Read Online Whiteout by Ken Follett - Free Book Online Page B

I, but there’s not much we can do about it.”
    â€œKit called me a few days ago. For some reason, he’s dead keen to sleep in the guest cottage at Steepfall.”
    Olga bridled. “Why should he have the cottage all to himself? That means you and Ned and Hugo and I will all have to squeeze into two poky bedrooms in the old house!”
    Miranda had expected Olga to resist this. “I know it’s unreasonable, but I said it was okay by me. It was difficult enough to persuade him to come—I didn’t want to put an obstacle in the way.”
    â€œHe’s a selfish little bastard. What reason did he give you?”
    â€œI didn’t question him.”
    â€œWell, I will.” Olga took her mobile phone from her briefcase and pressed a number.
    â€œDon’t make an issue of this,” Miranda pleaded.
    â€œI just want to ask him the question.” Speaking into the phone, she said: “Kit—what’s this about you sleeping in the cottage? Don’t you think it’s a bit—” She paused. “Oh. Why not?. . . I see. . . but why don’t you—” She stopped abruptly, as if he had hung up on her.
    Miranda thought, sadly, that she knew what Kit had said. “What is it?”
    Olga put the phone back into her bag. “We don’t need to argue about the cottage. He’s changed his mind. He’s not coming to Steepfall after all.”

9 A.M.
    OXENFORD MEDICAL was under siege. Reporters, photographers, and television crews massed outside the entrance gates, harassing employees as they arrived for work, crowding around their cars and bicycles, shoving cameras and microphones in their faces, shouting questions. The security guards were trying desperately to separate the media people from the normal traffic, to prevent accidents, but were getting no cooperation from the journalists. To make matters worse, a group of animal-rights protesters had seized the opportunity for some publicity, and were holding a demonstration at the gates, waving banners and singing protest songs. The cameramen were filming the demonstration, having little else to shoot. Toni Gallo watched, feeling angry and helpless.
    She was in Stanley Oxenford’s office, a large corner room that had been the master bedroom of the house. Stanley worked with the old and the new mingled around him: his computer workstation stood on a scratched wooden table he had had for thirty years, and on a side table was an optical microscope from the sixties that he still liked to use from time to time. The microscope was now surrounded by Christmas cards, one of them from Toni. On the wall, a Victorian engraving of the periodic table of the elements hung beside a photograph of a striking black-haired girl in a wedding dress—his late wife, Marta.
    Stanley mentioned his wife often. “As cold as a church, Marta used to say. . . When Marta was alive we went to Italy every other year. . .Marta loved irises.” But he had spoken of his feelings about her only once. Toni had said how beautiful Marta looked in the photograph. “The pain fades, but it doesn’t go away,” Stanley said. “I believe I’ll grieve for her every day for the rest of my life.” It had made Toni wonder whether anyone would ever love her the way Stanley had loved Marta.
    Now Stanley stood beside Toni at the window, their shoulders not quite touching. They watched with dismay as more Volvos and Subarus parked on the grass verge, and the crowd became noisier and more aggressive.
    â€œI’m so sorry about this,” Toni said miserably.
    â€œNot your fault.”
    â€œI know you said no more self-pity, but I let a rabbit get through my security cordon, then my bastard ex-partner leaked the story to Carl Osborne, the television reporter.”
    â€œI gather you don’t get on with your ex.”
    She had never talked candidly to Stanley about this, but Frank