Loss of Separation Read Online Free Page B

wrenches to what seemed to be a straight, uncomplicated life. I don't have much time, or much stomach, to think about what went before.'
    She nodded her head. She clacked at the thighs with her tongs. They sizzled and spat in the pan.
    'You overdid it a bit today.'
    'I'll be the judge of that.' I didn't mean to sound so short, but some sentences, no matter how you butter them up, still come out sharp and nasty.
    'Well, actually,' she said, her tongs in the air, her back still to me, 'your physiotherapist will be the judge of that. And when you turn up with a prolapsed disc he'll be really impressed that you tried to go cross-country running three weeks after waking up.'
    I snorted. 'It wasn't exactly a cross-country run.'
    'No, but it wasn't exactly a stroll in the sand either. Charlie said if he hadn't pulled on your reins you'd have ended up in the middle of Cold Acre Marsh with a long walk back whichever direction you looked at it.'
    'I wouldn't do it if I felt I couldn't manage it.'
    Now she turned around. I could see she was upset, but there was also some matronly steel in her. She didn't like being argued with. It was funny seeing that in a young woman. An attractive woman. Maybe that was what turned you mean, after a passage of years.
    'Paul, the weather's unpredictable. You only need to find yourself a couple of miles from home, a storm, or the cold coming in, and you're in trouble. The weather here, it changes fast. It gets ugly quick.'
    'Point taken,' I said, irked, and unsure whether my dented features were able to hide it from her. She didn't seem to mind that; she must have come up against surlier tossers than me in her line of work.
    She transferred the chicken to the pot and added the vegetables and stock. The slam of the oven door was some kind of end to things. When she turned to me again, she was smiling.
    'I might be pregnant, but nursey reckons one glass of wine won't stunt growth.' She uncorked a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and poured a hefty glug.
    'Has Charlie ever talked to you about Gordon?'
    'Of course he has. He's not one to hide his grief, Charlie. He's seen plenty in his time, quite a bit of it unpleasant. He knows how to deal with tragedy.'
    'It helped. He talked to me about it today. About the car crash. It helped me.'
    'It was before seatbelts, of course. Everyone did the same. Everybody had a child who bopped about on the back seat, or leaned forward to chat in between Mum and Dad. When you think of the appalling injuries, windscreens and the like, well, it's beyond me how the law didn't change years before it did.'
    Charlie and his then wife, who had left him after the accident, had been driving home to Peterhead, where Charlie was first mate on a prawn trawler. Their six-year-old son Gordon was in the back. Charlie was a good driver. He never drank. He always observed the speed limit. But the tread on their tyres was worn and the road was wet. The brake discs had not been checked for a while - they had skipped the last service because they couldn't afford it. It was a newish car; they weren't too worried about doing it just that once.
    Music in the car. One of Carol's old tapes. The Ink Spots. They had all sung along to If I Didn't Care and Do I Worry? Later, Charlie would sit with the album sleeve alone at home, staring at the track listing, the last three songs of which were Life is Just a Gamble, Forever Now and You Always Hurt the One You Love. It might have been funny, beyond belief, if it hadn't happened to him. Charlie had noticed the spongey brakes a moment before they failed completely. Their car, an Austin Princess, slid through a T-junction and into the side of an articulated lorry, he and Carol had suffered whiplash injuries, and Carol had sustained a broken leg when the dashboard collapsed into her thighs.
    Gordon had been catapulted past them. Charlie heard a popping sound, two in quick succession, even as the wreckage of the car drew in around him. He saw his son impact