Blood Ties: Part 3 of 3: Family is not always a place of safety. Julie Shaw

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ door, and the sound of it swinging open and then shutting, before getting up to go into the hall and welcome him home. And as she passed Iris’s picture she gazed into the other woman’s eyes, feeling a sudden connection to the girl who’d once loved the man she loved – and an unspoken question formed on her lips. Will it be alright? Do you think so?

      She went into the hallway and watched as he hung his coat up on the row of hooks, the cold air from outside eddying around as he did so. He turned to greet her.

      ‘Hello, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘How you doing now? Any better?’

      ‘Sort of …’ she began, but then, overcome with emotion, turned back towards the sitting room. He followed her in there.

      ‘Love, what’s up?’ he said, placing a hand on her shoulder. ‘What’s the matter?’

      She turned to face him and he immediately put his arms around her. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have gone to work today! Look at you! You’re shivering! Come on. Sit down. Take the weight off. Damn. I shouldn’t have left you. You didn’t go into work, did you?’ he wanted to know, urging her towards the settee.

      Kathleen sat down, even though sitting down was that last thing she wanted to do. She felt like a coiled spring in a jack-in-the-box, ready to explode at any moment. Just tell him, she ordered herself. Just get it over with!

      ‘Terry, I’m not ill any more. Well, sort of not. No, no. That’s wrong. I’m not ill. I’m fine. But I’m …’

      ‘What?’ His eyes bored into hers, his hands gripped her own.

      She dropped her gaze. ‘Oh God, I don’t even know how to tell you …’

      Terry’s frown deepened, the concern written all over his face. ‘Don’t scare me, love,’ he said, letting go of her hands to hold her face up to look at him. ‘What is it, Kathy? You can tell me anything. Have you been to the doctor’s? I knew it …’

      ‘Terry, I told you. I’m fine. It’s just …’

      He gripped her hands again. ‘Now you’re really scaring me … What’s happened? Is it something I’ve done? Is that it?’

      Kathleen shook her head. He was getting all the wrong ideas and she needed to toughen up and just tell him. ‘God, no! Terry, no. Nothing like that! There’s nothing wrong with us. Or me …’ She dredged a shy smile from somewhere. ‘Well, unless you count being pregnant as an illness.’

      Terry’s mouth gaped open, and he let go of her hands once again. Then, finally, he spoke. ‘You’re pregnant?’

      She nodded.

      ‘You mean we’re going to have a young ’un? But you said …’

      ‘I did my sums wrong.’

      He cupped her face in his hands again. ‘Oh my God, Kathy! Oh, my God! We are, aren’t we? We’re going to have a kid! You’re actually pregnant!’

      She placed her hands over his. They were still cold. She would warm them up for him. ‘You’re not cross, then?’

      ‘Cross? Why ever would I be cross?’

      ‘Because I’m seventeen … because it’s so soon … because we’re not …’ No. She couldn’t even think of saying the other thing. And didn’t need to say any more anyway, because, whooping with joy, he had hauled her back up onto her feet, and was spinning her around and around the centre of the sitting room, like her dad used to do when she was little. Which made her giddy. Almost faint. But she no longer cared.

Chapter 20

      It was a night like no other; as if she’d been whisked to a parallel universe, where the cares of the world no longer existed for either of them. They’d talked long into the night about the past, present and future, about getting married – Terry aghast – ‘I can’t believe you thought I wouldn’t want to marry you!’ – and much later, with Tiddles banished from the bedroom – a rare sanction, about which she was most indignant – they made love, keeping the world further at bay.

      But with the morning – another alarm-shrill in the blackness of the bedroom – came the inevitable reality that the world wouldn’t go away. Was very much present, in fact, in the shape of the fact that Kathleen must now go and tell her father.

      ‘Well, you’re not doing that on your own,’ Terry said as he sat and ate his porridge. Once again, she was poleaxed by the intensity of her nausea, but now she knew the cause she felt better able to deal with it. It would be gone in a bit and, in the meantime, she’d ride it … well, as best she could. Smelling his breakfast was already making her retch.

      ‘I wasn’t planning on it,’ she told him. ‘I want you there right beside me.’

      ‘As I should be. As I aim to be. Let’s go round there tonight.’

      Kathleen nodded. ‘I was thinking the same. I want to catch him on his own. I don’t think I can face her …’

      ‘I’ll bloody well face her.’

      ‘I know, love, but I think it’s best if we leave Dad to tell her, don’t you?’

      He frowned. ‘Much as it’s even her business, love.’

      ‘It is, Terry. I’m still her stepdaughter.’

      ‘And doesn’t she let you know it! But, no, if that’s the way you want to play it, then that’s fine by me. More than happy to knock the witch off her bloody broomstick!’

      It was a Thursday. Which was good, because it was games night at the pub, and she knew her dad would be down half an hour before opening to brush the billiard table and polish the balls before the match.

      She’d gone to clean as usual, first thing, and, happily, seen nothing of her father, and had been buoyed all day – well, once the sickness went – by the joy she was feeling. Terry was a gem, and she kept going over and over everything; unlike her father, he would not have a word said against her by Irene, and, though she was fearful about the inevitable confrontation, she cared less. Why should she care? Irene’s opinion no longer mattered. Only Terry’s, and Terry loved her, and would not let her down.

      They walked round to the pub for six-thirty, almost as soon as Terry had got in from work. He’d be away for a few days from tomorrow, on another European job, so it was important they do it as a matter of urgency – Kathleen knew she wouldn’t be able to keep it from her dad for very long, and she needed Terry by her side when he was told.

      They knocked on the front door and waited, it not escaping their notice that Terry was still officially barred from the Dog and Duck. He’d not set foot over the threshold in over two months now, and cared not at all. Well, Kathleen mused, wondering still what had passed between the two men, except for the time when he’d had the conversation with her father which could so easily have meant she was still slaving away on the other side of this very door. It still made her shudder to think that, if he hadn’t passed her in his lorry that day, she might never have seen him again.

СКАЧАТЬ