The Inheritance (7 page)

Then her mind wandered even more
and she thought about Meredith.  What if she had never died but had left and
Emma’s father had deliberately concealed the truth?  It could be a possibility. 
She’d better look into it.  Later.  When she’d had a chance to get properly
settled… Maybe she’d go shopping again tomorrow.  She’d seen a gorgeous dress
in a shop that she knew would suit her perfectly.

‘Well I think we’d better be
going,’ Natalie said breaking Emma’s reverie.  ‘I’m sure you’ve got things to
do, Rebecca.  Em?’

‘Er… yeah, what?’

‘We’ve got to go.’

Emma could vaguely hear Natalie and Rebecca
trying to conceal their laughter, but she didn’t care.  Right now she didn’t
care about anything.  She’d forgotten that cannabis put you in this dreamy
state.   It made her feel good.   And where was the harm in that?

It was six pm and Kate was still
hard at work.  Harvest time was one of the busiest periods she and her father
had on the farm.  She was busy lugging bales of hay from the wagon attached to
the tractor into the barn.  Her father often told her not to carry too much,
that she’d hurt her back, but Kate ignored him.  She liked to feel weary at the
end of the day; it sent her straight to sleep at night and meant she wasn’t lying
awake worrying about her future and her father.

She knew he was worried about
Emma.  Even though she’d hurt him so badly, it was obvious to Kate that he
still loved her very much.  He had a mobile number for her that he’d tried to
call a few times, but it had said the number was not recognised.  Although initially
he’d made it clear to Kate that he wanted nothing more to do with his younger
daughter, she knew this wasn’t true.  Kate was concerned for her sister too,
but in a different way from their father. 

She knew that Emma had landed on
her feet, but her worries were that her behaviour could spiral out of control,
that she could get into even worse company than Natalie.  Seeing as they
couldn’t even contact her on her mobile though, it seemed that Emma truly had
severed all ties with her family and in spite of everything Kate deeply
regretted this.  What would the future hold for them all?  Only time will tell,
she thought as she heaved the hay bales into the barn.

‘How did it go today?’ her father
asked later as the two of them ate their evening meal.  He’d been out all day
at a cattle market.

‘OK.  I got done what I needed to
do.  I’ll be glad when the harvest is over though.’

Her father nodded.  ‘Me too.  Kate,
you know that I really appreciate all you do.’

‘Yes of course I do, Dad.’

‘But the thing is although you do a
brilliant job on the farm and I’d love for you to take over if you wanted, I
can’t help thinking that you’re missing out a little.  You never see any
friends, your whole life is the farm, and I can’t help wondering if maybe I’m
asking too much from you at this stage in your life.’

‘Dad I…’

‘You’re still young, Kate, you’re still
in your twenties, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you.  I think it’s a
little too soon to decide definitively that you’re going to run this farm for
the rest of it.’

Kate was stunned.  Her father had
never spoken to her in these terms before.  She’d always assumed that his
greatest wish for her was that she carry on his work on the farm.  Now she felt
as though the rug had been pulled from under her feet.  If I don’t work on the
farm what on earth will I do? she wondered.  Then she felt her chest burn with
rage.  She’d worked so hard for so long on the farm and now he was telling her
that he didn’t want her help anymore.  Angry tears came to her eyes and she
blinked them away furiously.

‘If that’s how you feel, maybe I
should just quit now!’ she shouted standing up from the table with her dinner
plate in her hand.  ‘I thought you wanted my help.  It would have been nice if
you’d told me that you didn’t.  Then maybe I wouldn’t have wasted the last eight
years of my life slogging my guts out for nothing!’

She ignored her father’s hurt
expression and dumped her plate on the kitchen work top.  Rushing out of the
room, she grabbed her coat and keys and dashed out the front door slamming it shut
behind her, her eyes clouding with unshed tears.  She knew she was being
unreasonable, that her father did have a point.  But it cut her to the core to
hear him voice the subject that had been going round and round her head: that
her work on the farm was completely consuming her life and that she had left no
room for anything else.

What if there is nothing else? she
asked herself.  That was what scared her most.  For so long she had made the
farm her life, initially to mask the pain of Steven’s disappearance.  But
because she’d left college early to work on the farm and so had no more
qualifications, she’d gradually run out of other options.  These thoughts
whirled around her head as she went to the car and hopped in.  She needed to be
on her own, needed a place where she could think clearly which she hadn’t been
able to for a while.

The place where she was headed held
bittersweet memories for her.  She had walked there with Steven the day before
he disappeared.  She had only been there a handful of times since.  But there
was a little place the two of them had discovered on their last walk along the
cliff together, a sort of miniature cave nestled on the cliff top that she
could sit in out of the wind.  She’d been there a number of times to sit and
think; she found it therapeutic.  Her thoughts were so turbulent as she drove
along the track from the farm to the nearest road that she had to stop the car
and pause to take some deep breaths.  She didn’t want to risk having an
accident.  When she felt a little calmer she drove on.

She’d forgotten just how long it
would take to get to the cliff top.  But the length of the journey gave Kate
the breathing space she needed.  She thought about her sister and almost envied
her life, the fact that she had no worries or responsibilities.  Remembering
that in a year’s time she would be able to claim her portion of the inheritance
if she wanted to, Kate sighed deeply.  Her mind took her back to the life
changing decision she’d made eight years ago.  Whilst at college as a teenager,
she had had a long think about what she really wanted out of life.  At the time
her father was struggling to make the farm a success. 

Kate had wanted to help him improve
the running of it and felt that with her assistance, her father would be able
to make it more profitable.  She’d always enjoyed farm work anyway.  As for
college, although she was finding the work interesting, everywhere she went on
the campus reminded her of Steven.  It was too painful.  So after much agonizing,
she decided to leave college at sixteen and throw herself into running the farm
with her father.  There’d been so much work for her to do she hadn’t often
given her inheritance a thought.  But now Emma had claimed hers and gone away,
what was to stop Kate from doing the same?  She’d worked so hard on the farm for
eight years.  Fat lot of good that’s done me, she thought bitterly and asked
herself why she’d been so altruistic all these years when her father clearly
thought she should be doing something else.  She would be twenty five in six
months’ time.  Maybe she should think about getting hold of the money, seeing
as she had nothing else.

Finally she arrived at her
destination.  Although it was late summer it was a cloudy, almost cold day and
there was only one other car in the car park.  Kate shivered as she got out of
the car and pulled her coat tightly around her.  The cave wasn’t far away and
she set off, glad that she’d kept her sturdy shoes on.  It wasn’t long before
she found it.  It felt like a smaller space since she’d last been here as she
crawled in and got comfortable, but she liked that it was cosy.  From where she
was sitting she had the most wonderful view of the sea, a deep bluish green, stretching
away into the distance. 

As she gazed out at the sea, Kate gradually
felt calmer.  Some thoughts came to her of what she could do with her life.  Perhaps
her father was right.  Maybe she shouldn’t rule out doing some different from
farm work.  Her future was uncertain, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. 
She had always enjoyed learning and wasn’t bad academically.  Going back to
college could be an option.  She would certainly need to have some sort of
qualification before applying for jobs.  The only job she was really skilled in
was farm work.  She needed to acquire more skills before she could even attempt
to apply for a job that didn’t involve farming.

Whilst she was sitting in the cave
brooding Kate had been oblivious to the storm clouds forming over the sea and
hurtling towards her.  A large raindrop plopped on her leg which was stuck
outside of the cave as it was a tight squeeze.  She shivered and pulled her
coat more tightly around her and her hood up.  It was time to leave.  Her
father would be worried about her.  She felt remorseful when she imagined him
pacing the house unsure when she would return.  Leaving the cave, she dashed
back to the car and fumbled in her pocket for the key.  Fumbled but didn’t find
it.   Panic quickly set in.  She was in the middle of nowhere, the rain was
hammering down and she had no way of getting home.  She realised with a queasy
feeling in her stomach that she hadn’t even brought her phone with her.  You
stupid girl, she told herself.  If you’d just gone to your room to calm down
instead of rushing out like that, you wouldn’t be in this situation.

Kate looked around her wildly,
desperate to see if there was anyone who could help.  But the other car that
had been parked here when she arrived had gone.  All she could do was retrace
her steps.  The rain was lashing down and she was soaked to the skin.  She’d
have to return to the cave; maybe she’d dropped the car key inside and anyway
it was the only shelter she’d get for now.  Making her way back towards it, she
looked intently at the ground as she walked for any sign of her keys.  But she
could see nothing.  She reached the cave and crawled in shivering, sitting in a
foetal position so that she was completely inside the cave and so out of the
rain.  Feeling about her, she tried to locate the keys. 

Her hands felt a small lump and she
picked it up hopefully.  But it wasn’t her keys and her hopes deflated.  She
was curious though and held it up to the light to get a better look.  Her heart
began to pound.  It was a key ring and although it was rather rusty she
recognised it.  It was Steven’s!  It had a faded picture on it.  She could just
about make it out.  It was of her and Steven.  Their arms were around each
other and they were smiling happily.  He must have dropped it here that last
time we were together, she thought, a lump forming in her throat.  But she’d
been here many times since; why hadn’t she found it before?

And what was it doing here? She
supposed that Steven could have dropped it here on a separate trip.  But her
suspicious mind thought of other possibilities.  Maybe he’d been done away with
here and it had fallen out then.  Maybe his attackers had thrown his body over
the cliff hoping no one would find it and if so they were lucky for no one ever
had.  Then again, bodies dumped at sea were usually found, weren’t they?  She
put the key ring in her pocket. 

It was overwhelming, finding Steven’s
key ring like this when she’d been trying to get over his… Disappearance or
death?  In a way it was all the same to her because she knew he wasn’t coming
back, that if he was going to return he would have done so by now.  Eight years
had passed since he vanished – it’d been just before she quit college – and there’d
been no word from him, the police had found no trace of him.  Tears came into
her eyes and she didn’t bother to wipe them away.  Instead she allowed herself
to sob, huge racking sobs that seemed as though they were trying to wring the
life out of her.

It’d been a long while since she’d
cried like that.  Kate wasn’t one who could always talk openly about her
feelings.  She sometimes confided in her father, but there was no way she could
tell him everything.  Steven had been that person for a while, but since him
there’d been no one else.  Eventually her tears subsided and she sat in silence
watching the rain pounding down outside the cave.  Thankfully she was sheltered
so at least she wasn’t getting any wetter. 

After she’d been sitting there for
what felt like forever, Kate looked at her watch.  It was now after eight.  The
rain was easing but it was rapidly getting dark.  She needed to get home
somehow and didn’t want to be stuck here in the dark.  Deciding it was dry
enough to leave the cave, she crawled out of it stretching her aching cramped
limbs.  Shivering, she rubbed her arms to warm them.  She was still completely
soaked, so walked briskly back to the car to warm up.  Perhaps another car
would have turned up.  If there wasn’t one, the only thing she could do was to
walk to the nearest house or habitation to get some help.

When she reached the car park she
was disappointed.  Her car was the only vehicle there.    She scoured her
memory for the best route to take, but from what she could remember it didn’t
bode well for her; the further she’d driven from the farm to get here the less
and less houses there were.  She had no choice but to go in search of help though,
so leaving the car park she began to trudge along the narrow lane which led
away from it, hoping she might get lucky and be seen by a passing car.

Now it really was dark.  Kate sped
up.  She was getting desperate.  She had to find some help soon or else she
could end up spending the night in the cave, which didn’t bear thinking about.  For
a long time she couldn’t see any signs of human habitation, just fields which
she could barely make out in the dark.   Then finally when she was beginning to
despair of getting home that night, she saw in the distance the shadowy form of
a house and a light glowing dimly.  As she approached the building, Kate
realised that as a young woman out alone on a murky night she was very vulnerable,
but she had no choice.  She would have to ask a complete stranger for help.

Approaching the house, which she
could see was a small cottage, she paused and raked her fingers through her
tangled hair, pulled her coat straight and tried to make herself look a bit
more presentable.  She cleared her throat, took a deep breath and strode
purposefully to the door, banging on it firmly with the brass knocker.  She
waited nervously for what felt like forever before the door was flung open.  A
cranky looking middle aged man was standing in the doorway, the light behind
him illuminating him like a halo.  He looked Kate up and down suspiciously as
though she were up to no good.