The Family Game(84)

‘Ed and I aren’t even married. My child won’t even be a Holbeck. They wouldn’t be able to inherit anything, so they’ll take nothing from your kids. What is the problem here?’

‘God, you’re a stupid little bitch, aren’t you?’ she snarls, casting her eyes back to the house in disbelief. ‘I guess this is why he fell for you. Because you’re easy. You don’t know anything about this family, do you? You haven’t looked into the entailment, have you? Holbeck inheritance runs by blood.’

‘What? What does that—’

‘Edward is the first born. If he has a child with anyone – married, not married, whatever – then that child inherits everything. It doesn’t matter about you, if you’re married to him; you mean nothing. Only blood counts. Only our children count. Even their gender is irrelevant. Blood counts. Children count. We are nothing.’

‘We’re nothing?’ I repeat, turning the idea of that over in my mind. ‘Okay,’ I say finally, her eyes boring into me. ‘Well, in that case, I guess you’re completely fucked, then, aren’t you, Fiona? Because I’m having this baby and I don’t give a shit what happens to you either. If you win tonight, which I highly doubt, I’m still having this baby, and this family will have no choice but to accept my child no matter what I did or didn’t do – according to you. So, the question is, really, do you understand? Because it sounds to me like you probably should have done a bit more research yourself, shouldn’t you? Before you got knocked up by the wrong fucking brother, you stupid cunt.’

Fiona’s mouth drops open in a satisfying gawp. There it is. I guess she must have read me wrong too.

I turn with a hot ember of triumph glowing inside me and crunch on at a jog through the swirling snow.

Once I’ve passed the maze, I slip behind some bushes and let out the tension I’ve been holding in my body. A quick look back towards the house confirms that she isn’t following me, and I’m relieved to see she’s gone.

I shove my burning cold hands into my pockets and continue on, replaying Fiona’s words. My baby, the creature growing inside me, will inherit everything. Everything here, everything in New York and London and France and Italy and LA and Switzerland. All of it. Everywhere. Everything. The whole Holbeck empire.

The idea is beyond real understanding. The weight of all that shouldn’t rest on one person. You only have to look at history, at the lives of all those who have inherited, at Bobby, to know what a mixed blessing inherited wealth can be.

I don’t want that much weight for my unborn child. I want a new world for her. A fresh world for her to find her own happiness in.

But Fiona’s words throw new light on my situation and on Robert’s interest in me. The fact I am still here is perhaps more down to the life growing inside me than I ever realized. He must have known. Somehow, before we met that Thanksgiving evening. And suddenly I remember Dr Leyman. We visited him the morning before Thanksgiving dinner. A simple phone call between old friends could have told him everything. Given what I know of the Holbecks, I doubt doctor/patient confidentiality has ever stood in their way.

Finally, I reach the lip of the well, and with one hand resting on the icy stone I lean over to shine my torch into the darkness. The hole’s dripping walls disappear down into a void, and I fumble in the snow-covered dirt beside the well for something to drop down into it to gauge its depth, but as I do my hand comes into contact with something and I quickly pull away. It felt like human hair. I yelp, jumping back, my heart thumping erratically in my chest. There I was expecting to find horrors down the well, but here they are right on the surface.

Every fibre of my body tells me to run, to forget the game, to forget Robert and Edward and even the life growing inside me. The sudden possibility that I might die here tonight finally hits me with its cold, hard reality. A pure animal instinct for survival overtakes everything but I do not move, because if I run now, how long will I last out in the world with enemies like the Holbecks? If I make an enemy of Robert, I’m as good as dead.

I suck in a lungful of frozen air and force myself to pull it together. I’ve seen dead bodies before; I have seen those I love still and quiet; I am certainly strong enough to bear the death of a stranger.

I dip my hand back into the snow, keeping the beam of my torch on my hand as I tunnel into the gap. My fingertips find it again: a thick tendril of matted hair, coarse and frozen by the cold. I carefully brush the snow away and see I am wrong. It is not hair. It is not a body. Held in my hand instead is a frayed length of hemp rope. I pull at it and the snow all around the well shifts as the rungs of a rope ladder emerge from beneath the snow. I rise to standing, dragging it up and out of the snowy scrub. At one end of it is a large double-claw hook.

I guess I will have to go down the well after all.





45 The Point of No Return




Saturday 24 December

There are times in your life when you really do question where it all went wrong; and if scrambling into a pitch-black well at night, in a snow flurry, wearing a Balmain blazer dress just shy of three months pregnant, with a torch rammed in your mouth, isn’t one of those times then I don’t know what is.

The rope creaks but it does not give. It held my weight when I tested it on the outside of the well wall but now, looking down into the darkness, doubts surface regarding its reliability.