The Kicking the Bucket List: The feelgood bestseller of 2017
‘Warm, wise and full of heart… I absolutely loved this book.’ Lucy DiamondMum always knows best… The stunning debut for fans of Celia Imrie and Dawn French.Meet the daughters of Iris Parker. Dee; sensitive and big-hearted; Rose uptight and controlled and Fleur the reckless free spirit.At the reading of their mother’s will, the three estranged women are aghast to discover that their inheritance comes with very tricky strings attached. If they are to inherit her wealth, they must spend a series of weekends together over the course of a year and carry out their mother’s ‘bucket list’.But one year doesn’t seem like nearly enough time for them to move past the decades-old layers of squabbles and misunderstandings. Can they grow up for once and see that Iris’s bucket list was about so much more than money…
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Harper
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First published in Great Britain by Harper 2017
Copyright © Cathy Hopkins 2017
Jacket design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com (chair); Getty Images (birds).
Cathy Hopkins asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008200671
Ebook Edition © March 2017 ISBN: 9780008200688
Version 2017-12-01
For Mum
Table of Contents
Tuesday 1 September
The offices of Wilson Richardson solicitors were on the first floor in a block on the main road through Chiswick in London. The carpeted stairs smelt musty and I noted that the reception area on the first floor was in need of a lick of paint. Rose, my neat, petite sister, was already there, not a hair of her dark bob out of place and still dressed in black though it was almost eight weeks since Mum had died. I’d decided against funereal clothes and, it being a warm September day, had dressed in grey trousers and a pale green kaftan top. We were spared the awkwardness of our meeting because we barely had time to greet each other or sit before we were ushered into Mr Richardson’s office by a receptionist with blonde hair pulled back severely from her forehead. My youngest sister, Fleur, used to call the style the Dagenham facelift, back in the days when we were still speaking to each other.
A tall, bald man with glasses was seated behind a heavy oak desk. ‘Mr Richardson,’ he said.
‘I’m Rose and this is Dee. You may have her written down in your papers as Daisy,’ said Rose.
‘I am here and can speak for myself,’ I said.
Rose sighed. ‘Go ahead then. I was only being helpful. Your two names can be confusing for people.’
I focused on Mr Richardson. ‘I’m Daisy, Dee. Most people call me Dee but my mother liked to call me Daisy.’
‘As I said,’ said Rose.
Well this is a great start, I thought, as the solicitor gestured to three chairs that had been placed opposite the desk for the reading of Mum’s will. ‘Please, have a seat,’ he said.
‘My sister Fleur will be with us shortly,’ said Rose as she sat down.
‘She’s always late. She’ll be late for her own funeral,’ I said, then half coughed and cursed myself.
As we waited, I felt as if I was back at school and had been called in to see the headmaster. I wanted to get the reading over with and get home. Rose’s left foot was twitching so I reckoned she was feeling the same. She was the most in-control person I had ever known, but that foot gave her away; it always had, as if she wanted to be up, out and anywhere else. Out and away from me, away from Fleur, I imagined.
I don’t know about her life at all any more, I thought as Rose checked her watch. I wonder if she’s happy. How are she and Hugh getting on? What will she do with her share of the inheritance, and does she need it as badly as I do? Probably not.
We already knew that Mum would have left us equal shares of her money; she’d told us all years ago. The house in Hampstead, where we grew up, had belonged to Dad’s parents back in the 1950s and Mum and Dad had inherited it when they died. Victorian, four bedroomed and near the Heath, it had accumulated in value over the years. Mum did shabby chic before it was trendy, and the house had an old-fashioned charm about it, with original features, fireplaces and wooden floors so, despite being in need of modernization (the estate agent’s word for falling down) and the ancient plumbing and life-endangering electrics, it still went for just over two million when Mum sold it and moved to a retirement village. My share would be more than enough to sort out my finances, have a good pension pot and some to help my daughter, Lucy if she needed it.
