The Paradise Trees by Linda Huber Read Free Book Online Page B

her chair after lunch. There was still the shopping to do, and she was way too tired to face the drive to Merton. Mrs Mullen here I come again.
    Jenny chose to stay and help Margaret brush the dog, so Alicia trudged down the lane alone, glad to have a few minutes to herself and resentful that it only was a few minutes and not a couple of
hours. Still, at least she was out of the house and the village was a pretty little place when you weren’t worrying about sleeping pills and voices in your head. It was a pity she
couldn’t enjoy being here. There weren’t many villages like this left, even Upper Banford had mutated into a small town.
    At least Frank was around to give her some support. That was the only good thing, actually. Today she felt as if the whole situation was about to rear up and crash back down, flattening them
all. She was working so hard here and nothing was going right. And none of it was her fault.
    Her fault. Her mother’s voice echoed through Alicia’s head.
Stop, Bob. It wasn’t her fault.
    Alicia stood still, Margaret’s ancient shopping bag clutched in one hand. Something hadn’t been her fault, but what? She’d been with Cathal... and yes, it had happened more or
less right where she was standing, just outside the house where the O’Brians had lived.
    The memory was suddenly crystal clear in her mind. She, her parents and Cathal had been walking along here, Cathal had been going home, and he had clapped her shoulder in a friendly goodbye. Not
quite a hug, just a fond gesture from a boy of ten or eleven, which would make her eight or nine. The memories were getting younger.
    Her father had been outraged that a boy had touched his daughter. He had grabbed her shoulder and shaken her – that was when Mum spoke – and then he had marched her home and... what?
She could remember him dragging her up the lane and how terrified she had been, but the rest was a blank. What had he done to her? Something ‘bad’, she could feel that in her bones.
    There were only a handful of people in the shop, and Alicia wrestled a basket from the pile by the door. Mrs Mullen was busy giving a middle-aged woman a very detailed account of someone
else’s operation while a man waited patiently, his basket on the floor beside him.
    Alicia grabbed a family pizza and a lettuce for tonight’s dinner. Maybe tomorrow she’d feel up to an outing to Merton. The man was packing his shopping into an old-fashioned leather
shopper not dissimilar to Margaret’s when Alicia reached the checkout. By the looks of things he was having pasta with cream and bacon sauce for dinner, and Alicia felt slightly ashamed of
her ready-made pizza.
    ‘Right then, Alicia dear,’ said Mrs Mullen, jabbing at the old-fashioned cash register. Scanners and bar codes obviously hadn’t reached this far north yet. ‘How’s
your Dad today?’
    Alicia sighed. ‘Alright, I suppose, but things aren’t going to change for the better,’ she said. ‘It’s just a case of deciding what’s the best way to take
care of him.’
    The man leaned towards her. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, but am I right that you’re Mr Logan’s daughter?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Alicia, surprised. Gosh, this guy was a real Robert Redford lookalike. Maybe eight years older than she was, he had a full head of red-brown hair and he was tall,
towering above her. He was smiling - he looked kind.
    ‘Let me introduce myself, I’m Douglas Patton, the head of St. Joseph’s in Middle Banford.’
    Alicia felt a broad grin spread over her face. Talk about being in the right place at the right time, this chance encounter in Mrs Mullen’s shop might just make things a whole lot easier.
She shook his outstretched hand. It was warm, and he was holding onto hers for a few seconds longer than was necessary. Which was very interesting... and quite exciting, too.
    ‘Frank Carter has told me about you and the home,’ she said, stuffing her pizza into the shopping bag. ‘He