Her father was special. It had taken an exceptional man to acknowledge an illegitimate daughter, take her into his home and keep her there even when it had cost him his marriage. She accepted that her father had his flaws. As a younger man, he had had a pronounced weakness for women and more than one extra-marital affair. Her mother, Isabel Massey, had been one of those women.
The following morning, Gwenna watched while her father posed for the cameras at the neglected main entrance of the Massey estate. Although comfortably into his fifties, Donald Hamilton looked younger. With his silvering blond hair swept back from his tanned brow, he was a very presentable man. A lawyer, who had forged a successful career with a furniture company, he was accustomed to dealing with the media and his short witty speech added gloss to an already polished public performance. The gates were swept open and the local television news team recorded the moment and punctuated it with an interview. Gwenna’s stepmother and her stepsisters, Penelope and Wanda, were revelling in the limelight. Gwenna made no attempt to join the family gathering since she was well aware that she would be unwelcome and that the subsequent unpleasantness would discomfit her father.
‘I didn’t realise the police bigwigs were coming too,’ a member of the Massey Garden committee remarked at her elbow. ‘That’s Chief Superintendent Clarke.’
Gwenna glanced over her shoulder and saw two men in suits standing by a police car. Their faces were grave. Another man was in conversation with her father and whatever was being said was evidently not to Donald Hamilton’s liking, for he had turned a dull red and he was saying loudly that something was nonsense. The news crew were now paying attention to the tableau. With an exasperated smile on his lips, her father strode towards the men by the car, even making a laughing sally as he approached. But a curious little puddle of silence was steadily spreading through the crowd. It enabled Gwenna to hear the senior police officer refer to ‘very serious allegations’. She watched in frank disbelief as her father had his legal rights read to him. In full view of his family and the media, Donald Hamilton was being arrested.
In his opulent private suite at the Peveril House hotel later that afternoon, Angelo Riccardi flicked on the recording that had been made for his benefit. Having received an anonymous tip off, the television crew had lingered for the more exciting finale that had been promised: Hamilton, captured on film at the very height of his self-glorification as local worthy and philanthropist, brought crashing down from his little plastic pedestal of respectability.
Angelo had bought the furniture company that employed his quarry and had sent in his auditors to check the accounts. Catching Hamilton red-handed had not been the challenge he had expected. Indeed it had been almost too easy. Of course, public exposure was only the beginning, Angelo reflected. Hamilton had to be made to pay the proper price for his sins. Piece by piece he intended to strip the man who had abandoned his mother of everything he valued and his good name was only the first step in that process…
CHAPTER TWO
GWENNA looked round the noisy room in despair and blocked out the angry flood of accusations being hurled at the hunched and pathetic figure of her father, who had been shorn of all his natural buoyancy by the events of recent days.
The drawing room of the Old Rectory was large and elegant. But the flower arrangement on the table, which Gwenna had taken such special pains with, was now wilting and dropping petals. It was three days since the world in which she lived had shattered into broken shards and, along with it, some of her most heartfelt convictions.
Donald Hamilton had been charged with fraud, false accounting and forgery and informed that other offences might yet be added to that terrifying tally. At first, everybody had been up in arms in defence of the older man. Not just his family, but his friends and neighbours as well for he was a popular figure. The fact that his employer and work colleagues stayed silent and kept their distance had been loudly condemned. But then, possibly people were worried about the security of their jobs. After all it was barely a week since Furnridge Leather had been bought by Rialto, the vast corporate business empire run by Angelo Riccardi. Possibly because of that more cosmopolitan and powerful connection, the case had attracted a great deal of unpleasant publicity.
Perhaps the biggest shock of all had occurred when Donald Hamilton, confronted with overwhelming evidence of his crimes, had chosen to confess his guilt. Gwenna had been truly devastated. That the father she adored and admired should have stooped so low as to steal money had appalled her, but she had been proud that he had ultimately had the courage to admit what he had done and accept the blame. When he had finally been allowed home, he had taken Gwenna into his study for a private chat. There he had confided how the extravagant lifestyle he had been leading had led to steadily mounting debts that he could no longer handle.
‘I just borrowed a little one month from the Furnridge accounts to tide me over,’ her parent explained heavily. ‘Naturally I intended to pay it back. Unfortunately Penelope sprang her big fancy wedding on us without warning and that cost a fortune. Her mother spent another fortune comforting her when her marriage failed. Last year Wanda needed the capital to set up her riding school. As you know that was another disaster and I lost a lot on that venture. But I do realise that that’s no excuse for stealing. You mustn’t think I’m blaming anyone either—’
‘I don’t…I don’t.’ Gwenna’s throat was thick with tears as she gave the older man a comforting hug. She was well aware that nothing less than the very best was ever acceptable to her stepmother and her two stepsisters and that they expected her father to provide for their every need and want.
‘You see, I’ve never been very good at saying no to the people I love. I’m afraid that we’ve been living above our means for a long time in this house but I found it impossible to deny Eva anything. I love her so much, Gwenna. I don’t know what I’ll do if she decides to divorce me over this.’
After that illuminating conversation, Gwenna was now finding it very difficult indeed to stand by listening while the rest of her father’s family made him the target of their bitter recriminations. He was a solicitor, whose main source of income had been earned by his employment at Furnridge Leather. A few hours a week, he worked for a handful of private clients, most of whom were elderly and whom he had inherited from his late father’s now defunct legal practice.
‘They’ve frozen your bank accounts. My allowance hasn’t been paid. How am I supposed to pay my credit card bill?’ her elder stepsister, Penelope, was demanding, her pretty face contorted with fury.
Gwenna wondered what would happen if she dared to suggest that perhaps it was time that the brunette looked for a regular job. Both her stepmother’s daughters still lived at home. Penelope was twenty-seven, a part-time model who treated her career like a hobby and expected her stepfather to fund the luxuries she enjoyed. Her sibling, Wanda, was two years younger and had never held down a job for longer than six weeks.
‘What about the repayments on my sports car?’ Wanda was demanding. ‘Where am I going to get the money to keep them up?’
Eva Hamilton gave her silent husband a bitter look of tearful condemnation. ‘Until now, I never appreciated how lucky I was that my first husband was such an excellent provider.’
Gwenna winced at a reminder that she felt was unnecessarily cruel and wondered fearfully if her stepmother would stand by her disgraced husband, now that the gravy train had ground to a halt.
‘Yes, he was and I’m certainly not living up to that challenge.’ Slumped in his armchair in the corner, Donald Hamilton was sunk so deep in depression that he was a soft target for all such attacks.
‘If only you hadn’t admitted that you took the money! With a good lawyer, we could have fought the charges!’ Penelope told him furiously.
