The Inheritance (11 page)

‘What’sss going on?’ she slurred.

The last thing she heard was the
barman asking if she was all right before she collapsed in a heap on the floor.

******

When she came to Emma was lying in
a ward on a hospital bed.  She raised her head but a wave of nausea hit her so she
rested her head back on the pillow.

‘Where am I?’ she croaked.  Out of
the corner of her eye she could see someone slumped in a chair.  She swivelled
her head.  ‘Natalie?’

The figure was indeed Natalie.  She
sat up in the chair rubbing her eyes which Emma could see were red.  She was
still wearing the fancy dress from the party only now it was crumpled and
stained.

‘Emma.  Thank God you’re all
right.  You gave us a fright.’

‘What happened?’

‘You OD.’

‘But I thought I took the same as
you?’

‘Sshh!  You don’t want the whole
hospital to hear you, Em.’ Natalie pulled her chair up close to Emma’s bed and
whispered in her ear.  ‘OK, OD is not an accurate way of putting it.  I don’t
know what went wrong but for some reason your body couldn’t handle the drug,
you became dehydrated but then you drank too much…’

‘Drank too much?’

‘Yeah, there’s this thing with E
that it can stop you peeing so if you drink too much... Well anyway.  The
upshot is an ambulance was called, plenty of questions were asked and you were
brought here.  They pumped your stomach.’

‘That would explain the nausea.’

‘Yes… Look, Emma you’ve got to
promise me something.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Don’t ever do that to me again.’

Emma was stunned.  She lay still
with her mouth open in shock, wanting to reply but her head was pounding and
she couldn’t think straight.  It was too late anyway.  Before she could say
anything Natalie got up and walked out of the ward without looking back.

As she lay on her bed at home reflecting
on what had happened, Emma felt her eyes fill with unshed tears.  Her tryst
with Tom in the corridor filled her with shame.  That just wasn’t her; she
didn’t do that sort of thing.  What was wrong with her?  Yes the drugs were
partly to blame.  But it was her recklessness in taking the drug which had got
her to this point.  And she was hurt by Natalie’s anger at her for getting ill when
she had been the one who had convinced her to take the drug in the first place. 
She could see that she and Natalie were back to square one.

******

For some months after the party
there was an uneasy calm between Emma and Natalie.  At the same time she could
feel Natalie drifting further and further away from her.  It seemed to Emma
that it was as if they were mere acquaintances faking a proper friendship.  They
still attended parties together and went on plenty of shopping trips during the
long hot summer London was experiencing.  Emma continued to spend money like
water, buying more designer clothes, shoes and accessories than ever, as well
as the cost of evenings out and everything else that went with maintaining her
expensive lifestyle.  But nothing was the same as before her overdose.  Natalie
seemed to have no patience with her these days.  On a swelteringly hot August
day, they’d had a difficult conversation about the holiday abroad together they
were planning.  They were going to go the Maldives in January.  They’d paid
their deposit.  The balance was due in the autumn.

‘I’m so looking forward to getting
away from London with you,’ Emma had said trying to be a little jovial.  They
were sitting in the living room with the curtains drawn and the fans on full
blast.  The conservatory was a no go area at the moment – it was just too hot.

‘Well it won’t be just with me.  As
you know we’ll be staying with Rebecca,’ Natalie had said.  Her voice was
terse.

Emma was surprised.  ‘No, I didn’t
know.  You could have said something, Nat.’

‘I did.’ Natalie snapped.  ‘You’ve
just got a memory like a sieve these days.’

‘And we all know why that is!’ Emma
replied her face going red.   

‘Oh would you please stop harking
back to that, Emma.  You’re like a broken record.’

‘I nearly died, Natalie.’

‘I realise that.’  And Natalie had
stood up and stormed out of the room.

Emma had remained motionless seated in
the armchair.  She could barely believe her friend’s callousness.  Time went on
and her relationship with Natalie didn’t improve.  August drifted on into
September, and September into October.  She and Natalie still weren’t on good
terms, but Emma thought their friendship could be salvageable.  Then when she
received a letter in the post in early October, things began to get a lot worse.

‘I don’t understand.  This can’t be
right,’ Emma said to herself as she scanned the letters urgently.  The first
letter was from the bank.  It said that she’d gone over her overdraft.  The
second letter was a statement from her ISA.  There was very little left in it.

‘What can’t be right?’ Natalie
asked with a disinterested tone to her voice.  She’d appeared as if from
nowhere.  Emma clasped the letters behind her, hoping that Natalie wouldn’t see
them.  Her relationship with her was so volatile at the moment.  Telling her
what was in the letters might send it over the edge.

‘I was just thinking that it can’t
be right that we’ve got no parties to go to this week,’ she said.  It was the
best excuse she could think of. 

‘Actually we have.  Rebecca’s
putting on a party at her new house to celebrate moving in.  You can come if
you feel up to it.’

‘All right.’ Emma feigned a smile.

Natalie nodded.  ‘Well I’m going
out now.  I would’ve suggested you come too, but you’re obviously fragile after
what happened.’

‘What do you mean?  It’s been
months, Nat, and I’m feeling so much better than I was.  We’ve been out
together plenty of times, haven’t we?  I wouldn’t mind coming…’

‘I don’t think so Emma.  All right,
I’ll be honest.  There’re things I need to discuss in private with a friend.  I
really can’t have you hanging around with me.  It’s just not appropriate.’

Emma nodded in silence, a lump in
her throat.  She wondered what Natalie had to discuss with whoever it was and
why it was so important that she wasn’t there.   She had to face the hard truth
that she and Natalie were never going to be as close as they once were. 
Watching her leave, tears formed in Emma’s eyes and she blinked them away
furiously.  She would have to sort this out on her own.  That much was clear. 
Right now though her head was swimming as if she’d just come off a roller
coaster and she couldn’t think clearly.  She was reminded of how she’d felt
just after her overdose.  It had been like waking up after a drunken night out,
but about a million times worse.   Emma shuddered at the memory.  Walking into
the living room, she sank down on to the comfortable sofa and dropped the
letters on the coffee table.

Putting her feet up on the sofa,
something Natalie always frowned on, Emma laid her head on the armrest and shut
her eyes.  But although she felt exhausted she couldn’t settle.  Her mind returned
to that eventful night at the party.  Scenes from the evening kept replaying in
her head; everyone ignoring her, taking the tablet, dancing for ages, and her
encounter with Tom.  She remembered their stupidity in not thinking about using
protection.  Emma was on the pill, but who knew if Tom was healthy or if he had
an STD?  She groaned quietly again at her folly.  How could she have been so
stupid?

Eventually she began to doze and
when she woke up it was half past four.  Natalie wasn’t back.  In the past that
would have bothered Emma.  Now that she and Natalie weren’t on good terms
anymore however, Emma knew there was no point hanging around waiting for her to
return.  She turned her attention to the letters and looked at them closely. 
As she examined the overdraft letter, she had a vague recollection of reading
her last bank statement and seeing that she was perilously close to going over
her overdraft.  But as with many important things in her life she had ignored
it.

She was badly in the red and needed
to claw back enough money to get back within her overdraft to start with.  But
she also owed the bank money for exceeding it.   How am I going to get the
funds together to pay the bank and get back in the black? she thought, looking
at her ISA statement.  It wasn’t good news.  She had just about enough money
left to pay the bank charges, but nothing else.  There was only one option for
her.  She would have to get a job.  For most people this would hardly be
humiliating.  Emma knew many of her friends she’d left behind in Cornwall
worked very hard to earn enough money to pay rent, let alone buy expensive
extras such as she had been enjoying.

But she’d grown accustomed to
living how she pleased.  She was now unused to a rigorous routine and the
discipline of a job, like a pampered student who refused to study.  She stayed
up late most nights and got up when she wanted.  She had been used to buying
pretty much anything she liked without a second thought.  So to her the thought
of searching for a job, filling out numerous applications and going for an
interview where she was competing with many others, filled her with dread.  And
then there was Natalie.  How on earth am I going to tell her that I don’t have
any money in the bank to live off? she wondered hopelessly.  That from now on I’ll
have to earn my own money?  Leaning back on the sofa, she closed her eyes again
and thought of how amazingly stupid she’d been to blow a hundred grand in less
than eighteen months.

The best job she could hope for
would be to get some bar work like she’d had back home.  Home.  Where was that
now?  Was it her father’s farm?  London was starting to feel less and less like
home.  For the first time since she’d left Emma found herself missing the
farm.  She pictured the farmhouse nestled in the clearing surrounded by trees like
a creature in its den.  She saw her bedroom with its pretty colours waiting for
her like an expectant friend.  And her father and sister laughing and joking
with each other over their evening meal.  She even found herself wondering how they
were.  Would they have anything to say to her after all that had passed?

Most likely they would want nothing
to do with her and maybe that was best.  She didn’t need or want their
disapproval.  She could do without her sister’s judgemental looks and her
father’s disappointed expression.  She threw the letters, which she barely
realised she’d been holding tightly, on the coffee table.  Her stomach
rumbled.  She’d been feeling queasy all day and had had very little to eat.  But
now she had an appetite.  Maybe she’d feel better after some food.  She went to
the kitchen and had a rummage, foraging like a forest animal.  There wasn’t
much in the cupboards.  Although Emma and Natalie had tried to get into the
habit of cooking for themselves when Emma first moved to London, lately they’d
been living on meals at fancy restaurants and expensive takeaways.

She did find some pasta and a sauce
to go with it that was just about in date.  Heating it up on the hob, her mind
wandered as she tried to recall the last time she’d been truly happy.  After a
while she remembered.  Her mind grasped the memory, as if it were a rare
butterfly that might flutter away if she didn’t keep hold of it.  It had been
about a month after she’d arrived in London.  Natalie was busy seeing a friend
and Emma had decided to go sightseeing on her own.  She had felt just like any
other tourist as she queued up to go on the London Eye.  As she was waiting
patiently in the queue, someone tapped her on the shoulder.

‘Excuse me.’  It was a young
Chinese man with his wife or girlfriend.  ‘You tell us what is what?’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand,’
Emma said.

‘On the wheel,’ the young woman
said eagerly.  ‘You tell us things, what is this, what is that.’

‘Oh, I see.  You want me to tell
you about the things we can see from the wheel?’ Emma replied trying not to talk
too fast.

‘Yes, yes,’ they said together
nodding vigorously.

‘Yes, all right, no problem I can
do that for you.’

The three of them chatted together
as they were standing in the queue.  They just about managed to communicate; the
couple speaking in broken English and Emma trying to keep her language simple
so they could understand her.  Although they were queuing for a long while, the
time flew by for Emma.  It was sometimes hard for her to work out what they
were trying to say.  But she did manage to learn that the couple were on
holiday here in Britain for a few weeks.  They told her that they lived in
Beijing and were doctors.  

Emma did most of the talking.  She
told them about her life in London.  They seemed to understand English much
better than they could communicate in it, nodding enthusiastically when she
told them about going shopping at Harrods and the parties she’d been to.  Emma
fibbed a little when telling them about herself.  She told them she had a
little job in a bar, feeling a bit ashamed that she didn’t work at all.  They
were most likely very hard workers and she didn’t think they’d understand if
she told them she had no job. 

‘Here we are!’ she said as they
finally reached the front of the queue. 

It was a little while longer before
the three of them, along with about twenty others, were installed inside one of
the large pods of the London Eye.  Then slowly, slowly, the pod began to move
upwards.

‘What we see?  What we see?’ the
woman asked Emma.

The view was incredible.  They
could see for miles.  The people and cars far below looked like ants scurrying
around.  London was a toy town from up here.  Emma began to point out the
Houses of Parliament, the Tower of London and various other famous landmarks to
the Chinese couple who paid close attention.  As she talked she felt her
spirits lift; she wasn’t sure exactly why but at this point she felt truly
happy.  Maybe it was because she had her whole life ahead of her; the world was
full of endless possibilities and she was only just beginning to discover them. 
Being with this couple, she felt useful as though she had a purpose and was
sorry when the ride, which lasted about half an hour, was over.  At the end of
it Emma shook hands with the couple who were beaming at her. 

‘Thank you much,’ the man said.  

‘Yes, you very good!’ the woman
added.

‘Here my card,’ the man said
pressing a small contact card into Emma’s hand.

‘Thank you very much,’ she said.

The couple gave her a little nod. 
Emma smiled.  Then they went their separate ways.

As Emma ate her pasta she realised
she’d forgotten all about the man’s contact card until now.  She felt bad; she
really ought to have written to him.  That was just another thing on her list
that she should have done but hadn’t.  But her main priority was to sort out
her finances.  After her meal she grabbed a pen and a notepad and curled up on
the sofa.  She perused the two letters for what felt like the millionth time.  It
seemed she would need to pay a fee for going over her overdraft limit, but she
wasn’t sure for how much.  She would need to contact her bank to find out. 
There was very little money left in her ISA, but she was hoping that what there
was would go some way to paying the bank.

Emma sighed deeply.  She felt as
though she had all the cares of the world on her shoulders and it was too much
to bear.  She needed to get a job and fast.  But she also needed to talk to
Natalie and tell her the situation.  She had no choice.  She had no money to
pay the rent let alone fork out for all the sumptuous extras the two of them
enjoyed.  Natalie needed to know the truth.  For the first time that evening
she wished Natalie were here, so that she could get the unpleasant conversation
over and done with.  But she wasn’t here, so Emma spent what felt like forever making
notes, working out exactly how much she owed and how long it would take her to
pay it back.  If she got a job, that was.

The evening dragged on and there
was still no sign of Natalie.  Emma felt increasingly tired and in the end,
although it was only nine thirty, she decided to go to bed.  Talking to Natalie
would have to wait.  Just as she was about to go upstairs, however, she heard
the front door open and Natalie’s voice.

‘Yes, yes, all right, I’ll call
you,’ Emma heard her say giggling. 

There was the muffled sound of a
man’s voice and the front door was slammed shut.  The door to the living room
was thrown open and Natalie came in.  She had a happy expression on her face. 
Emma was unsure whether or not to tell her about the letters.  She looked so happy
that Emma was reluctant to spoil her good mood.  But then as Natalie saw Emma’s
face she frowned and sat down on the sofa opposite her.

‘What’s wrong now?  You look like
your grandmother’s just died.’

‘No, but it’s bad.’  Emma began to
tell Natalie about her predicament.  She watched the expression on her face
change from displeased to downright hostile.

‘What are you going to do about it
then, Emma?’

‘I’ll have to get a job, Nat.  I
have no choice, I have bills to pay.  I mean, I’ll barely be able to afford the
rent on this place and…’

‘That won’t be an issue,’ Natalie
said flatly.  ‘If you can’t afford to pay the rent then you can’t stay here. 
Also if you get a job, we’ll be living different lives.  You’ll have to get up
at certain hours, I’ll be in late.  It just won’t work.  I’m sorry, Emma, but
we can’t live together anymore.’

Emma stared at her friend,
open-mouthed in shock.  She could barely believe what she was hearing.  Then she
felt anger seething inside her at Natalie’s unfairness.

‘Fine,’ she snapped.  ‘I knew this
would be your reaction.  You’re such a selfish bitch, you can’t think of anyone
else!  I’m prepared to work my way out of this situation I’m in, which by the
way you helped me into by encouraging me to spend, spend, spend like there was
no tomorrow.  And thanks to you I nearly died of a drug overdose.  But as soon
as there’s any hint of me having money troubles, or not being able to cope with
your self-centred lifestyle, that’s it.  I’m out.  Well you want to know
something, Natalie?  Maybe I’m better off without you!’