Coral Glynn by Peter Cameron

Author:Peter Cameron [Cameron, Peter]
Language: ita
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788845926884
Amazon: 8845926885
Publisher: Adelphi
Published: 2012-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

Soon after Coral arrived in London, she found a woman who put an end to her pregnancy.

She wrote to Clement, in care of the Loftings, but heard nothing back. She wrote to him again a few weeks later, when she moved into a new room in a large house on Grantley Terrace, and regularly returned to the place she had originally stayed, to enquire for mail. But there was none, and her second letter, which had included her new address, also went unanswered. She wrote a third, and final, letter.

She was hired by the National Health as a visiting nurse, and it suited her well. It was good to see her patients in their homes, change their bandages, give them injections, bathe them, change their linen, even empty their bedpans, and then leave at the end of every day—leave and return alone to her little room with the bed and dresser and chair and gas ring and the trees outside the window and the sound of the piano coming up from downstairs. Madame Paszkowska, her landlady, was a pianist, and often played. Apparently she had been quite well-known on the continent before the war.

Initially, Coral was shocked that she did not hear from Clement, but then it made perfect sense to her: of course she did not hear from him. She never would. Dolly had certainly told him about the baby, and that, combined with the awful business with the girl in the wood, had caused him to be done with her. Perhaps he had sincerely meant to reconnect with her when he sent her away, but once she was gone, and it was over, he must have realised what a mistake it all had been. It had all been a mistake. It was over.

It was more difficult to banish Inspector Hoke from her mind. For a while she thought she saw him everywhere she went, and was sure he would be waiting for her every evening when she returned to Grantley Terrace. But then, slowly, she realised he was not going to appear, that if he had meant to find her he would have done so already—she had made no attempt to hide herself—and she understood that that burden, that shadow, was, like the baby, gone.

Coral thought: This is more happiness than I deserve, even if it is not exactly happiness. But it was a sort of freedom: there had been so many problems—it had all been problems, everything had been a problem for such a long time—and to be released from that perpetually increasing darkness was a kind of joy.

* * *

There was only one other tenant living in the house on Grantley Terrace with Madame Paszkowska: an elderly woman called Miss Lingle. She lived in a suite of rooms on the floor below Coral with her pet rabbit, Pansy, who sat all day upon Miss Lingle’s lap. Although she left her door open and smiled at Coral when she passed by every morning and evening, she never spoke to Coral, and Coral did not speak to Miss Lingle.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.