Worst Fears Read Online Free Page A

two hours to get over the shock, and I drove down on my own which I shouldn’t have, and ran out of petrol and didn’t arrive till 12, and the ambulance had just taken the body away. It was terrible.”
    “Poor Alexi,” said Irene, in the soothing mother’s voice which at the best of times made Alexandra want to cry. “You still won’t see it. What was Abbie doing at The Cottage at six in the morning? More like half past five, because it seems she called the doctor before she called you.”
    “Jesus,” said Alexandra, “I don’t know. Mushrooming; leaving edible fungi at Ned’s door. Taking her students out to look at an English dawn. Needing a telephone: the students are always en crise. Whatever.”
    “Darling,” said Irene. “You’re in denial.”
    Alexandra slammed the phone down. It buzzed again.
    Dr. Moebius said, “I’ve been trying to get through to you for hours, Mrs. Ludd. There’s either no reply or the line’s busy. Now it’s very late.”
    “There’s always tomorrow morning,” said Alexandra, with a temper better reserved for her mother. “What’s your hurry? People are a long time dead.”
    “It was you I was concerned about,” said Dr. Moebius, a little stiffly.
    “I have not seen you since your husband died.” Dr. Moebius headed the local Health Centre. He was known to be a pleasant man, a bad diagnostician, and gullible; much given to acts of faith. He was as likely to recommend acupuncture as surgery, meditation as medication. He was a favourite with terminally ill patients, who looked forward to having him at their death beds. He would pray, and believed in heaven.
    “I could do with some sleeping pills,” said Alexandra. She had searched out the carton in the bathroom cabinet but found it empty. She’d remembered it with at least eight tablets left. Perhaps Ned had needed them in her absence.
    “Not a good idea,” said Dr. Moebius. “Lime tea’s just as efficacious and easier on the liver. I wanted to tell you the autopsy report is in. Massive myocardial infarction; a heart attack, in layman’s terms. What we all supposed. Unfortunately the forensic people have only done half of what I required, so the body has had to go back to them. Technically I should have asked your permission first, but Mr. Lightfoot’s ambulance was on its way back to the lab, empty—”
    “You wouldn’t want to waste the opportunity, I can see,” said Alexandra. “But if my husband died of a heart attack, isn’t that all you need to know?”
    “That’s not the point,” said Dr. Moebius. “The labs take liberties. I asked for a brain dissection—there was a possibility of cerebral haemorrhage. It was not the lab’s decision to take. They cut corners. You’ve already viewed the body, in any case.”
    “I have not,” said Alexandra.
    “Oh,” said Dr. Moebius. “Mr. Lightfoot said you had.” It seemed perfectly possible to Alexandra that Mr. Lightfoot was right. What did she know? She was only the wife.
    No sooner had that call finished, when her mother was back on the line.
    “Don’t worry about it,” said Irene. “I’m not offended. I know how upset you are and how difficult for you this is. But why haven’t you asked Abbie what she was doing at The Cottage at five in the morning?”
    “Six.”
    “Half past five,” conceded Irene. “Well? Isn’t it an obvious thing to ask? How can you deny you’re in denial?”
    “But one would, wouldn’t one?” remarked Alexandra. There was such a sharp dividing line between the world in which Ned was alive and the world in which Ned wasn’t, there seemed something indecent in trying to link the two. “And then Ned died” was like a tidal wave which swept through your dining room carrying everything before it, flinging all familiar bits and pieces everywhere, snapping and sheering in its violent onward rush. To try and retrieve and piece together this one mingy little detail seemed almost impolite. Had he been frightened? Or