Read Online Folly's Child by Janet Tanner - Free Book Online

talent, Hugo might have been trapped in small-time design and manufacture for ever. But the very mention of Greg Martin’s name was painful to Hugo. He had skilfully evaded Margie’s questions, moving on to talk instead about Kurt Eklund, the financial genius he had hired after Greg’s death to help him avoid what had seemed at the time almost certain ruin. It had been Kurt who had set up the dozens of licensing deals for menswear and toiletries, bedlinen and beachwear, soft furnishings and costume jewellery, all bearing the name of Hugo Varna, which had not only saved him from bankruptcy but also made him his first million. In the process Kurt had graduated from business adviser to trusted friend; Hugo had rewarded him with a fifteen per cent share of the business and never regretted it.
    Margie had not pressed Hugo to talk about Greg Martin though her professional instincts had nagged at her that if she could probe a little into the association it would produce some riveting television. But she also sensed how deep Hugo’s hurt ran and since his first wife’s death was also connected with the man she told herself it would be tasteless to dwell on it.
    The truth was, of course, that hard-nosed journalist though she was, Margie was as attracted to Hugo as was almost every other woman who met him and she actually wanted him to like her.
    The momentary weakness had bothered her for weeks afterwards as she worried as to whether she had lost her professionalism along with the opportunity to grill Hugo Varna over the truth about his relationship – and Paula’s – with the man who had died as he lived in a blaze of publicity. But whether she had been right or wrong, Hugo had been allowed off the hook. He did not talk about Greg Martin. He did not even think about Greg Martin if he could help it. As he left the studio after the interview his well-programmed defence mechanism had come into operation, and he had pushed the painful memories into a corner of his brain where his conscious mind could not reach them.
    Now, however, to his intense discomfort, Hugo found there was no way he could prevent himself from thinking about Greg Martin. From the moment the news had broken that he was not dead at all but very much alive in Australia he had been unable to think of anything else. None of the usual tricks for shutting off memory would work now; whatever he did, whichever way he diverted his attention it would only come wandering back, like a man in a maze who continually finds himself back in the same spot. It was insufferable – awful. He was beginning to think he was going mad. His nerves jangled in time with the balls on the executive toy on his desk and his brain felt as thick and muzzy as the grey January sky above the skyscrapers of Manhattan.
    A slight commotion in the outer office attracted his attention.
    His secretary’s voice, raised in agitation: ‘I’m sorry – Mr Varna is not to be disturbed. You can’t go in there!’
    And another voice, one he instantly recognised: ‘Like hell I can’t!’
    The door flew open and Harriet burst in. Behind her the secretary floundered helplessly.
    â€˜I’m sorry, Mr Varna, I couldn’t stop her.’
    â€˜It’s all right, Nancy. This is my daughter.’
    â€˜Oh, Mr Varna, I’m so sorry …’ she stuttered, even more horrified by her gaffe than she had been about letting a strange woman push her way into the holy of holies. Nancy Ball had only been with Hugo for a few months and it was much longer than that since Harriet had visited him at the office. It had simply never occurred to her that the young woman in a ski jacket with faded jeans tucked into her boots might actually be Hugo Varna’s daughter!
    â€˜Don’t worry about it, Nancy,’ he said comfortingly. ‘You weren’t to know.’
    She retreated, casting one last flustered glance at Harriet. Sally, Hugo’s