Worst Fears Read Online Free

Edinburgh to arrange everything, including funeral dates: she’d do what she could: otherwise she supposed there’d be a memorial service sometime later, in London.
    “You’re in your competent mood,” said Sam. “That’s better than ‘poor-little-me.’ Look on the bright side: at least you were saved from him falling dead at your feet.”
    “I don’t like to think of him dying alone,” said Alexandra.
    Sam said, “Why wasn’t he in the London flat making you cocoa anyway?”
    Alexandra said, “He had too much work to do,” and began to cry, so Sam concluded the call.
    The next call was from Irene, Alexandra’s mother. She lived with her third husband next to a golf course in Surrey. She had Romanoff blood, way back in the past. “How are you, darling?” she asked. “Has Ned been back to say goodbye to you yet?” And Irene explained, as she often did, that the dead would appear in dreams to the bereaved in order of their closeness and say goodbye. Ned, she implied, was being laggardly, in death as in life.
    “He’s been, mother,” said Alexandra, as diplomatic in Ned’s death as she was in his life. “I expect he was waiting until after the autopsy, when he could settle.”
    “I’d rather not think about that,” said Irene. “As for Sascha, he’s just fine. Don’t worry about him. I’ll keep him here till you’re ready.”
    Alexandra had been to her mother’s to see Sascha on the Saturday afternoon. She had expected Ned to bring the child up to London at the weekend as usual, after nursery school. Then, apart from Saturday night, they’d have the weekend together as a family. Instead Ned had taken Sascha to Irene’s on Thursday and left him there, claiming pressure of work. He’d gone back home and two days later died, around midnight, ten minutes into Casablanca.
    “But I want Sascha with me,” said Alexandra. “I need him. He’s my child.”
    “I daresay you do need him,” said Irene, “but what does little Sascha need? He needs a cheerful mother, an organised home, and proper child care while you’re at work. So I’ll keep him till you’ve got your act together, if you don’t mind, in his interests not yours.”
    “But I have to tell him his father’s dead,” said the daughter.
    “What’s the hurry?” enquired the mother.
    “Shouldn’t one tell a child at once?” asked Alexandra. “Won’t he find out?”
    “Not if he can’t read the papers,” snapped her mother. “Because I’m certainly not going to tell him.”
    Alexandra recalled how the news of her own father’s death had been kept from her for a week or more, till Irene felt strong enough to tell her. She had always resented it. A similar fate was being prepared for Sascha.
    “Okay,” said Alexandra. She was exhausted. Perhaps after she had talked to Hamish tomorrow she would simply drive all the way to Surrey and pick up Sascha. The child-care, Theresa, wasn’t yet back from holiday, but that hardly mattered now.
    It seemed unlikely that Alexandra would be back to work by the following Tuesday. She supposed, speculatively, that it would be possible to back out of the production altogether. They would hardly hold her to her contract. Daisy Longriff might yet get the part of Nora on a permanent basis. It occurred to Alexandra that Longriff would come between Linden and Ludd in an address book.
    “Alexandra,” said Irene. “Now I don’t want to upset you, you’re upset enough already: but there’s something strange going on here.”
    “What?” asked Alexandra. She felt bad-tempered as well as tired. Her mother was convinced, as mothers often are whose own lives are not above suspicion, that Ned was unfaithful to her daughter. Alexandra could explain and explain that these days men could have women friends and women men friends without any sexual sub-text, but Irene would have none of it.
    “What time did Abbie call you?”
    “Six in the morning,” said Alexandra. “From the house. It took me