Cruel Legacy Read Free

to work at all.'
    Philippa had said nothing. There was no point in reminding him that his great-aunt Maud had had every right to leave her money to whomever she chose, even if that someone had turned out to be a six-foot-odd itinerant, a New Zealander who had knocked on her door one summer asking for casual work and who had stayed on over the winter to nurse her when she fell ill and broke her hip-facts of which they had known nothing until after her death, until Andrew, in his rage and disbelief, had virtually accused Tom Forster, twenty-nine to Maud Knighton's eighty-odd, of being his great-aunt's lover and of having seduced his, Andrew's, inheritance away from him.
    'How could she do this to me... to our sons?' Andrew had demanded, after he and Philippa had left the solicitor's office.
    'Perhaps if we had visited her more...' Philippa had suggested hesitantly.
    'What, go traipsing up to Northumberland? How the hell could we have done? You know how impossible it is for me to take time off work.'
    Andrew had, of course, typically, threatened to take the matter to court, to have his aunt declared insane and the New Zealander guilty of forcing or threatening her into dispossessing him, but to Philippa's surprise and relief Tom Forster had quietly and calmly offered to share his inheritance with Andrew on a fifty-fifty basis.
    Andrew hadn't wanted to accept. He had insisted that the very fact that he had made the offer proved that he knew Andrew would win any court case, but Philippa's father and Robert had put pressure on Andrew to accept.
    Robert's emerging political ambitions made it imperative that his background, his family and their histories were all squeaky-clean; the last thing he wanted was the full distasteful story of Andrew's quarrel with Tom Forster splashed all over the less savoury tabloids.
    Philippa, sensitive to her father's reactions, had been aware of the way he had distanced himself from Andrew afterwards, but Andrew, she suspected, had not. He was not that sort of man; other people's feelings and reactions had always been things outside his understanding.
    The last thing Philippa had expected, after all his complaints about how difficult life was going to be for them now that his expectations of what he would inherit had been so drastically diminished, was that he would actually part with some of the money. Not some of it, she reminded herself now, but all of it and more beside: money he had borrowed from the bank, boasting to her about the size of the loan the bank had given him, saying that showed how highly they regarded him and his business ability. She on the other hand had felt sick at the thought of their owing so much money.
    'How on earth will you ever be able to repay it?' she had asked him.
    He had laughed at her, telling her she knew nothing whatsoever about business, reminding her scornfully that she had no aptitude for it. 'Your father was right; all the brains in the family went to your brothers.'
    Philippa had winced. She had borne the burden of knowing she was a disappointment to her parents all her life. Ideally, they would have preferred another boy, not a girl, and then, when they had discovered that their third child could in no way compete intellectually with their elder two, they had turned away from her, concentrating instead on her brothers. She felt that they had been relieved when Andrew had asked her to marry him. She had only been nineteen, inexperienced and confused about what to make of her life.
    'I don't want my wife working,' Andrew had told her importantly once they were married, and she had resigned herself to giving up ideas of a career.
    All he wanted her to do was to be a good wife and mother, Andrew had told her. He was the breadwinner, the wage earner. He didn't like these strident modem women who seemed so out of touch with their femininity.
    On their first wedding anniversary he had given her a diamond bracelet.
    'For my good, pretty girl,' he had told her and