Buried in Cornwall by Janie Bolitho Read Free Book Online Page A

had met them Rose felt that maybe she didn’t fit in with these exotic people after all, that there were things about them she didn’t understand, and that she had no desire to join in their sexual games. For a moment she felt a pang for the faithful, reliable Barry Rowe who had yearned for her since before she had met David but who could never be more than a friend. Like Laura, he had been neglected lately and Rose wondered if she was becoming selfish. By the time shepulled into her drive she realised she was being melodramatic, that what had happened at the mine shaft had left her edgy and more than a little suspicious. On the other hand Nick had offered no more than friendship and if it was Jenny he wanted they could still remain friends. Rose had done nothing to jeopardise his relationship with the younger woman.
    Both Laura and Barry had been delighted that she was finally doing what she had been born to do. She was not deserting them, she was simply picking up a career where she had left it off.
    Turning her key in the lock she decided she was glad to be home.

CHAPTER THREE
    Jenny Manders was one of the last to leave the gallery. She was quietly seething. How dare Nick be so obvious about Rose in front of her and the people who had known them as a couple. Maddy hadn’t wasted any time before making one of her bitchy comments. And what did Rose Trevelyan have that she didn’t? She could paint, that was all. I may only be a model, Jenny thought, but I’m fifteen years her junior and better looking. But despite an excess of wine which had made her bitter, she acknowledged the unfairness of her thoughts. Rose was a nice woman. Even Alec Manders, her father, known for his taciturnity and meanness of manner, had seemed drawn toher on the one occasion all three had met in the street. And who the hell does Maddy think she is to be so judgemental when all she produces is tat for the tourists, and she has the gall to imagine she’s one of us.
    Jenny’s pride in her roots was genuine. Unlike many of her contemporaries she had tried life in London and had also spent two months in Paris, mixing with artists on the Left Bank and posing for them. Something in her cried out to be accepted by such people. Although she recognised that she had no talent herself, she fed on those who did. Disappointment had followed disappointment. The Frenchman with whom she had lived for seven of those eight weeks had thrown her out as soon as he was satisfied with the work he had produced using Jenny as his model. Good work, too, for which she would get none of the credit. She had sat shivering for hours in the daytime and shared his bed at night, and all for nothing. With Nick, because it was the longest relationship she had sustained, she had believed it would be different, that he would eventually marry her or at least keep her as his mistress. She would have had the best of all worlds; being amongst the people she admired and both working for and living withan artist, one who could provide a proper home for her.
    Her mother had disappeared when she was three years old but she did not learn of the circumstances until she was seventeen. Renata Trevaskis was a beauty, descended from true Romany stock. She had married Alec Manders on her eighteenth birthday but soon became restless and dissatisfied with married life and a small child whose upbringing was mostly taken over by her mother-in-law with whom they had had to live. She started drinking, encouraged by Alec’s mother who had never liked her. A year later rumour had it that she had run off with another man, a holiday-maker from somewhere up country. It had surprised no one, knowing the awful restrictions she had had to live under in the strict Chapel environment of the Manders’ home.
    Agnes Manders was a martinet and had brought her son up to attend two church services every Sunday. He had, over the years, acquired his mother’s views and opinions on everything. Oddly, considering that