Gold Digger Read Online Free Page A

can’t stay with you.’
    ‘Yes, I know.’
    But the weather changed. Rain in torrents, thudding against windows for two days: the sort of rain that defied movement out of doors and made it easy to stay in. It was August, but all the same Thomas lit a fire in the gallery room. She kept protesting that she should go, but it was weak protest, from a weak body, and she would fall asleep at the drop of a hat.
    He worked at the computer in the gallery room. It was still a source of amazement to him, that he could view and buy paintings from all over the world. She hovered, sometimes, watching.
Do you write something every day?
she asked.
    Every day, sometimes all day. It’s a good thing to do. Here, try it.
    She could use the keyboard, clumsily, then easily. Hers was such an open mind, there was nothing she could not learn. And when he was not looking, she talked to the paintings.
My, but you’re a fine one
, she said to the Portrait of a Boy on the Stairs.
Don’t you love your own hair?
He could tell that her hands itched to rearrange what she saw, make space for more; and he wished she would.
    He was glad she had been so ill so soon and he thanked heaven for the rain. It gave him time to observe her and to acknowledge that she had not come back to blackmail him, although she still could. They never talked about the night of the storm; they talked about the house.
    He found her in the big room, early on the morning of the fourth day, talking to Madame de Belleroche. Look, now, she said to the grand, kind lady in the hat whom she had just dusted with tender loving care. Do you think, Di said to her, that he lets me stay just to see if I’m going to pinch anything? I hope not, but even so, I’d better go before I do. And what about his children? Why don’t his children want to come and see you, even if they don’t want to come and see him? Why don’t they? Or is it just me who’s the freak? Yes, I am a freak – bet you were, too, looking like that.
    He loved the fact that she talked to the paintings, as if she knew, as he did, that they were alive. Thomas had so quickly grown accustomed to her presence in the house, moving about like quicksilver: it unnerved him how right it felt. As long as it rained, and as long as she was weak, she would stay, but he did not want her to stay for that reason. He wanted the child who talked to paintings, and he wanted her strong.
    On this morning it was bright again and the outdoors beckoned. She was wearing the cotton coat she had carried with her when she first arrived and her little bag was by the door. His heart slowed to a standstill. Di sensed his presence, spoke over her shoulder.
    ‘My mother told me about the parties there used to be in this house. Parties for children, when it was a school, and then after that. Your father had parties for children. They were magic, she said.’
    ‘My father was a headmaster who believed in magic,’ Thomas said. ‘And that was a long time ago.’
    ‘You could do it again.’
    The wonderful, glorious possibility of that, of filling this house with children, entered his mind for a minute, took hold and then began to fade.
    ‘No, I don’t think so.’
    She shook her head. ‘Pity, Mr Porteous, Thomas. Perhaps it’s just me, but if I was magicked by this house and all the paintings in it, so would other kids, other people be. There’s nothing different about me. If I could have kept on coming to a place like this more often than the few times I did, I’d have known there was another world outside my bastard own. So, I just thought if more people could see all this, love all this, for free, there might be a few less thieves. Kids need magic. People need paintings, don’t they? Even if they don’t know they do, they do.’
    He sat down, impossibly excited this time. How did she know what he had always wanted? She was frowning, looking like a monkey, frustrated by her own lack of coherence.
    ‘It’s time I went, Thomas. Thank you for