The Inheritance Clause

Chapter 1: The Last Will and Catastrophe

The solicitor's office smelled like old paper and regret, which Penny Doyle thought was probably the correct ambiance for being told you'd inherited something you didn't want.

"To my great-niece, Penelope June Doyle," Mr. Frobisher read, adjusting his bifocals with the solemnity of a man who had delivered bad news professionally for forty years, "I leave Lark Cottage, its contents, and the surrounding half-acre of land in the village of Carden Hollow, Dorset."

Penny blinked. She hadn't seen Great-Aunt Helen since she was eleven, at a family funeral where Helen had pressed a boiled sweet into her palm and told her she had "interesting eyes." That was the entirety of their relationship. One boiled sweet. One cryptic compliment. And now, apparently, a house.

"There is, however, a condition," Mr. Frobisher continued, and Penny felt the universe adjust itself back to its usual programming.

"Of course there is."

"Miss Doyle must reside in Lark Cottage for a period of no fewer than six consecutive months from the date of taking possession. Failure to fulfill this condition will result in the property reverting to the Carden Hollow Parish Council for community use." He looked up. "Your great-aunt was quite specific."

"She was quite something," Penny said, though she had no real basis for this claim.

Mr. Frobisher set down the document and folded his hands. He had the expression of a man who had seen many people receive unexpected inheritances and knew that the initial reaction was rarely the final one.

"You're under no obligation to accept, of course. If you decline, the property passes immediately to the parish council. I should mention that several members of the council have already expressed interest in converting the cottage into a community arts space." He paused. "They were quite keen, actually. Phoned twice."

Penny stared at the document on his desk. Six months. In a village she'd never been to, in a house she'd never seen, left to her by a woman she'd met exactly once.

The sensible thing would be to decline. She was thirty-six years old. She had a flat in Bristol—well, she had a flat in Bristol for another nineteen days, at which point her landlord was converting it into two smaller, more expensive flats, because apparently the laws of physics now bent to the will of property developers. She had a career as a children's book illustrator that had peaked five years ago with a series about a badger who solved mysteries, and which had since settled into a gentle decline that her agent, Trish, described as "a transitional period" with the forced optimism of someone describing a sinking ship as "experiencing a change in altitude."

She had nothing tethering her to Bristol. That was the pathetic truth of it. Her last relationship had ended eight months ago when David, a perfectly nice accountant, had told her over pasta that he found her "emotionally unpredictable," which Penny thought was rich coming from a man who cried at insurance adverts. Before David there had been Marcus—no, she'd been told not to use that name. Before David there had been the one who collected vintage typewriters and turned out to still be married. Before him, the long-distance thing with the marine biologist who eventually chose the octopuses over her, which Penny couldn't even resent because octopuses were genuinely remarkable creatures.

"Miss Doyle?" Mr. Frobisher prompted.

"Sorry. I was thinking about octopuses."

"As one does."

Penny pulled the document toward her and read the condition again. Six consecutive months. That was autumn through spring, if she started now. October through March. Half a year in a village she couldn't even picture, in a house that could be anything from a charming period gem to a structural hazard.

"What condition is the cottage in?" she asked.

"I haven't personally visited," Mr. Frobisher said, in a tone that suggested wild horses could not have dragged him there. "Your great-aunt lived there for forty-three years. She was, by all accounts, more interested in other pursuits than home maintenance."

"That's not reassuring."

"It wasn't intended to be."

Penny liked Mr. Frobisher. He had the refreshing quality of not pretending things were better than they were.

She thought about her flat—soon to be two flats—and her career—soon to be a memory—and the general trajectory of her life, which had the aerodynamic profile of a brick. She thought about the boiled sweet, which had been butterscotch, and about Helen's voice saying "interesting eyes" with a seriousness that had made eleven-year-old Penny feel, for one brief moment, seen.

"I'll take it," she said.

Mr. Frobisher nodded as though he'd expected this, which was annoying.

"I should mention," he added, reaching for another sheet of paper, "that your great-aunt also left a brief personal note for you. Shall I read it?"

"Please."

He cleared his throat. "'Dear Penny. Don't be sensible. Love, Helen.'"

Penny laughed, surprising herself. It was the first time she'd laughed in what felt like weeks, and it came out slightly unhinged, which made Mr. Frobisher reach discreetly for his water glass.

"Right," Penny said. "Right. Don't be sensible. I can absolutely manage that."

---

Nineteen days later, Penny drove into Carden Hollow in a twelve-year-old Fiat packed so tightly with her possessions that she could only see out of the driver's side window and a small triangle of the windscreen. The village revealed itself gradually through this limited viewport: a church spire, a pub called The Ploughman, a row of stone houses the color of old honey, a post office with a noticeboard so covered in flyers it looked like it was growing feathers.

It was pretty. Penny was suspicious of pretty. Pretty places in the countryside had a way of being deeply hostile to newcomers, like those flowers that looked beautiful but turned out to be poisonous.

She followed the solicitor's directions down a lane that narrowed until the hedgerows were brushing both sides of the car, which did nothing for her already fragile nerves. The lane ended at a gate, and beyond the gate was Lark Cottage.

Penny turned off the engine and stared.

The cottage was stone, as promised. It was also half-covered in ivy, which had grown so enthusiastically that it appeared to be attempting to pull the building back into the earth. The roof sagged in the middle like a horse that had given up. Two of the upstairs windows were cracked. The front door was a shade of blue that had faded to the color of a three-day-old bruise. The garden—and she used the term generously—was a riot of overgrown things, though she could see, beneath the chaos, the bones of something that had once been carefully planned.

There was, however, one section of the garden that was immaculate. To the left of the front path, a border of roses and late-blooming perennials had been maintained with obvious care. It looked like someone had drawn a line through the garden and said: this part, civilization; everything else, anarchy.

"Don't be sensible," Penny muttered, and got out of the car.

The key was under a stone hedgehog by the front door, exactly where Mr. Frobisher had said it would be. The lock required significant persuasion. The door opened with a sound like a complaint.

Inside, the cottage smelled of dust and something floral—lavender, maybe, or the ghost of lavender. The hallway was narrow and dark, lined with framed pictures she couldn't make out. She found a light switch. Nothing happened. She found another light switch. A single bulb came on in the kitchen at the end of the hall, revealing a room that had clearly been decorated in 1974 and had been patiently waiting ever since for someone to come and fix it.

The countertops were orange Formica. The cabinets were painted a shade of avocado that hadn't been fashionable even when it was fashionable. The stove was the kind of ancient gas range that looked like it might explode if you spoke to it harshly. On the windowsill above the sink, a row of dried herbs hung from a string, so old they'd turned the same uniform gray.

Penny opened a cabinet. Inside was a single tin of baked beans, a box of PG Tips with a best-before date of 2019, and a bottle of sherry that was two-thirds empty.

"Helen," Penny said to the empty kitchen, "I think we would have gotten along."

She explored the rest of the house with the cautious optimism of someone defusing a bomb. The sitting room had good bones—a stone fireplace, two deep-set windows—but was furnished with what appeared to be the entire contents of a 1970s jumble sale. The sofa was upholstered in a fabric that could only be described as "aggressive floral." There was a television set so old it had knobs.

Upstairs, two bedrooms and a bathroom. The main bedroom had a brass bed frame and a window overlooking the garden. The second bedroom was smaller and had been used as some kind of storage room—boxes stacked against every wall, their contents unknown. The bathroom featured a cast-iron tub with claw feet, a toilet that made an ominous gurgling sound when she tested the flush, and a sink with separate hot and cold taps, because apparently the Victorians believed that comfort was a moral failing.

The hot tap produced nothing. The cold tap produced a violent burst of brown water, then a thin, sulky stream.

"Hostile plumbing," Penny noted. "Excellent."

She went back downstairs and out the back door, which opened onto a small paved area and, beyond it, the full extent of the garden. It was larger than she'd realized—a proper half-acre that sloped gently down to a stone wall, beyond which she could see fields and, in the distance, the village church spire. The garden was a tangle of things she couldn't identify, punctuated by the occasional structure: a greenhouse with several broken panes, a shed that leaned at a concerning angle, what appeared to be a sundial buried in ivy.

And there, at the far end of the garden, was a man.

He was kneeling by a flower bed, doing something purposeful with a pair of secateurs. He was tall—she could tell even though he was kneeling—with dark hair going gray at the temples and the kind of posture that suggested he'd never slouched in his life. He was wearing a waxed jacket and wellington boots and looked so thoroughly at home in the garden that for a moment Penny wondered if he came with the house, like the aggressive sofa.

He looked up. Penny waved, because she didn't know what else to do.

He stood, brushed off his knees with precise movements, and walked toward her. As he got closer, she could see that he was somewhere in his early forties, with a narrow face, sharp cheekbones, and brown eyes that were currently assessing her with the warmth of a tax audit.

"You must be the niece," he said.

"Great-niece. Penny Doyle." She extended her hand.

He shook it. His grip was firm and brief. "Hugh Sinclair. I run the bookshop in the village. I've been looking after Helen's garden."

"I noticed. That section by the front path is beautiful."

"I've been doing what I can. Helen let most of it go in her last year. She wasn't well." He said this with a flatness that Penny suspected was covering something considerably less flat. "I wasn't aware she had family who might take an interest."

The emphasis on "might" was subtle but unmistakable. Penny felt herself bristle.

"I didn't know about the cottage until the will was read."

"No. I don't suppose you did." He looked at the house, then back at her. "The parish council had plans for this place. A community arts space. It would have been good for the village."

"I'm sure it would have been."

"Helen knew that. She sat on the council for twelve years."

Penny understood what he was saying. He was saying: you are an interloper. You are an obstacle. You are the wrong person in the right place.

"Well," she said, with a brightness she did not feel, "I'm here now. For six months, at least."

"So I've heard." He picked up a canvas bag of gardening tools she hadn't noticed. "I'll continue maintaining the borders I've been looking after, if that's acceptable. They need consistent care, and I'd rather they didn't die because of—" He stopped himself.

"Because of what?"

"Because of a change in circumstances," he finished, with the diplomatic precision of a man editing himself in real time.

Penny wanted to say something sharp, but she was tired and the house was a catastrophe and she'd driven for three hours with a box of art supplies pressing into her kidneys. So she just said, "Fine. Maintain away."

Hugh Sinclair nodded, once, and walked around the side of the house toward the lane. Penny watched him go, feeling the particular kind of irritation that comes from being judged by someone you've known for less than three minutes.

"Wonderful," she said to the garden. "This is going to be wonderful."

A fox trotted across the far end of the lawn, paused to look at her with an expression of mild contempt, and disappeared into the leaning shed.

Penny went inside to see if the sherry was still drinkable. It was not, but she drank some anyway.