The Happy Family by Jackie Kabler (electric book reader txt) 📕

and I don’t intend to part company with her any time soon – not if I can help it.

I drop a teabag into a mug and pour in the boiling water, yawning again. I’m not sure why, but I haven’t been sleeping well recently; my nights are restless, my dreams more often nightmares. Nightmares like the ones I used to have years ago, way back in my teens.

Is it him, Mr Stalker, who’s making me feel so strange? Is that why the nightmares are back? It’s been so long …

I stare into my mug, wondering, then jump as a voice shouts:

‘Bye Beth! See you tomorrow!’

Robin is waving at me from the kitchen doorway.

‘Oh gosh! Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,’ she says.

I laugh and wave a hand dismissively.

‘Oh, it’s OK, I was in my own little world there for a minute! Bye, Robin. Thanks so much, as always. Have a nice evening!’

‘You too.’

She smiles, waves again, and is gone. I turn back to my drink, fishing the teabag out, squishing it against the side of the mug, and depositing it in the food caddy that sits beside the sink. My heart is racing. How ridiculous. It was only Robin. What’s wrong with me?

I walk slowly out into the hallway and make my way upstairs, bracing myself for the inevitable row I’m about to have with my strong-willed ten-year-old daughter when I try to persuade her to hand over the iPad to her little brother, and having a stern word with myself. Everything is fine. I’m fine, work is fine, the kids are fine. So I need to shake this nagging unease that keeps sweeping over me. There’s no reason for it. I probably just need a hot bath and an early night – a decent sleep. Whatever it is, it’ll pass, like everything does.

I take a deep, steadying breath and yet, even as I push open the door of my daughter’s bedroom, I can feel that tight little knot of tension in my stomach growing. Because it’s not working. No matter how sternly I talk to myself, how firmly I tell myself everything is fine, I can’t entirely supress this creeping feeling of … dread. The clawing sensation that something that happened a long, long time ago, something I thought I’d managed to bury forever, might not be buried after all.

Chapter 3

‘Do you think that poor woman is OK? It’s freezing. Is there nothing we can do?’

I’m peering out of the window of the surgery waiting room. Across the street, in the doorway of the building adjacent to our car park, an old lady is sitting wrapped in a blanket, a big wheelie suitcase tucked in beside her. She has long, straggly grey hair and a brown felt hat pulled down low over her eyes, and she’s reading a battered paperback, gloved fingers shaking slightly as she turns the pages. She started using the doorway – that of a closed-down Indonesian restaurant – as a daytime reading spot a few weeks ago, spending a few hours at a time there before neatly folding her blanket and trundling slowly off again, leaving a little nest of cardboard behind her. It’s probably a lucrative spot for her – I’ve seen more than one of our patients stopping to drop a few coins in her lap as they arrive and depart – but it hurts my heart to see her there, alone in the cold.

‘Nadia? I took her over a coffee earlier.’

Ruth is behind her reception desk, resplendent in red animal print today and sorting through some files. The waiting room is empty; the lunchtime lull before afternoon surgery begins at two.

‘Nadia?’ I say. ‘Is that her name?’

Ruth looks up at me.

‘Yep. She’s a bit of a sweetie, actually. She doesn’t say much, but I’ve started popping over with a hot drink and a few biscuits every time she turns up and I’ve built up a bit of rapport with her. She’s staying in that shelter off the High Street, but they have to be out between breakfast and teatime, bless her.’

‘That’s pretty tough in this weather.’

‘It is. But at least that doorway’s quite deep, out of the wind. And she’s got a hot water bottle, which helps. I top that up for her too, if she needs it.’

‘That’s kind of you. Poor woman. What’s her story, do you know? How come she’s homeless? She must be, what? Seventyish?’

I turn to look at Nadia again. She’s buried even deeper in her blanket now, just her nose peeking out, the book close to her face.

‘Probably. And I don’t know,’ says Ruth. ‘Didn’t like to ask really. She seems healthy enough at least. It’s so sad though, isn’t it? To be homeless and alone at her age. Well, at any age really.’

I turn away from the window with a sigh.

‘It really is. I’m so grateful that Dad is safe and warm and looked after. He was in great form just now.’

‘Oh good. Give him my love next time you see him. Tell him I’ll pop in one day early next week, take him a slice of cheesecake. I’m planning a baking session on Sunday.’

‘He’d love that. He always did love your cheesecake. Actually, so do I. You’ll be bringing some into work too, right?’

Ruth grins.

‘Of course.’

I smile back and head for my office. I called in to see Dad at lunchtime today so I could get home a little earlier; Jacob, my ex, is taking the kids tonight and Barbara and Brenda, my next-door neighbours and friends, are coming round for drinks and a takeaway, a Friday night treat. I try to see my father at least three or four times a week, but I don’t always manage it. He understands, but it doesn’t stop me feeling guilty. At eighty, he’s been in a care home for nearly a year now, since he had a major stroke, but even before that he’d been struggling. He’s got diabetic retinopathy, a complication of his diabetes