The Day of the Storm by Rosamunde Pilcher

Author:Rosamunde Pilcher
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

8

It was hard to sleep that night. I tossed and turned, fetched a glass of water, paced the floor, looked out of the window, climbed back into bed and tried once more to compose myself, but always, when I closed my eyes, the evening came back to me like a film played over and over, voices drummed in my ears, and would not be stilled.

All right, so nobody wants to accuse another man of stealing. What do any of us know about Joss?

If you want to be made a fool of, try doing business with that little shyster Ernest Padlow. And if you think I’m selling my land to that jumped-up little beachsweeper, you’re wrong …

It won’t always be your land …

… you, dear boy, are not my only grandchild.

Dinner had been a gruesome meal. Eliot and Grenville had scarcely spoken a word from beginning to end. Mollie, to make up for their silence, had kept up a patter of meaningless conversation to which I had tried to respond. And Andrea had watched us all, a gleam of triumph in her round, seeking eyes, while Pettifer trod heavily to and fro, removing dishes, handing round a lemon soufflé rich with whipped cream, which nobody seemed to want.

When at last it was over, they had all dispersed. Grenville to his bedroom, Andrea to the morning room from whence we presently heard the blare of the television set. Eliot, with no explanations, put on a coat, whistled up his dog and banged out of the front door. I guessed he had gone to get drunk and didn’t entirely blame him. Mollie and I ended up in the drawing room, one on either side of the fire. She had some tapestry and seemed quite prepared to sit and sew in silence, but this would have been unbearable. I said, plunging straight in with the apology which I felt I owed her, “I am sorry about this evening. I wish I’d never mentioned that desk.”

She did not look at me. “Oh, it can’t be helped.”

“It was just that my mother had mentioned it to me, and when Grenville spoke about the jade and the mirror, well, it never occurred to me that I’d start such a storm in a tea-cup.”

“Grenville’s a strange old man. He’s always been stubborn about people, he’ll never see that there can be two sides to every situation.”

“You mean about Joss…”

“I don’t know why he’s so taken with Joss. It’s frightening. It’s as though Joss were able to exert some hold over him. Eliot and I never wanted him in and out of the house this way. If Grenville’s furniture needed to be repaired, surely he could have come and fetched it in his van and taken it down to his workshop, like any other tradesman would do. We tried to talk Grenville out of it, but he was adamant, and, after all, this is his house. It isn’t ours.”

“But it will be Eliot’s one day.”

She sent me a cold look.

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