Here's the first chapter of a new story I've been working on:

Emma was perched on a hay bale in the barn which overlooked the green rolling hills she’d known all her life.  She watched her sister, barely able to disguise her irritation.  Kate was sitting on another hay bale a few feet away, attempting to untangle her hair with her fingers.  It was a permanent mess.  Why don’t you just cut it all off and start again, Emma wanted to say.  Kate looked up at her with a disapproving expression on her face.  It seemed to Emma that Kate always looked at her that way.

‘I don’t see why you can’t just stay here and wait until you’ve decided what you want to do with your life,’ she said.

‘But you would say that, wouldn’t you?  You’ve always wanted to stay exactly where you are now, stuck on this farm,’ Emma said unkindly.

Kate didn’t reply.  Emma knew she was being unfair but she couldn’t help it.  Kate always expected Emma to be the same as her, to have the same aspirations.  But Emma saw things very differently.  She watched as Kate stood up from the hay bale, dusting herself down.

‘Well much as I’d like to stay here and argue the toss about why you shouldn’t do it, I have work to do,’ she said and strode off out of the barn.

Emma rolled her eyes and flopped back onto the hay bales, staring up at the ancient roof of the barn.  She could see her life stretching interminably before her, the weeks and years rolling by and her never leaving this place.  I can’t stay here; I can’t she thought, feeling a tight pain in her chest as if she was physically trapped.  She rooted around in her pocket for her mobile phone and checked the screen.  Still no reception.  Bloody countryside!  She was trying to organise a night out tonight to her favourite club with her friends.  Emma sighed and stood up, brushing herself down.  She’d just have to ring Natalie on the landline.

She walked back across the fields towards the farmhouse, stopping along the way to lean against a gate, and gaze out across the endless fields.  There was no denying the beauty of this farm, the lushly green hills, the trees and blue sky.  Emma took a deep breath of the soft clean air.  This place would always be a part of her, yet she yearned to see more of the world, to experience life in a different place.  She felt that unless she left, she’d grow mad with frustration.  Her sister Kate and their father just didn’t understand which made everything harder for Emma.  When she tried to explain, they’d get identical puzzled expressions on their faces as though they couldn’t comprehend why she wanted to leave.

In the distance she caught sight of her father in his tractor trundling along.  She raised her hand to wave at him, and then dropped it.  She didn’t want another argument with him, which was what seemed to happen whenever they talked nowadays.  Turning away from the field, she began to walk along the rutted track towards the farmhouse.  As a child she’d always loved this walk, with the trees from either side of the track meeting each other in the middle and forming a green canopy.  Now she found it almost claustrophobic.

She couldn’t explain even to herself why she felt so penned in here.  Emma knew that many people would do anything to live in a place that was so free of people and houses, cars, noise, everything that went with urban living.  She only knew that for her life on this farm was like a straightjacket; she was hemmed in and she desperately wanted to escape from it.

Staring at her feet encased in their usual attire of wellington boots, she trudged along the muddy path.  Emma thought ruefully of how nice it would be to go to places, or better still to live in a place which didn’t require you to wear wellie boots most of the time.  Although she often dressed up to go out, getting from the house to the taxi or a friend’s car could be a problem – she usually had to dodge the muddy puddles in the farmyard, which could be hazardous in high heels.  

Approaching the farmhouse, Emma paused for a moment to gaze at the building which she sometimes felt had become her prison.  The house was late Victorian, although her father said it’d been built on the site of an older building.  It was rectangular in shape, with two stories.  The original sash windows were still in place and the roof was tiled with Cornish slate, parts of it spattered with moss.  The house had a quaint, old-fashioned look to it.  Tendrils of ivy clung to the light grey Cornish stone bricks, especially around the windows and front door.  Kate said the ivy made the house look romantic.  Emma thought it looked as though the ivy was trying to strangle the house.  Just as the house is trying to strangle me, she thought.

She sighed and went inside, noticing the phone flashing on its stand in the hall to say that she had a message.  It was from Natalie.  As she listened to it, she smiled to herself, her spirits lifting.  Natalie sounded her usual exuberant self, telling Emma that she was determined to show her a good time tonight and get her away from ‘that dreary old farm’.  She said the taxi would pick her up at 6pm sharp.  Emma looked at her watch.  She had two hours to get ready, which by her standards wasn’t very long.

The sun was streaming through the window when Emma reached her bedroom.  She loved this room – it was the one place in the entire farm that she could truly call hers.  Years ago her father had succumbed and let her decorate the way she wanted.  Over time she’d re-decorated it and it had gone from being a pink little girl’s room to a trendy teenager’s room.  Now it was decorated in soft pastel colours with beautiful rustic furniture which she’d managed to salvage from a friend who was going to throw it out.

She switched on her music, turned it up loud and went to have a shower, ignoring the calls from her sister somewhere downstairs to turn it down.  Kate was such a killjoy; it was as if she’d been born miserable.  Emma began singing along to the music as she scrubbed herself in the shower.  There was a hammering on the bathroom door.

‘Emma!’  It was her father.  ‘Emma!  Can you please come out of the bathroom and turn your music off or down.  Your sister’s trying to make an important phone call and you’re drowning her out.’

‘Hang on.  I’ve got soap all over me; I need to rinse myself off.  Why don’t you go and turn my music down yourself?’

‘Honestly, Emma, you’re not thirteen.  By all means, come out when you’re halfway decent but hurry.’

Emma finished up in the shower and came out frowning, thinking about how she always seemed to revert to being a teenager around her father and sister.  Fortunately neither of them was around right now.  They’d obviously gone back to their tedious jobs.  Of course, they didn’t see their work on the farm that way – they both loved it.  Both Kate and her father were constantly trying to persuade her to help out on the farm, to ‘pull her weight’ as they put it.  They would tell her she’d enjoy the work once she got stuck into it.  But Emma wasn’t convinced.  She knew that the best thing for them all would be if she could do what she wanted, what she’d been talking about with Kate: take the money and go.

Turning her music off, she threw open her wardrobe door and searched for something suitable to wear tonight.  She tossed garment after garment over her shoulder on to the floor.  How was it that she could have so many clothes, yet nothing to wear?  There was simply nothing that she really liked in her wardrobe anymore and she thought glumly how it’d been a while since she’d been to a proper shopping centre. 

But she still managed to be ready by five to six that evening and lingered in the hallway, checking her makeup in the large gilt mirror on the wall.  It’d been Meredith’s purchase and Emma’s father had always hated it.  For that reason, Emma suspected.  The sound of the taxi’s horn in the farmyard jolted her and she rushed outside, slamming the front door behind her so that its knocker rattled.  Her heels almost catching in the gravel of the driveway, she made it to the waiting taxi, with Natalie’s smiling face greeting her.

‘Glad you could make it,’ she said as Emma climbed in.

‘Well they can’t stop me doing every last thing I want to,’ Emma replied pulling a face.

They sat in silence for a moment as the taxi pulled out of the driveway and on to the mostly gravel track that led from the farmhouse to the nearest road.  It would be an expensive night, Emma thought to herself; the taxi fares were always astronomical for getting as far as the farmhouse.  But she couldn’t walk all the way from the house to the road; it was just too far, especially in her fancy shoes.  Emma knew that Kate and her father saw things differently, but technically Emma paid the largest part for her trips out, which were funded by her occasional work in the bar at the nearest pub.  Even getting to the pub was a struggle – it took her forty five minutes to walk each way as she hadn’t yet passed her driving test.  Nothing was easily accessible when you lived in the middle of nowhere.

‘Why do you let Kate get to you?’ Natalie asked suddenly.  Emma was surprised at the question and didn’t say anything for a moment as she pondered her response.

‘I don’t know exactly,’ she said finally.  ‘But it’s difficult not to when she’s always on at me to help more on the farm.  And Dad’s as bad.  They just expect me to be the same as them, to want to run the farm for the rest of my life.’  She paused and gazed out of the window at the beautiful golden sunset, brooding.  ‘I can’t think of anything I’d rather do less.’

Natalie nodded sympathetically and looked thoughtful.  Then her face lit up.  ‘I’ve got a great idea, Em.  I’m thinking about moving to London.  I’ve got enough to rent for at least a year.  You’ve got that money your dad owes you, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then use it to come with me.  You’ve done nothing since uni, have you?  Why not live the life you’ve always wanted?  Take charge of your life for a change.’ 

Emma was silent, thinking.  She’d pestered and pestered her father to let her have the money, but so far she’d been unsuccessful.  He wouldn’t budge.  She needed to give him a reason, something to finally convince him to let her take the money and go.  She’d given him plenty of reasons to kick her out that was for sure, coming in late most nights and getting up even later the next morning and flatly refusing to help on the farm.

‘Well?’ Natalie said impatiently.  ‘What do you think?’

‘You’re right, I should come with you.  I’ve always wanted to live in London.  But I need to give my dad a reason to part with the money otherwise it’s impossible.’

‘I think I’ve got a reason,’ Natalie said, a gleam in her eye.

Emma stared at her reflection in the mirror.  Her face with its bleary eyes, messy hair and greasy skin stared back at her.  It’d been a couple of weeks since she’d last been out late and the night had taken its toll on her.  It was midday.  She’d slept through the calls of her father asking her to feed the dogs and of her sister yelling up the stairs to tell her she really needed a hand with cleaning out the cattle shed.  The conversation she’d had last night came back to her as she stood under the shower and washed off the previous evening’s dirt.  She remembered what Natalie had suggested she say to her father and felt a little apprehensive. Maybe it would be wrong to give him that ultimatum.  Then again when she had the money, her father would see the back of her.  Wasn’t that what he’d always wanted?

She got dressed slowly after her shower, feeling lethargic.  She knew she’d have to talk to her father sooner or later but part of her wanted to delay it.  Emma was serious about leaving and she did intend to get the money, what was rightfully hers, but the truth was underneath it all she loved her father, even if she disagreed with him most of the time and she didn’t want to hurt him.  Conflicting thoughts ran through her mind, whether or not to demand the money in the way that Natalie had suggested, or rather to keep pressing him as she had been doing.  That hadn’t worked so far though, had it?  So maybe he needed this jolt to get him to agree and give her the inheritance.

When she went down to the kitchen for brunch, Emma saw there was a note for her on the table.  It was from her sister, demanding that she walk the dogs.  Emma and her family had joint responsibility for their two dogs, Oscar and Bruno.   Oscar was a brown Labrador, Bruno a black one.  Emma loved the dogs, but they could be demanding.  They were both young, only a year between them and lively.  She would often be expected to walk them as she refused to do anything else to help on the farm. 

But why should I?  Emma thought to herself, feeling frustrated again.  She didn’t want to live here anymore and as her father wouldn’t help her to leave by giving her the inheritance, did he really expect her to work for nothing?  Of course Kate worked on the farm but she got paid for it because she’d made it clear from the beginning that she loved life on the farm and that was where she wanted to be.  Forever it would seem, Emma thought sullenly.  She knew Kate didn’t get paid much, but it was galling to her to know that her sister was the good daughter in her father’s eyes, the one who was choosing the right career, the right life as he saw it. 

Emma sighed and prepared her food.  She knew she wouldn’t have long as the dogs would probably come in the house soon and start to pester her for their walk.  Sometimes she wished they could just let the dogs loose, let them roam free and take themselves for walks.  But they’d most likely end up frightening the cattle.  Occasionally she and her family would hear reports of dogs being shot in the locality for scaring the sheep, so she knew that really the dogs needed to be kept under control.  There were places she could walk them though, places that the three of them always took the dogs to because they were livestock-free areas. 

Sitting at the table, Emma drank her coffee and ate her porridge, gazing out of the window at the farmyard which was bathed in the glow of golden sunlight.  She was glad it wasn’t wet.  At least the dogs wouldn’t get too muddy.  She hated having to clean the mud off them after particularly muddy walks.  They were outside at the moment; she could hear them barking in the farmyard every now and then.  From far away she could hear the sound of her father’s tractor lumbering along.  It really was a heap of junk.  She knew that Kate had been trying to persuade her father to invest in a new one, but so far he was refusing, saying the current one was perfectly adequate and he’d only invest in a new one when it stopped working.  Stubborn as usual, Emma thought.

It wasn’t long before she was walking the dogs through the nearby woods.  Every now and then she heard the faint familiar sounds of the tractor and the gentle lowing of the cows.  But here she was alone, free with her thoughts.  The dogs were behaving themselves, lolloping along through the undergrowth ahead of her, giving Emma a chance to daydream.  She imagined herself living in London, all the chic shops and glamorous people, the fantastic museums and thriving nightlife and being free to explore for as long and as often as she liked.  There was so much she wanted to see and do when she got there.  

She turned a corner on the trail she was following and stopped abruptly.  There was a figure up ahead.  Kate.  Great, she thought, just what I wanted, another lecture.  Emma slowed down hoping Kate wouldn’t see her.  But she’d forgotten about the dogs who bounded up to her sister enthusiastically.  Kate bent down to make a fuss of them.  She was dressed in her usual farm gear of dirty old jeans and an equally old fleece, wearing her muddy wellies and her hair scraped back into a messy ponytail.  Emma knew that Kate had to dress this way for her farm work, but she seemed to constantly dress down.  She’d always thought that Kate would look so pretty if she just tried and made the effort sometimes.

‘Hi, Emma,’ Kate said cheerily.  ‘Thanks for taking the dogs out for me.’

‘Well I didn’t exactly have a choice, did I?’

Kate’s face fell and her expression became hostile.  ‘It would be nice if you could just do the occasional task with a bit of good grace…’ She tailed off.  ‘Look I didn’t come to argue with you, I just wanted to talk to you about something.’

‘So talk.’

Kate frowned at Emma’s rudeness.  ‘All right.  I was only going to say that I’m worried about Dad.  He seems a bit preoccupied at the moment and I’m concerned for him.  You know it’s…’

‘Yes, I know it’s the anniversary of Meredith’s death or whatever, but this happens every year; he’s always unhappy for a while, then he gets over it, end of story.’

‘I was going to say that the anniversary of Meredith’s death was over a month ago and he’s usually fine by this time of year.  I think something’s wrong, Emma and I just want your help to find out what, to help him.  If you can fit it in to your busy schedule,’ Kate said sarcastically.

 ‘Well I don’t know.  You see there’s something I was going to discuss with him.  I intend to move to London soon and I’ll need my share of the inheritance.’  Emma felt a sense of satisfaction as she saw the surprised look on her sister’s face.

‘I don’t know how you think you’re going to get it,’ Kate said flatly.  ‘He won’t budge; you know he won’t let you have it until you’re twenty five, so you’ve got a good few years to wait.’

‘Oh I think he can be persuaded,’ Emma replied smugly, then seeing Kate’s expression she went on, ‘Look, I’ll keep an eye on Dad but I think you’re worrying too much.  Just forget about it and carry on doing what you do on the farm.  That’s what’s most important to you anyway.’  She called the dogs who followed her as she walked away, feeling Kate’s loathing stare boring into her.