Gold Digger by Frances Fyfield Read Free Book Online Page A

she’s kind.’
    It left out the whole issue of the intense mutual attraction which they were both denying, and all the same Saul was impressed, although it did not do as an answer.
    ‘And her family? What do they think?’
    Thomas hesitated, reluctant to discuss what was secret.
    ‘The only real relative is her father, someone she holds in revulsion, and a man once infamous in these parts, but no longer resident. No longer here. Tell me about mine, Saul. How are they really?’
    Beyond hope
, Saul thought, but did not say.
Edward, your
elder daughter’s husband, is teaching himself about art in order to turn your collection into money as soon as allowed.
    ‘They’re well,’ he said.
    He stretched his feet towards the fire and wondered what spring would bring. And when, if ever, these two would notice what was happening to them. They were melding, like ivy on a wall.
    L ater that month, or was it the next, when the wind rose and the draughts whistled, Di got herself locked into the laundry room on the first floor. It had one door only, with a catchy lock, and when she couldn’t get out, she screamed and hurled herself against the walls so hard she was covered in bruises. When Thomas found her, he held her tight until she made him let her go. Later still, when she saw him weeping at his desk, she went in to him and held him. They sat and talked about how, when the house was open to all, there would be no locks on any doors, and no barriers against touching precious things. It would not be that kind of house.
    And they talked about the night of the storm. And the parties there used to be, and would be again.

C HAPTER T HREE
----
    Scene .
Family Portrait of two daughters, then in their twenties, one slender and elegant, the other plump with flyaway hair, their three sons sitting between them. A garish portrait in acrylic paint, in which all the sitters, bar one, look unwilling. The smallest child is absorbed in some activity: the other two fidget.
    Painted by Christina Porteous, amateur artist. A painting for hiding in the attic.
----
    I t was the spring of the year after Diana Quigly returned to the house of Thomas Porteous, Collector of pictures and Inventor of games.
    Gayle and Beatrice, the two daughters of Thomas, now in their late thirties, sat on the same sofa where they had sat to indulge their mother’s desire to capture them in paint some years before. Patrick was the only child this time, sitting on the floor near his mother’s feet. Gayle nudged him aside withher foot and he scuttled across the room out of the way of her exasperation. Edward, Patrick’s father, Gayle’s husband, sat facing the women as if chairing a meeting. He was, without doubt, the head of the family.
    ‘He wants us to bring the children down for a party,’ Gayle said in her calm voice. ‘To leave them at the door for tea with him and a chaperone, amuse ourselves, and come back later for supper. How desperately inconvenient. Why should we?’
    ‘To keep him sweet,’ Edward said.
    ‘To mourn our mother,’ Beatrice said in her sing-song voice, which irritated Edward. ‘To remind him what he owes us. To make him feel like shit.’
    ‘To spy out the land,’ Edward said. ‘To see what else he’s acquired with your money.’
    ‘
Our
money,’ Gayle said sweetly, looking him straight in the eye.
    ‘I like parties,’ Patrick muttered from the floor, and then kept quiet. Edward and Gayle kept him close. He was small for his age, looking more like five than eight. Gayle was lost in thought, remembering the house by the sea she had visited as a child, and latterly only with reluctance, taking Patrick at her own mother’s insistence. There was a niggling, older memory of a party with fancy dress, something that eluded her. Patrick loving the place when he could scarcely walk, when he and his cousins, Alan and Edmund, were towed to visit Grandad.
    ‘We don’t have to go and see him,’ Beatrice said. ‘We can just continue to