Blood From a Stone by Dolores Gordon-Smith Page B

places.’
    â€˜Just for fun or because he promised his mother?’
    Celia looked at him suspiciously. ‘His mother’s been dead for years. Why on earth should he have promised her he’d go to Singapore?’ Her suspicion increased. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’
    â€˜Just a little badinage, don’t you know?’
    Celia sighed. ‘I see you haven’t improved, Jack. Ted’s been offered a job with a mining company. He says we can’t afford to live in England.’
    â€˜Bad luck,’ said Jack with genuine sympathy. ‘What are you going to do?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ said Celia. ‘He’s not like you, Jack. He wants to be settled. He likes security. I want him to buy some land and have a farm. He grew up on a farm. I know that’s what he really wants to do.’
    â€˜He couldn’t do anything better,’ agreed Arthur enthusiastically.
    Jack grinned to himself. A month ago, Arthur, tremulous with excitement, announced that his dearest wish had come true and he had at last persuaded his Aunt Catherine to let him manage her estate at Croxton Ferriers.
    It wasn’t, in Jack’s opinion, a job for the faint hearted. The estate had been neglected for years and it would take an enormous amount of work to get the place on its feet again.
    Arthur, who dreamt of living in the country, cheerfully embraced the idea of hard work. What made it better, in his opinion, was that the job came with a house he described as a little Jacobean gem. Isabelle had taken one look at the gem and flatly refused to go anywhere near it until it was in a rather better state of repair.
    â€˜Can’t Marchant find anywhere?’ asked Arthur.
    â€˜It’s not so much can’t as won’t. Money, you know. Ted thinks he’d need at least two thousand pounds or so to get anywhere suitable and that’s beyond him, unfortunately. I think we could manage with somewhere a lot smaller, but Ted doesn’t agree. He says in Singapore I can have the sort of life I deserve, but that’s nonsense. Ted will insist I want all sorts of things that I simply don’t need. As a matter of fact, there’s very little I do need. It would be inspiring, don’t you think, to live close to the earth in a really simple way. It would be so much easier to be in touch with the essential verities, to concentrate on what’s truly important, without all the needless trappings of modern life.’
    â€˜Electric light and running water are always handy,’ murmured Jack.
    â€˜You sound just like Ted,’ said Celia, shocked. ‘I don’t propose to live in a slum. It’ll be perfectly simple to install a generator for electricity and I have no intention of living without modern plumbing. Absolutely not. Ted’s just being stubborn. I loathe the idea of living in Singapore.’
    Jack, Isabelle and Arthur swapped glances. ‘What about the sapphires?’ asked Jack. Despite having just been reminded why he and Celia could never have been counted as twin souls, he had a lot of sympathy for her. Ted Marchant was a sound enough bloke but a bit of a he-man. He could well imagine him thinking he knew better than the little woman. What’s more, he could well imagine him saying it. ‘Couldn’t the sapphires be – er – cashed in?’
    â€˜I wish,’ said Celia ruefully. ‘I know they’ve been in the family for generations, but I could put the money to much better use. There’s so much that needs doing on the estate that I think Dad could be persuaded, but there’s no chance of
that happening.’
    â€˜Why ever not?’ asked Arthur, refilling her cocktail.
    â€˜The sapphires don’t belong to us, that’s why not,’ she said, sitting down once more. ‘They belong to Evie, and don’t we all know it! She absolutely adores them. She even had a photograph taken of