Next of Kin

About the Book

The land running down to the River Dean has been farmed by the Meredith family for generations. Robin Meredith bought the farm from his father, just before he married his wife Caro, and he and his brother Joe work on the land. But now Caro has died, as much a mystery to the family as she was when she arrived from California twenty years ago, leaving Robin and the rest of the family to cope with the loss.

With Caro gone, her daughter Judy feels cut adrift, while Joe's despair is deeper than anyone suspects. Into this unhappy family comes Zoe, Judy's London friend, an outsider with an independent spirit and a disturbing directness. Everyone underestimates Zoe's power as a catalyst for change as the realities behind the seeming idyll of a rural community become ever clearer.

Table of Contents

About the Author

Joanna Trollope is the author of many highly-acclaimed bestselling contemporary novels. She has also written a study of women in the British Empire,
Britannia's Daughters
, and a number of historical novels.

Born in Gloucestershire, she now lives in London. She was awarded the OBE in the 1996 Queen's Birthday Honours List.

Also by Joanna Trollope

THE CHOIR

A VILLAGE AFFAIR

A PASSIONATE MAN

THE RECTOR'S WIFE

THE MEN AND THE GIRLS

A SPANISH LOVER

THE BEST OF FRIENDS

OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN

MARRYING THE MISTRESS

GIRL FROM THE SOUTH

BROTHER & SISTER

SECOND HONEYMOON

FRIDAY NIGHTS

THE OTHER FAMILY

and published by Black Swan

By Joanna Trollope writing as Caroline Harvey

LEGACY OF LOVE

A SECOND LEGACY

PARSON HARDING'S DAUGHTER

THE STEPS OF THE SUN

LEAVES FROM THE VALLEY

THE BRASS DOLPHIN

CITY OF GEMS

THE TAVERNERS' PLACE

and published by Corgi Books

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Epub ISBN: 9781409011705

Version 1.0

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NEXT OF KIN

A BLACK SWAN BOOK: 9780552997003

First published in Great Britain in 1996 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Black Swan edition published 1997

Copyright © Joanna Trollope 1996

Joanna Trollope has asserted her right under the Copyright,

Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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FOR SAMUEL, CHARLOTTE AND THOMAS

Chapter One

At his wife's funeral, Robin Meredith was asked by a woman in a paisley headscarf, whom he didn't immediately recognize, if he wasn't thankful to know that Caro was now safe with Jesus. He, summoning all the courtesy he could manage at such a moment, said no, he didn't think so. He then went out of the church into the rain and looked at the black hole into which Caro was to be lowered.

‘No cremation,' she'd said. ‘I want it done properly. Brass handles. Full-length. In the churchyard.'

It was about the only instruction she had given as well as the only acknowledgement she had made that she was dying. There were planks on top of the hole, and long tapes of black webbing had been laid across them with which to lower the coffin.

‘You OK?' Robin's daughter said, standing close to him, but not touching.

‘Better out of there,' he said, meaning the church.

‘Me, too.'

There was a pause, and then Judy said, ‘Mum liked it, though.' Her voice shook.

‘Yes,' Robin said. He put a hand out to take Judy's but both hers were deep in her coat pockets, her long, black, Londony coat which proclaimed, as did all her clothes, how far she had deliberately come from the land on which she grew up.

‘You never—' Judy hissed suddenly.

‘Sh—'

The undertakers, lugubrious and ungainly to the point of caricature, trod ponderously towards them. They all wore spectacles and orthopaedic-looking shoes. The congregation, walking respectfully behind, began to fan out in a quiet circle, Robin's parents, his brother and sister-in-law, the herdsman from the farm and his wife, Caro's friends, people from the social advice bureau where she had worked, the man who ran the village shop, the woman in the paisley scarf.

Judy began to cry again. She left Robin's side and ran unsteadily through the wet grass in her high-heels to where her Aunt Lyndsay stood. Lyndsay put an arm round her. Robin looked up briefly and saw his mother watching him in the calm, mildly curious way she had watched him all his life, as if she could never quite remember who he was. He looked down again, at the coffin, now lying almost at his feet, which contained Caro. It didn't look long enough, not by inches. Caro, after all, had been almost six feet tall.

The Vicar of Dean Cross, a small, exhausted man with four parishes to run who refused ever to take a holiday, moved to the graveside under a black umbrella held up by his wife.

‘“Happy are the dead who die in the face of Christ!”' he said, without particular conviction. He opened his prayer book and his wife moved the umbrella so that a shower of drops fell upon the open page.

‘“In the midst of life,”' he read irritably, ‘“we are in death. To whom can we turn for help, but to you, Lord, who are justly angered by our sins?”'

Robin glanced again at Judy. She and Lyndsay were both crying now and his brother Joe had hoisted over them a vast yellow umbrella with ‘Mid-Mercia Farmers' Co-operative' printed on it in black. Joe's face was set and he was looking straight ahead, his gaze above the grave, above the thought of Caro.

‘“We have entrusted our sister Carolyn to God's merciful keeping,”' the Vicar said, ‘“and we now commit her body to the earth—”'

If, Robin thought suddenly, he says ‘Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes', I will leap the grave and punch him.

‘“—in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died, was buried, and rose again for us.”'

The coffin sank down unevenly into the earth in its black slings.

‘“To Him be glory for ever and ever.”'

The undertakers stepped back, coiling up the webbing. Robin shut his eyes.

‘“God will show us the path of life.”'

He opened them again. Judy came forward and stooped to drop onto the coffin a posy of primroses and then the woman in the paisley headscarf gave a little dart and threw after it an artificial orchid whose plastic stem clattered on the lid.

‘“In His presence is the fullest of joy,”' the Vicar said, ‘“and at His right hand there is pleasure for ever more.”'

Joy, Robin thought flatly. Pleasure. He put his hand up to his black tie and tugged at the knot. He hated ties. He hated them as he did churches. The Vicar was looking at him across the grave, almost expectantly. Robin nodded at him briefly. Did the man expect him to say thank you?

‘“Unto Him that is able to keep us from falling,”' the Vicar said, his eyes still upon Robin. ‘“To the only wise God, our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and for ever. Amen.”'

‘Amen,' everyone murmured.

‘Nicely done,' Robin's mother, Dilys, said.

Harry, his father, moved closer. He looked at his son and then, briefly, at the open grave of his daughter-in-law. Strange woman. American. Never quite seemed able to involve herself with the farm and yet – Harry swallowed. He felt it might be an obscure and diverting comfort to mention to Robin that his new power harrow would cost over £6,000, but thought he'd better not. Not right now, at any rate.

‘Judy's taken it hard,' Dilys said, her gloved hands easily clasped before her. She glanced across at her younger son. ‘And so has Joe.'

Robin said sharply, ‘Caro was Judy's mother. And my wife. Not Joe's.'

Dilys regarded him.

‘I expect,' she said, calm and persistent, ‘that it's almost harder if you've been adopted. Like Judy, you can't help waiting for the next loss.' She paused, looking towards the grave, and then she said, in the tone of mildly contemptuous pity she reserved for all those not truly part of her own family, ‘Poor Carolyn.'

Robin jammed his hands in his coat pockets and ducked his head.

‘I'm going to get Judy. See you back at the farm for tea.'

‘Yes,' Dilys said. ‘Yes.'

Harry leaned forward, and lightly touched Robin's arm.

‘Bear up, lad.'

Robin had bought Tideswell Farm two months before Caro had agreed to marry him. Harry had not offered to help him financially, nor had Robin wished to ask. With the proceeds of the sale of a small cottage he had previously bought, with the intention of living in it, and a huge bank loan, he had acquired those 200 acres running gently down to the River Dean and the farmhouse, a seventeenth-century stone house with gawky Victorian additions. The yard behind the house had been almost entirely decayed, overshadowed by an immense and collapsing Dutch barn, and with no hard standing for cattle. In those early months, a quarter of a century ago, Robin had poured concrete himself, all day and every day, and almost always alone.