Chapter 2 The Inheritance
Cornwall, present day.
When the cab entered her home’s cul-de-sac, Lizzie Endell’s stomach turned twice and by the time it stopped outside the house’s driveway, it had turned another five times, making her so queasy she nearly opened the cab’s door and threw up on the curb.
What a spectacle that would be…
She was a grown woman, a medical graduate, had finished her courses with flying colours, and even earned distinction mentions from some of her professors, including invitations for internships and one to pursue a doctorate, but she was still unable to deal with the anxiety that coming back to her parents’ house caused.
Lizzie pushed her glasses against her nose and brushed a rebellious lock of hair behind her ear. Being in the vicinity of her mother was always a case of full-blown PTSD. All the adolescence insecurities that she managed to keep chained and gagged in a deep, dusty corner of her mind surfaced with renewed vigour, putting her tenuous, hard-earned confidence to the test.
It is only for summer. It is only for summer. It is only for summer.
She had been repeating the mantra in her head as some kind of lame self-help therapy since boarding the train in Oxford. As the train carried her southwest down to Truro, she used the time to rationalise how to spend those two months productively, had listed all the opportunities she would have to stay away from her mother and with a solid reasonable plan of action in her mind, Lizzie had felt confident that spending two whole months in her childhood’s home would not be as bad as she was picturing.
Nevertheless, as soon as the cab turned the final curve on her street and she spotted her house’s entrance, the healing effects of her carefully outlined plans and impromptu mantra seemed to have waned away pretty quickly and she could not summon the courage to open the door and climb down the cab.
Instead, she was feeling really bloody tempted to tell the driver to turn around and take her back to the train station.
The problem was that she had nowhere to go. There was not a single internship available this year. Her grandmother was spending July on a cruise with her girlfriends and even Vivian would be away half of the summer.
She bit her lower lip. There was no hope.
You’ll be all right, Lizzie, Vivian had reassured her, after delivering the news that she would be flying away to Greece with her family, Summer will be over in a jiffy!
Telling herself she was being ridiculous, she squared her shoulders. Her parents were not horrible people. They were not abusers or junkies or criminals. As a matter of fact, they were a perfectly normal, fully functional, typical middle class couple, with normal interests and hobbies, who entertained a healthy circle of friends and were well-liked by neighbours.
However, Lizzie had always felt so different from them, that during most of her life she believed she had been left on Earth by aliens.
She was still not entirely sure it was not the case…
Her father – Ben Endell – was a computer scientist, a bit of a genius in his field of work, who was proud to don the badge of fully-fledged nerd, choosing a good book over a social event anytime. Being a self-declared nerd herself, Lizzie saw no problem with that, however her father’s general blasé attitude over essentially all aspects of life made her cringe. It was as if he completely lacked fire in his blood, for want of a better expression. Nothing would ever make him angry or genuinely excited, or sad or barking mad. At least once, she would have loved to see him rage and bang his fists on the table with indignation or laugh till his stomach hurts, just to prove he had a pulse.
Her mother – Charlotte Endell, née Carne – on the other hand, was as different from him as water was from oil. Charlotte had been a notorious beauty in her youth, who could have taken a pick of the hunkies surrounding her, but who had chosen the quietest bookworm at the corner of the classroom for her spouse.
Because of her looks, Charlotte had been born to become a social butterfly, but family came on the way. At the age of eighteen, she was suddenly thrust with the burden of raising her three younger siblings when Lizzie’s grandparents died only months apart from each other. Forced to work full-time, her mother buried any dreams of going to college and pursuing the designer career she had aspired to in her youth, and once her youngest sister entered university, Charlotte married her father and gave up work completely after Lizzie was born.
Lizzie could not deny that her mother had had a tough youth, and that being a full-time housewife waswithout a shadow of a doubt a hard job, but her mother would seldom state an opinion that was her own and had no interests other than keeping the house unhealthily clean, discussing fashion and beauty tips, and following meaningless details of the life of celebrities on social media.
How her parents – who in Lizzie’s opinion were the human equivalent of Coca-Cola mixed with Mentos – had remained married for twenty-five years was beyond Lizzie’s comprehension.
When Lizzie turned fourteen living with her parents became unattainable. She simply could not cope anymore with her mother’s demands for Lizzie to behave like her, while her father hid in his office acting like Switzerland, not willing to take anyone’s side. The building family tension had only been eased when her parents decided to send her to a boarding school. It had not been the best time of her life, but her teenage hell of pimples, greasy skin and untameable hair, crushed heart, and social exclusion had been less horrible for her than living with her mother and her full-time disapproval.
At least during the boarding school years, Lizzie had the chance to discover herself and find friends with whom she could truly connect.
Then she got accepted at Oxford’s medical school and was thrilled to put a few extra miles between herself and her family. In her first years in college, she had done everything possible to avoid returning home during the breaks, signing up for every extra-curricular summer courses that came her way and she could afford, or going on backpacking trips with her friends. This year, however, the final college year, bad luck had struck: she had not managed to hook herself with anything and her friends were heading home to celebrate their graduation with their families or were starting research jobs.
She had been left with no choice but to go home.
A rather dreadful prospect…
You’ll be all right, Lizzie.Summer will be over in a jiffy!
She dearly prayed Vivian was right…
The cab driver’s voice snapped her back to the present. She was still sitting at the back of the car, clutching her backpack against her chest like a shield.
“Sorry, I was a bit distracted...” she replied gingerly, pushing her glasses back and nervously digging for her wallet.
“You tell me!” the driver gave a friendly chuckle, studying her through the rear mirror, “It seems to me like you’re going to pass out back there. Are you okay, love? Want me to call someone from the house to help you out?”
Terrified at the prospect of the fuss her mother would make if he did that, she shook her head vehemently, handing him the notes to pay the fare and climbed out of the car without further ado.
Clearly unconvinced, he helped her with the luggage and she watched him drive away, half-tempted to wave him back. With a resigned sigh, she rolled her luggage towards the entrance and stood frozen in front of the royal blue door with her keys in her hand, staring at the seventeen nailed in big golden numbers to the wood, still trying to find the courage to open the door.
This should not be this difficult anymore…
The door swung wide open and her mother squealed, startling her. Lizzie yelped and almost fell on the gravel.
“Elizabeth! Good heavens, you are here! Why haven’t you replied to my text?” Charlotte cried outraged.
Lizzie winced at being called Elizabeth so pompously, wondering if by my text her mother meant the daily fifteen or twenty messages she normally sent to ask or communicate useless things, such as a fabulous shoe sale, even though she knew perfectly well that Lizzie seldom wore anything other than trainers.
Usually the same until they fell into pieces.
“Hi mum,” she hugged her mother, kissing her on the cheek and flatly ignoring the question.
Charlotte held her by the shoulders and examined her from head to toe with pursed lips. Lizzie was wearing her oldest jeans and T-shirt, completed with her scruffiest trainers, in striking contrast with her mother’s sea green cocktail dress and golden sandals. It was the kind of outfit Lizzie would only wear for a party – maybe – but one that her mother would put on to watch TV on a Sunday afternoon. Standing side by side they could be the human version of The Lady and the Tramp.
Well, perhaps I do provoke her a little.
“Ah well, get in, will you? It’s chilly outside!”
It was July. And it was twenty-odd degrees, but Lizzie knew better than to argue with her mother. In silence, she grabbed the handle of her suitcase and wheeled it inside the house, knowing that her mother was more concerned that a neighbour would spot her dishevelled-looking daughter and mistake her for a homeless person loitering in the neighbourhood, than worried about Lizzie catching a cold.
“Benjamin! Our daughter is here!” her mother called turning her elegant neck in the direction of her father’s studio, making Lizzie wince again at her pretentious tone.
Her mother could not bring herself to use pet names. Although everyone called her father Ben, Charlotte had to spell out the full Benjamin, enunciating each syllable regally as if he were sixth in line to the British throne.
Lizzie was aware that one of her distant ancestors had been part of the Scottish Peerage some two or three hundred years back, but as far as she knew, that title had died out a long time ago.
At best dad is like, one thousandth in line to the British throne, she mused, chuckling to herself.
A moment later, her father came out of his studio, book in hand as per normal, and glasses hanging on the tip of his nose much in the same way that Lizzie’s always were. His black hair was streaked with gray, and the green eyes which he passed over to her, still bore the same air of lethargy she knew all too well. Lizzie loved her father dearly and made little secret that she preferred him over her mother by light-years, but his lack of joie de vivre was dismaying.
However, this time he offered her an impish smile which made her frown. Her father only used that expression when he was hiding something from her mother.
“Lizzie!” he greeted genially, dropping the book on the coffee table and coming with open arms to hug her. The gesture was so rare that it stunned her into silence.
“Hi dad,” she greeted hesitantly, now certain that something was afoot.
“Why didn’t you call us to say when you’d be here?” he scolded, kissing the top of her head as if she were a little girl of six, “We would have picked you up at the train station.”
Lizzie kissed him on the cheek. His black and gray stubble scratched her face pleasantly, “It was no big deal, dad, it’s only a ten minute ride from the station. I didn’t want to bother you guys on a Sunday afternoon…”
The truth was that she had needed the extra time to get ready to face her mother.
Ben lowered his face and peered at her from over his glasses with his deep green eyes, in a gesture that Lizzie came to recognise as his soul-reading gimmick. Although action was a word which her father rarely pulled out of the dictionary, his understanding of her compensated for the complete lack of connection she felt towards her mother.
Fortunately for her, he said nothing about her fib, and Lizzie barely managed to disguise she was holding her breath.
As usual her mother noticed nothing.
“Let’s have tea then, shall we?” Charlotte declared in a regal tone, rushing to the kitchen before either of them could say whether or not they wanted tea.
“Thank you, my dear,” Ben replied simply, not willing to stir any argument as was his wont, but when her mother was out of earshot, he turned to Lizzie, grabbed her by the arm and leaned in close to her ear to speak, “We have something important to discuss later.”
Puzzled, she studied her father’s face, feeling that she could pass out with curiosity.
“It’s about your inheritance,” he added, lowering his voice into a conspiratorial whisper as if that explained everything.
It did not.
Lizzie opened her mouth to ask What inheritance, but Charlotte walked back to the room with a tray of cakes and Ben waved his hand briefly, gesturing later.
It was not until after dinner, when Charlotte had gone to the family room to watch whatever reality show – however unreal – she fancied in the moment that Lizzie had the chance to query her father about his cryptic words from earlier.
Eyeing her mother from over his glasses to make sure she was truly distracted by the show, her father quietly beckoned Lizzie to follow him into his study, making her wonder what the reason for all that mystery was.
Ben signalled for her to sit on his favourite armchair and pulled his desk chair closer, and she started to think that someone in the family was dying, because her father allowed no one – except perhaps his cat, to sit on his armchair.
“Dad, I’m starting to freak out here – what is this all about? Are you okay? Is mum okay? Oh my God, did grandma have another stroke?”
He smiled. It was that unusual impish smile again and Lizzie could tell he was not his usual self because her father was clearly… excited.
No, that was not the right word.
He was outright ecstatic.
The plot thickens!
“Yes, everyone is fine, don’t worry,” he assured her, patting her hand fondly, “This is about something else entirely. Something truly… extraordinary and complicated, which I didn’t want to tell your mother before speaking to you because, you know, she would make a bit of a fuss, and this is something you might need to digest in your own time… I confess I am still digesting it myself and I am not entirely sure I have understood it completely… but I’ll do my best to explain it to you.”
For the second time in the same day, her father stunned her into silence. That must have been the longest speech he had made in her entire life.
He peered into her eyes and took another deep breath.
“As you know, our family is originally from Scotland.”
She nodded in silence. Ben was a computer scientist, but ancestry had been his father’s hobby and he had inherited her late grandfather’s taste for it. He had spent a good amount of time and even some money digging into the Endell family tree.
“Yes, well, you may recall that I inherited a number of family documents from your grandfather. These documents only go as far as the eighteen century or so, and belonged to the Lady Elizabeth Endell, the Eighth Viscountess Lochellen, who held the title in her own right and was an imminent figure in her community. Lady Lochellen died at the very young age of thirty and left only one son.”
She frowned, recalling her father mentioning something about the Viscountess Lochellen when she was young. She had been named after that ancestor if memory served.
Ben went on, “You may also recall a very curious fact that your grandfather uncovered in his research: Lady Lochellen’s son had only one son, who had only one son, and it would appear that for the past two hundred and fifty years only men have been born in the Endell family, making you the first Endell woman in more than two centuries!”
Recalling having that same conversation with her father years before, Lizzie bobbed her head in agreement, pushing her glasses back. Such freaky family phenomena were weird, but not a biological impossibility: many families had only sons while others had only daughters, and well, fate could be a bitch too.
“Is this why you were speaking of inheritance earlier? Did you find a treasure map or something amongst the old papers?” she hoped her father would go straight to the point.
“In a way…” he replied in that unusually cryptic tone again and when she huffed impatiently, his smile broadened, “I never really gave it much thought, reckoning it was just a family oddity, until about a month before your birthday when I received a very peculiar letter,” he explained, reaching into the pocket of his trousers and pulling out an envelope folded in two and handing it to her, “I suppose it is better if you read it yourself.”
Totally bewildered, Lizzie pulled out the letter, which had been – to her surprise, considering the subject – handwritten in high quality personalised stationery. The writing was very elegant and clear, though in an old-fashioned style, and she mused that it probably had been written by an old-school solicitor close to their eighties.
Possibly nineties…
Dear Mr Endell,
My name is Brun MacLugh and I am the current Warden of the Glennloch Estate in Perthshire, the ancestral seat of the Lochellen Viscounty. As it was disposed in the late Viscountess Lochellen’s last will and testament, and in agreement with the Royal Decree of 1534, her property and titles can only be inherited by a direct female descendant when such descendant reaches twenty-four years of age.
Here I must add my sincere apologies for contacting you only now: the previous Wardens seem to have lost track of your family a hundred years or so ago, and therefore only recently I have been made aware of the birth of your daughter, Ms Elizabeth Endell. For the effects of this particular affair, until your daughter turns twenty-four, you still figure as her legal guardian and hence the reason I am addressing you and not Ms Endell directly.
Upon her birthday on the First of May, your daughter shall become the Ninth Viscountess Lochellen and will be the legal proprietor of Glennloch, along with its incomes.
Several documents must be signed by your daughter forthwith, in order for her to take possession of her inheritance, thus I should hope that Ms Endell could come to Scotland at her earliest convenience to have the matter sorted. The address to my office is written on the post-scriptum.
I am at your disposal to clarify any queries you may have and I look forward to receiving yours or Ms Endell’s reply to this letter.
Yours faithfully,
Brun J. MacLugh, Esq.
To be sure she was not having some kind of psychotic breakdown, Lizzie read the letter twice, very slowly.
“What is this?” she cried, unable to keep the disbelief from her voice, “Is this a joke?”
Ben chuckled as if that was the greatest of the pranks, “Well, looks like you’re a Viscountess now, Lizzie. Your mother will probably have a stroke when she learns about this!”
Ignoring her father’s morbid comment, she poked the letter with a trembling finger, “Dad, how this can even be possible? Did you know about this weird will?”
“Not really,” he shook his head, “the Eighth Viscountess Lochellen died two and a half centuries ago, if memory serves, and I think the last Endell to be born in Scotland was her great-grandson who moved to Cornwall as a small child. I confess that I know little about Glennloch beyond the name, and all this time I had assumed that the family had lost it one way or another, most likely in a shameful way…” he peered through the window, probably making a list of shameful ways in which one could lose a family property, “It had never occurred to me that the house was entailed away from the male line, which is quite unusual…”
“Unusual is an understatement!” Lizzie cried sounding mystified, “This is completely bonkers! It is like, I don’t know, Pride and Prejudice backwards! Maybe this is a weird prank? I mean, the date on this letter is April first! Did you check this story?” she read the return address: Mr Brun MacLugh,“What do we know about this Brun MacLugh? Is Brun a Scottish name? Is he even a real person?”
Ben lifted his hands in a pacifying gesture at her barrage of questions, but his unconcerned demeanour did little to reassure her, after all it had taken him three full bloody months for him to tell her about that letter.
“Yes, Lizzie. After receiving this letter I asked myself the same questions and made some calls. Mr MacLugh is a real person and he’s indeed the one who manages Glennloch. And no, I don’t think Brun is a Scottish name. Very unusual… Anyway, it took me a while to tell you about it because I consulted with my solicitor friends to check into this and what Mr MacLugh says is truth: this title and the property are passed down the female line only,” her father stood up and reached for a paper inside his desk drawer, handing it to Lizzie, “A friend who works at the Royal Archives managed to find the Royal Decree of 1534, signed by King James V himself! Why the King signed such decree remains a mystery! There’s simply no precedent!”
She took the printout from her father’s hands, staring at it as if it were a piece of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
“Okay,” she acquiesced slowly, “Surely there must be a way out of this? Can I not refuse this inheritance?”
“I have asked this question too,” her father explained, pointing to the paper in her hands, “However, my friends explained that the way this Royal Decree was written made it virtually unbreakable, in other words, you may not use the title or take possession of Glennloch, but they cannot be reverted to the Crown, nor extinguished. They will always belong to the Endell women.”
Lizzie gaped, finding hard to absorb the bizarreness of that story.
This cannot be happening…
Her father opened a small glass cupboard he kept in his studio and poured two tumblers of whiskey – Scottish whiskey to complete the pun – offering her one, which stunned her speechless for the third time that day.
He had never drunk like that with her before.
“I think you need one, Your Ladyship,” he grinned, bowing his head.