Pets on Parade (Prospect House 2) Read Online Free Page B

that she had once been married, and there was a daughter in California and a son somewhere in Australia. But Beryl wasn’t to be drawn. The only thing on her mind at that moment was the cigarette she was desperate to draw on; and with a little inflected ‘Mmm’ to suggest there was more to her than met the eye – her good one – she quickly disappeared through to the back door to have her smoke.
    My comment about secret admirers hadn’t been entirely tongue-in-cheek as, when I mentioned the possibility, I did have one particular client in mind – Mr Entwhistle.
    I had met the gentleman one lunch break during the hot spell of June the previous year, just after I’d started as an assistant clinician. The heat inside Prospect House had been stifling, despite windows and doors flung open everywhere – that itself was a curse as it meant the pungent smell of rotting seaweed down on the beach wafted in, even though the beach was over a mile away. That apart, I was still thankful to get out, and I headed down past Prospect House, through the tunnel of rhododendrons that had once been part of the house’s Victorian gardens and now served as a hidey-hole for young courting couples.
    I crossed the Green to the shops lining the far side, a small complex catering for the cul-de-sacs of bungalows that had spread out like a web from the Green over the past few decades. Although bounded on three of its sides by busy arterial roads that headed down into the centre of Westcott and its main attractions, the pebbly beach and pier, the Green was still a popular recreational area; and on that June scorcher, there were youngsters playing tennis on the courts provided by the Council, while office workers dotted the brown-scorched grass, grabbing themselves a bit of tanning time. The office girls stretched out in their halter tops and short skirts made their end of the Green particularly desirable for elderly gentlemen dreaming of days gone by when they had the physiques to expose themselves with similar candour; and so, at lunchtimes in the summer, the park benches there were always packed.
    Apart from the display of youthful flesh, the only other feature of the Green to stir up any excitement was the magnificent oak that stood at the apex of the Green, adjacent to, but over the road from, Prospect House. There’d been heated debates in the local newspaper and a campaign group set up to save the tree as the Council had deemed it unsafe. In the event, it had recently been struck by lightning and split in two, necessitating its complete removal. The demise of that tree brought Cyril the squirrel into our lives, a fascinating episode in my early days at Prospect House and one which helped to form a strong bond between Lucy and me. Heavens – how different things had become between us. We’d need to make a Herculean effort and foster a herd of baby elephants to establish the same degree of rapport now.
    My main objective that lunchtime, besides escaping from Prospect House, was to grab a baguette and some buns for tea from the little bakery I’d discovered soon after starting work at Prospect House. With my penchant for sweet things, especially when presented as sticky iced buns, or custard doughnuts – maybe Madam Mountjoy could enlighten me as to whether I’d been an elephant in a previous life – I soon became a regular customer at ‘Bert’s Bakery’ as it was called.
    So, with a bag of Bert’s buns to one side of me on a green park bench (at the less crowded end of the Green, overlooking an unimaginative border of sparsely planted rows of sickly, red geraniums and stunted, orange marigolds, acres of bare soil between each weedy plant, evidence of council cutbacks, it would seem), I was tucking into a ham and cheese baguette with Bert’s own mayonnaise dressing, when a Border collie appeared from behind the bench, sidled up to me, slowly sank on his haunches and rested his black-and-white head on my right knee, eyes fixed on my