The Beekeeper's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page B

He made a hasty decision. ‘Oh, that ,’ he said dismissively. ‘I know all about that. ’ He chuckled convincingly. ‘I wish I could say she takes after her mother.’ Bill was caught off guard. Keen not to look foolish, he laughed, too. ‘They’re good boys,’ Freddie continued. ‘If I’d wanted a safe chaperone for my daughter, I’d have chosen him myself. What’s the young man’s name again . . . ?’ He feigned vagueness.
    ‘Jasper, I believe,’ Bill responded, visibly disappointed.
    ‘That’s right. Jasper. Nice fellow, Jasper.’ He patted Bill in the same over-familiar way that Bill had patted him. ‘Good to see you, Bill. Give my best to Evelyn.’
    When he arrived home he could hear Grace humming in the shed at the bottom of the garden. ‘Grace!’ he shouted, and the tone of his voice brought her hurrying up the garden path, heart thumping against her ribcage. She thought of Trixie, and the anxiety felt like a clamp around her throat. Her husband stood on the veranda, hands on hips. Beneath his hat his face was dark with fury. ‘Why do I have to hear about Trixie and this Jasper boy from Bill Durlacher?’ he demanded. ‘You’ve made a fool out of me.’
    She swept the wisps of hair off her sweating brow with the back of her hand. ‘I’m sorry, Freddie. I should have telephoned you.’
    ‘I’m away for one weekend and this happens!’ He began to pace the veranda.
    ‘It’s all right. I’ve spoken to her and she’s grounded.’
    ‘Grounded! She should be smacked from here to Timbuktu. What the hell’s going on?’
    Grace tried to play it down. ‘She went to Cape Cod with some friends to watch the band play in a private concert. She told me she was going to stay with Suzie and I believed her. I mean, she stays with Suzie most weekends, so I thought . . .’
    ‘But she spent the weekend with this Jasper no-good.’ He swiped irritably at an intrepid bee that buzzed a little too close for comfort.
    ‘She was with Suzie. They went together. It sounds worse than it was.’
    ‘She lied to you, Grace. How much worse could it get? She’s nineteen and she spent the weekend getting up to all sorts of trouble with a young man she’s only just met. It’s a disgrace. Who is this Jasper, anyway?’
    ‘He’s English.’
    ‘As if that makes it any better. He’s in a band, for God’s sake?’
    ‘Yes, but he’s a nice boy.’
    Freddie sank onto the swing chair and took the cigarette packet out of his breast pocket. ‘Have you met him?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘So, how do you know he’s a nice man?’
    ‘I trust Trixie.’
    He popped a cigarette between his lips and lit it. ‘Do you have any idea of the lifestyle of these people? Do you?’
    ‘They’re not all Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull.’
    ‘Drugs, alcohol, sex. Do you really want our daughter hanging around with boys like that? Grace, don’t be naïve.’
    ‘What else did Bill tell you?’ She tried to control the tremor in her voice.
    ‘He didn’t have to tell me anything else. I can imagine what everyone’s saying.’
    She sat beside him and placed her muddy hands in her lap. ‘Is that what’s worrying you? What everyone else thinks?’
    Freddie looked at her through a veil of smoke. The nicotine seemed to calm him down a little. ‘Grace, we arrived here twenty-seven years ago and made a new life for ourselves. These good people welcomed us onto their island and made us feel at home. But we’ve worked hard to belong. You’ve built up a reputation as the best landscape gardener for miles around and I’ve gained the respect of the people I work with at the farm. It’s not easy, looking the way I do, but they’ve accepted us and we’ve got some good friends. I don’t want all that destroyed in one summer by Trixie behaving like a slut.’
    Grace felt the word as keenly as a slap. ‘How can you say that about our daughter, Freddie? She’s not that. ’
    ‘She’s compromising her reputation, Grace.’
    ‘But