Rory,
Per our conversation, here are the outstanding items on the estate, in writing, because I am the kind of person who needs it in writing and you are going to have to make your peace with that.
1. The cellar inventory still needs signing off. 2. The brewery wants its kegs back by the 30th. 3. The solicitor needs your statement about the licence, since my father, in his infinite and infuriating tidiness, made you a party to it without telling either of us.
That is the official email. I could have stopped there.
I am not going to, because it is one in the morning and I have had two glasses of the good whisky you left, and that is apparently the dose at which I become honest in writing. I did not miss the ferry by accident, and you know it, and I am telling you anyway, because I have spent a year letting people assume the careful version of me is the whole of me, and I am tired, and you have never once assumed it. Come up to the house tomorrow when the last crossing is done. Bring nothing. Leave the steady-ferryman-good-with-everyone bit at the slip. I would like the version that is only for one person.
Reply to confirm receipt of the outstanding items. Or do not. Just come.
Jess