Daughters by Elizabeth Buchan Read Free Book Online Page B

possessive, in control.
    ‘Through and through, sweetheart.’
    He meant Lara never had.

Chapter Four
    Recently the doctors’ practice had expanded, which was not surprising as it served an area of high-density population. Two new full-time GPs had been taken on, which meant Lara had had to move out of the consulting room she job-shared with her fellow therapist, Robin Brett. Space was now at a premium and, eventually, they carved a new office out of a utility room that had been used to store lavatory paper and cleaning equipment. They furnished it with a couple of tables, plastic chairs and cheap carpet tiles.
    The new domain was good. Old broom cupboard it might have been, but its latest incarnation as a consulting room represented years of her patient study and consolidation.
    Lara got out the files for her morning clients and read through the first two sets of case notes.
    Help me … heal me …
    This was the cry of much of humanity, the seam of need that ran through the everyday.
    ‘I’m training to be a counsellor,’ Lara informed Bill, when Maudie was eight and he, she and the children had had time to adapt to their haphazard life. ‘With special emphasis on …’
    ‘On?’
    ‘Bereavement.’
    He had been astonished. Things were bad then. Rock bottom, in fact. Looking back, they were struggling to learn a new language and neither of them had mastered the vocabulary. Often they had got it wrong. The linguistic gap was evident when Bill had pointed out that Maudie was only eight and needed
looking after
.
    She had exploded, ‘She needs a father.’
    ‘She’s got one, Lara.’ He had whirled around, faster than she had ever seen him move before. ‘Don’t you ever forget it.’
    After qualifying, she had been fortunate to find a GP practice with an enlightened view on therapeutic services. She worked three days a week for them and another full day at a private clinic, which gave her a day’s leeway to study and catch up. In theory, this left the evenings and weekends free to concentrate on the children. In practice, it took time to build up her list of clients, of whom a sizeable majority wanted to see her early in the morning or in the evening. The irony did not escape her either that, having been sad and blighted for so long, she was earning a living from other people’s misery.
    A stream of people washed in and out of her consulting room.
I hate myself/my partner/my children. My life has no meaning. I’m frightened.
There were some to whom life had been unbearably cruel. Others had painted themselves into psychological corners and, unwilling to take the first step out of them, thrived on being miserable and self-conscious. Then there were the plain bloody-minded – who frequently included teenagers. Each contributed a pieceto the mosaic. Each provided a strange kind of antidote to her own predicament …
    ‘Is it justifiable,’ she asked her professional mentor, at one of their regular meetings, ‘to use others for oneself … if only in a small way?’
    ‘Physician heal thyself,’ was the response.
    If she had ever been tempted to write a blog, it would have been entitled: ‘The Divorcee’s Guide to Cheeseparing: how to keep sane with three children, a job with anti-social hours and an income that depends on the misery of others’.
    As her practice grew, communicating with Bill became easier. Perhaps, in listening to others, she learned the missing vocabulary.
    It had not always been so.
    Flashback.
    They talk more in court than outside it. Must improve, she thinks.
    ‘My ex-husband is tucked up down the road,’ this was the modern divorce, she plans to say in the blog she never writes, ‘with Violet, his new partner. We have regular contact.’
    Each week, Lara asked him, ‘What time do you want to pick them up?’
    Each week Bill replied, ‘Five thirty,’ or ‘After work.’
    Had Shrinking V. still been around when Lara began work?
    Chronology did a melting trick whenever she