Cruel Legacy Read Online Free PDF Page A

wanted was food. He looked at the note again and then checked his watch. He might as well go straight round for Cathy.
    Jane's mother gave him an amused look as she opened the door.
    'I've come to collect Cathy,' he told her.
    She was a plump, slightly over-made-up blonde, the smile she gave him just a little bit too suggestive as she told him, 'Lucky Cathy,' and added, 'Look, why don't you come in and have a drink? And I dare say we could find you something to eat,' she added as they both heard his empty stomach growl protestingly.
    "Thanks but I'd better not. Sally's got supper on,' he lied.
    'Oh... I thought she was working tonight.' The blonde was pouting slightly now, the pale blue eyes narrowing.
    He'd never been a man who enjoyed the dangers of flirting, but her obvious availability and sexuality were making him sharply aware of the contrast between her attitude towards him and Sally's.
    His body hungered for the comfort of sexual contact with Sally, but these days she just didn't want to know. Sometimes he felt the only reason she stayed with him was out of habit and because he provided a home for her and the children plus a steady income to support them all. It certainly wasn't because she wanted to be with him.
    The children were more important to her than he was. Much more important.
    Cathy chattered excitedly all the way home.
    'Lindsay Roberts went to Disneyland for her summer holiday,' she told him. 'She was telling everyone about it. When can we go, Dad? Everyone else in my class has been.'
    'Stop exaggerating, Cathy,' he told her sharply. Too sharply, he realised when she suddenly fell silent and he saw the sullen pout of her mouth and the tears shining in her eyes.
    'Why are you so mean?' she demanded angrily. 'Mum wants us to go.'
    'I'm not being mean, Cathy...I...'
    He stopped. How did you tell a fifteen-year-old that the way things were right now you were lucky to be able to pay the mortgage, never mind pay for expensive American holidays?
    'You're mean,' Cathy told him. 'And you forgot that you promised to take Paul fishing.
    'I wish I lived in a big house like Lindsay's with a garden all the way round it.'
    Joel's mouth tightened. It wasn't Cathy's fault, he told himself. Kids were more materialistic these days; the whole world was more materialistic.
    'Aunt Daphne's having an extension built on to her house, with a new bathroom. I heard her telling Mum.'
    Paul was in the kitchen when they got back. Tiredly, Joel apologised to him and started to explain, but Paul wasn't listening.
    'It's OK... I didn't want to go fishing anyway,' he told him curtly.
    Joel had never found it easy to get on with his son. He had always felt that Sally over-indulged him, much more so than he had ever been indulged as a boy. He could scarcely even remember his mother spending much time with him. She had not been the maternal type, despite giving birth to five children. Sally, on the other hand, had cosseted and protected Paul to the point where Joel had sometimes felt when he was a baby that he wasn't even allowed to touch him.
    'You're too hard on him. He's a child, that's all,' Sally would protest whenever he attempted to discipline him.
    'Mum said to tell you that there's cottage pie in the fridge for supper,' Cathy informed him. 'But I don 't want any.'
    'Neither do I,' Paul announced.
    Joel paused in the act of opening the fridge door and then closed it again. The phone rang and he went to answer it. It was the foreman in charge of one of the other production lines at the factory.
    'Fancy a pint?' he asked.
    Joel sighed under his breath.
    'I can't,' he told him flatly. 'Sally's at work and I've got to stay in with the kids.'
    'When I grow up I'm never going to get married,' Cathy announced when he had replaced the receiver. 'And I'm going to have lots and lots of money and go to America as often as I like.'
    'Cathy...' Joel began, and then stopped. What was the point? How could he explain to her?
    Later, when both