Power Games Read Online Free PDF

clinked ice, and shook his head. She fixed herself a very small one, too. It was strange to sit down beside Graham again. Goodness knew how many meetings they’d sat side by side; but this was more shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh, than she was used to. And he was still holding the buttons.
    She knew how well-shaped his hands were, and that the left was weighed down with a particularly heavy wedding ring. But she’d never had to touch one before. He could simply have scooped the buttons up and passed them to her, couldn’t he? But they lay over whatever destinies the lines on his palm were supposed to promise, waiting for her to gather them.
    â€˜The wood was beginning to go rotten,’ Kate said, reaching for the buttons as gently and unobtrusively as she could. She turned to flick a smile at him.
    For a crazy moment she thought he was closing his fist around both the buttons and her fingers. If he was, he thought better of it.
    â€˜You could have repaired it,’ Cassie grumbled. ‘Where will you keep your garden tools? Your lawn-mower?’
    â€˜In the coal-shed!’ She didn’t think it wise to tell her at this point that she wouldn’t need a lawn-mower as she wasn’t going to have a lawn. ‘Alf’s going to clean it out and put a proper floor in. And then replace the corrugated iron roof with a polycarbonate one – you know, strong transparent plastic. So it’ll almost be a potting shed. And the outside lavatory – I’ll put some shelves in to overwinter any plants I manage to grow.’
    â€˜And I thought you’d got green fingers,’ Graham put in.
    She spread her hand for him to inspect them. ‘I’m afraid that they look pretty ordinary pink ones to me.’ Why on earth had she done that? And risked glancing sideways up at him, to find his eyes fixed on her face? It was so dangerous.
    â€˜She kills house plants, I can tell you that. When she was a little girl and she used to stay with me – I’d give her cuttings to take back home and they’d always die. Wouldn’t they?’
    â€˜That might have been something to do with that cat – the one that used to pee on them.’
    â€˜Our cat does that,’ Graham said. ‘Wretched creature – I can’t think why my wife keeps it.’ His face closed. And suddenly he was on his feet and halfway to the door. ‘See you soon, Aunt Cassie. Kate.’ He nodded formally and was gone.
    â€˜Well, you know your own mind best. But where’ll you keep your coal?’ Cassie demanded, without pausing to do more than nod goodbye.
    Probably he wouldn’t have noticed, any more than he’d noticed Kate’s wave.
    Kate rallied. ‘Come on, when did you last have a coal fire? You don’t need it with central heating.’
    â€˜I always had some standing by. Just in case. Power cuts and three-day weeks. You need a stand-by. Now, you were saying you’d started to play tennis. Don’t you go getting a new racquet, spending your money where you don’t need to. There’s a perfectly good one in the loft.’
    Not quite the ultra-light graphite one Kate had treated herself to.
    â€˜Behind the chimney, I think it is. Me and my Arthur used to like a good game. Always took our racquets on holiday. I had this lovely dress—’
    â€˜What was it like?’
    â€˜Oh, quite daring it was for those days …’
    Â 
    Well, she reflected in bed later, she’d escaped a cross-questioning for that evening. Tales of Cassie’s tennis and her clothes had kept them going till Kate could decently go home. But she had a nasty suspicion her great aunt had missed not one blink of the interplay between her and Graham. That tension. Then he’d mentioned his wife, and the very thought of her had driven him to his incontinent escape.
    Oh God! Cassie’s bladder, Graham’s cat – and at last the word she’d