Free Betrayal by Clare Francis

her sharp eyes on mine, a smile hovering at the corners of her mouth. When I had finished she looked meaningfully at David, and I guessed she was prompting him to ask some pre-arranged question.
    ‘Yes . . .’ murmured David, catching her eye. ‘Suppose we put in, say, fifty thousand now, could we put in more later?’
    I tried not to show my disappointment. Only last week David had been talking about a minimum of a hundred and fifty thousand. ‘It would be difficult,’ I said carefully. ‘You see, there’s only going to be so much equity and once the buyout’s gone through, that’s it, there won’t be any more for sale.’ I glanced from one to the other and wondered if they had actually decided on this reduced figure but didn’t like to tell me.
    Mary recognised my anxiety and gave me a sympathetic little grin.
    David roused himself to murmur, ‘After the last two years, the losses . . .’
    ‘I know. And that’s why I want you to come in with us, David. To make good your losses. The potential is there, we believe that very strongly.’
    Engrossed in some inner deliberations, David narrowed his eyes and tapped his fingertips together.
    Mary tried to catch his attention again but, failing, shrugged at me and said in a theatrical whisper, ‘We wanted to ask – what about income? What income could we expect?’
    ‘There would be no dividends until we got into profit.’
    David picked up on that. ‘And that could be years?’
    ‘Hopefully a lot less.’
    ‘ Hopefully ,’ he repeated with a censorious look, as though he had succeeded in catching me out.
    I started on our strategy then, how we intended to go out and sell ourselves hard on the Hartford name and quality. But catching the expression of boredom on David’s face, an expression I knew so well – lids hooded, his dark winged eyebrows lifted outwards in a satanic arch – I cut it short.
    ‘Listen—’ I said forcefully, ‘I’m putting everything I have into this. I wouldn’t be doing it unless I believed absolutely that we could pull it off.’
    Mary exclaimed in mock horror, ‘Everything?’
    ‘Certainly all the cash I have. And’ – I gave a weak chuckle – ‘quite a lot I don’t. I’m borrowing as much as I can.’ And far more than was safe or wise, though I didn’t say that.
    I tried not to think of how much I stood to lose if the buyout failed, and how much I had at risk if it succeeded. I tried to forget how very overextended I already was. Ginny and I had a lifestyle that didn’t come cheap. We had second homes in Provence and Wiltshire, we had staff and cars, until last year we had bought good modern pictures, and we entertained on what could only be described as a grand scale. Even allowing for all this, the outpouring of cash was so relentless that I could never quite grasp where it went. Since last year when the HartWell dividends had plummeted and I had taken a voluntary reduction in salary, w e had tried to cut back. Ginny had been in charge of the economies, but for some reason I could never understand her cuts seemed to make little impact on our bank balance, and whenever I thought of the future I felt an upsurge of panic.
    Mary screwed up her face in an extravagant imitation of alarm. ‘I hope you’re not expecting us to do the same!’
    ‘Of course not. I wouldn’t want you to. You must only invest what you can afford.’
    David drawled, ‘And if the company goes down the plughole?’
    ‘It won’t.’
    ‘But if it does?’ he insisted with a tinge of impatience.
    ‘Then the banks would get first call.’
    ‘And we’d get—?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    He grimaced, ‘ Exactly! ’
    I was aware of Mary watching me closely again. She gave a sudden chuckle. ‘A bit of a gamble then!’ She made it sound like a flutter on the horses.
    David sat forward. ‘We’ll need time to think about it.’
    ‘Of course.’ I looked from one to the other. ‘Though it would help enormously if you could give me some idea of