State We're In by Adele Parks Read Free Book Online Page B

it was possible that he wanted to negotiate extra time just to prove that something as petty as rules regarding visiting hours didn’t apply to him, didn’t tie him.
    Maybe. Or maybe he actually wanted to stay by this man’s bedside.
    He wasn’t thinking straight. He probably needed some fresh air.
    â€˜Sorry, I didn’t know the rules.’ He treated the nurse to one of his grins. He flashed this particular grin regularly. It was practised, perfect, showing off a line of teeth that had had the benefit of a top Chicagoan orthodontist. He used this grin when he needed a shop assistant to accept his returned item even though he had failed to retain proof of purchase; he used it when he needed a female maître d’ to find him a table, even though he’d failed to make a reservation, and he used it when he needed some hot woman to drop her morals and her knickers. It never failed.
    â€˜Are you family?’ The nurse was already looking for a way to allow this man to stay until official visiting hours started, even though she could get into trouble for doing so.
    â€˜I’m his son,’ said Dean, turning back to glance at his father, as though he too needed confirmation that this was the case.
    â€˜Eddie’s never mentioned a son,’ pointed out the nurse, unaware, or at least unconcerned, about any potential hurt her comment might cause.
    â€˜No, he wouldn’t,’ admitted Dean with a sigh. The sigh seeped like an ink stain on to the hospital sheets. ‘I think I’ll go and call my sister. I’ll come back at the proper hours.’
    â€˜Oh, he has a daughter too?’ The nurse turned toward Eddie Taylor and beamed, clearly pleased for the sick man. ‘How lovely.’
    â€˜Yeah, lovely.’ Dean turned away quickly so she wouldn’t see his glower.
    â€˜Hi, Zoe.’
    â€˜Dean. Is everything all right?’
    Dean wondered whether there would ever come a day when his sister would simply pick up the phone and be pleased to hear from him. He doubted it. She’d probably always assume that he was the bearer of appalling news. Their exposed and lonely childhoods had taught them to expect the worst. They both made a valiant effort to pretend that this was not the case; they’d clawed their way out of their inheritance and become decent, hard-working members of society, but the fact was, they lived with an awareness of the world’s underbelly.
    Zoe was the epitome of upright and reputable. She drove an old but reliable estate car to toddler dance classes and to resident association meetings; she dressed in White Stuff jumpers and bought her jeans from Gap. She usually carried a cotton shopping bag; ordinarily it was filled with responsibly farmed produce which she made into delicious meals for her family. Most people would probably peg Zoe at a little older than twenty-nine; she had dashed towards being an adult, as childhood wasn’t a place either sibling had wanted to linger. But if anyone watched her striding through the cobbled streets of Winchester, where she lived in a small but cosy house, they would never guess that she wet her bed until she was thirteen and that she still couldn’t sleep without leaving a light on.
    Dean had pulled off an even more stupendous transformation. He was a wealthy and extremely successful advertising executive, who oozed charm and composure. There was nothing about his expensive and elegant style of dressing, his confident swagger in the boardroom, his affable generosity when buying rounds at the bar that suggested that as a child his wardrobe was limited to charity shop purchases and second-hand clothes donated by well-meaning do-gooders. Nor was there anything to betray that he had been treated by a child psychiatrist for anger management until he was sixteen. They had managed to construct convincingly respectable, balanced personas for the benefit of almost everyone else they knew. It was