The Water's Lovely Read Free

marry her? Will this courageous paramedic marry her and take her away from here so that you and I can move in together as I’ve been trying to do this past year?’
    â€˜Oh, Andrew, I shouldn’t think so,’ said Ismay. ‘He lives with his mother.’
    It was quite a big house, of mid-thirties vintage. Irene Litton would never have expected her son to live with her in a flat or a small place. Or so she told herself. But surely, when you had a four-bedroomed house at your disposal, it was simply imprudent not to occupy it – well, prudently. Edmund might have all those certificates and diplomas but he didn’t earn very much. Now if he had been a doctor, as his father and she had wanted … As things were, it would have been simply foolish for him to take out a mortgage on a flat on his salary. Of course, ignoring how much she loved the house in Chudleigh Hill, how it had been her home for thirty-six years, her home she had come to as a bride, she could have sold it and divided the proceeds with Edmund. He would never have allowed that. He had too much respect for her feelings and her memories.
    Besides, she wouldn’t live long. She wouldn’t make old bones. She had always known that from the time Edmund was born and she had had such a dreadful time, thirty-eight hours in labour. They had gone to her husband and asked him whom they should save, his wife or his unborn child. Of course he had said his wife. As it turned out, after a nightmare of agony, when she thought she was dying, the child was born and she was still alive. But from that moment she had known her constitution wasn’t strong. It couldn’t be when she had so many things the matter with her: migraines that laid her low for days on end, a bad back Edmund said was neither arthritis nor scoliosis – but he wasn’t a doctor – M.E. that made her perpetually tired, acid indigestion, a numbness in her hands and feet she knew was the start of Parkinson’s and, lately, panic attacks that frightened her nearly to death.
    She hadn’t expected to live to fifty. By a miracle she had and past that, but it couldn’t go on much longer. When she died, in two or three years’ time, the house and everything in it would be Edmund’s. Marion’s too, she had hoped, but that was not to be. Well, young people had to make their own choices. And their own mistakes. She hoped, for his sake, Edmund hadn’t made a mistake in picking this Heather. He had brought her home to Chudleigh Hill. She couldn’t exactly say he had brought her home to meet his mother. No doubt he was shy of doing that, the girl was gauche, to say the least, and with a disconcerting stare out of over-bright blue eyes. You could say she had
rude
eyes, thought Irene, pleased with the phrase. Irene had met the pair of them coming downstairs. It was the middle of a Saturday afternoon, so there was no question of their having been upstairs doing anything they shouldn’t have been. Edmund wouldn’t do that. Not before he was married.Or not perhaps, Irene thought bravely, moving with the times, before he was engaged.
    â€˜This is Heather, Mother,’ Edmund said.
    â€˜How do you do?’
    The girl said ‘Hello, Mrs Litton’ in the sort of tone too casual for Irene’s liking.
    Nice hair, thought Irene, but otherwise nothing much to look at. ‘Can I get you some tea?’
    â€˜We’re going to the cinema,’ the girl said.
    â€˜How nice. What are you going to see?’
    â€˜
The Manchurian Candidate
.’
    â€˜Oh, I’d love to see that,’ said Irene. ‘Nicole Kidman’s in it, isn’t she?’
    â€˜I don’t think so.’ Heather turned from Edmund to face her with a smile. ‘Will you excuse us, Mrs Litton? We have to go. Come on, Ed, or we’ll be late.’
    Ed! No one had ever called him that. She couldn’t help thinking how different Marion would