False Picture by Veronica Heley Read Free Book Online

throwing her toys out of her buggy. She had an agency to run, staff wages to pay. How could she have been so childish?
    She went downstairs to look into the complaints file, which was not on her desk. Maggie wasn’t in the agency, either. Even from the basement, Bea could hear Maggie, up in her room at the top of the house, doing a karaoke act along with the radio or her MP-thingy. ‘
I will survive …
’
    I’m sure you will, thought Bea. I’m not sure I will, though. Now what do I do first? Answer: divert my thoughts by getting some books on Millais from the library.
    Maggie decided to move into the flat that night. She had too much clobber to walk there, so ordered a taxi for herself and the three – no, four! – bags of belongings she wanted to take with her. Once she’d banged out of the house, Oliver and Bea turned in to the kitchen to tackle the chicken, chips and salad she’d left out for them.
    The house seemed to settle down around their shoulders.
    â€˜Nice and quiet,’ said Bea. Then, thinking that sounded like a criticism of Maggie, she added, ‘I shall miss her.’
    Oliver nodded, folding himself on to a stool and waiting for Bea to serve his food. He’d been the odd one out in his family, rescued by Maggie after a row in which he’d been thrown out on to the street. He was a nice lad, but used to being waited on by womenfolk. Not for the first time, Bea thought it would be a good thing if Maggie were not quite so protective of him. She did everything for him bar powdering his bottom after he’d had his bath.
    Bea scolded herself. What was the matter with her? First she schemed to get rid of Maggie because she made so much noise, and now she was thinking about how she could get rid of Oliver, which made her the most ungrateful person she knew. Why, Maggie had been carrying the burden of looking after the house from the moment she arrived, and without Oliver the agency would have been finished months ago.
    She dished up. ‘Max didn’t ring while I was out?’
    Oliver shook his head. ‘I got a lot of stuff about the Farnes off the internet, printed it off and left it on your desk. Lady Farne must have been quite a character. There’s some stuff on Millais, too. He was another odd one. Did you know he didn’t get his knighthood for years because he was playing around with another man’s wife, though he did eventually marry her?’
    She hadn’t known that. Perhaps it was going to be more fun to research Millais than she’d thought it would be.
    She’d returned from the library with an armful of books on art, which she didn’t think was precisely her kind of bedtime reading. Not like the latest Maeve Binchy, for instance.
    Oliver changed and went out after supper, saying he was going to see about signing on at the gym.
    Bea wandered around the quiet, too quiet house. The rain had stopped, hurray. The scent of nicotiana and honeysuckle hung in the air. Bea deadheaded some roses, and swept up a few leaves which had fluttered down from the big tree at the bottom of the garden. She got the cushions out of the shed and sat down on the lounger under the tree with some of her art books. She turned pages. She yawned. All those pretty pickies of children and young girls and statesmen and … they were really just potboilers, weren’t they? Only one or two of them stood out and one of them … she had to smile … was a portrait of his wife’s first husband. Well, well. Who’s the tomcat now?
    Piers, currently painting a clientele whom he called the Great But Not So Good, was probably today’s equivalent of Millais. She glanced at some of the sugary portraits of children which Millais had done. They were not fashionable today, of course, but they had a certain charm.
    Which led her to remembering that Velma had the same sort of blue-eyed, innocent charm. Why, at school she’d got away with