Serendipity (ON HOLD)

Drew's Story

Drew was lying in his hospital bed when a young nurse came in.

"Is there anything I can do for you Mr Johnson?" she asked, more out of politeness than necessity, since as a general rule he never really needed anything.

"Yes there is actually!" he said wryly. "Please could you ring Taylor and Taylor Associates and ask them to-" here he whispered into her ear. She looked quite surprised but replied saying "Good for you Mr Johnson! There ought to be more people like you in the world." and left the ward as he was the last patient on it that she needed to tend to.

Mr Smith sat uncomfortably in the stiff chair by Drew's bedside, and sniffed. "I'm not sure what came over you, Mr Johnson but I have set everything up as you wished. It is a rather... interesting move with your personal finances, I believe, and since it is my job to advise you in said finances-"

"Mr Smith!" he said imperiously.

"What?"

"You are forgetting your place. Yes, you are employed to advise me, but you are also employed to sort out my finances according to my wishes, and these are my wishes, so could you please just get to the job at hand."

"Of course," he simpered obsequiously. "As I was saying, I have set up the payment to be donated at the time specified by yourself, and all that remains is to notify your... relatives as to the change in the will. Luckily, I do not believe that too many problems will arise from it, since aside from inheritance taxes, you are vitrually debt free, due to... if I may say so myself, my rather good advice, especially in matters of investment."

"Don't claim the credit for something my daughter mainly achieved Mr Smith. Yes you have been useful, but it is not purely down to yourself. I highly doubt you could ever control me as well as my daughter has done. If it were not for her, I would have much less to leave."

"Of course, of course! I didn't mean to-" he frantically backtracked.

"Look, if that's everything we need to discuss, you're free to go. I seem to remember you saying at the beginning of this meeting that you had somewhere to be urgently."

"Yes, yes. I do. I'll be going then."

"Goodbye Mr Smith."

The Johnsons were an old family, Drew's father had been an English businessman, and had met his wife during a business trip. She had been an American socialite, her daddy was closely involved in the War Effort, and there hadn't been any particular objections to her marrying the Englishman, aside from the fact that she then proceeded to move to London. When the Great War started, her husband was one of the few lucky boys to survive the Somme, but shellshocked, he had been invalided back home, and it took her years of care to restore him to who he was before. Their interests had (surprisingly) stayed firm during the Great Depression, and they sailed out of the other side with minimum losses. When the Second World War rolled around, she had cleverly persuaded him to take the family to stay with her parents in New York, and manage his business from abroad. When the end of the war signalled their return home, they found that their town house had miraculously survived the Blitzkrieg, a shock which instantly converted his mother to a firm believer, and they had raised their darling only son in relative peace from then on.  In this comfortable house and life, Drew had been raised but, poised to take over the company at 21, his father had realised the stupidity of such a move - Drew had, already by then proved himself to be a good manager and businessman, on the flip side, he was a renowned 'bad boy' and his father had ceased to trust him with large amounts of money, especially old family ones - and held onto the company, becoming the first in a line of older, established businessmen, and retaining said company and interests, until he knew his granddaughter was old enough to keep her father in line, when he sold the company for a record amount to Virgin, keeping a larger than normal number of shares and assests which he had instructed Taylor and Taylor to 'never sell, if ever told to by Master Johnson' and retired to a life of leisure aboard his yacht, and with his wife in their house in New York.

As a consequence of this, Drew Johnson had a large amount of money squirrelled away that he had never been able to access, and so his daughter and granddaughter stood to inherit a fortune, somewhere near to £2.5 million, even after the various taxes imposed by the government. He had been kept on a tight leash by his daughter and his accountants, and hadn't been allowed by her to spend any money he hadn't earnt, meaning that he had been forced to attempt to stay on the straight and narrow.

He could understand why Mr Smith would be a little shocked, considering how he had used to live his life, especially considering his various addictions, but he just couldn't for the life of him understand why he was so disapproving of his choice. It wasn't like his family would suffer much, it was only £500,000 and most people thought it was good to donate money to charity. It wasn't like he didn't know what he was doing, he had looked at a number of charities before deciding which one to donate to.