Perched on the chair in her bedsit, Linda reread the letter. She couldn’t work it out. It was from a solicitor she’d never heard of. Linda checked the envelope again; yep, it was addressed to her.
An aunt had left her something in her will. Linda went to switch the kettle on; she desperately needed a shot of caffeine. She was an orphan, brought up at Barnardos – and she had no family. Who was this mysterious woman? Why had she never met her? The letter said her name was Jane Malcolm. That was all Linda was told.
The solicitor asked her to go to his office; she had a pensioners’ bus pass so that wasn’t a problem. She fancied the ‘will reading’ would be like in an old film where a group of people gathered, then someone doesn’t like the outcome and there ends up being a murder.
But she was letting her imagination run wild. In truth, Linda expected to find it was a big blunder and she’d been mistaken for someone else with the same name.
The solicitor, a young chap, hardly out of school, Linda thought, handed her a sealed document with a brisk, ‘That’s all I know.’ She was hardly there a minute before, head spinning with confusion but excited to rip open the envelope and read the contents, she stumbled down the stairs into the busy street.
She saw the coffeeshop across the road, but she didn’t see the lorry. She never learned the truth.
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Words: Richard Rooney
Illustration: A.I.
Flash Fiction 250
Flash Fiction 250 