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

thirst encouraged me to reluctantly get up and make my way to the kitchen. I didn’t bother putting on the T-shirt, and wore only knickers. Craving a Coke, I headed to the fridge, and then heard a clunk. I swivelled around, arms across my breasts, thinking it was Señora López or Abigail.

It wasn’t either. Ed was staring at me.

‘You scared me.’ Frantically I looked for something to cover myself, but only found a tea towel, which I pressed against my chest. Ed didn’t move, didn’t flicker a reptilian eyelid. Had he been there earlier, when we were making love in the lounge? The thought made me want to vomit.

‘Look, can you…’ My eyes darted around the kitchen. ‘Pass me that jumper on the back of the door.’

He moved over, retrieved it, threw it at me. I put it on. ‘The taxi company can’t find your bag. You must have forgotten it,’ he said.

‘I didn’t forget it.’

He shrugged in the way only Ed could. ‘How can you be so unseeing, Rose?’

‘What’s your problem with me?’

‘None. Absolutely none.’

‘I need my stuff,’ I said.

‘Ed, I’ve told you to buzz when you come in.’ Daniel stood in the doorway, tousled with sleep and completely naked.

I threw a look at Ed. No reaction; or perhaps a little, as I watched his gaze move to Daniel’s penis, which was half erect.

Daniel carried on, oblivious. ‘Have you got Rose’s bag?’

‘Taxi company don’t have it.’

He shook his head and left the kitchen, returning a few minutes later wearing a pale grey silk kaftan. He put his arm around me. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve some old notes here you can look at, and textbooks.’

Ed watched for my reaction. I didn’t give him the satisfaction. I was pregnant and I was going to fail the placement. Tears stung my eyes.

‘Ed, can you tell Abigail we can’t make the lunch tomorrow. Tell her I’ll call her.’

‘Of course.’ He left without saying another word.

The next few days passed without incident. I sunbathed, I swam, I read Daniel’s old textbooks. He talked me through orthopaedic clinical practice. It was late in the afternoon, and I was lying on a sunbed when a shadow fell over me.

‘Hey you. Enjoying yourself? Ed and I missed you at the restaurant.’

‘Abigail, so nice to see you. I did want to come.’

I hadn’t really wanted to, but that was only because I was certain Ed would be there. Daniel deciding not to go had surprised me a bit, but families were often a law unto themselves. And I knew that relationships between siblings could be particularly tricky. Mine with Sam hadn’t been what it should have been these last few years. He was turning into someone I didn’t know, becoming more and more like our mother – economical with the truth, and somehow missing the inherent moral compass most of us were born with – and this concerned me. He had already been in trouble with the police.

‘It was a fabulous lunch,’ Abigail carried on. ‘Lovely group of people who it would have been nice for you to meet seeing as you’re now part of the family.’

As she talked, I slipped my sunglasses down my nose and looked up at her. Today she wore a sky-blue maxi dress, white sandals, a glint of diamonds in her ears, though for all I knew they could have been fake. It wasn’t these material accessories that caught my attention, though; more her facial expression, or lack of it. Or maybe I was imagining things again. Or maybe she was annoyed that Daniel and I hadn’t gone for lunch with her. Maybe she was pissed off with me. I didn’t want her to be pissed off with me. I wanted things to be smooth. Having the jagged relationship with Daniel’s mate was enough.

‘I’m hoping I’ll come again. So next time?’ I said with the biggest smile I could find.

She plonked herself down on a lounger. ‘I’m sure you will.’ I pushed my sunglasses back up my nose. ‘I’ve bought you a present.’ She gently thrust a bag into my lap.

‘You shouldn’t have done, honestly, but thanks.’

‘You didn’t have a decent bikini, so I chose one for you.’ She made a point of staring at Casey’s bikini top. Either it had shrunk in the last few days, or my boobs really had grown. I pulled the contents out of the bag. Bright red. Scarlet.

‘Do you like it?’ she asked.

‘I do.’

‘Put it on, let’s see if it fits. Mind you, I’m guessing it’ll be too small in a few months.’

‘I’ll go and get changed inside—’

‘Rose, you don’t strike me as the shy sort. We’re all girls together. Slip it on here.’ She paused a moment. ‘There’s only Daniel around, and me. You have nothing I haven’t got, no? And certainly nothing he doesn’t know about.’

A slow heat ran through my body with her words, even though I knew she was right. And I wasn’t the shy sort, at all. Med school beat that out of you. ‘Honestly, I’ll go inside.’

‘Suit yourself,’ she said, lifting her shoulders a fraction and making me feel gauche, unworldly, and too young.

I was beginning to wish I’d questioned Daniel more about his sister so that I knew more about her, although I did know she didn’t have children. I assumed she wasn’t married, but she might well have been divorced. I took a look at her ring finger. A definite white mark. Maybe that was why she and her dad were at loggerheads. A recent divorce.

I went inside to put the bikini on. It fitted perfectly.

When I returned to the poolside, Daniel was sitting upright in my lounger next to his sister, his hand resting on her knee. Suddenly I was utterly self-conscious.

‘Great fit,’ he said.

I grabbed my T-shirt and quickly put it on.

‘Excellent fit, yes,’ Abigail said, looking pleased.

‘You look amazing, Rose,’ Daniel said.

‘I’ll be making a move and leave you two in peace.’ Abigail got up. ‘See you both back in England.’ She bent forward and kissed