Read Online Hole in One by Catherine Aird - Free Book Online Page B

gave such good views out onto the course, exhibiting that aspect of flock behaviour associated with safety in numbers. They weren’t the only ones with a wish to keep together. Others must be doing so, too, because the putting green in front of the window, normally the place for golfers to pass the odd half hour with club in hand, was deserted.
    Indeed, there was little to see from the picture windows until a solitary figure came into view going in the direction of the professional’s shop.
    â€˜Isn’t that the young Trumper girl over there?’ said Anna, peering out of the window. ‘Luke’s daughter.’
    â€˜What on earth is she doing here?’ asked Christine. ‘She’s only a child, surely.’

    â€˜I didn’t know she played,’ said someone else.
    â€˜She doesn’t.’
    â€˜I’ve never seen her up here before.’
    â€˜Today of all days,’ shivered Anna, who hadn’t enjoyed being questioned by Sergeant Perkins about her own round in the Rabbits’ Competition.
    â€˜She’s been seeing rather a lot of one of the students who’s caddying here in the vac,’ the Lady Captain informed them.
    â€˜It’s a boy called Matt Steele.’ Ursula Millward had declined the offer of sedation herself but wouldn’t go home alone either. ‘Her people aren’t at all keen.’
    The Lady Captain shrugged her shoulders. ‘But what can you do when they’re that age?’
    â€˜Very little,’ said a mother of another teenager realistically.
    â€˜At any age,’ groaned another mother, even more experienced in the ways of the young. ‘Except keep talking. That’s all.’
    â€˜Poor little rich girl,’ murmured the Lady Captain.
    â€˜Poor?’ Anna’s eyebrows came up. ‘You must be joking.’
    â€˜Hadn’t you heard?’ said Ursula Millward, glad to be talking of anything but the body in the bunker. ‘Her grandmother’s entered the fray.’
    â€˜That’s all the Trumpers needed,’ sighed Anna, ‘just when they were trying so hard to play Happy Families for a change.’
    â€˜Happy Families!’ snorted another lady golfer. ‘You could have fooled me.’
    â€˜She’ll have stirred it up good and proper, if I know old Mrs Trumper,’ remarked someone else who clearly did know the woman in question all too well.
    â€˜They can’t handle the old lady,’ snorted Ursula Millward. ‘Never could. It’s half their trouble.’
    â€˜Go on,’ Christine urged. ‘Tell us what she’s gone and done now.’
    â€˜Old Mrs Trumper,’ said Ursula impressively, conscious
that she had everyone’s full attention, ‘has given Hilary half her holding in the firm now and promised to leave her the other half when she dies.’
    â€˜ Great Expectations , then,’ said Anna, a keen member of the Berebury Literary Circle.
    â€˜More like Jarndyce and Jarndyce,’ said the Lady Captain, who knew her Charles Dickens – and her Trumpers – better than most.
    â€˜So where does the poor little rich girl bit come in then?’ asked a newish member curiously.
    â€˜There’s Tim Trumper.’
    â€˜Who he?’ asked another member, younger than most, who liked to be thought of being with it, speech-wise.
    â€˜Her cousin.’
    â€˜So?’
    â€˜Childhood sweethearts until a little chick from Calleford with attitude came along and got her claws into him.’
    â€˜Now that must have really upset the Trumper applecart,’ agreed Christine appreciatively.
    â€˜Believe me, it did,’ said Ursula Millward.
    â€˜And put Hilary’s nose out of joint, too, I daresay,’ observed the mother of the teenager, well-versed in youthful angst. ‘What a family …’
    â€˜For family,’ said Ursula Millward, ‘you can read firm.’
    â€˜Or dynasty,’ put