Free The Inheritance by Elaine Jeremiah Page A

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