The Nurse by J. Corrigan (list of ebook readers txt) 📕

picks up his mobile and taps in her name. After a few seconds, she answers.

‘I’ve been waiting for you to call.’

‘I thought you’d be angry with me,’ he says.

‘I knew the score, and Hugs did too.’

‘Are the police charging Hugo?’ he asks.

‘No. Ed didn’t implicate him – he told the police Hugs didn’t know anything. Seems that Ed really does love my brother.’

‘Look after Hugo. And work your ass off for that first, which I know you’ll get.’

Standing in the kitchen once they have said goodbye, he debates with himself about what to do. His eyes flick around. There is no way he’s going to be able to hang on to this flat; he’ll have to sell, and then rent. He takes in the faded decor. He’s done nothing with the place, could never afford to. Never liked the place anyway. But he will not take the advance, he will not sign the contract.

He will not publish Rose and Abe’s story.

He returns to the study and opens a filing cabinet, takes out a manuscript. A book he wrote after Elliot’s death. It’s never seen the light of day. Not his usual genre. A love story. He packs it into a large Jiffy bag, seals it up and writes his editor’s name and address on the package. He’ll post it later, and then call Greg to tell him the bad news about Rose’s book.

He takes Elliot’s photo from the same drawer and places the framed image of his son on his desk, where it will stay.

Then he sits back in his chair, eyes roaming the room. They settle on the rucksack he took to the prison the last time he saw Rose.

Cathy’s story. He’d forgotten all about it. He gets up and retrieves the bag, opens it and pulls out the loose crumpled sheets. He reads the title out loud. Unsaid Things.

He begins to read.

After finishing the last paragraph, he starts again at the beginning. Rose watching Abigail visiting Abe in the hospital. Abigail’s lacerating words that pierced Rose’s heart like a spear. But Rose didn’t know then that Abe was her son, and neither did Miles. Oh Rose. We are all fallible.

Cathy’s story shows Rose’s hidden festering anger towards Daniel and Abigail Deane, which exploded on listening to Abigail’s heartless tirade that fateful day in the hospital. And it reveals something else about Rose. Why has she kept this to herself? His heart reaches out to her as he thinks of everything she has had to endure alone. Even the cruel diagnosis of cancer.

He reads the words again, but this time a wave of comprehension rips through him as he registers the invisible lines, the ones Cathy did not write.

He could be wrong, but he thinks he is not. Cathy would do anything for Rose.

A tear falls and he watches as the salty liquid is absorbed into the paper. He waits, and eventually the wetness dries.

As if the tear had never been there.

62

7 September 2016

Both Daniel and Abigail Deane admitted to all the charges brought against them and so their case did not go to trial. They were given their sentences the previous week. Miles’s hearing finished six weeks ago and he is now residing at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Rose is an exonerated woman. In Theo’s telephone conversations with her – they haven’t seen each other since his prison visit – he’s mentioned nothing about reading Cathy’s story. He’s hoping she will talk tonight, and if she doesn’t, then he will.

His own interpretation will remain hidden within him, no matter what his visit to see Miles in prison unearths.

His train is late getting into Euston, and so by the time he walks into the Premier Inn’s bar area, navigating his way through a throng of people, Natasha, Rose and Mia are already there. Natasha is sitting on a leather sofa by a huge piano, while Rose is perched on the piano stool with the child sitting precariously on her lap.

Mia is pretending to play the piano, her chubby fingers unperturbed at the barrier of the substantial maple lid that covers the keys. Theo smiles. She appears very calm and a long way yet from the toddlerhood he still remembers as being quite hellish.

The child is a very dark blonde, with wiry curls, and when he gets closer, he can see her huge caramel-coloured eyes, her skin the colour of the piano’s dark wood. She has inherited her grandmother’s hair and eyes, but her father’s facial plan. She has, though, her mother’s physique, he notes as Rose swivels around on the stool; Mia is long and narrow, like Natasha.

His gaze falls on Rose and her luminescent smile. Is the smile due to her release from prison, or the fact that she is here with her granddaughter? But now he knows the truth regarding her cancer, he notices the dark circles below her eyes, and feeling her inner distress, his heart is lead inside his brittle chest.

He takes a breath and picks up his step. Rose is wearing a grass-green dress, her hair held in a loose ponytail, straggles of curls hanging down each temple.

She holds up her hand and waves, but it is Natasha who shouts. ‘Theo! Come on over!’

He glances at Rose; she smiles even more widely at him but at the same time mouths something to Mia, who then grins at the woman she only met hours before. Rose shrugs in pretend nonchalance.

Rose stays at the piano with Mia, leaving Theo to talk with Natasha. The cacophony of bar noise ensures that she won’t hear their conversation.

‘This is so good of you,’ he says. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Good. I like her,’ Natasha replies. ‘Abe would have done too.’ She throws an indulgent glance towards her daughter, who is utterly engrossed with the piano and with Rose.

‘Has she talked?’ he asks.

‘She has. We’re both staying here, same floor. I chatted with her alone in her room while Mia slept earlier. She’s told me everything. Her mother, Marion—’

‘Marion says she didn’t know