The Pure in Heart by Susan Hill Read Free Book Online Page B

back.’
    Simon wanted to touch his sister’s hand, kiss her cheek, get her to open her eyes again but with his father there he could not. He simply stood, looking down.
    ‘I’m glad,’ he said.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘How can you ask? She’s my sister. I love her. I don’t want her to die.’
    ‘Your mother thinks her quality of life is zero.’
    ‘I don’t agree.’
    ‘We bow to your superior medical knowledge then.’
    ‘It’s an instinct.’
    ‘The police work on instinct rather than facts?’
    Simon Serrailler was a man who had never felt violent towards anyone in his life though he had never been squeamish about using an appropriatedegree of force in the course of his job, but he felt an uprush of anger against his father now which made him clench his fists. At moments like this he had a clear insight into the hatred and rage that led some people to violence. The difference between him and them, he knew, was the thin but infinitely strong wire of self-control.
    ‘When will she be well enough to go back to Ivy Lodge?’ he askedcalmly.
    Richard Serrailler stood up. ‘Couple of days. They’ll need the bed.’
    Simon was a foot away from him. His father was a lean, good-looking man who might have been sixty rather than seventy-one.
    ‘What do you feel for her?’ Simon asked him now, glancing towards Martha. He felt himself tense as if he might need to defend himself for having the nerve to put the question at all. But his fatherlooked at him without anger.
    ‘I am her father. I have loved her since the day she was born. I don’t cease to love her because I have always regretted that day. What man could? You?’
    ‘All of that,’ Simon said, ‘but maybe without the regret.’
    ‘Easy for you.’
    ‘ Easier .’
    ‘If you were ever to be a parent, which I presume you will not, you would know. Are you walking back to your car?’
    They wenttogether down the quiet corridors. What his father meant, what was behind hisextraordinary remark, how he judged him were questions Simon could not address now. He whited out all thought and merely walked, out of the hospital and into the car park. At his father’s car he held open the door, waited until he was seated with his belt buckled, said goodnight, and closed the door.
    Two minutes laterhe was on the road to Lafferton, the tail lights of his father’s BMW already almost out of sight ahead.
    He wanted to go back to the farmhouse; he needed to talk to Cat, but she would have gone to bed long ago, trying to rest as best she could in these last days of her pregnancy. He felt separated from her – from all of them, a feeling which would pass once her child was born, and which in anycase was largely illusory and entirely on his side. It had happened before – when Cat had married Chris, and as she had borne Sam and Hannah.
    He turned into the Cathedral Close. The wide avenue with the grass spaces on either side and the cathedral rising up above his head, the elegant buildings, pale in the lamplight which was a softer, more silver colour than those of the raw lights aroundthe hospital and out along the main road, the long shadows cast by the trees … he had often thought that it looked artificial at night, a film set of a place, too empty, too tidy, too carefully arranged.
    But it went with his mood. Tomorrow he would not hang about here. He knew when solitudebecame dangerous for him. He needed to get stuck into work. If it was a day or two before the officialend of his leave, that was fine by him.

Nine
    Andy Gunton stepped off the kerb and the car came out of nowhere, skimming his body. He lost his balance and fell into the gutter. A woman started screaming.
    Traffic, Andy thought as he picked himself up, bloody cars and buses charging at you from everywhere.
    The woman went on screaming and three people had come out of shops.
    ‘I’m a first-aider, sit down.’ She looked young enough to beone of Michelle’s kids.
    ‘I’m OK,’ Andy said. ‘Just lost me