The Inheritance Read Online Free Page A

herself leaving Cornwall and getting a job far away, working for years to
get the sort of money she’d need when she could easily have it now.  The
frustrating thing was that her inheritance of £100,000 would provide for her
needs, but her father had been refusing to let her have it.  She was meant to
wait until she was twenty five to have it, but that would mean another three
years.  And I can’t wait another three years, she thought to herself.  I’ll go
mad.
    She knew that the way she was
forcing him to give in was underhand to say the least.  But she could see her
life stretching interminably before her, the weeks and years rolling by and her
never leaving this place.  I had to do it; I have to go she thought, feeling a
tight pain in her chest as if she was physically trapped.  She rooted around in
her pocket for her mobile phone and checked the screen.  Still no reception. 
Bloody countryside!  She was trying to organise a night out to her favourite
club with her friends.  Emma sighed and stood up, brushing herself down.  She’d
just have to ring Natalie on the landline.
    She walked back across the fields
towards the farmhouse, stopping along the way to lean against a gate, and gaze
out across the endless fields.  There was no denying the beauty of this farm,
the lushly green hills, the trees and blue sky.  It was spring and everything
was lovely.  Emma breathed in the soft clean air.  In the distance she caught
sight of her father on his tractor trundling along.  She raised her hand to
wave at him, and then dropped it.  She didn’t want another argument with him, especially
not after the other night.  Turning away from the field, she began to walk
along the rutted track towards the farmhouse.  As a child she’d loved this
walk, with the trees on either side of the track meeting each other in the
middle and forming a green canopy, a roof made of leaves.  Now she found it
almost claustrophobic.
    She couldn’t explain even to
herself why she felt so penned in here.  Emma knew that many people would do
anything to live in a place that was so free of people and houses, cars, noise,
everything that went with urban living.  She only knew that for her, life on
this farm was a straightjacket, hemming her in. 
    Approaching the farmhouse, she
paused for a moment to gaze at the building which she sometimes felt had become
her prison.  The house was late Victorian.  It was rectangular in shape, with
two storeys.  The original sash windows were still in place and the roof was
tiled with Cornish slate, parts of it spattered with moss.  The house had a
quaint, old-fashioned look to it.  Tendrils of ivy clung to the light grey
Cornish stone bricks, especially around the windows and front door.  Kate said
the ivy made the house look romantic.  Emma thought it looked as though the ivy
was trying to strangle the house.  Just as the house is trying to strangle me,
she thought.
    She sighed and went inside.  Just
then the phone rang.  She picked it up.
    ‘Hello?’
    ‘Hey girly, you ready to party?’ It
was her friend Natalie.
    ‘You bet.’ Emma smiled.
    ‘Good because someone needs to
rescue you from that dreary old farm.  And today that someone is me.  I’ll come
in my limo and we’ll get to you for seven pm, OK?’
    ‘Limo?’
    ‘Em, don’t be dense.  I’m joking. 
I’ll be in a taxi, see you at seven.’
    ‘Fantastic.  I’ll see you then. 
Bye.’
    ‘Em, wait.  Have you talked to your
dad again?’
    ‘Yes.’ Emma said.  ‘I did what you
suggested.  I gave him the ultimatum.’ 
    ‘Good.  About time too.  You must
tell me all about it.  See you later.’
    ‘See you.’  Emma put the phone
down.  Her guilty feeling returned.  She shook her head as if to clear her bad
thoughts away and quickly climbed the stairs.
    The sun was streaming through the
window when Emma reached her bedroom.  She loved this room – it was the one
place in the entire farm that she could