Chapter 2: Money Can't Buy Friends

My hand on the doorknob, I rally my nerves. Chances are my grandma has already heard all about it from her assistant, Martin. There are no secrets in my family. I shouldn't have called Martin but I don't know anyone else who would resolve everything as quickly as he will, and expedience trumps privacy.

I can already imagine what my grandma will have to say. She's a meddlesome one, my grandma. Not that I'd have her any other way. She'll have about a million meaningless platitudes, meant to ease my heartbreak on the tip of her tongue. I've heard them all before though and I'm not sure I want to hear them again.

It's embarrassing. Only a few days ago I was telling her how great he was and now I've got to tell her that I was wrong. Again.

"He's not even a person," she barks out as soon as I enter the house.

She's clearly been waiting for me, pacing angrily. She's so tiny, no more than five foot and yet you shouldn't let her size fool you. My granny is terrifying.

"Then what is he? A dog?"

"Worse!"

Her eyes are fiery, and I can almost imagine her calling in a favour to someone who owes her one to have him shot.

Eliza Clancy is not your typical seventy year old woman. She's headstrong, sometimes belligerent and a little bit aloof. She's ridiculously wealthy in the sort of way most women of her generation aren't. She doesn't live off the money her dead husband left her. Instead, she invested it over thirty years ago before creating a little business.

That's what she calls it. 'Her little business.'

She quickly went from being somebody's wife to being a household name and the richest independent woman in the country. That's my granny.

"Worse than a dog?" I ask with a smirk as she wraps her arms around me.

"Far worse," she tells me. "He's a rat."

I allow her to lead me into the living room, accepting the scotch she offers me.

Sitting down on the sofa next to her, I curl into her side. To the rest of the world Eliza Clancy might be terrifying but to me she's just the grandma that raised me.

"I thought he was different," I whisper almost wishing that she won't hear me. "I thought he actually liked me."

She takes my hand in hers and squeezes it gently. I wonder if I'm not the only one irritated by the repetition. We've been here a few times now. It's embarrassing.

I thought we had something real. We had plans. We were going to see the world together. We were going to… I'd even convinced my grandma to give me a few years before expecting me to start at her company.

That had been one hell of an argument but I'd won it because I wanted the future that we envisioned together.

"Oh child. Don't let him get to you. It says more about him than it does you."

Here come the clichés. She's out of practice; it's been a few years since she last had to use them, but it doesn't look like that will stop her.

"Money doesn't tend to bring out the best in people," she says softly. "In fact, it often brings out the worst in them."

"He said he loved me. I believed him. I thought he meant it."

"Maybe he did, maybe he didn't." She puts her arm around me, pulling me into her side. "Who can actually say? But Eden, if that's what his love looks like, do you really want it?"

I don't have an answer for her. She's obviously right but that doesn't change how I feel. There's nothing more infuriating than being told what you already know. I can't just write it off and pick myself up, pretending everything is fine when it's clearly not.

"I hate this. What am I supposed to do?" I ask her, getting to my feet.

She doesn't answer immediately, her eyes scrutinising me. I turn away from her, trying to hide from that gaze that seems to see more than I want it to.

It shouldn't be a surprise. It's always been this way. Everyone vying to be my friend but not because I was special or prettier than the rest, not because I was clever or even particularly funny.

Those things don't matter when you have as much money as I do. If you have money, you don't even need to have a personality. No one cares. You could be boring as hell and they'd still flock to you like demanding geese, ready to bite off your fingers.

But those 'friends' weren't there when I really needed them, sitting on a cold pew in my grandma's church. Not one of them came that day. I'd stupidly been sure they would and so I'd spent the better of my parents' funeral craning my neck as I searched for them over the heads of my parents' friends.

I didn't get a text or a call or even a cat meme on social to check that I was okay.

But when I returned to school a week later, they expected everything to stay the same. It wasn't though. Every time I paid for something because they 'forgot' to bring money, every time they presumed that I'd pay, every time they asked for something… It hurt.

It's like temporary insanity or something; perfectly decent people turn into money grabbing b*stards when they meet me.

Turning back to look at my grandma, I feel suddenly silly. Pathetic even. She's sitting there, her back perfectly straight, her ankles crossed with an elegance and poise than I could never possess.

"Will I ev- " The word catches in my throat. "Will I ever meet someone different?

"Maybe. Maybe not." She shrugs as if it doesn't matter before she lets out a bark of laughter. "You probably already have, a thousand times over."

"What?"

"There are plenty of people in this world who won't give two figs if you have ten pound in your bank account or a billion. You'll have met a few, I don't doubt it. But darling, if you want real friends stop just accepting everyone who sticks to you."

She pauses for a second before continuing, "you can afford to be picky, darling."

I don't know what to say. Isn't your grandma supposed to tell you to make friends with everyone?

"I have a proposition for you," she says, her eyes bright with excitement. "A bet let's say."