The air in the solicitor’s office smelled of musty leather and yellowed parchment. Emily perched on the edge of a stiff-backed chair, her fingers twisting the frayed strap of her handbag. Beside her sat Beatrice – her elder sister, immaculate in her tailored suit, the gold bracelet on her wrist catching the light as she scrolled through her mobile. Beatrice might have been waiting for a board meeting rather than the reading of their grandfather’s will.
Emily remembered how grandfather used to say that the most important moments often came wrapped in silence. The grandfather clock in the corner ticked heavily as the elderly solicitor adjusted his spectacles and cleared his throat.
“The last will and testament of Arthur William Whitmore,” he began in a voice that seemed dredged from the depths of an oak-paneled study.
“To my granddaughter Beatrice Victoria Whitmore, I bequeath the two-bedroom flat in Mayfair, including all furnishings and effects therein.”
Beatrice didn’t even glance up from her phone, as if this were merely the confirmation of an expected outcome. Emily felt the familiar hollow ache beneath her ribs. Always second-best. Beatrice had attended Oxford, married that hedge fund manager, owned property in Chelsea. And Emily? Thirty-four years old, assistant librarian at the local branch, still driving the same second-hand Mini she’d bought at university.
“And to my granddaughter Emily Victoria Whitmore,” the solicitor continued, turning a crackling page, “I leave Rose Cottage in the village of Little Wellingham, including all outbuildings and the three-acre plot of land.”
Emily’s breath caught. That crumbling old place grandfather had retreated to after grandmother passed? She remembered childhood visits – the thatch in desperate need of repair, the garden gone to seed, the plumbing that groaned like a dying man.
Beatrice finally deigned to look up, her lips curling in that familiar half-smile. “Well, at least you got something, Em. Though heaven knows what you’ll do with that pile. Knock it down and sell the land to developers, I suppose.”
The solicitor handed Emily a set of heavy iron keys, their teeth worn smooth with age. Outside, her husband Geoffrey waited by their battered Volvo, checking his Rolex with visible irritation.
“Well?” he demanded as she approached. “Don’t tell me she got the lot again?”
When Emily explained, Geoffrey’s face darkened like a thundercloud. He kicked the tyre so hard the car shook. “Bloody hell, Emily! Your sister gets a Mayfair flat worth two million quid, and you’re left with some rotten cottage in the back of beyond?”
That evening, Geoffrey announced over their Marks & Spencer ready meal that he’d been seeing Beatrice for months. “She understands what it means to strive for excellence,” he said, as if this explained everything. By morning, he’d changed the locks.
The first thing Emily noticed when she finally reached Rose Cottage was that someone had been there before her. Fresh milk in the fridge, the beds made up with crisp linens that smelled of lavender. The second thing she noticed was the envelope tucked beneath the pillow in the master bedroom, addressed in grandfather’s spidery hand.
“My dearest Emily,” the letter began, “if you’re reading this, then you’ve come home as I knew you would. That cottage holds more than crumbling plaster and creaking floorboards. Remember how you used to hunt for buried treasure in the garden? Well, my girl, you’ll find it beneath the old yew tree – three paces from the trunk toward the kitchen window…”
The chest contained gold sovereigns dating back to Victoria’s reign, a Tudor locket that might have belonged to Anne Boleyn, and stacks of carefully preserved first editions that made Emily’s librarian heart skip. The auction house valued it all at nearly half a million pounds.
When Geoffrey came sniffing back, talking about second chances, Emily simply showed him the door. When Beatrice threatened solicitors, Emily reminded her about the tax implications of undeclared assets. And when the local council tried to compulsory purchase the land for development, Emily proved her ownership of an eighteenth-century folly that qualified the property for protected status.
These days, the villagers often see Emily Whitmore cycling to the train station with a satchel full of books for the mobile library service she set up. The thatch on Rose Cottage shines golden in the sunlight, its gardens bursting with heritage roses. And if you pass by on midsummer’s eve, you might glimpse Emily raising a glass of elderflower cordial to the portrait of a smiling old man above the inglenook fireplace, his eyes twinkling with secrets kept and promises fulfilled.
