Free The Irresistible Inheritance Of Wilberforce by Paul Torday

I thought I would go there later, when I got up. I did not really want to go out in the street, though, in case I met someone I didn’t want to meet.
    I looked at my watch and saw that it was half past ten. I must have slept for more than twelve hours. I yawned. The kitchen was rather depressing to be in. The plates never seemed to get washed and the whole place smelled rather stale. I cleared some dirty wine glasses from the table and took them as far as the sink. I took two empty bottles and pushed them into the bottle bin, which was full. Someone ought to empty that, I thought. There seemed little point in having breakfast this late. I decided I would open a bottle of wine and take a glass up to bed, and get up later. I opened a bottle of red wine from the Murrumbridge Irrigation Area of New South Wales that I had found in the basement, and took it upstairs with a glass. I climbed back into bed, poured the wine and put the bottle on my bedside table. I stared at the label for a moment and wondered why Francis, a lover of Bordeaux, had allowed this stranger into his cellar. I decided it must have been part of a parcel of wines he had picked up at auction somewhere.
    As I sipped the wine, which was young, I considered my affairs. It was clear I was going to have to find some money. I supposed I could sell the flat, which must be worth quite a lot; but then where would I live? I had taken out some fairly large loans against the security of the flat some time last year, in order to pay off an overdraft at the bank. Still, it was worth looking into, when I got the time. Then there was Catherine’s jewellery, which her family kept asking me to return. I supposed I could sell that. It was my property really, and she didn’t need it. That might at least pay off a few bills while I sorted myself out.
    Sorting myself out was a silent conversation I had with myself every now and then. Sometimes it progressed as far as writing a number of proposed actions down on a sheet of paper, for example:
    1. Talk to bank about second mortgage being increased
    2. Consider working as an IT consultant to bring in some income
    3. Get out and meet people
    4. Do not drink at breakfast or before the middle of the day
    5. Go for at least an hour’s walk in Hyde Park every day
     
There were several such sheets of paper in and on my desk at present, for the simple reason that the waste-paper basket was so full there was no point trying to throw them away.
    I supposed the wine at Caerlyon was worth quite a lot - at least a million pounds. It was a comfort to me that it was still there, that it would always be there. I wondered whom I should leave it to. It sounded from what Colin was saying as if I ought to make another will. I had made one when Catherine and I married, and in it I had left everything for life to her, and then afterwards to the children that we never had. It was probably a good idea to have another look at that. To whom would I leave the wine?
    The thought was discomforting. There was no one. No one except Francis understood wine and cared for it as I did. He was dead, and Colin was trying to convince me that I was dying. Trying? He was making a good job of it.
    What was it that he had said I had? Werner’s philosophy? That wasn’t it, but it was like it. Whatever the condition was called, it didn’t sound very appealing: falling into an endless sleep, haunted by dreams of a life I had never had, my own memories pushed into far corners of my mind from where they could never escape, eternal prisoners in nightmare oubliettes.
    I found I was perspiring heavily, and my pyjamas and the sheets were damp. I climbed out of bed and went and looked at myself in the mirror. I was tall and once had black hair and a pale face and blue eyes. My hair was now streaked with grey and plastered to the top of my head, shining with sweat. My face was no longer pale but dead white, decorated with a few patches of rough red skin, and covered in a sheen of