False Pretences Read Online Free

thought they could continue as before. More fool him. On the other hand, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find another building firm sympathetic to her point of view, and if Sandy started to be difficult then . . . out goes he!
    First get the practicalities out of the way. The funeral. No one had queried the death certificate. Dicky heart, natural causes. She must put in another stint on the phone, advising people about the funeral. Tiresome, but necessary. At least no one expected her to act the part of the grieving widow, since Denzil’s weakness for young girls had been well known.
    Honoria grinned. In due course she was going to take her revenge on the little sluts who’d encouraged him to stray, but first things first. There would be time for pleasure once the business end of things had been tied up.
    Tomorrow she’d deal with the coffee-flavoured troublemaker. She didn’t anticipate any difficulty. She’d teach him his place, and that would be that.

TWO
    Friday evening
    B ea climbed the stairs from the agency rooms to the kitchen, pulling herself up by hanging on to the banister. Whatever was the matter with her? She knew, really. Age and grief.Sixty wasn’t old, but grief was a killer.
    Maggie, tall and gawky, was crashing around the kitchen in a scorching temper. Bea braced herself; she did not feel like taking on Maggie in a tantrum.
    Oliver was laying the table for supper but as usual had put the knives and forks the wrong way round, irritating both Bea and Maggie. He hadn’t even the excuse that he’d been brought up in a family that ate off its knees in front of the telly, since the first eighteen years of his life had been spent as the adopted son of an English headmaster and his wife. He hadn’t fitted in there very well, and on discovering something nasty on his father’s laptop, had been thrown out of the house . . . only to be rescued and brought to Bea by Maggie, rather as one brings home a stray cat. Since then he’d become Bea’s right hand at the agency and was turning into a handsome young man.
    Bea failed to understand how Oliver could make a computer juggle statistics but become a cack-handed idiot when faced with domestic chores such as laying the table. Personally, she blamed Maggie for mollycoddling him.
    Maggie, on the other hand, could only perform the most basic functions on a computer but had developed into a successful project manager, while at the same time running their four-storey Kensington house with noisy efficiency. And she knew how to lay a table properly.
    Winston, their long-haired black cat, made as if to jump up on to the work surface . . . and nearly got swiped by Maggie with a pan. Winston knew when it was best to make himself scarce. He plopped out of the cat flap on to the iron staircase that led down into the garden.
    Bea wished she could do the same.
    Maggie shot evil glances at Oliver as she dished up some of her special meatballs in tomato sauce, with spaghetti and baby courgettes.
    â€˜. . .  and I thought I’d made it quite clear that I did not, repeat NOT, want Zander hanging around with his tongue out. I hope you told him I was going out with a rich property developer. Make that the owner of a football club, or better still, a polo-playing South American. What excuse did he make this time?’
    Oliver lifted both shoulders as she brandished a pan close to his head.
    â€˜He’s in trouble,’ said Bea, pushing herself to defend him.
    â€˜So why come here?’ Maggie thumped a bowl of grated Parmesan on to the table. ‘Unless, of course, Oliver told him to. That’s it, isn’t it, Oliver? You’ve been sneaking out behind my back to go to the pub with him. Do you think I’m blind and deaf? You make arrangements to see him on your mobile late at night, when I’m trying to get to sleep.’
    Oliver rolled his eyes, and held his tongue. Wise