HOSTAGE TO FORTUNE : Extract

Richard Price took two glasses from a passing tray, and handed them one each. 'Congratulations,' he said. 'I really am delighted for you both.'
'Aren't you having a drink?' Susan asked.

He smiled again. 'Better not,' he said. 'I'm on stage in a couple of hours.'
'What are you in?' asked Jeff, in the easy way he had, as he set his glass down, untouched. Susan wouldn't have dared ask, would have thought she ought to have known.

'Pretentious nonsense,' said Richard. 'I don't understand a word of it, but it keeps the wolf from the door for another week or two.'

Susan laughed at the idea of his having to keep the wolf from the door.
'Well?' said Richard Price. 'How did you feel, when they told you? I know everyone's asked you already.'

Susan smiled. Her reactions on winning the money had been a very definite sequence of emotions. Disbelief, followed by a feeling of elation which had turned into a stab of something very like fear in case it displeased Jeff. Which was odd, and unfair. She had no reason to be afraid of him. Bewilderment. All that money, and she had no idea what she wanted to do with it. Anger, for a while. She had almost made up her mind to walk out on her dead marriage, but the money changed things. What would people say, what would they think, if she went now? She couldn't go. The money was just another trap. Then…after all that, up there on the stage, a distinctly pleasurable feeling of power.
'I can't put it into words,' she said.