Life Sentence Read Online Free Page B

the ambiguity. ‘Devon, I mean.’ And then realised it was only she who’d registered any ambiguity in the first place. So she was interested in Mark’s proposition.
    His face stern, he said, ‘You have to work out your notice. With luck, you’ll have sorted out the case by then.’ He played with the rough edges of the file. Suddenly, grinning like a schoolboy, he looked up. ‘Tell you what. Give yourself a fair chance. Pop into Personnel and put your departure date back a month or so.’
    As kind a dismissal as she could wish for then. But as she got to her feet, she asked, ‘How did you manage while Tina was so ill?’
    He blinked. Perhaps she’d been wrong to equate a wife with elderly parents. Or perhaps she waspresuming too far. But at last he said, ‘I did a lot of tap and acro.’ He mimed frantic juggling. ‘And like you I found people more than ready to help out here. How many meetings did you go to in my place? How many interview panels?’
    She shook her head: that was nothing. She opened her mouth, then shut it.
    ‘Go on,’ he invited.
    She wrinkled her nose, the question was so crass. ‘You didn’t think of resigning to spend more time with her?’
    ‘I took a lot of unpaid leave, as you may have to do, but somewhere, deep down, I knew that however hard it was, after she’d gone, I’d need a job. This job. God Almighty, Fran. What would I do otherwise? Work part-time in the Cancer Research shop? I’d have died for that woman, but I have to live for me now.’
    Their eyes locked. In an instant, their uniforms disappeared.
    Was that why he’d asked her out for dinner? Not simply because he felt sorry for her?
    But it was his quasi-official voice that suggested, ‘Is Thursday still all right for dinner?’
    All she could manage was a nod.

    ‘It’s your mother. She’s been taken to hospital. You’ll have to come straight down. Now.’
    ‘Pa – I—’
I have a date with my boss in half an hour; it’s been arranged for days; I’m so looking forward to good food, good wine and
—
    ‘I said, she’s in hospital. Your mother. You’ll have to come now.’
    ‘Pa—’
    ‘I can’t hear a word you’re saying.’
    Damn him, he’d switched off his hearing aid. She never knew whether it was intentional or accidental. It sure as hell prevented arguments. As did putting the phone down on the stream of questions she needed answers to.
    What was she shaking with? Anger at having the evening aborted? Or fear that what she’d been afraid would happen was at last coming to pass? That her mother was dying, which would leave her to work out what to do with her father? Or, deep down, that her mother wouldn’t die, that she’d had a stroke and would become a vegetable and she’d have to drop everything here and go to Devon immediately. Now. Before she was ready. Before she’d inured herself to the prospect of leaving behind everything important.
    What could be more important than your mother? Or your father, for that matter? Wasn’t it her duty to care for them both without complaint, just like hundreds and thousands of women all over the world did? She might be a career woman through and through but she was also their daughter.
    Just now the only imperative must be to get down there as quickly as possible. She must tell Mark. Phone or face-to-face? The latter would be more courteous.

    ‘But you’re going straight off? Just like that?’ Mark sounded concerned rather than angry. He got up, putting his hands on her shoulders to press her into a chair.
    ‘These days I keep an emergency bag in my car.’ It included a foil blanket, too, the sort serious walkers carried, in case her father locked her out as he sometimes did. With his hearing aid on the bedside table, all the knocking and ringing and shouting in the world wouldn’t raise him. ‘It’s always on the cards, isn’t it, one of them being taken really ill. And hospital sounds like really ill. If only Pa had said which one.’ Yes,