The Lubetkin Legacy Read Online Free PDF Page A

remarried. She’s now Mrs Lukashenko.’
    ‘Luckychinko? That’s a pretty name. Chinese, is it?’
    ‘Ukrainian, actually. Her last husband was Ukrainian.’
    ‘Mm.’ She scribbled something in her file.
    Mrs Penny was impressed, as most people are, by the sitting room with its rooftop view over London towards the City. My father, Wicked Sid Sidebottom, Mum’s second husband, who’d been a bit of a handyman when he wasn’t being wicked, had put up the bookshelves in the living room, giving the flat a genteelly bohemian air, though the books were mostly his thrillers and Mum’s romances, interspersed with a few
leather-bound classics for gravitas. The floor was carpeted with Persian rugs, rescued by Lev ‘Lucky’ Lukashenko, her last husband, from a fire-damaged warehouse – they still retained a faint whiff of their smoky odour. The walls were cluttered with pictures and photographs which had fascinated me as a child, though now I barely noticed them. Without wanting to appear snobbish, I would guess it was a notch above your average council flat.
    ‘My, it’s spacious! May I?’
    Without waiting for a reply, she opened the door to my bedroom and stepped inside. There was something so presumptuous, so rudely intrusive, in this action it was as if she had yanked down my underpants to examine my private parts. Worse, in fact, because at least I can confirm that my privates are clean. My room was as untidy as Mum’s but in a different way. Dead coffee cups, stacks of newspapers and theatre magazines, sports shoes, T-shirts and cycling gear instead of soiled silk.
    ‘I’m afraid it’s a bit of a mess.’ Why the hell was I apologising to her?
    ‘Don’t worry. You should see some of the places I visit, Mr Luckyshtonko. Is that another bedroom you’ve got through there?’
    Alarm bells started ringing in my head and Mother’s last words rang in my ears. I remembered the beep … beep … beep and the terrible groan when it stopped.
    ‘It’s just a small study.’
    What I didn’t say was that when Howard lived with us – he was my father’s son by a previous marriage – that little study had been my bedroom. What was it Inna had said about the under-bed tax? My heart thumped. While Mrs Penny was taking notes, I decided to make a pre-emptive move.
    ‘I would like to register the tenancy in my name. Would
there be any p-problem with me taking it over from my mother?’
    ‘Hm.’ Mrs Penny sucked the end of her biro nervously. ‘No, not normally a problem, Mr Lucky-s-stinker. You need to satisfy certain conditions. For example, you would need to demonstrate your relationship with the tenant, and you would need to provide evidence that you have actually lived here as your main abode for the last two years.’
    ‘Fine. No problem.’
    ‘But in the challenging currently prevailing climate of acute multi-causal public sector housing defectiveness, I mean deficiency, and a major increase in the number of deserving qualified decent hard-working local families on local authority waiting lists, the Council is spearheading a multi-fanged, I mean -pranged. No, sorry, I mean a multi-pronged initiative. To counteract incidence of under-occupancy in the borough.’ She spoke too fast, mangling the words between her teeth. ‘It means that a tenant in receipt of housing benefit might incur an under-occupancy charge. According to the Council’s newly formulated criteria, this flat could be classed as having too many rooms.’
    ‘Too many rooms?’ She should see where George bloody Clooney lives.
    ‘I’m just doing my job,’ she murmured, blushing rather sweetly and lowering her head to flick through her file. ‘But don’t worry, the rule doesn’t apply to pensioners. Your mother is still living here, isn’t she?’
    ‘Yes.’ As I said it, a spasm tightened my jaw. But it was too late. The word had bolted. ‘She’s just popped out to the shops,’ I added, for realism.
    Mrs Penny smiled. Her face was