Drawing the Line Read Online Free PDF Page B

terrifying efficiency.
    Griff blinked, and said mildly, ‘So the miserable churl doesn’t deserve your tenderness. But I must tell you that that bit of Coalport does. Gently does it, dear heart. Now, what do you say to treating ourselves at the pub on the way home? It’s been a long day and I fancy we have quite a lot to celebrate.’ He glanced at Marcus, scurrying after Copeland like a whipped puppy. ‘All the same, quite a lot.’ He patted the carrier bag holding my page and a bulge in his pocket, caused by a box holding the WSPU ring.
    Yes, I was frustrated in every sense of the word. But Griff was making a real sacrifice in offering to eat out. He hated the noise and smoke of a pub, even when we tucked ourselves into the smoke-free zone, swattingrather pettishly at any stray wisps he fancied might be coming our way. The expression on his face if he had to move a leftover ashtray would make you think he was handling raw sewage.
    ‘What’d be even nicer,’ I lied, ‘would be to stop off at that big Sainsbury’s in Ashford and pick up some bits and pieces for you to cook. And maybe a bottle of bubbly to go with it.’
    It was worth the wait I’d let myself in for while he flitted happily round, making up his mind which vegetables would go with which meat, just to see his face light up.
    ‘Do you really mean it? Or, dear heart, I saw this wonderful recipe in a magazine at the doctor’s the other day!’ Which meant he’d torn it out and stuffed it in an overfull carrier bag hanging behind the kitchen door.
    ‘Of course I mean it.’ And I’d buy a small item on my own account from the stationery section while he pottered round the chill cabinets.
     
    ‘A loose leaf folder!’ Griff picked it up off the kitchen table. ‘For me? Lina, it’s lovely of you to give me a present –’ He held it as if were no more use than a slice of old bread. He might have asked out loud, ‘But what do I use it for?’
    I mustn’t be disappointed. ‘You see these polythene wallets? They’re open at the top. You can slide pieces of paper inside. There. School children sometimes use them for projects or essays.’
    ‘So you’re expecting me to –?’ His face was still screwed into doubt.
    ‘
You
don’t have to do anything. While you cook thedinner, I shall sit down at this end of the table with a pair of scissors and your recipe bag and I shall trim all the jagged tears and pop the recipes in the wallets. So if you like them, you’ll know where to find them, and if you don’t like them all you have to do is fish them out and throw them away.’
    He’d put on his glasses to look at the folder. Now he took them off again and polished them furiously. ‘That will be very useful. More than useful. And all the kinder since I know all you want to do is pore over that page.’
    He nodded at it: he’d put it flat on the piano he never played but couldn’t persuade himself to sell. He said it would be a sign of giving in – what to he never specified.
    ‘You think it’s all right?’
    ‘It’s got all the signs of being authentic,’ he said cautiously, wandering over to peer at it again. ‘But I’d like to have it – very quietly – authenticated. UV lights, ink samples, paper samples.’
    ‘That’d cost more than a week’s gewgaw money,’ I reminded him.
    ‘But there’s more than one way, in the vulgar parlance, to skin a cat. We could show it to Titus.’
    ‘Trevor Oates! That revolting man!’ He was worse than Ralph Harper, with nasty freckled convolvulus hands.
    ‘Some may say he’s merely a master forger. Others may say you should set a thief to catch a thief. Titus knows every trick in the book. And every rival in the market place. If that’s not kosher he’ll know. And he’ll know who forged it.’
    ‘Wouldn’t Copeland?’
    He looked me straight in the eye. ‘Would you fancyasking him?’
    ‘I suppose I could always ask Marcus –’
    ‘Not, I’d have thought, if you still harbour any