Page 106 of The Heir Apparent
28 December 2023
On the morning of my thirtieth birthday, I woke to find £3 million in my bank account. I lay in bed for a long time, staring at my phone screen. Then I called Antony Eastaughffe, the trustee in charge of Mum’s estate. He was Papa’s only friend from their days in the bleak boarding house in the Scottish Highlands. They would often laugh together about how older boys whipped them with frozen willow stems and forced them to crawl across the muddy rugby oval before dawn.
“I thought my portion of the estate came to £5,000,” I said.
“Yes, when your mother died, she left £10,000 to be divided equally between her children.” I heard the rustling of papers as he looked for something on his desk. “Louis’s portion remains £5,000—your father expected that he would one day inherit the Duchy of Exeter, of course, and saw no reason to give him any more. But when it came to your trust, Freddy added a substantial amount of his own money. We’ve been investing it for you over the years, so most of it is tied up in stocks. This £3 million lump sum is in honour of your thirtieth birthday. I am happy to liquidate the rest if you wish—the terms of the trust allow you to do so—but it was Freddy’s hope you’d live off the quarterly distributions instead.”
“Wait,” I said. “How much money do I have?”
More papers rustled on his desk. “Just over £12.7 million.”
I looked at the string of numbers in my banking app again. “Papa did this?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry… I thought he would have told you. He always said that if you could make it to thirty without needing his help, he knew you would be alright. But he still wanted you to be comfortable.”
I felt a familiar twinge in my heart, one I had spent my life struggling to identify. I understood now that I was angry with Papa for being so proud, that I loved him and yearned for him, and always would. We had waited too long and there was nowhere left for that love to go. But I was grateful that I finally got to know him, even if it had to happen after he died.
“Okay,” I said to Mr. Eastaughffe, not bothering to disguise the tears that had thickened my voice. “Let’s do as he wished and stick with quarterly distributions.”
I glanced one more time at Papa’s birthday gift. It was enough to change the trajectory of someone’s life forever.
“There’s a hospital in Nairobi,” I said. “I’d like to make an anonymous donation—perhaps half? And there’s something I’d like to do with the rest.”
“It’s your money to spend as you wish.”
We made an appointment for later in the morning. After breakfast, I left the house and walked to Mr. Eastaughffe’s office in Earl’s Court, trailed by Rita. Once I was finished and had the cheque, I wandered into a park and sat on a bench. The air was charged with the electrical current that signalled snow was coming, and I found myself holding my breath as I waited for the first flake to fall. Rita stood under a tree nearby; as the year drew to a close, my security detail hovered even closer. No more sneaking out to the pond on my own.
My phone buzzed in my pocket and I knew it must be noon.
“Hello, James,” I said.
“Happy birthday.”
“Thank you.”
He paused. “The first one without your twin is the hardest.”
For the final years of his life, Louis and I had communicated only on this day.Hey happy bday, one of us would type out in a fit of resentful obligation. There would be hours of silence and then, finally, the other would respond:Thx u too. On the last birthday we shared, we didn’t even bother to do that much.
“Does it ever get easier?” I asked.
“Not really. You just learn to live without the rest of you.”
We kept the line open as I sat on my park bench, and he stood in his dark hallway at the bottom of the world. We were two incomplete halves that would never make a full set, but he was all I had left.
“Do you remember the last time you and Mum spoke?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “Although we didn’t really speak. It was our birthday, and she called in the middle of the night. She must have been touring through Scotland, and someone was singing ‘The Parting Glass’ for her. They were singing it beautifully—just them, no instruments—and she held up the phone so I could hear it.”
Both the Irish and the Scots claim the old song, but it doesn’t really matter who it belongs to, because we all like to sing it at the end of the night—one more drink before friends part. From the heavy white sky, the first flurry spun into view, and I breathed against my aching chest.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know you don’t want to hear that, but I am. I’m so sorry.”
“Lexi,” he said, “you’ve spent the last year chasing the approval of a bunch of strangers, people who don’t know you and never will. But at some point, you need to forgive yourself. Otherwise, you’ll never be able to accept it from anyone else.”
A family went past, bundled in mittens and coats. I watched as they hurried under the steady snowfall.
“What if…” I said, my heart racing as the question of my life finally dared itself to be asked. “What if she could have beensaved? What if I’d called the coastguard instead of him? What if she died out there because of me?”
