Sisters of Mercy Read Online Free

it would do my prospects no good at all … and a small, desolate feeling formed in the pit of my stomach and grew. I was ambitious and when I’d been appointed senior sister in ITU at St Chad’s after returning from Birmingham, I’d been really buoyed up, so sure that I was on my way. I couldn’t bear to lose that feeling.
    When the report had been typed, I debated for a moment whether to give it to Miss W personally or put it in the internal post. The latter, I decided. She’d be sure to say some-thing about THE PROBLEM, as I thought of it, and my face might give me away.
    The rest of the day passed uneventfully and a little after five, I drove home to my terrace.
    Although I’d lived there for nearly a year, walking up the path, opening the front door and hearing it close behind me with a solid snick still gave me a sense of pleasure. As a girl, I used to cycle round the city and I’d loved this street of Victorian artisans’ cottages even then, although my parents, who owned a ’fifties semi, raised their hands in horror when I told them so. Still, that sort of attitude has changed now and my little terrace has become almost trendy.
    I put on the kettle, kicked off my shoes and flopped on the sofa to open my letters — I have to leave before the postman comes.
    The sleepless night had caught up with me and I felt almost too tired to get to my feet when the kettle boiled. That made me remember I had a loose arrangement to go out with Mary that evening — she would phone, she’d said earlier in the week. I was fairly sure she wouldn’t now, not after I’d played the heavy with her this morning, and that suited me. Mary’s company could be stimulating, and one or two of the parties we’d been to had been fun, but she could be very wearing. She was a divorcée who liked to ‘play the field’, which included toy boys. One evening when she’d set us up with a couple, I’d told her bluntly that as far as I was concerned, it was infra dig, and she’d called me a snob. She’d got the message though, and we’d remained friends — as I said, she could be great fun. But not tonight, Josephine, I said to myself.
    I made some tea and thought about Inspector Anslow. There was something about him I liked, and I was glad now that I’d been to the police. The more I thought about it, the less worried I felt; it was as though I’d handed the whole problem over to them. Which only goes to show that police officers are every bit as good at giving false comfort as doctors.

     
    3
     
    The next morning, I had a lie-in (til nine, anyway) then a leisurely breakfast over the Sunday paper before driving over to my parents’ house for lunch.
    They lived on the other side of Latchvale, in the same ’fifties semi I’d grown up in. They were very conservative, rather like Latchvale itself — an English cathedral city that had somehow found itself in the West Midlands. I was something of an afterthought: Mum was over forty when she had me, which meant she was nearer seventy than sixty now. Dad was even older.
    They didn’t repeat the experience (whether by design or default, I don’t know) which meant that one way and another, I had rather an odd upbringing.
    They sent me to the same small private school that Mum had been to (a survival even then) which believed in educating their ‘gels’ rather than gaining them qualifications. It gained me enough to become a nurse, though.
    ‘ Hello, Mum.’
    ‘ Hello, dear.’
    We kissed cheeks.
    ‘ Would you like a cup of tea? Or a glass of sherry, perhaps?’
    Yeeuch!
    ‘I’d rather a coffee, if you wouldn’t mind.’
    ‘ Very well, dear. Your father’s in the lounge.’
    I went through. He was dozing over the paper. I kissed his papery cheek.
    ‘ Hello, Dad.’
    ‘ Oh! Hello, Jo. I didn’t hear you come in. How are you?’
    ‘ Fine, thanks. You?’
    ‘ I’m fine.’
    Although I loved them both, we had nothing in common and it sometimes seemed to me as though the