The Widow’s Mite
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Minnie Price lives alone in one room of an opulent house in an affluent suburb of town. In spite of the apparent comfort of her surroundings she has barely enough to keep body and soul together. Her unfeeling step-children do nothing to help and, in fact, make it their business to ensure her struggle is as difficult as possible.
Then one day, a caller arrives with what seems to be a life-line; a fund of money left behind by Minnie’s late husband of which her step-children know nothing. It is hers—legitimately hers—if only she can jump through the complex logistical hoops to release it.
Meanwhile Minnie’s new friend Maisie is enjoying the fruits of her late husband’s hoarding. With a sizeable fortune to spend on her own dilapidated house, Maisie has an idea that she can bring into being the kind of home Clifford wanted to create all along. Her children are horrified when they discover her plan. What with that, and the news that they have a step-brother, the drama at Old Farm Hall is by no means concluded.
Fans of The Hoarder’s Widow will enjoy this sequel, but it reads equally well as a standalone.
Excerpt
Minnie found herself on some slightly shadowed, unacknowledged layer below the carefree pathways trodden by her friends—to whist clubs and coffee mornings, the Scout AGM and the beauty parlour. People here were greyer and moved slowly; they had nothing to hurry towards, nothing pressing to go back to. Every day was a test of endurance; time to be killed, hunger staved off, money not spent.
There was a man on the market who sold misshapen eggs—he called them ‘ouch’ eggs—at a discounted price. He sat in a wheelchair swathed in a grubby coat, a tattered blanket across his wasted legs. His face was leathery and deeply etched, his teeth a jostle of angles and brownish stumps. He was the first to acknowledge her, here, amongst the doggedly struggling, the scrimp-and-savers. He watched her count out her pennies to pay for her eggs. She must have done it with the precision and carefulness that only someone with little money would bother with. He held out his hand—calloused but, when she laid the coins into it, warm—and gave her, with his lucid blue eyes, a look of kind recognition that she could not meet. She picked up her box of eggs and made a fuss about tucking them into her bag.
‘Here,’ he said, and pushed another half dozen towards her. ‘Do me a favour and take these, will you?’
He opened his coat a little and for a dreadful moment Minnie thought he was going to do something obscene, but all he showed her was a hen, nestled against his body.
‘She’s like me,’ he said, ‘only got one leg. If I leave her with the flock she gets bullied. We’ve got to look after each other, haven’t we?’ It was hard to know if he addressed Minnie or the hen.