LITMIR.BIZ

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on the spot, she wouldn’t wonder—Alethea merely answered with a dutiful, ‘No.’

      ‘I should think so. You tell him next time he rings not to bother you again.’

      Alethea gave more thought to leaving home as she lay wakeful in her bed that night. Her mother usually kicked up a fuss whenever she asserted her right to go out with someone if she so wished. But, since Trent had called for her last Tuesday, Mother had seemed to carp non-stop.

      Alethea knew that her mother had endured a hard time, and she was sorry about that. But, unlike Maxine, who was having trouble getting any maintenance money from Keith, her father had seen to it that his wife kept their house and had a good monthly allowance. Though, thinking about it, her mother would have had lawyers sitting on his doorstep night and day had he attempted to do otherwise.

      Alethea stopped herself right there. Grief! She was sounding as bitter as her mother! Quite when her thoughts had become a touch on the sour side, she couldn’t have said. But suddenly Alethea knew without question that the time had come for her to cease merely thinking about leaving home. If some of her mother’s bitterness wasn’t to rub off permanently on to her, she had to do something about it now. The trick would be to find the nerve to tell her mother what she had in mind.

      Saturday dawned early. Sadie, with a sleepy-eyed Georgia in tow, came into Alethea’s bedroom and woke her up. ‘I’m bored,’ Sadie announced.

      ‘And me,’ Georgia echoed.

      ‘Looks as though we’re in for another fun-filled Saturday.’ Alethea struggled to sit up. She knew that there was not the remotest likelihood that they were going to allow her to go back to sleep again. ‘We could go down and have breakfast,’ she suggested.

      ‘Yes!’ they whooped in unison.

      The morning that had started off noisily grew progressively worse. Lunch ended in a pitched battle with Sadie being sent to her room yelling, ‘It’s not fair!’ and with Georgia smiling cheerfully at the outcome.

      Alethea, who had been hoping at some time during the morning to find a tactful way of telling her mother that she had decided to find somewhere else to live, accepted then that she wasn’t going to get the chance of a quiet talk until all three of Maxine’s offspring were tucked up in bed.

      Sadie was unusually silent upstairs. It was a silence Alethea didn’t trust. She went upstairs and found Sadie in her bedroom experimenting with her lipsticks.

      ‘Suits you,’ she murmured faintly. Guessing they were all in for an afternoon of hell, she added, ‘If I can square it with your mother, do you fancy a walk.’

      ‘Past the sweetshop?’

      ‘Into it if you like.’

      Only just did Alethea manage to avoid a sudden and impetuous kiss from her heavily lipsticked niece.

      Polly was still a little poorly, so it only took half an hour to clean up Sadie and get her and Georgia ready.

      In all, Alethea had them out of the house for around three hours. But, at least, thanks to a nearby playground with slides and swings, plus a mile-and-a-half long ramble, when they returned with sweet bags in hand, they were looking fit, healthy and cheerful, and even managing to talk at a less than high-pitched level.

      If the two girls were looking cheerful, however, it was more than could be said for their mother. Maxine looked extremely worried and as if—but for the presence of her daughters—she would be in floods of tears again.

      Alethea gave her a questioning look; Maxine shook her head. Clearly she did not wish to discuss the fresh crisis which had presented itself while the children were around. Alethea could make a fair guess at who was at the root of Maxine’s present upset, though, when her mother coldly let fall in passing, ‘He called!’

      Alethea had to wait until the children were upstairs in bed, and she and Maxine were in the kitchen tidying up, before she heard anything of why Keith Lawrence had that afternoon braved his mother-in-law’s house.

      He was, it seemed, to be prosecuted. SEC, Trent de Havilland’s company, had decided they now had sufficient evidence to have him tried for diverting some of the company’s funds into his own bank account.

      ‘Oh, Maxine, I’m so sorry!’ Alethea gasped, realising that it hadn’t taken the powers that be very long to have a case against her brother-in-law all neatly tied up. ‘Is he sure it will come to that—prison, I mean?’

      ‘He’s positive,’ Maxine answered shakily, adding, in obvious distress, ‘We’d just started to agree that any money left over from the sale of the house—once he’s paid everything back—I could have. But, unless someone can put in a good word for him, it will mean...’ She started to cry. ‘It will m-mean that my girls will have to bear the stigma of having a jail-bird for a father. Oh, I can’t bear it!’

      ‘Oh, Max, don’t...’ Her heart was wrung, and Alethea couldn’t bear her sister’s distress. She left off wiping down the work surfaces and went over to put an arm around Maxine. ‘Perhaps it won’t come to jail. Perhaps someone will speak up for him. Has Keith a friend at work who...?’

      ‘He hasn’t been there all that long. He knows no one really, except...’ Maxine broke off to wipe her eyes. ‘Except, you,’ she ended.

      For several witless seconds Alethea stated at her. ‘Me?’ she questioned, smiling nervously as she sought to understand what her sister meant. ‘What have I...?’

      ‘You know Trent de Havilland,’ Maxine enlightened her.

      ‘Tr...’ Alethea’s lovely violet eyes widened in alarm as, appalled, comprehension started to dawn. ‘Yes, but...’ She gasped.

      ‘You could go to his party tonight and, if need be, beg him not to prosecute.’ Maxine, it seemed, after hours of worrying, had come up with the only possible solution.

      ‘I couldn’t do that!’ Alethea argued in a strangled voice.

      ‘Why not?’ Maxine wanted to know, sounding tougher than she looked. ‘I’d do it for you.’

      ‘Oh, Maxine...’ Alethea cried. Her sister’s distress was her distress. But surely Maxine could see that Alethea couldn’t possibly do what she was asking. ‘Trent doesn’t even know Keith. He’d have no idea who on earth I was talking about.’ She tried to counter Maxine’s insane idea with reason.

      ‘He doesn’t have to know Keith,’ Maxine continued. ‘He’s the chairman of the whole shoot. All he has to do is pick up the phone and give the order to drop the prosecution and...’

      Oh, Heavens! Maxine was seeing her wild notion as perfectly feasible, Alethea could see that she was. ‘But Keith stole from him!’ she cut in to protest.

      ‘And you’re his sister-in-law, my sister and aunt to his three children,’ Maxine said forcefully. This was her only chance and for her three children she would fight—and expect their aunt to do the same.

      ‘I’m—sorry,’ Alethea mumbled, and, unable to bear the accusing look in Maxine’s eyes, she left the kitchen and went up to her room, with an unbearable weight of guilt dogging her footsteps.

      That same guilt plagued her for another half an hour while she sat on her bed and tried to forget Maxine’s tear-stained face. Maxine seemed to think there was nothing to it. That Alethea could just bowl up to Trent’s gathering and do as she asked. But how could she?

      Another half an hour went by and, wriggle though she might, Alethea, thinking of Maxine tearing herself apart, thinking of Maxine’s pronouncement, ‘I’d do it for you’, found she had presented herself with a new problem: how could she not do it?

      She didn’t want to do it. No way did she want to do it. The idea of driving over to the smart area where Trent de Havilland lived, of ringing his doorbell and then of somehow or other getting him alone and saying, Oh, by the way... and then confessing she was the sister-in-law of a man who had

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