Read Online A Woman of Courage by J.H. Fletcher - Free Book Online

your invitation. Whether I love my chains or not, the fact remains I cannot have lunch with you.’
    â€˜I have written my autobiography,’ Emil said. ‘It contains certain information the world has long wanted to know. Information that I have until now been unwilling to disclose. The purpose of my invitation is to discuss the possibility of your interviewing me about it on your programme.’
    Don’t be too eager, Sara thought. Make him come to you.
    â€˜I’m not sure they’d be interested,’ she said. ‘It would have to be quite sensational to get them to agree.’
    â€˜A man who was offered the Nobel and turned it down? A writer whose last contract was for a million dollars? A writer whose Breton father wanted independence from France so much that he fought for the Nazis in the hope of obtaining it?’ She could almost see the snarl. ‘Is that sensational enough for your people?’
    â€˜Fought for the Nazis?’
    No wonder he had kept quiet about his past. Always, in his writing and his life, Emil had known how and when to set the hook. Now, between one instant and the next, it was buried deep.
    â€˜Of course I’ll discuss it with them,’ Sara said. ‘But I still can’t manage lunch. Not today.’
    â€˜Dinner, then?’
    â€˜Oh Emil, I’m sorry. I’m tied up tonight as well.’ To reject him not once but twice… She took a deep breath and plunged. ‘It would be lovely another time.’
    â€˜Tomorrow night, then. At nine o’clock. D’accord ?’
    Get her make-up off, nip home, a quick shower and change of clothes: another rushed evening. So what was new?
    â€˜ D’accord. ’
    â€˜Your address?’
    It was a rule in the business that you never gave your address to anyone: but this was Emil , she told herself, and rules, just occasionally, were meant to be broken.
    She hung up, wondering what she’d let herself in for. I am not going down that path again, she thought, never. Never! But memory could be a traitor, and the question in her mind remained.

EXECUTIONER MODE
    It was quarter to eleven when the chopper put down on the landing pad atop the Brand Corporation building. With the rotor still turning Hilary thanked the pilot – something she never forgot – and was out of the door and heading purposefully for the lift that would take her to the executive floor housing her suite of offices and the penthouse that was her home from home when she couldn’t spare the time to return to Cadogan Lodge: there had been occasions when she had roosted there for days at a time. The vast bed was regularly aired, the towels and other goodies replenished every week. Handy for entertaining important guests, it was a showcase. The dining room contained numerous examples of early colonial Australian furniture, including an 1840 cedarwood bookcase provenanced to Dorothea Mackellar. One of the two Opie portraits of Lachlan Macquarie hung on the wall behind Hilary’s chair; the other was on display at the State Library of New South Wales. The vast reception area provided a contrast in style. It had two hundred and seventy degree views across the city and an outside balcony from which it was possible to see the length of the harbour from the bridge to the Heads. The furniture was luxurious and modern with a few good paintings: Olsen, Nolan, Boyd. Also a Gulliver, the artist whom Jennifer had loved and whom Tom Tallis, the curator of her collection, had tipped to become the next big name in the art world. Poor Tom, felled by a stroke a month ago at the age of fifty-five. He was a sad loss, both as curator and friend.
    In a glass-fronted cabinet a chambered nautilus shell was an elegant brown and white memento of her first magical visit to Penang. Ah, Penang…
    But today Hilary had no time for smiling memories of recent days, so she left the penthouse as soon as she had checked that all was in