Kat's Tic tocc 7.

This was so enjoyable! Thanks again, KatKAT'S TIC TOCC 7 724 words. Cheated horribly with this and spent 55 minutes on it!

The executor of the will placed four things on the table. An elaborate floral brooch, pair of miniature shoes, a CD and a sealed envelope. What does the envelope contain? What's on the CD? What's the story behind the shoes and brooch?

“IS THIS SOME SORT OF JOKE?” Cassie's voice, more used to screaming down the long yard at the stable lads, makes my ears want to bleed. The small solicitor cringes and raises his hand, but Celery interupts. Her eyes are alight with interest.

“It's a code isn't it!” She always was cleverer than us. She isn't really called Celery, but Cecilia. Clever, neat, mind like a calculator. Back in the seventies when they'd just come out she could work things out nearly as fast.

Cassie sits back.She's still in her stable gear, tweed jacket, jods and wellies smelling of dung. Pooh! She's so unfeminine, like a sack of spuds.

I look down at Celery's immaculate attire, the subtle black rough cut diamond on a fine chain, I know for a fact she saved up for that for five years. The Kurt Gieger suit she got from a charity shop, what luck that was. Jimmy Choos; plain courts of course. These clothes send out a subtle message to others with values like hers. They say; she thinks, Class. I just think she's a nobody with pretensions.

Crispian reaches out and lifts up the package. He shakes it. His own hand is shaking, I notice. Missing his lunch time drink, or drinks. I look at him disparagingly. Always was a wimpish type. No good in business. Boozed up a lot of the time. He could be good if he just had some confidence, they used to say.

“Feels like a sort of hard case, about eight inches long.” he frowns. His eyes flicker away nervously.

Celery turns the CD over. She's smiling as she reads the back.

“Got it!” She reaches out and picks up the ornate brooch. It's a cheap thing from the sixties glinting with paste stones. She pins it on herself with a smile and pats it gently.

“I'll wear it always!” She says, a bit like the old Nursey in 'Black Adder' when she was given the old sea captains revolting ginger beard as a keepsake after he died. (It was about as incongrous as that on Celery's understated jacket.)

I dont understand. But Crispian takes the CD and reads it out loud.

“It's got to be put in the computer. It's a DVD! But I think I know what it's going to say.”

Cassie reaches out for the tiny shoes. She looks down at her smellie wellies and gives a slow smile.

“I get it too.”

They all look at me.

“Well, what are you on about? “ I hear myself bluster resentfully. I pick up the package. I feel the contents. I'm none the wiser. The solicitor has fed Crispian's DVD into the computer.

“What do you think it is?” he says to Crispian, his finger hovering over the start button.

“I know it's from a spiritual retreat centre in Southern Spain. I think its a chance for me to try and clean up my act. A sort of last chance to make something of myself, give up booze, find some belief in myself.”

And he was right.

Then they all looked at me, expectantly.

“Come on, Christine. We've all got our inheritances. You'll miss out if you cant guess. I think I know what it is now I've felt the package too. Can I tell her?” Celery turns to the solicitor.

“I'm sorry. Madam must guess for herself.”

I couldn't guess. We sat there for two hours; then he told me that, unfortunately, my time was up as decreed in the will, by our Mother. So nothing for me.

We all left, awkwardly, the others making sounds of embarassed sympathy. Bastards!

I sat outside on a bench, there in the shadows as dusk fell. I was still holding the package but it meant nothing to me. A ridiculous, cruel joke.

The case contained some unwearable spectacles with pink lenses. I'd love to know what they meant, but actually I dont wish to see those dull, grey, smug people who call themselves my brother and sisters EVER again.