Aunt Emily's GIFT

It was ugly and worthless – so what was stopping Amanda getting rid of it?

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How could Aunt Emily have done it? Amanda thought, gazing at the huge vase in horror. She knew how much her aunt had been attached to it – she’d told her often enough – but even so!

‘That vase is the most precious thing to me, Amanda,’ Emily had said. ‘It’s second-hand, not worth anything, but it’s full of sentimental value. Your uncle bought it for me when we got engaged. I told him it was rather large, and we’d nowhere to put it, but he said it was the only thing big enough to hold all his love. Now he’s gone, it’s a link with him.’

So when her aunt’s knees became arthritic, Amanda had been the one who had dusted the vase when she cleaned the rest of the house. She knew every crack in it and every chip. The same dried flowers stood in it, year after year, fading gently and dropping bits, standing pride of place in the grate.

Amanda had assumed that when her aunt died, the vase would somehow go with her. She hadn’t thought that Emily would bequeath it – and nothing else – to her.

‘It held all my Ernie’s love,’ she wrote in her will, ‘and now I give it to my beloved niece, Amanda, full of all my love.’