A Country Affair Read Free Page A

can’t stand and as for being a nurse? All that blood! God help us, not likely.”
    “But that really is the sharp end, where it all happens.”
    “You sound a bit wistful to me. Why don’t you be a nurse? The pay’s not brilliant so they’re always crying out for them.” Stephie began shuffling her papers about, in preparation for leaving. “Anyway, I’m off for lunch, back at four. I hate split shifts. Too far to go home, really, too long to spend wandering around the shops; it only makes me buy things. Still, it’s better than where the practice was before: at the back of nowhere. At least you feel at the hub of things here. Not a bad town once you get to know it. I’ll be glad when the new shopping mall’s finished; they say all the big stores will be there. Your mum and dad coming Saturday?”
    “For the opening? Possibly.”
    “They’ll like to see where you’re working, won’t they?”
    “Have a nice afternoon.”
    “Thanks. We’ll go through the accounts tomorrow. Can’t afford to let them slip; otherwise it’s hell. See yer!”
    Kate watched her disappear through the big double doors. Funny girl. Nice one minute, nasty the next. Unpleasantness was one thing she hated and the conversation she’d inadvertently overheard when she’d first arrived had been unpleasant to the nth degree. She hadn’t asked Dad and Mia yet, and rather guessed they wouldn’t want to come. Not after the fuss Dad had made when she’d taken the job. She’d ask when she got home, the moment she got in the door.
     
    D AD’S car was in the drive; he was home early. Kate glanced at her watch—half past four; that was definitely early for him. She pushed down the door handle, which was slack and didn’t always work at the first go, and wished for the umpteenth time that her dad would get around to mending it.
    “It’s me!” Kate flung her bag down on the hall chair and went into the kitchen. With her eyes shut she could have done a painting of that kitchen scene because it was so familiar. The kitchen table under the window with its blue-and-white checked cloth and its bowl of flowers. Dad lounging in his rocker by the side of the range, the stub of a cigarette in his mouth, his jacket lying on a kitchen chair. Lost in thought, his pale, fleshy slab of a face turned upward as though seeking heavenly inspiration, light-blue eyes focused on nothing at all, his stockinged feet thrust against the bottom of the range snatching at the warmth it generated and, without looking up, his muttered “You’re back, then.”
    Even more predictable was Mia: thin, almost to the point of emaciation, seated on the special wooden kitchen chair she used when she was working. Mia raised her eyes, glazed with concentration, to look at her. “Kate! Sit down. I want to hear all.” Putting down the tiny brush she was using, she sat back to study her work. It was a miniature painted from a photograph of a pretty girl, a present for the girl’s twenty-first. Kate, always genuinely full of admiration for Mia’s delicate skills, said, “Why, Mia! That’s wonderful! She’ll be delighted. So lively!”
    “Kiss! Kiss! Please.” Mia hooked her arm around Kate’s neck to make sure her kiss reached its target. “Glad you like it; I think it’s one of my best. There’s such a glow about her, isn’t there? Do you think I’ve captured it? I do. Such a zest for life, and I’ve caught the color of her hair just right. Tea’s still hot. Pour me a cup too, and we’ll listen to your news, won’t we, Gerry? How did it go?”
    “Absolutely brilliantly! I don’t think I have had a more fantastic day in all my life. So interesting!”
    “The staff, what are they like? Nice girls?”
    “There’re two Sarahs—they’re nurses—and a round, plump one called Bunty. Two receptionists: Stephie Budge and Lynne Seymour, besides me. The senior receptionist—well, practice manager, I suppose—is called Joy. She was the one who interviewed me