The Nurse by J. Corrigan (list of ebook readers txt) 📕

both to Miles having liked his last book and being invited inside. He’s trying to ignore the novel comment. He steps into the hallway, which although a pleasant space smells strongly of mould. ‘Thanks.’

He follows Miles through to the kitchen, noticing on the way the continuing sparseness of the hallway, although the kitchen is a very different space. The late-morning sun streams through a large window, blatantly illuminating the chaos that’s in such contrast with the orderliness at the front of the house. Every countertop is filled with mugs, plates encrusted with old food, used cutlery and piles upon piles of newspapers. He catches sight of Rose’s image in one of them. Taken in her youth. Dazzling. The sink heaves with washing-up, the intensity of the laser-like light catching months of dust and debris. He scours around looking for photographs, pictures, anything personal, anything to show Rose, anything to show her husband and their life. There is nothing. He surmises that Miles has removed everything. This is a place where Rose’s husband eats and drinks, reads old newspapers. Where he exists as opposed to lives.

Theo is a voyeur, watching and assessing someone else’s bleak life, and the feeling mounting inside him is the same one that galvanised him into giving up journalism and taking up the writing of investigative non-fiction. As curious as he is regarding the human condition, as detached as he can sometimes be, he doesn’t like nosing around people who have no wish for him to be prying. And that was never a good trait for a journalist. Standing in Miles’s kitchen, observing the everyday life of a man whose wife has admitted to and subsequently been imprisoned for murder, those long-ago feelings of awkwardness surface again.

Miles cuts into his thoughts. ‘I’d offer you a cup of tea or coffee, but I’ve run out of both. Water?’ He picks up a pile of newspapers from the small chaise longue that runs parallel to the kitchen table. ‘Please sit down.’ In the harsh sunlight, he looks older. Theo notices his stoop and the way he doesn’t seem to look at him directly, his eyes downcast.

‘Water’s good. Thank you.’

Miles nods and walks to the sink, washes out a glass, doesn’t bother drying it, fills it and hands it to Theo. ‘How are you finding Rose?’

‘Well, considering. I’ve only made a few visits so far,’ he says, glugging the water. ‘It’s good of her to agree to talk with me.’

‘She didn’t tell me a writer was visiting her.’ He perches on the end of the chaise. ‘You’re intending to write about her, I take it?’

‘Yes, that’s the plan.’

‘A take on Capote’s In Cold Blood?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Why are you here?’ Miles asks.

‘Background.’ Theo turns to look at him. ‘Although Rose suggested I didn’t bother you.’

‘But you came anyway?’

He nods.

‘You’re no Capote.’

‘No,’ Theo admits.

‘Have you spoken to anyone else, apart from Rose?’

‘Her mother, Marion. We’ve met a few times now.’ Theo tries to gauge how much to reveal. ‘And I’m also in touch with Abe Duncan’s widow.’

‘Getting the victim’s story through the victim’s wife?’ He detects an edge of sarcasm in Miles’s voice and hates himself a little more.

‘I don’t think Rose wants you to know she’s talking with me, Mr Marlowe.’ He looks at the broken man.

Miles pulls at the sleeve of his mohair jumper. ‘I’d do anything for my wife, Mr Hazel. She shouldn’t be…’ His voice tapers off as quickly as the look of pain on his face appeared.

‘Shouldn’t be what?’ Theo’s heart beats in rhythm with the rapidly dripping kitchen tap.

‘I’m very surprised she agreed to see you. What did you say that caught her interest?’

For the first time, Theo catches a flicker of amusement pass over Miles Marlowe’s features. ‘I obviously charmed her with my wit and genius,’ he says. ‘Are you angry she’s talking with me?’

‘No. I’m not. I’m really not.’ Miles leans forward. ‘What do you want from me, Mr Hazel?’

‘I’d like to know more about Daniel Deane.’

‘Ah, Rose has told you?’ His concave cheeks seem to collapse even further. ‘I haven’t seen Daniel Deane for years. Not since I resigned from Bluefields in 1991.’

‘She’s told me, yes, about her relationship back then.’ Theo glances up at him. ‘Why did you resign, Mr Marlowe?’

‘I didn’t like what Daniel was involved in.’

‘And what was that?’

Miles lifts his shoulders in futile submission.

Theo watches this man who is clearly desperate to talk. A man he guesses isn’t a talker.

Miles continues, his voice a whisper. ‘Daniel asked me to resign.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he wanted me out of the way.’

‘And you didn’t question why that was?’

‘I didn’t.’

Theo ploughs on. ‘Mr Marlowe, to be perfectly honest, I’ve no idea how Rose could have done what she did.’

‘I love her,’ Miles says, staring at the floor, his shoulders hunched so far forwards that he looks as if he’s about to retch. He gathers himself, shakes his head. ‘The worst thing I could have done after Rose went to prison was retire. She knew my career meant everything to me.’ He swallows hard. ‘It is Rose’s story to tell. And I hope she will tell you.’ He pushes his fingers through thinning hair. ‘I think it’s time for you to leave.’

‘Mr Marlowe, why did Rose train to be a nurse and not carry on at med school? From what she’s told me, I sense that her true vocation was to be a doctor… a paediatrician.’

‘It was her vocation.’ His eyes move away from Theo’s face. ‘This is for Rose to tell you.’

Theo inclines his head. ‘Rose didn’t know that Abe Duncan was Daniel Deane’s son, did she?’ He waits a few seconds. ‘Was it you who knew?’

Miles’s head moves vigorously from side to side. ‘No, I didn’t know.’

The heat of frustration consumes Theo. ‘Will you talk to me again, Mr Marlowe?’

‘See how it goes with Rose. See what she says.’ Miles gets up, walks to the window and peers out, his back to Theo.

Theo gets up too, but loiters.

Still peering into his garden, Miles says, ‘My hands