Good Morning, Midnight by Reginald Hill Read Free Book Online

fear of the supernatural was compensated for by a very relaxed attitude to real-life horror, exclaimed, “Ee bah gum, he’s made a reet mess of himself, hasn’t he, Sarge!”
     
7 A BRITISH EURO
     
    The company of her stepdaughter was always a delight to Kay Kafka. They shared an affection which went all the deeper because it involved neither the constraints of blood nor the coincidence of taste and opinion. Indeed, during these regular Wednesday evening encounters, they rarely strayed nearer the harsh realities of existence than a discussion of films and fashions and local gossip, but what might (in Kay’s case at least) have been tedious in the company of another was here rendered delightful by the certainty of love.
    In recent months, however, the approach of harsh reality in the form of the soon-to-be-born children had provided another topic, which could have kept them going for the whole visit if they’d let it. Even here, there wasn’t much harshness in evidence. It had been so far a comparatively easy pregnancy, and, bulk apart, Helen seemed to be enjoying her role as serenely glowing mother-in-waiting. So they would move easily over the wide range of pleasurable preparations for the great day-baby clothes, pushchairs, nursery decoration and, of course, names. Here Helen was adamant. Superstitiously she’d refused all offers to identify the gender of the twins, but if one were a girl, she was going to be called Kay.
    “And I don’t care what you say,” she went on, “they’re both going to call you grandma.”
    Which had brought Kay as close to tears as she’d been for a long while. She’d told the children to call her Kay when she married their father. The two elder ones did their best to avoid calling her anything polite, but Helen was young enough to want, eventually, to call her mum. Realizing the problem this would give the girl with her brother and sister, Kay had resisted.
    “I want to be her friend,” she explained to her husband. “The lady’s not for mummification.”
    But she never explained to him just how very hard it was for her to resist.
    Grandma was different. She had no resistance to offer here. And even if she had, she doubted if it would have made a difference. Helen had powers of obduracy which could sometimes surprise. In this at least she resembled her dead father.
    So she’d smiled and embraced the girl and said, “If that’s what you want, that’s what I’ll be. Thank you.”
    It had been a good moment. One of many on these Wednesday evenings. But tonight seemed unlikely to contribute more. Somehow Jason’s phone call had disturbed the even flow, then the fog delayed the pizza delivery and when they finally turned up, they were what Kay called upper-class anglicized-pale, lukewarm and flaccid with not much on top. But the real downer was the fact that, as she entered the finishing straight of her pregnancy, it seemed finally to be dawning on Helen that the birth of the twins wasn’t just going to be a triumphal one-off champagne-popping occasion for celebration, it was going to change the whole of her life, for ever.
    Kay tried to be light and reassuring but the young woman was not to be jollied.
    “Now I know why you would never let me call you mum,” she said. “Because it would have made you my prisoner.”
    “Jesus, Helen,” exclaimed Kay. “What a weird thing to say.”
    “I come from a weird family,” said Helen. “You must have noticed. Talking of which, I wonder if Pal turned up.”
    On cue the answer came with the sound of the front door opening. A moment later Jason looked into the room. In his mid-twenties, six foot plus, blond, beautifully muscled and with looks to swoon for, he could have modelled for Praxiteles. Or Leni Riefenstahl. If his genes and Helen’s melded right, these twins should be a new wonder of the world, thought Kay, smiling a welcome.
    “Hi, Kay,” he said. “It’s all right, sweetie, I’m not going to disturb you. Any word