The Inheritance

Pulling it inside, Tati closed the door and ran to the kitchen for scissors. With drunken abandon she sliced away at the plastic wrapping, finally wrenching the contents free with her hands. It was a set of miniatures, tiny, intricately painted portraits of Tati’s grandmother Peg and her three siblings. Of course! She’d completely forgotten that her father had left her these too. Perhaps because, unlike the large Sutherland portrait of Peg, they weren’t particularly valuable. Not that Tati had any intention of selling any of them.

Tati turned each of the miniatures over in her hands. Granny, Uncle John and the two older sisters, Maud and Helen, whom she never knew. For a moment she thought it might be Mrs Worsley who had sent them in a moment of forgiveness. But the note was from Angela Cranley, who realized she’d forgotten them and had them sent over. Even Tati had to admit that that was kind and thoughtful. She tried not to resent it as she propped each of the tiny pictures up along the kitchen countertop. Picking up the large painting, she set it beside them, studying it closely for the first time.

There was her grandmother Peg, a young girl of twenty-one in the portrait but with the same sharp, knowing eyes she’d had as an old woman, and that Tati remembered so vividly from her own early childhood, in the years when her mother had still been alive. Peggy was Tati’s mother’s mother, but the two women hadn’t been remotely physically alike. Tatiana’s own mother, Vicky, was all softness and curves, a round, gentle loving woman, as welcoming as a feather bed or a favourite cushion. Peggy, by contrast, was intelligent and cynical, a tall, slender person of angular proportions and gimlet stares, rarely seen without a strong French cigarette in one hand and a tumbler of whisky in the other. Much more like me, thought Tati.

Sinking down into one of the ugly plastic dining chairs, Tati gazed at the painting for a long, long time. Her grandmother would have been horrified to see a family of Australians installed at Furlings, of that Tati felt sure. She was less sure as to whom Granny Peggy would have blamed for the situation: Rory, for changing his will? Or her, Tati, for driving him to it?

It doesn’t matter anyway. She’s dead. They’re all dead except for me. Peggy and her siblings. Mum and Dad. I’m the last. I’m the living. It’s what I think that matters.

She didn’t realize until hours later, when she got up to go to bed, that her face was wet with tears.





CHAPTER FOUR

Angela Cranley tied the silk belt of her kimono robe loosely around her waist and smiled down at her husband.

‘Come back to bed,’ growled Brett, reaching for her hand and pulling her towards him.

‘I can’t. You know I can’t,’ giggled Angela. ‘It’s Logan’s first day at school this morning.’

As always after they’d made love there was a glow about her. Brett loved his wife the most like this, with her tousled hair and flushed cheeks and that smile that said more about her love for him than words ever could. Thank God he’d left Sydney and that bitch Tricia! He didn’t know what he would do if he ever lost Ange.

It was three days since Brett had first arrived in Fittlescombe and walked through the front door of the house that was to be his home for the foreseeable future. All Angela’s anxieties about Furlings not being ready had been for nothing. Brett had instantly seen past the teething problems of the move and fallen almost as deeply in love with the house as he was with his wife and children. (Well, one of them, anyway. Jason still seemed miserable and distracted, but then that was becoming a permanent state of affairs with him.) Brett had seen numerous images of Furlings online, of course, so he’d already known the house was a beauty. But this was one of those rare cases where reality had trounced anticipation. Brett Cranley had grown used to having lovely things, to buying whatever he wanted and designing his life to order. Despite this, ever since he’d learned of Rory Flint-Hamilton’s will and seen those first pictures, Furlings had seduced him. It was a bit like having an arranged marriage and then discovering your bride was a supermodel.

He noticed that Angela had been nervous at dinner that first night, but he put it down to the house call she’d received earlier in the day from old man Flint-Hamilton’s daughter. Apparently Tatiana was threatening to challenge the will.

‘She seemed awfully determined about it,’ Angela said, refilling Brett’s wine glass and re-folding his napkin like an over-attentive Geisha. ‘She’s clearly heartbroken about losing the house.’

‘I don’t give a shit,’ Brett said brutally. ‘She had no right turning up here unannounced and worrying you like that.’

Angela didn’t say that her only real worry had been how Brett would take the news. Her husband doled out law suits the way that other people sent out Christmas cards. She couldn’t face beginning their new life in this idyllic village under a cloud of conflict and rancour.

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