Emma Page - Family and Friends

COPYRIGHT Copyright Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 About the Author By Emma Page About the Publisher

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 1972 by Collins Crime

Copyright © Emma Page 1972

Emma Page asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780008175986

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780008175993

Version [2016-02-18]

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright COPYRIGHT Copyright Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 About the Author By Emma Page About the Publisher Harper An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain in 1972 by Collins Crime Copyright © Emma Page 1972 Emma Page asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication. Source ISBN: 9780008175986 Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780008175993 Version [2016-02-18]

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

About the Author

By Emma Page

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1

A damp and desolate afternoon in Milbourne, a hangover day filmed with the melancholy of the old year’s passing.

Little swirls and eddies of fog among the grey stone streets. The yellow lights of shops half-heartedly welcoming the straggle of dispirited housewives beginning the new year as they had finished the old, plugging the gaps in the family store-cupboard against yet another weekend, another succession of mountainous meals to be consumed in the name of festivity.

In the manufacturing quarter of the town, a mile or more away from the main shopping area, Owen Yorke sat at his desk in the small cramped office on the ground floor of Underwood’s. He had built the factory in the years of restriction that followed the second war.

No thought of luxury then, no concern to provide himself–the managing director and joint owner–with impressive surroundings of pale wood and a wide sweep of window, only the urgent necessity to produce, to sell, to start the wheels turning and keep them turning.

Now, twenty-five years later, success and the eternal need for expansion had brought Underwood’s to the point at which the old factory would no longer do. The plans for the new building had already been approved, work was to begin on the site in a matter of weeks, as soon as the fierce grip of frost showed signs of slackening.

Owen Yorke bent his head over the plans uncurled on his desk, considering the layout of the storage bays. The factory was silent now, the machines idle until Monday morning brought the workers streaming in again through the gates. Only a skeleton staff in today, the man who looked after the old-fashioned heating system, a handful of clerks catching up with the paperwork, cleaners busy with mops and buckets.

Owen tilted back his chair and stared thoughtfully at the opposite wall, not seeing its clutter of charts and graphs, the gay new calendar, the framed photograph of Ralph Underwood, his father-in-law, dead now for more than a quarter of a century but still looking out from the yellowing cardboard with his habitual half-smile of tentative goodwill.

Rather astonished, old Ralph would have been, at the way his modest gown and mantle shop in the High Street had given birth to this thriving garment factory. Even more astonished if he could have run his eye over the new plans and glimpsed the magnificent edifice his son-in-law was proposing to erect on the new manufacturing estate outside Milbourne.

Owen ran a finger along his nose. Everything was going well. I’m barely fifty, he thought, I have fifteen good years of work in me, twenty perhaps with luck. He looked after himself, didn’t smoke, took a drink only when the social side of business demanded it; he paid attention to his diet, found time for a round of golf now and then.

And he was respected in the town, highly thought of both as an employer and a responsible citizen. He lent his name to good causes, wrote out dutifully philanthropic cheques, had long ago taken care to join the right clubs.

He gave a little smile of satisfaction. At the next meeting of the Independents’ he would be nominated as President for the coming year, elected without a voice raised in opposition. An old and locally powerful organization, the Independents’, reaching out an intrusive finger into every pie worth mentioning.

As a young lad going straight from school into Ralph Underwood’s gown shop, glad of any steady job in that grimly depressed time, working as general dogsbody doing everything from sweeping out the store-room to taking annual stock, he used to walk past the Independents’ Club on his way home every evening. He would glance at the broad stone steps, at the weighty front door with its large knob and heavy brass knocker, and wonder if he would ever manage to storm that citadel of status and prosperity . . . And now he was going to be president.