“It was all so bloody pointless.” He exhales. “It started when the council dug up the road outside one of our pubs for eight months. They ruined access to it, and business went down. So Dad sued them. And lost. That’s when he had his first heart attack. That should have been the end of it.”
I bite my lip. “So … what went wrong?”
“Then some other lawyers made contact. More expensive.” I can hear the bitterness in Nathaniel’s voice. “They persuaded Dad he would win on appeal. They kept whipping him up, pressing the right buttons. They knew he was ill. Mum and I tried to talk him out of it … but he just called us negative. Dad always believed he was in the right. He kept saying justice would prevail. He trusted those bastards.” Nathaniel is silent for a moment, then adds, “He had the next h
