Gold Digger Read Online Free

and watched. He was a fine swimmer, as sleek and ageless in the water as a seal and she wanted to say:
don’t go far, come back
.
    That was what he reminded her of; a seal in water, and a nimble, long-legged bird on land.
    He threw a towel round her shoulders when they sat on the bank, he being careful to keep a distance from her and her shivering until the heat of the sun began to penetrate. Then she shrugged off the towel, wanting the sun on her skin, and he handed it back.
    ‘Keep it on, I would,’ he said, gently. ‘Keep wrapped up for now, or you’ll burn.’
    The sea, and that single act of solicitude, made her want to weep, and she gripped the towel closer. He had skin like lovely old leather and even then, she wanted to touch it to see if it was real. She looked down at her own legs and began to struggle back into her jeans.
    ‘Milk bottle white, you are,’ he said. ‘Never seen such white pins. Perfect for an artist’s model. Luminous white.’
    She expelled the air from her lungs in a big balloon of breath in a moment of happiness so unfamiliar it made her giddy. There were so many variations of white.
    ‘Could I be alabaster white? Chromium white? Titanium white? Or maybe something more like the colour of sand?’
    ‘So many kinds of white,’ he said. ‘Most of them toxic. Such a struggle to find a non-poisonous white. What was it like In There?’
    ‘Grey,’ she said. ‘Grey and beige. But I dreamt in colour. I dreamt of paintings and paint.’
    ‘I do that all the time,’ Thomas said. ‘I need the sea to distract me from it. Give me balance, perspective. Thank God for Nature.’
    Di knew no God, but she was briefly in heaven.
    ‘Were you born here?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Me too.’
    He already knew she was. Both of them born within the sound of the sea, albeit decades apart, but with the same response.
    ‘And your children?’
    ‘My daughters? No, they were born in London. Never took to the sea, even in a painting.’
    ‘Poor them,’ she said.
    That subject closed itself. They drifted back along the beach, retreating higher as the tide came in, both of them with their eyes to the ground, picking things up as they went along, the way he did, most days. Feathers and shells, shells and feathers, nursed in the towel as the sun sank lower and the breeze and the shadow took away the danger from the sun. He noticed how carefully she selected: she was starving hungry but she still had time to choose. Only the best shape, the cleanest white, the least damaged razor shell, the perfect conch, the stone with the hole all the way through, as though she was arranging them into something in her mind: as if they already had another purpose other than to be where they were. The rejects were gently replaced on the ground, waiting for another day. Watching her concentration, he thought she had the instincts of a true Collector, a connoisseur with an innate respect for the perfect as well as that which was less. She found a piece of flint shaped like a bird. No man-made sculpture could rival such a thing. There was a waft of barbecue smoke from a long way away. Her stomach made an ominous growling sound, audible over all the rest, and she clutched her abdomen in apology.
    ‘Food,’ he said. ‘Food. I have food at home. I can grill some fish and bake some potatoes. Tomatoes.’
    Her stomach went into spasm at the very thought of real food, but all the same, they forgot it and talked about paintings. Paintings on the walls, painting behind corners, paintings on the computer screen. Pictures which made her clap her hands. Photographs of children: she wanted to know about his children. Time passed. When they finally ate, she consumed it like a starving waif, and then she was violently sick.
    R aymond Forrest phoned the next day.
    ‘So, did she arrive?’
    ‘Yes, and she’s still here. Asleep at the top of the house.’
    ‘Get her out of there. You old fool, Thomas.’
    ‘No, I’m not.’
    ‘She