Risking It All by Ann Granger Read Free Book Online Page B

life, and whatever you choose, you have to live with it afterwards.’ She waved a hand to stop any reply I might want to make.
     
    As it was, I couldn’t have replied at once, which was as well. I’d probably have blurted out that yes, we’d all had to live with her decision. But then I felt ashamed because what she was saying, that she would be wasting her time apologising, was what I’d said to Ganesh. Only I’d said it in anger, and she said it in a simple way which somehow made things seem logical. But then she said something which put them out of sync again.
     
    ‘I wanted to see you, Fran. It’s nice to know you don’t hate me so much you wouldn’t come. There’s something very important I need to tell you. Something that happened after I left Stephen. I need your help, Fran.’
     
    ‘Is it something I really need to know?’ I asked, my voice sticking in my throat. I felt a spurt of resentment. Was this why I was here? Why hadn’t she asked, how are you, Fran? What are you doing? Where are you living? As to the last, it was better she didn’t learn I was dossing in Hari’s garage. But she could’ve asked.
     
    ‘Yes, you should know it, and you’re the only person I can tell about it. When I have, you’ll see why. Whether you’ll understand is another matter.’
     
    She folded her thin hands on the coverlet. She wore no rings. I wondered if she’d left her wedding ring behind when she’d walked out, all those years ago. Her nails were clipped short as tidily as Sister Helen’s were.
     
    ‘I didn’t leave your father for another man,’ she said. ‘In case you all thought I did. But after a while, I did meet someone else. We weren’t together very long, only a few months. Then he left.’
     
    So she, too, had been dumped. It was hard not to feel a glimmer of satisfaction. I’m not proud of all the feelings I had then, just telling you what they were.
     
    ‘There was a further complication,’ she was saying. ‘I was pregnant.’
     
    ‘This man’s child?’ I said. ‘I mean, you weren’t, when you left home?’
     
    ‘No, not Stephen’s child.’ She paused, picking at the top sheet with her fingers. ‘I didn’t try to contact the father of the baby. I knew he wouldn’t want to know anything about it, and besides, I’d no wish to have him back in my life. I had the baby in St Margaret’s maternity hospital, a little girl. I called her Miranda.’
     
    Just like that. This time yesterday I’d had no family. Now I was acquiring relatives faster than I could take it in.
     
    I asked hoarsely, ‘Where is she? Where’s – my sister? How old is she?’
     
    ‘She’s twelve now, just coming to her thirteenth birthday,’ my mother said. ‘As to where she is, I don’t know. Let me tell it in order, Fran, or it will get confusing. In the same ward, at the same time I was there, was a young woman called Flora Wilde. She was a nice young girl with a nice husband who visited and brought flowers, sat by the bed and held her hand. I envied them so much because I had no one to visit me. They’d moved down to London only recently from the North. She’d had a little girl too, the same day Miranda was born. But Flora and Jerry Wilde weren’t blessed with a healthy baby as I was. Their little girl was very frail. Flora had been told she’d be unlikely to have another. It was a miracle she’d had that one. She had a condition which resulted in spontaneous miscarriage and had lost two or three babies in the early weeks. She’d spent most of her pregnancy lying in bed, frightened to move. When I took Miranda home, she and Jerry had to leave their little mite in the hospital. I thought about them a lot.’
     
    My mother’s formerly colourless face had become flushed. I realised all this was stressful for her. I asked her if she wanted anything, should I call Sister Helen?
     
    ‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ve got to tell you it all, now, today. Tomorrow I might have a bad day