Betrayal Read Online Free PDF

believed that the secret of life was to laugh at whatever came your way. If her high spirits were sometimes a little relentless they hid a compassionate and generous personality, quick to leap to the aid of those in trouble. A solicitor who had given up her practice on marrying David, she did good works on the boards of hospices and children’s homes, and was a prison visitor at Dartmoor.
    She had a sturdy body with an angular face, ruddy cheeks, and eyebrows that seemed too dark and bold for her colouring, and her appearance wasn’t enhanced by her practical tweed skirt, shapeless jumper and cropped hair. But if her looks were plain, they were thoroughly redeemed by her unwavering good nature.
    She could not have been more different from Howard, either in appearance or personality, and sometimes I had to remind myself that they were brother and sister. Mary was so much a part of our family, both in spirit and fact, that I tended to forget she might sometimes have divided loyalties. When our two families had jointly and harmoniously controlled HartWell this had not been an issue. But if Mary had felt torn over the acrimonious falling out between Howard and me, she had been very discreet about it.
    ‘We’ve looked through this buyout proposal thing,’ David began, leaning back in his chair and pulling his spectacles off his nose in a practised gesture. ‘I can’t say we’re a hundred per cent clear on everything . . .’
    So I took them through it, item by item. The investment opportunity, the risks, the potential for significant capital gains. I told them what the new team had already achieved, what was left to get right. When I talked about the future, how we believed we could turn the company round in a few months, some of my old fire returned, I began to sound evangelical again.
    Mary listened with partial attention, her sharp eyes on mine, a smile hovering at the corners of her mouth. When I had finished she looked meaningfully at David, and I guessed she was prompting him to ask some pre-arranged question.
    ‘Yes . . .’ murmured David, catching her eye. ‘Suppose we put in, say, fifty thousand now, could we put in more later?’
    I tried not to show my disappointment. Only last week David had been talking about a minimum of a hundred and fifty thousand. ‘It would be difficult,’ I said carefully. ‘You see, there’s only going to be so much equity and once the buyout’s gone through, that’s it, there won’t be any more for sale.’ I glanced from one to the other and wondered if they had actually decided on this reduced figure but didn’t like to tell me.
    Mary recognised my anxiety and gave me a sympathetic little grin.
    David roused himself to murmur, ‘After the last two years, the losses . . .’
    ‘I know. And that’s why I want you to come in with us, David. To make good your losses. The potential is there, we believe that very strongly.’
    Engrossed in some inner deliberations, David narrowed his eyes and tapped his fingertips together.
    Mary tried to catch his attention again but, failing, shrugged at me and said in a theatrical whisper, ‘We wanted to ask – what about income? What income could we expect?’
    ‘There would be no dividends until we got into profit.’
    David picked up on that. ‘And that could be years?’
    ‘Hopefully a lot less.’
    ‘ Hopefully ,’ he repeated with a censorious look, as though he had succeeded in catching me out.
    I started on our strategy then, how we intended to go out and sell ourselves hard on the Hartford name and quality. But catching the expression of boredom on David’s face, an expression I knew so well – lids hooded, his dark winged eyebrows lifted outwards in a satanic arch – I cut it short.
    ‘Listen—’ I said forcefully, ‘I’m putting everything I have into this. I wouldn’t be doing it unless I believed absolutely that we could pull it off.’
    Mary exclaimed in mock horror, ‘Everything?’
    ‘Certainly all the cash