Family Inheritance (Part 1)

“It is a crazy idea, how would I get to work?”

“We don’t need to work, the inheritance covers that handsomely”

Cynthia and Patrick were repeating the same lame discussion that they had chewed over every day for the last week. Cynthia threw her hands up in the air, she was fed up of his lies.

” I know you have been screwing your new secretary, so why don’t you just be honest”.

Patrick tried to pretend but he was sick of pretending.

“Alright, it is true, Lucy and I are friendly, and I don’t want to go with you to Wuthering Heights and leave her”

” It is not Wuthering Heights, much more Daphne du Maurier, and it is in Cornwall, 300 miles from Yorkshire”

Cynthia stopped and looked at her husband, was he worth fighting for? Would it be better to make this a fresh start for her, she was now coming up to 40.

“I give up, I will move to Post House and you stay here. I will get a lawyer to draw up some agreement”.

Cynthia and Patrick had been married for fifteen years, no children, they tried and stopped trying. She had tests, he refused. Two years previously she had found out that he had started bedding his new secretary, however she pretended not to know and their life had descended into a farce. Now she had chosen.

Ten days previously, her grandmother had sent a message that Cynthia had inherited Great Aunt Cynthia’s estate. Cynthia was named after this woman but had only met her a few times and not in many years. Cynthia’s grandmother, now 87, had cut her sister off and neither Cynthia nor her mother had found out why. Now great Aunt Cynthia had died aged 93, and left it all to Cynthia.

.

There seemed to be some mystery about it because the lawyer had said the estate was worth many millions, but had no idea how this money was generated. His task was to give it to Cynthia. She got the house, the grounds, furniture, a car, general rubbish and a lifetime income that Cynthia could only spend if she started taking huge quantities of drugs.

The one stipulation was Cynthia must reside in Post House for at least 220 nights every year. She had no idea how anyone could check up on that but she didn’t argue. When she told Patrick she assumed he would go along with it, after all he could retire and still he could sneak off to the new girl if that was his wish, but it seemed not to have occurred to him and now Cynthia had decided she could be no worse off without him.

Next day Cynthia arranged at meeting with a lawyer, sorted out Patrick’s claims against her, the lawyer producing a document which looked to be favourable to him but in fact closed the door. Cynthia was now a free woman, still married but never actually needing to see Patrick again. Farewell “dear” husband.

Cynthia packed clothes for a week. If she had all this money she could buy new stuff, she guessed the internet worked where she was headed. She sat in her car in front of her home for the last fifteen years, said a rude word and drove off not looking back.

She stopped part way to have lunch and to phone Robert Bergen who looked after the house. He seemed polite and looked forward to seeing her. Cynthia had been told that Robert and Rosalind looked after the estate but she would need to find out exactly what. Her great Aunt was 93 and may have needed carers but she wasn’t and didn’t. All in good time.

She arrived later that afternoon, and drove into the estate, she turned through the trees and stopped the car. There had to be a mistake. In front of her was a good sized house, large by English standards, and a lake, fields and a view of the sea. Idyllic.