Aunt Margaret's Lover Read Online Free PDF

said. 'I would never move that. It is my favourite.'
    'And mine,' I said firmly.
    I felt we had put the incident of the Picasso portfolio behind us. It was only at the will reading after the funeral that I found we had not.
    Chapter Five
    Coincidence is the fusion of two apparently unconnected happenings which result in a synthesis. Mrs Mortimer died a few days before Saskia was due to depart these shores. The two events seemed to balance out the sadness of each other: both feared, both inevitable, both here. Even the funeral was on the same day as the farewell party. Sassy suggested we change it, but I decided not. To be surrounded by large numbers of young people, with just a sprinkling of wrinklies such as myself, struck me as a good way to confront mortality and a graveside farewell, and providing I did not get maudlin (which meant modest dips into the champagne only) I was sure it would be an unshadowed success.
    The only dimmer was that Jill could not come. She and David had flu. I decided with relief that this accounted for her low spirits on the phone. She had been going down with something. When she rang to apologize, she was still in low spirits, though largely because Amanda was there looking after them. 'Do you know,' whispered Jill down the phone, 'that she thinks Canada would be a wonderful place to live. Can you imagine?' Amanda was serene and pretty, just like her mother, but unlike her mother she had been spared a romantic streak. She was absolutely David in that. At her age Jill would have been dreaming of the ochre and blue of the Adriatic, of the scent of jasmine in the velvety night air.
    David, of the new-found rotundity, was now chairman of some sort of Anglo-Japanese financial group based in Newcastle. Their house was impressively Georgian. Made homely despite its size and lordliness, it looked out over the Cheviot Hills. He was another Julius, really - one day he was travelling the magic bus, the next he wore a suit. Jill, who fitted somewhere in between, had submitted to reality, kissed the dreams of fond mortals goodbye, had two children, raised them, and now ran a little market garden. Much more fun than the hard, uncertain graft of my framing business. 'You should have married someone rich like me,' she used to say. She had stopped saying it now.
    I had especially wanted her around that night, not only because the party was a landmark in my and Sassy's life, but because 1 wanted her to stay up with me and talk into the small hours. Funerals and farewells make for restless feelings and she might have had some ideas - until I came back to the shores of routine peacefulness again. She would probably suggest a man, some idealized swain. She usually did. Besides, I had been invited to Mrs Mortimer's will reading, an event on which I wanted to conjecture with someone who would not think me callous. This was to take place - another curiosity - on the same day that the ship sailed and I was grateful. It would certainly give me something else to think about.
    That there was to be a will reading, and that I should be asked to attend it, was no surprise. I expected Mrs Mortimer to leave me some token of our friendship, for she had said as much, but what it was I had no idea. Of course I fantasized, but the only thing I fantasized about was far too valuable to be left to anyone outside of the family.
    Saskia and I went to the Pomme d'Amour on her last night. Just the two of us. We laughed at the inappropriate choice, though she said, 'Well, we are a bit like parting lovers, aren't we?' I thought, Are we? It didn't sound right to me.
    She looked, and sounded, extremely grown up. 'I wonder what he will be like. And I wonder if I shall like his paintings. Apparently his studio is very big and I can have a corner of it if I want to. Of course I shall travel about quite a bit too, but he'll be my base, so that's sort of a relief.' She laughed. I tried to but it hurt - I couldn't pretend otherwise to