The Paradise Trees Read Online Free Page B

Four
Alicia
    The pet shop was new, housed in what had previously been the dry cleaners on the High Street, and a faint scent of chemicals still hung around, mingling strangely with the
animal smells of the latest inhabitants. The front shop was empty, and Frank walked round the back.
    ‘Kenneth! We need help here!’
    There was an answering mumble from above and a few moments later Kenneth Taylor appeared. Alicia stared. The pet shop owner must have been about the same age as she was, but he certainly
wasn’t doing much to fight off approaching middle-age. He was overweight, obese almost, with thinning, dark blonde hair, and the expression in his blue eyes didn’t quite match the smile
on his fat shiny face. Even his clothes looked greasy, with several suspicious stains down the legs of his jeans and a t-shirt that looked as if he’d been sleeping in it. But his large
fingers were gentle as he examined the kitten while Frank explained what had happened.
    ‘Okay. He can stay here in the meantime and I’ll make inquiries.’ There was a faint Scottish burr in his high-pitched voice.
    ‘If nobody wants him then maybe we do,’ said Jenny bravely, and Alicia sighed again. Please, puss, have a lovely home and a concerned owner waiting for you, please.
    ‘I’ll be in touch, then,’ said Kenneth Taylor, smiling unattractively at them. ‘Mrs Bryson, isn’t it?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Alicia, surprised. In the rush of explaining about the kitten Frank hadn’t actually introduced her by name. Kenneth Taylor smiled again.
    ‘Word gets round fast here,’ he said, and Alicia shrugged. He was right, the village was a terrible place for gossip. Harmless, of course, but still...
    Outside, Frank turned to her, a hopeful expression on his face.
    ‘Why don’t we swing past St. Joe’s before you go home, let you see it from the outside. We’d be there and back in twenty minutes, and it would give you a first impression
of the place.’
    ‘Alright,’ said Alicia, surprised. ‘If you’ve time.’ He was being very obliging, and vaguely she wondered why. Or had she just got used to the large town mentality?
Country people
were
more helpful. Look at how Kenneth Taylor had taken on the kitten when he could so easily have given it back to Jenny while he made his inquiries.
    Frank drove swiftly along the Harrogate road towards Middle Banford and a few minutes later they pulled up in front of black iron gates, opening onto a long driveway. Alicia stared at the house.
St. Joe’s was a relic from Victorian times, a tall red sandstone manor set in the middle of an enormous garden with a duck pond. It had been one of those country house hotels when Alicia was
a child and seen from the road it still looked exactly the same.
    ‘Sixty beds,’ said Frank. ‘It’s split into three wards inside and it is more ‘hospital’ than ‘home’, but that’s what your father needs. One
of us local doctors is always on call, and the nursing staff are great.’
    Alicia sighed. St. Joe’s really did sound like the answer to all their problems.
    ‘It sounds ideal,’ she said. ‘But I do want Margaret to agree too, if possible. I’ll get her over to see the place this week, and if she’s okay with it, we could
have him admitted as soon as a bed’s available.’
    She turned and smiled reassuringly at Jenny as she spoke. Would her daughter have the same problem with her one day? What a horrible thought. Even more horrible was the fact that the high blood
pressure that had caused her father’s strokes often ran in families. Was disaster slumbering in the depths of her own brain, in Jenny’s? It didn’t bear thinking about.
    Frank Carter turned the engine on again. ‘Try to arrange for Margaret to meet Doug Patton while you’re there, he’s great with the patients and their relatives. Another idea
might be to talk to Derek Thorpe, the charge nurse on the admissions ward. He was a local boy too and he’s brilliant with geriatrics