The Paradise Trees Read Online Free Page A

tried to speak to her since the first stroke... but then she had never been
living here, before.
Had
he been laughing just now? It was a horrible thought, and there was no way to tell. She forced her attention back to Margaret and Frank, who were discussing
Bob’s medication. Alicia drew breath to help Frank convince Margaret that sleeping pills were a good idea, then froze at the sound of Jenny’s high, agitated voice outside.
    ‘Mummy! Aunt Margaret, come
quick
, it’s hurt, its back leg’s all blood... ’ She crashed into the room and pulled at Alicia’s arm.
    ‘Jenny, darling what’s hurt?’
    ‘It’s a kitty, out in the lane, I think it’s been run over, oh, come quick!’
    Frank lifted his bag. ‘Show me where it is and I’ll see what I can do.’
    Jenny looked at him, her eyes wide. ‘Are you a stranger?’ she asked, and Alicia hugged her daughter.
    ‘It’s okay, Jen, this is Doctor Frank Carter, he’s here to see Grandpa. I was at school with him when we were children.’
    Jenny’s face brightened immediately. ‘Can you help animals too?’ she said, stepping towards him.
    ‘I’ll try. Let’s have a look.’
    Margaret handed Bob’s mug to Alicia. ‘I’ll come too. It might be the Donovan’s cat.’
    She followed Frank and Jenny outside and the room fell silent. Alicia turned back to her father.
    ‘More tea?’ Again, she couldn’t bring herself to call him ‘Dad’. With immense discomfort, she held the mug to his lips and then wiped away the dribble after
he’d taken a loud slurp. Hell, she was a nurse, and before she’d taken her present job as school nurse she’d even worked with geriatrics for God’s sake and she still
couldn’t cope with this, she literally couldn’t stand having to touch her father. Trembling, she put the mug down on the mantelpiece. Six weeks of this would kill her.
    Her father coughed, then cleared his throat and leaned back in the armchair, his eyes fixed on her again. His mouth stretched to one side and she couldn’t tell if he was smiling or leering
at her. Alicia managed a quick grin in return, watching his face as he chuckled away to himself. This was quite appalling, and there was no way to tell what he was thinking, sitting there in his
chair. Did he know who she was? The first stroke had put an end to his ability to communicate; the speech therapist had tried various non-verbal methods but he had been uncooperative and the end
opinion was that his understanding of the world was very limited.
    She had never been so glad to see Margaret come back into the room.
    ‘It isn’t the Donovan’s cat and it isn’t badly hurt, just a scrape and a fright,’ she said. ‘Frank suggested taking it to Kenneth Taylor at the pet shop and
Jenny wants to go too. I’ll stay with Bob.’
    Jenny was standing beside Frank’s car, cradling a half-grown tiger-striped kitten wrapped in a green cloth, presumably from Frank’s bag. Alicia could see that the cat wasn’t
the only one who’d had a fright.
    ‘Doctor Frank said the man at the pet shop might know whose kitty it is,’ said Jenny, looking up with wide eyes. ‘And if he doesn’t know, can we keep it? Please,
Mummy?’
    Alicia let out a small sigh. Jenny had always wanted a cat, but up until now Alicia had managed to banish it into ‘someday’. But if no-one claimed this poor creature,
‘someday’ might just have come. There was her father, and Jen, and Margaret – not to mention Conker – and now a kitten. It was too much.
    ‘We’ll see,’ she said.
    Jenny settled into the front seat of Frank’s car, clutching the kitten tenderly on her lap. Frank chatted away to her about animals in the village, and the little girl answered, her fright
forgotten again. Alicia thought sadly that conversations with adult men were all too rare in her daughter’s world.
    But at least now she had a break, a thirty-minute breather away from her father’s house.
    Had
he been laughing at her?

Chapter