A Contrived Inheritance

On the rebound from an unhappy relationship, Maggie marries Alex Stewart, a rich banker. Their marriage survives only because he spends most of his time away from the UK on business, latterly in Sydney, Australia. Problems that surface in their marriage when Alex sends their two sons to boarding school deepen when both sons leave to work in Sydney after university and Maggie becomes estranged from them as a result.

When Alex decides to retire and return to live permanently with Maggie in their beautiful cottage in the Cotswolds, he arrives before she has time to consider whether or not they still have a future together. When she finds out that he has leukaemia, her thoughts about separation or even divorce are put to one side as she does her best to look after him. In the last stages of his illness, having suspicions about the contents of a cassette tape which he asks her to take to his solicitor friend, Maggie listens to the tape and is horrified to find that without her knowledge he is about to make a new Will, leaving comparatively little to herself but vast sums of money to their sons and also a large sum of money and a penthouse to a male person in Australia who is unknown to her. She is so consumed with rage and humiliation she doesn’t deliver the tape. The situation is made worse when she challenges Alex about the male person. His reply fuels thoughts that he has a dark, mysterious past. When Alex dies suddenly, before he can do anything about changing the Will he made over twenty years ago, Maggie, as the sole beneficiary under the existing Will, inherits his wealthy estate.

Far from happy with her inheritance and angry with her sons and her only sister who she feels let her down at the time of Alex’s death, guilt, self-pity and depression begin to overwhelm her to such an extent that she embarks upon a dramatic course of action to change her life. She sells her cottage, changes her name to Lydia Henshal and moves to a guest house in Cornwall. Only her bank manager and financial adviser know that she intends to ‘disappear’ for an undisclosed period of time but she does not make them aware of her destination.

Living under an assumed name does not come without its problems. Although the guest house is wonderfully comfortable and restful, the landlady, Lucy Davenport, is quite intimidating at first. Maggie becomes not only edgy and anxious but exhausted as she tries to block out thoughts about her late husband. Unwittingly she gives the landlady the impression that her behaviour is bordering on the eccentric.

As she begins to settle down in her new surroundings she finds that at last she is able to reminisce about her life in general and her marriage to Alex . Taking one step at a time, she analyses certain memories to the point where they take on a totally different perspective. Is she right in thinking that maybe she is the one who is mostly at fault? Having reached this conclusion, and having met a certain gentleman artist who she feels she could become emotionally involved with, she knows it is time for her to reveal her true identity and sets about putting the record straight. Once achieved, she writes a letter of apology to her sister who is living in France and makes arrangements to visit her two sons in Australia who she now desperately wishes to see and to meet her elder son’s wife and her two grandchildren that she has never seen.

Whilst in Australia, she decides, but not before she has done much soul-searching and has overcome feelings of trepidation, to meet the ‘unknown male person’ living in what is now her penthouse. The outcome of that decision is staggering.

Returning to the guest house, Lucy Davenport springs a surprise on her, and….to her great consternation, her private life soon runs into turmoil when her gentleman friend finds out that she is a multi-millionaire and also a fellow artist. Incredibly, they find they are both inexplicably linked by coincidences involving the Cotswolds, a painting, his daughter and one of her sons.

Matters get somewhat complicated in her mind knowing that her sons are arranging to visit her with a view, she believes, to finding out why their father left them out of his Will. She hasn’t figured out what she is going to say to them or how she intends to help them. When her younger son arrives on his own, she is shocked to learn of the problems that her elder son is experiencing and even more shocked to hear that her younger son himself has left Australia for good on account of losing both his job and his home. This latter information does have a surprising upside. It has Maggie thinking that her son would be more than competent to deal with a project she has in mind with regard to the guest house which she is interested in buying.

Maggie has to resolve many issues, including a health scare, before her life gets back on track to where she wants it to be. She knows she will never really come to terms with having contrived her inheritance but maybe there is a way that she can appease her conscience in some constructive way. Will the terrible tragedy that occurs in the family bring an end to the problems that have so far beset her in her private life?