The Happy Home for Ladies: A heartwarming,uplifting novel about friendship and love. Michele Gorman

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       Chapter 2

      By the time I got back with all Mum’s shopping, Dad was there, sopping wet from the squall that had whipped up outside. His dress shirt was stuck to his chest and little rivulets dripped down the sides of his face from his flattened hair. His whole head had gone grey early, but at least he’s still got it, and despite the stress of being an entrepreneur, he doesn’t look his age (fifty-eight). He does look like a builder, which he is, even though he spends more time on email now than on building sites.

      ‘You really didn’t park in the garage?’ I asked him.

      ‘You really did?’ he shot back. ‘I told you it was a waste of money.’

      That’s pretty much what passes for a friendly greeting in our family.

      Dad wasn’t offended because he’s cheap. We’re talking about the man who drives a £60k car. He and Mum went on exotic holidays. He’s not afraid to spend his cash. He just hates feeling ripped off. That’s why he buys own-brand baked beans if the good ones aren’t on sale. Tesco won’t ever put one over on him.

      Not Mum, though, aka Spendy McSquillions. She’d never met a purse she couldn’t empty. It was a good thing their business had done well.

      ‘I’m only supposed to have one visitor at a time,’ Mum said when I gave her the carrier bags from downstairs.

      ‘I’m sure it’s fine, Bev,’ Dad said. ‘Phoebe’s driven all the way here.’

      ‘I know, thank you,’ she said to me. ‘But really, you don’t have to stay, now that Dad’s come. I’m fine, don’t worry about me.’

      I could tell that she was fine by the way she was just as critical as usual.

      ‘Mum’s right,’ Dad added, glancing at his phone. ‘You’ve got to get out of that garage,’ he said, like the parking attendant there was holding my car hostage.

      ‘I don’t care about the money, Dad.’

      But I let them convince me to go back to their house. He’d only keep going on about the expense anyway, and clearly Mum wasn’t in any danger.

      I couldn’t say I was completely at home at my parents’, but it felt comfortable enough. Like I said, it wasn’t where I grew up. They sold that when they decided to make their fortune a hundred miles south. Still, I flattered myself that the guest bedroom where I always stayed was ‘my room’, and that I’d at least get first dibs over any Tom, Dick or Harry who came to visit.

      Dad didn’t stay at the hospital very long after me, but he went back to work and then out for some dinner meeting that couldn’t be moved just because his wife and business partner was dining in Critical Care.

      When I got to Mum’s room the next morning, all I saw was a lump in her bed with a sheet pulled over it. Exactly like they did in films when the paramedics had done all they could to save the patient.

      She was dead! ‘Mum!’

      ‘What!’ snapped the voice under the bedding.

      ‘What are you doing?’

      Mum appeared with an angry yank of the sheet. She had her phone to her ear.

      ‘You’re not supposed to use that in here!’

      ‘No kidding, Phoebe, so stop shouting about it or the nurse will hear. Shush.’ She waved me away as she continued to talk and scribble in the notebook I’d picked up for her in the shop.

      ‘That could interfere with the machines, you know,’ I said when she’d hung up.

      ‘Don’t be such a worrier,’ she grumbled. ‘It’s my machine, so it’s my risk.’

      ‘There are other patients with machines on the ward, СКАЧАТЬ