Keep Me Alive Read Online Free PDF

the idea of being able to expand your little empire that you completely misinterpreted Furbishers’ mild expression of interest in your, er – ’ He looked deliberately down at his notes – ‘your pheasant, pork and, um, pis tachio terrines?’
    Trish knew perfectly well that he was trying to instil in the judgeis mind the idea that the magnificent and enormous Furbishers empire was far too important to bother to do anything intentionally to harm a pissant little rural business. After all, Furbishers made a huge and well-known contribution
to the United Kingdom’s economic, political and cultural life. They believed they were untouchable.
    The judge’s minute smile suggested that he knew what Aldham was doing, too. He made a note and turned his head away from the silk, whose poker face did not change.
    ‘No one takes six weeks to prepare estimates of costs, income and profits in a frenzy of excitement,’ Applewood said firmly, directing his responses to the judge as Trish had advised. ‘I went into every possible eventuality and decided that the deal Furbishers had offered me was a good one.’
    ‘But they hadn’t at that stage offered you the deal, had they?’
    ‘Of course they had. Arthur Chancer, the buyer, and I shook on it. He told me the men in suits took for ever to produce the paper contracts and he didn’t want to wait for them before putting such a potentially popular product on the shelves. He said that actually signing the papers would be no more than a formality, and we should get going straight away.’
    ‘That’s not quite accurate, is it?’ Aldham shuffled through his papers, presumably looking for the buyer’s witness statement. ‘Didn’t Mr Chancer actually say that the men in suits took for ever to get out the paperwork and so he would like to offer you a trial agreement for two deliveries a week for three months, while they worked out the terms of the deal they would eventually offer you?’
    ‘No.’ Will shot Trish a small triumphant glance, inviting her to notice his unemotional rebuttal. She wasn’t allowed to make any kind of signal, so she couldn’t nod her approval.
    ‘Didn’t he add that those three months would give him time to assess the popularity of the product, so that he could work out the best price he could offer you for a long-term supply?’
    This was, of course, the crux of the case, and given that there were no incontrovertible documents to prove it either way, the verdict would depend on the judge’s assessment of the balance of probabilities, and of the characters involved.
    ‘No, he didn’t,’ said Will, still firm and polite.
    ‘Did anyone ever advise you not to buy the new machines until you had a signed contract?’ Aldham asked, sounding dangerously casual.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘No one at all ever said anything like: “be careful to get something on paper before you spend all this money”?’
    There was a pause. Trish felt her heart thudding. Aldham might be fishing, but she had a feeling he had some documentary evidence somewhere to support this. She and Antony had, of course, seen the skeleton arguments Ferdy was going to use, just as he had seen theirs. But there could still be surprises in the detail.
    ‘Only my wife. My ex-wife. And she didn’t understand that I had a firm contract,’ Will said. ‘She was ignorant enough to believe that a contract has to be written down, and you know as well as I, Mr Aldham, that is not the case.’
    ‘But she still warned you, didn’t she?’
    ‘It is true that she once wrote to me in those terms from her mother’s, where she was staying at the time, but she knew nothing about the details of this particular deal, so I threw the letter in the bin.’
    Will looked at Aldham as though he suspected the flamboyant silk of fossicking through dustbins in search of documentary evidence.
    ‘“She knew nothing,”’ Aldham quoted. ‘And yet she put her finger on the very point