’ave I? I’m the plumber, ’ere about a leak.’
CHAPTER THREE
IT WAS a little after nine in the evening when Jade quietly opened the front door, risked a nervous glance at the hallway and the staircase winding temptingly up to her bedroom. With a little sigh of relief, she closed the door very silently behind her, standing still as it clunked firmly shut. Just in case. Just in case Curtis came bounding out from behind a door somewhere like a bloodhound on the scent of something tasty and her peace of mind was shattered. Yet again. For the sixth day running.
If she had hoped that his appearance at Stratton House might have caused a few ripples before ebbing away into a relative state of calm, then it was becoming increasingly clear that this was not to be the case.
‘This is ridiculous,’ Andy had complained the day before, over a cup of coffee in one of the college canteens. She had watched the droop of his mouth as he listlessly stirred his coffee with concern. ‘He’s been working all the hours God made from as far back as I can remember. Yet he now chooses to saunter back home at seven in the evening so that we can all sit down to a cosy little family meal. What a joke!’
It didn’t take a genius to figure out his tactics, Jade had thought sourly. Curtis Greene, empire-builder and workaholic, was trooping home so that he could keep an eye on them, not that dear Andy suspected a thing. She hadn’t mentioned any of his brother’s grim accusations and she had no intention of doing so. As far as she was concerned, the boat had been rocked enough already, without her adding to the general seasickness.
‘Maybe he’s trying to bond,’ she’d suggested, and they had looked at one another with glum, resigned understanding.
‘Bond, flond. All I’ve had off him are lectures on responsibility and growing up. I’m twenty-two years old!’ He’d raised aquamarine eyes to hers and grimaced. ‘He just can’t seem to get it through that thick skull of his that I’m determined to pursue my art!’
‘Well, you’ll just have to prove to him that you mean business,’ she had said gently.
Easier said than done, she thought now. The only business Curtis understood was the complex business of making money, and after his initial flaming row with Andy he had subsided into the age-old water-dripping-on-stone routine. Over drinks, he would sit, cradling his gin and tonic with a vaguely glowering expression, and refer to the importance of keeping their vast business under family control.
Over dinner, he would punctuate the stilted conversation with observations on the harshness of life and the necessity of confronting it and controlling it, by which he meant packing in thoughts of painting and doing what his family legacy dictated, and over coffee he would throw dark hints about hangers-on, apparently rife in the world of art, who would see the heir to a fortune as easy game. These remarks were the ones that Jade found most difficult to deal with, because she knew that they referred to her but were never couched in terms that would allow her a say on the matter. Not without stirring up a hornets’ nest.
So far Andy had stuck his ground, but for how much longer? Curtis was forceful, and determined to have his way, and she knew that he was just biding his time, confident that he would get precisely what he wanted in the end.
They could leave the place, and in fact they had discussed this option, but, as Andy had said, that would be tantamount to running away, and he had spent his life running away. And Jade, he had informed her desperately, couldn’t leave him alone with Curtis. She was his moral support, and he needed her.
So here they were, the three of them, stuck in the rambling house, with the Master Puppeteer waiting for his chance to pull some strings.
She was tiptoeing up the stairs, gaining confidence that she would make it to bed without obstruction, when, from the foot of the staircase, she heard that dark, velvety voice call out.
‘You’re back. I’ve been waiting to have a word with you.’
She spun around guiltily and remained in frozen animation, with one hand on the banister, the other clutching the lapels of her jacket.
‘I’m kind of tired. Can it wait?’
‘I’m in the blue sitting room.’
So much for deigning to answer her question. She watched, in frustration, his vanishing back, and then reluctantly made her way back down the stairs and towards the sitting room, divesting herself of her jacket en route.
She really was tired. Andy was not back home this evening, and in an attempt to defer her own moment of return she had slugged it out at college, gone to the library and then forced herself to go for drinks with a group of students whose high spirits had only made her feel old and washed out. It was bad enough that she sported none of the prerequisites of the struggling art student. Her hair was its natural colour, her make-up was subdued, her clothes made no statement whatsoever unless you called feeling comfortable a statement, and getting drunk on a regular basis was something she viewed with horror rather than delight.
She walked into the sitting room to find Curtis standing by the bay window with a glass in one hand.
‘I’ve poured you a drink.’ He nodded to the glass on the table in the centre of the room. ‘Take it. Might relax you. You act as though I’m about to eat you the minute you’re within five feet of me.’
Jade snatched up the drink and swallowed a couple of large mouthfuls, then sat down rapidly as the burning liquid shot through her system like fire.
‘What did you want to talk to me about?’
‘Where’s my brother?’
‘Isn’t he at home?’ she asked innocently, wishing that he would do the polite thing and sit down, because he looked even more forbidding standing by the bay window, his body thrown into irregular shadows.
‘No, and you know it. Isn’t that why you made sure to stay out of the house for as long as possible?’ He looked at his watch and gave a theatrically overdone frown of perplexity. ‘If this is the latest you can do, then your social life could do with an injection. Where is he, anyway? I wanted to discuss some business with him.’
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