A Brighter Tomorrow - Maggie Ford (thriller novels to read .txt) 📗

One problem would be that if she and Felix did become closer, Dora might be a stumbling block. Even so, her sister needed to get away from the place where she was, being virtually trapped by that woman. Paid companion indeed! – a girl her age playing companion to someone of Mrs Lowe’s years who should have had contemporaries as friends.

Tomorrow evening she would go and demand Dora’s release from her job, and so long as Dora was still willing to come away with her, there wasn’t much they could do about it.

Twenty-Four

What was it about best-laid plans? Whatever the saying was, Ellie realized that rushing off to visit Dora would do no good at all. To turn up out of the blue could cause all sorts of problems and her chances of enticing her sister away could go all wrong.

It wouldn’t take five minutes for that woman, Mary Lowe, to talk Dora round with a bribe of, say, another nice dress or something like that. What had she to offer? An attic room, the constant smell of paint, the leak in the corner from a broken tile, a lavatory along the hall below whose flush was as if a battle had broken out and which, if used in the middle of the night, would wake up the whole building; tenants who kept themselves to themselves, whom she saw so little of that they might have been ghosts, who often, out of a misguided courtesy for others asleep in the house, avoided pulling the chain after bedtime, the morning revealing a pan full of all that had passed in the night.

This is what she had to offer her sister. On top of that, food would be plain and not plentiful. No more nice gowns. She’d be out all day trying to sell her work and what would Dora do with herself in the meantime? Not a very attractive offer. Ellie scratched miserably at her itching chilblains.

She still intended to visit Dora, but best to leave it for a while longer. Instead she used the evening to write to her, keeping it light-hearted so that should anyone else open it – and she wouldn’t put it past Mrs Lowe to do just that – there’d be nothing significant to be gleaned from it.

Another reason for not going to see her was that this afternoon had been a little traumatic, and special, not to say surprising.

As usual, she had sat on her stool beside her small display of pictures propped against the park railings, eyeing the passing public despondently. Not much interest in works of art. The weather had been miserable, the end of January as cold as could be expected, heightened by a sharp wind bearing the odd flurry of light snow whenever it felt inclined. Who’d want to come out?

Huddled in the expensive but now gradually deteriorating winter coat she’d brought with her from Doctor Lowe’s, Ellie got up off her stool as she recognized the man coming towards her. Her lips tightened.

‘So you’ve shown yourself at last,’ she began. ‘What’ve you got to say for yourself, Mr C. Hunnard?’

She might have been talking to the wind. He utterly ignored her as he took in the two oil paintings she’d set up, the one of her mother, the other, still unsold, of Mary Lowe, the rest just a couple of watercolour scenes.

The painting that was supposed to represent her father she had left behind, no longer being able to look at it without experiencing a new feeling: that the figure at his feet wasn’t her mother but herself. It made her feel strangely ashamed now to look, and it stood propped with its face to the wall. She wanted no one to see it now and many times had thought to paint over it, but was somehow unable to bring herself to. Though why she couldn’t have said.

‘This one,’ Hunnard was saying, indicating the distorted likeness of her mother. ‘This is new. It’s very good.’

He looked from the painting to her. ‘You must keep going with these, young woman. Get rid of this other rubbish.’ He waved his silver-topped cane towards the landscapes, then swung it back to her mother’s portrait. ‘I should like to buy this one.’

Strangely she felt loath to sell it, though if she wished to settle the rent and buy fuel and food, she would have to. She was no nearer to having all that money she’d dreamed of, enough to further her plans to find and confront her father.

The man had moved even closer to the painting to peer at it. Ellie watched him with growing indignation. Who did he think he was, taking in her work as if he were some blooming judge or other at a competition?

‘How much?’ he asked suddenly, standing back.

Now Ellie flared. ‘A bit more than the measly four quid you gave me for my last one! Someone saw it in your gallery, marked up at fifty guineas, and you gave me four pounds. Well, no, Mr Hunnard, this one’s not for sale – not at what you’re offering.’

He regarded her for a moment, then quietly said, ‘What if I offered a sum you couldn’t refuse?’

Ellie’s anger died a little, but she still stood her ground. ‘It depends on how much.’

Her heart was beating so fast it was making her feel a little sick. What if he named a price around the fifty guineas that the previous one had been marked up for? – should she stick out for more? After all, this portrait of her mother was special to her. She wasn’t sure she even wanted to sell it.

She needed the money, desperately. All that she had made earlier was practically gone and next week’s rent still to pay. But what if he laughed at her price and walked away? She’d be in the soup.

She took a deep breath. ‘What about what you’re selling my other picture for?