I Gave Him Half My Liver, Then He Sold My Father's House novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: I Come Home to a House That Rejects Me
Nell returns from rehabilitation to find Gregor calling her a former cleaner outside her father's house. His settlement offers twenty thousand pounds for a sale due in forty-eight hours, but the signature requirement exposes her leverage. Keeping the deed secret and the papers in hand, she demands that he tell the buyers who she is.
Gregor keeps one hand over the new lock while he tells the people inside that I am the former cleaner who has been harassing his family.
My key touches the brass plate and stops. The screws are bright. The lock has been fitted badly enough that the door sits crooked in its frame.
The mailbox below it carries another woman's name in black capitals. Mine has been scraped away, leaving pale scratches through the paint.
'She was dismissed months ago,' Gregor says. 'I have tried to be patient, but she keeps returning.'
The property agent looks at my camel coat, my overnight bag, and the discharge papers folded inside my hand. Her sympathy arrives before her manners do.
'You need to leave,' she tells me. 'This is a private viewing.'
'I live here.'
Gregor gives a small, embarrassed laugh. 'You used to work here.'
He says it warmly. That is his best voice for lying. It invites strangers to help him.
The house behind him still has my father's blue tiles in the hall. Someone has removed the photograph above the console and placed white tulips there instead. My umbrella stand remains beside the stairs.
A woman I have never seen carries a ring of keys through the room where I learned to read.
'Please step away from the entrance,' the agent says. 'We can arrange collection of your belongings through our office.'
'There are no belongings of mine in your office.'
Gregor shifts across the doorway. His brown wool jacket is the same one he wore when I signed the hospital forms for his transplant.
The agent notices the movement and decides I am the danger.
'Nell,' Gregor says, using my name for the first time, 'you have been away for treatment. You have come back without notice, and you are upsetting everyone.'
The house is mine. My name is mine. He is trying to remove both in front of people who have never met me.
I put my key back into my pocket.
'Gregor Vale,' I say, 'what date did you believe I would return?'
His smile stays in place. His eyes move once to the agent.
'This is exactly what I mean. She asks questions to make people uncomfortable.'
'The date, please.'
He looks at me then. The faint smile disappears at one corner.
'The facility expected you later.'
'That was not my question.'
The agent presses her clipboard to her chest. 'Madam, if you have a dispute with the owner, you need to take it through the proper channels.'
'Who is the owner?'
'My husband,' I say.
Gregor turns toward the tall man standing beside the stairs. 'Cormac, you see the problem.'
The man lifts his pencil from the papers. He has a worn leather satchel over one shoulder and a charcoal suit creased at the cuffs. An olive sweater shows beneath it. His dark hair is pushed back from his forehead, though several strands have fallen loose again.
One eyebrow sits slightly higher than the other when he studies Gregor.
'You told me the property was vacant,' he says.
His voice is formal, careful, and longer than it needs to be. He is choosing each word before giving it away.
'It was vacant for practical purposes,' Gregor replies.
'That phrase does not appear in the transfer documents.'
'The woman has no legal connection to the house.'
Cormac looks at my coat, then at the new lock. His pencil lowers toward the papers.
'A former cleaner with a key?'
'She kept it without permission.'
'A former cleaner whose name appears on the utility correspondence?'
Gregor's hand leaves the lock.
The agent turns a page on her clipboard. 'The viewing particulars list the property as ready for immediate occupation.'
'It was,' Gregor says. 'Before she began this.'
I look through the doorway. The hall table has been cleared. My father's brass letter opener is gone. The framed certificate from his first practice has been replaced by a print of a beach.
The new woman has put her taste over his house and called it preparation.
'You were never on the deeds,' Gregor says to me. 'Your father meant to transfer it properly, but he never got around to it. You have confused family expectation with ownership.'
Daphne Corr drafted my father's will and signed the witness declaration on the deed box. She once spent an entire afternoon finding a missing probate receipt for me.
I do not tell Gregor that the notarised deed is in a private safe deposit box, or that only my signature opens it.
'That is an interesting account,' I say.
'It is the accurate one.'
He has added unnecessary detail. He does that when frightened.
The property agent steps closer to him. 'Mr Vale, perhaps we should ask security to attend.'
'There is no need for that,' Cormac says.
'She is trespassing.'
'She has a key.'
'A key does not establish title.'
'Neither does a new lock.'
The agent looks between them. Her practiced sympathy has nowhere to settle now.
Gregor reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and removes a folded document. 'Nell, I would rather resolve this privately.'
He holds it out without crossing the threshold.
'Take twenty thousand and sign a release. Then we can all move on without lawyers, police, or further embarrassment.'
Twenty thousand pounds. The private ward charges more than that before winter ends. The rental income from this house pays for my mother's specialist care, and Gregor knows it.
'This house pays for my mother's care,' I say.
'And I am offering you money.'
He keeps the paper extended between us. To anyone watching, he is trying to help. To me, he is asking how cheaply I can be made to leave my father's doorway.
'You're selling the house.'
'We are selling an asset that has become impossible to manage.'
'You said it was yours.'
'It is ours in every practical sense.'
Cormac holds out his hand. 'May I see the document?'
Gregor passes it to him. Cormac reads the first page, then the second. His pencil stops beneath a clause and underlines it twice.
He takes a completion notice from his satchel and puts it beside the settlement. The date is two days from now.
'Completion is in forty-eight hours,' he says.
Gregor looks at me as if the date settles the argument. My coat is damp at the hem. My discharge papers have softened where I have gripped them too long.
He has chosen an evening when I am tired, sore and carrying everything I brought home in one bag. He wants the number to frighten me more than the signature line does.
I take both sheets from Cormac. The settlement names the house, the payment, and the claim I am supposed to abandon.
'I'll review the offer.'
Gregor's shoulders loosen. I let him have that moment while I read the sentence Cormac has marked.
'What do you need from me?' I ask Cormac.
'Your signature. The sale depends on it.'
Gregor reaches for the papers. I fold them against my coat before his fingers touch them.
'The release is precautionary,' he says.
'It is a condition of completion,' Cormac replies.
Helen looks from the new lock to the papers in my hand. Behind her clipboard, the pen that was ready to record my removal has stopped moving.
The deed stays where it is, in the box only I can open. I have no reason to tell Gregor about it. He has put a different kind of proof into my hands himself.
He called me a cleaner because he needed these people to look away when he pushed me out. Now they have heard that he needs something from me.
I keep the papers and look straight at him.
'Then tell your buyers who I am.'
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