Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? by Claudia Carroll Read Free Book Online

is.
    But by the sounds of it, I’m already too late. I’m up in our bedroom, frantically pulling on jeans and a warm woolly jumper and from downstairs I can already clearly hear Andrew Leonard stomping around, letting himself in with his own key like everyone else seems to.
    Andrew is Dan’s father’s old veterinary partner, by the way and at seventy-five years of age, he’s still going strong and working every bit as hard as he did twenty years ago. He and Dan always start the morning surgery together and so Andrew, a widower who lives alone, has got into thehabit of calling here for breakfast beforehand most days. And by the sounds of it, he’s with James, the practice’s new intern as well.
    As I hurriedly pull on a pair of boots, I can hear the two of them chatting away and clattering open the kitchen cupboards, before Andrew shouts up the stairs at me that there’s no milk for the tea and would I please mind running out to get some?
    Next thing I hear old Mrs Brophy. the practice’s elderly and very cranky receptionist, clattering in and yelling up at me that if I’m going to the shops anyway, would I mind picking up a few sticky buns for the tea as they ran out yesterday when I wasn’t there to do a run to Tesco?
    Oh God, oh God, oh God. This is what happens when I’m missing for one single afternoon and when I oversleep on one single morning? Dear Jaysus…
    ‘AND WILL YOU GET SOME TEA BAGS WHILE YOU’RE AT IT TOO, ANNIE?’ she screeches upstairs at me and I call back down that I’m on my way. Mrs Brophy, I should tell you, has worked here since old Dan Senior’s time and point blank refuses to let me help her out with the surgery’s paperwork in any way whatsoever. Honest to God, even if I as much as answer the phone and take an appointment when she’s in the house, she feels threatened and, I’m not kidding, will actually go into a sulk about it that can often last for days on end. I’ve been here ever since Heaven started, she’ll snap at me, and I do NOT need your help, thank you.
    Nor does she have any intention of retiring in the foreseeable future and believe me, every carrot you can think of has been dangled at her to entice her off in that direction – a Mediterranean cruise, a week’s spa break in a five-starhotel, you name it. But no, nothing doing. She gets offended if I even offer to give her a hand and there’s no budging her to leave either; a classic catch twenty-two. She’s also chronically hard of hearing with the result that anyone ringing up the house or surgery tends to holler down the phone at whoever answers, just in case it might be her.
    A sudden, disconnected thought flashes through my mind: how weird it is that I should feel so completely isolated and lonely in this house and yet I’m constantly surrounded by other people.
    Anyway, I scrape my hair back into a ponytail and race to the bathroom, where Dan’s just stepping out, washed, shaved and ready for the day. Perfect chance for me to nab him, because I know only too well that once he launches into his day’s work, trying to hold a one-on-one conversation with him will be pretty much like trying to nail mercury to a wall.
    ‘Dan, before you go downstairs, I really need to…’
    ‘Hey, you were out so late last night. Where were you?’
    ‘Yeah, I know, I had to go to Dublin…I phoned you, didn’t you get my message?’
    ‘You left a message? No, never got it. My phone must have been out of coverage. Oh rats, that reminds me, I think I must have left my mobile in the car last night…’
    Absolutely zero interest in why I had to go to town, not even a raised eyebrow, nothing. He’s thundering down the main staircase now, taking two steps at a time in that long-legged way that he has and I’m racing just to keep pace with him.
    ‘The thing is, Dan, I have to talk to you and it’s really important…’
    ‘Sure, sure, yeah…MRS BROPHY? DID PAULFORGARTY CALL ABOUT THE RACEHORSE WITH THE BROKEN