The Last Testament Read Online Free PDF Page B

THREW
    THEM OUT?’
    Maggie rushed to the front door. But, doubtless sensing trouble, the trash guy had made his getaway. Swearing, she pressed the lift button again and again. ‘Come on, come on,’ she muttered, tensing her jaw. When the lift came, she willed it down faster.
    As soon as it arrived on the ground floor and the door opened a crack, she squeezed through it, running through the main doors of the building and out onto the street. She looked left and right and left again before she saw it, a green truck pulling out. She ran hard to catch up, coming within a few yards. She was waving wildly, like someone flagging down traffic after a road accident. But it was too late. The van picked up speed and vanished. All she had was half a phone number and what she thought was the name: National Removals.
    She rushed back upstairs, frantically grabbing the telephone, her fingers trembling over the buttons. She called directory information, asking for a number. They found it and offered to put her through. Three rings, then four, then five. A recorded message: We’re sorry, but all our offices are closed on Sunday. Our regular opening hours are Monday to Friday . . . If she waited till tomorrow it would be too late: they would have destroyed the boxes and everything they contained.
    She went back into the kitchen to find Edward standing, defiant. She began quietly. ‘You just threw them out.’
    ‘You’re damn right I threw them out. They made this place look like a student shithole. All that junk, all that sentimental crap. You need to drop it, Maggie. You need to move on.’
    ‘But, but . . .’ Maggie wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at the ground, trying to digest what had just happened. Not just 26
    SAM BOURNE
    the letters from her parents, the photographs from Ireland, but the notes she had taken during crucial negotiations, private, scribbled memos from rebel leaders and UN officials. Those boxes contained her life’s work. And now they were in a dumpster.
    ‘I did it for you, Maggie. That world is not your world any more. It’s moved on without you. You’ve got to do the same.
    You need to adjust to your life now, as it is. Our life.’
    So that’s why he had been so keen to get her locked away in the consulting room this morning. And she thought he just wanted her to get a punctual start to the day. She had even thanked him! The truth was that he just wanted the garbage men in and out before she had a chance to stop them. For the first time, she met his gaze. Quietly, as if unable to believe her own words, she said, ‘You want to destroy who I am.’
    He looked back at her blankly, before finally nodding towards the other end of the apartment. In a voice that was ice cold, he said, ‘I think someone’s waiting for you.’
    She almost staggered out of the room, unable to absorb what had happened. How could he have done such a thing, without her permission, without even talking to her? Did he really hate the Maggie Costello he had once known so much that he wanted to erase every last trace of her, replacing her with someone, different, bland and subservient?
    She stood in the landing that served as the waiting area, her head spinning. The man in blue was still there, now turning the pages of Atlantic Monthly .
    ‘Bad time? I’m sorry.’
    ‘No, no,’ Maggie said, barely out loud. On auto-pilot, she added. ‘Is your wife coming?’
    He made a curious smirk. ‘She should be along soon.’
    Maggie gestured him into the consulting room. ‘You said it was some kind of emergency.’ She was struggling to remember THE LAST TESTAMENT
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    his case, to remember if he was one of the handful of clients she said could contact her out of hours.
    ‘Yes. My problem is that I’m finding it hard to adjust.’
    ‘To what?’
    ‘To life here. Normality.’
    ‘Where were you before?’
    ‘I was all over. Travelling from one screwed-up place to another.
    Always meant to be doing good, always trying to make