Elizabeth picked up the key, slipped it into the cabinet, turned it easily and inhaled deeply as she pulled out the top drawer. Outside a crash of lightning lit up the back garden, so for a moment, it felt as though Eric himself had come back to warn her off. The ominous roll of thunder that followed almost rattled the nerves out of her, but she sat holding open the door for a moment, watching as the garden jerked back into the darkness.
Then, she peered into the open drawer. It was not a deep drawer, rather it was long and the few bits of paper were only to cover over empty bottles that Eric had dumped there to hide from a world he obviously assumed had never guessed his weakness. Elizabeth sighed at the waste of it all. He’d spent forty years drinking himself into a grave that he’d worked so hard to keep others out of. The drawer below that was deeper. It too was a storage space for empty bottles, but there was one file, in itself unusual. Eric was not the sort of man who kept files or indeed records really of any sort, so far as Elizabeth had ever known.
This file was encased in a brown folder with a thick elastic band holding it together. She pulled it out and placed it timidly on the faded and marked blotter that took up most of the desk. With her foot, she mindlessly pushed in the drawer. Another crash of lightning outside lit up the garden eerily at her back. This time, it had less bite to it and although it halted her hands midway on the elastic, it did not make her want to run for the house next door. Elizabeth found herself intrigued by the very fact that Eric would keep a file locked away and hidden. She couldn’t help but wonder who he might have been burying it from. Some deep part of her knew – the only person he concealed anything from, really, was Elizabeth.
There was no hiding anything in death, of course. The empty bottles, the gambling debts – she never even knew he’d liked horses. All these years, there was a whole other world that he’d been a part of, placing bets on races from the drunken comfort of the bar counter in Flannelly’s pub. The tab had come to two thousand pounds. Old Ned Flannelly had the good grace to look embarrassed when he called to collect the debt. He hadn’t wanted to bother her with it. The truth was, Eric would not be dropping into the bar again and so, before he finally shuffled out of life, Ned Flannelly took his chance to collect what he was owed.
It had frightened Elizabeth, to think that they could have that kind of financial debt hanging over them without her even knowing. That same ominous feeling returned to her now. It was easily remedied with Ned Flannelly – all she had to do was walk down to the bank and withdraw from her savings to pay him off. She stopped for a moment before she opened the file before her. What if this file contained more secrets like the one Ned Flannelly had hidden with him for God knows how many years?
Elizabeth was a lot of things, but she braced herself, because she’d never been a coward. She pulled open the file sharply on this thought.
The papers were held in place by a wire grip. She recognised immediately the deeds to the house with a familiar map peeping out from beneath them. The boundary fence in faded blue was a straight line marked out in tired ink. Beneath that were a number of letters, mostly to and from their solicitor. One of them, Elizabeth was surprised to see, was Eric’s will. She hadn’t realised he’d ever made one. The date was recent, only months before he died.
The will, once she’d waded through the legal jargon, didn’t throw up anything too surprising. After all debts were cleared on his estate, the house and surgery were hers to do with as she pleased. He’d actually said that – as she pleased! As if taking full possession of them was something she’d been waiting for all these years. Oh, Eric. She shook her head sadly. She put the will aside. There was very little else, apart from a thick brown envelope, which he’d gone to some bother to tape together for added security. Annoyed with the wording of the will, Elizabeth tore open the envelope now, disregarding the time put into securing it all together.
A bundle of papers fell from its innards, a sheaf of pages with various logos all of which seemed to Elizabeth to be very familiar. She rifled through them quickly, catching only words at the top of each. Overdraft. Term Loan. Credit Card. Overdue. Default. All of them sent to Eric from different banks; five in all. Elizabeth gasped. She thought for a moment she’d never catch her breath again. Eric had gambled them into hock up to their eyeballs. They owed an absolute fortune, probably more than the house was worth and, if the red underlined numbers were anything to go by, more than the surgery was worth too.
She was penniless.