstairs in the office, next to my bedroom, though I normally spend my days in the living room, surrounded by the photographs and books of my past. The desk looks a little desolate because I have forsaken it's deep drawers and ink wells for the more modern conveniences, so before I wander back up the stairs I take the time to sort out the various pieces of paper that clutter my desk.
Jonathon's chair too looks a little forlorn, but I do not allow myself the luxury of sitting down with my feet up, getting lost in the mundane channels the television has to offer. After my twenty minute coffee break I once again sit facing the computer, the screen showing me the last sentence I typed before I went downstairs.
'Possibility of Albert Healy to come looking for me...'
I erase the last line. He wouldn't come looking for me. He would go looking for his sister's solicitors and they would come looking for me. Legally I wonder how that would stand in court, Bernadette Cynthia Healy's request is that I find her brother, and if I do as she asks her belongings have been bequeathed to me. However, if Albert Healy finds me first, looking for whatever his sister left behind then technically everything would go to him because I didn't find Albert.