Motherlove Read Online Free

squeamish as I thought I’d be. It’s when they start talking I go to pieces.’
    Vicky Wendle smiled. ‘Maybe you should go for forensic pathology. They’ll never answer back on the autopsy slab.’
    â€˜I hadn’t thought of that! Brill. Except I really wanted obstetrics.’
    â€˜Perfect. Babies can’t talk at you.’
    â€˜No, but their mothers can.’ Zoe shuddered. ‘I don’t know how you coped in oncology. Doesn’t matter what we’ve been taught, I just sound like I’m talking by rote. Mitchelson said you were a natural.’
    â€˜Did he?’ Vicky knew she was far more communicative with the patients than with her lecturers and fellow students, but she hadn’t expected anyone to notice. She felt quietly flattered.
    â€˜But then you’re his star, you and James “Actually My Uncle” Danvers. Drew says – oh yes, Drew’s party, Saturday, are you going? I thought, if you were—’
    â€˜I don’t think so,’ said Vicky, slowing the words so her haste wouldn’t be too obvious. She was four years into her course, and her classmates still hadn’t cottoned on that she didn’t do parties. ‘Think Mum’s got something planned here. Look, she’s coming. Better go. Talk to you about that Harper lecture this evening?’
    The door of her tiny bedroom opened, and Vicky switched off. In every sense.
    â€˜Thought you’d like a cup of tea.’ Her mother, Gillian, bustled in with a tray.
    Vicky moved her books and files from one side of her miniscule desk to make way for it. ‘Thanks.’
    â€˜Not studying too hard, I hope. We want to see something of you. But I suppose there’s such a lot of work for your course.’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Oh.’ Gillian frowned at the tray. ‘I brought you biscuits. I suppose I shouldn’t have done. Shall I take them away again?’
    â€˜Might as well.’
    â€˜All right. Well then…’ Gillian hesitated, picked up the biscuit plate and an empty mug from the windowsill and added in a library whisper, ‘I’ll let you get on.’
    The door softly closed. Vicky sat back with a sigh and picked up her fresh tea. Zoe was right, she could sit and listen to dying cancer patients with compassionate interest and discuss their most intimate issues with calm professional concern, but she couldn’t speak to her mother about anything. Not properly. Not anymore.
    It didn’t matter. She had work to do.
    And she should collect her medication. She could do that now, walk down to the chemist’s. She needed some exercise, some air, even if it was only the air of Marley Farm.
    Downstairs in the kitchen of her former council house on the Marley Farm estate, Gillian’s mother Joan was topping up the teapot and coughing over her cigarette. Gillian watched the dangling ash about to drop off into the box of tea bags. There was absolutely no point in saying anything, but she did. ‘I wish you wouldn’t smoke in the kitchen.’
    Joan coughed again and flicked the ash, just in time, in the direction of the bin. It missed. ‘My bloody kitchen, remember? No one’s going to stop me smoking in my own home. Bloody Nazis, telling us what to do. We fought a war against that. Look at your father! And now they’re bloody telling us where we can and can’t fucking smoke.’
    Gillian wanted to argue that smoking bans and the Final Solution weren’t in the same league, but she held back, biting her tongue. ‘I just want to keep the kitchen clean.’ She wanted the house smoke-free too, but no chance with Joan there. Gillian had smoked, too, once. Long ago, before cigarettes became one of the many resolutely embraced sacrifices of her life.
    Joan watched her slip Vicky’s empty mug into the washing-up bowl and return the biscuits to the tin. ‘I suppose you’re going to be waiting on