Winter Solstice by Pilcher Rosamunde

Author:Pilcher, Rosamunde [Pilcher, Rosamunde]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9780340752487
Publisher: Hodder
Published: 2005-07-03T23:00:00+00:00

LUCY

On Monday morning, when Lucy descended from her private eyrie in the attic, she saw, on the first-floor landing, that Carrie’s bedroom door was closed. Her first thought was that perhaps Carrie had overslept, and wondered if she should wake her up, and then, fortuitously, decided against it.

Downstairs, she found only Oscar and Elfrida in the midst of breakfast. This morning Oscar was eating sausages, and Lucy hoped there would be some for her. Sausages for breakfast was one of her ideas of heaven.

“Lucy.” As she appeared through the door, he laid down his coffee-cup, and smiled.

“How are you this morning?”

“I’m fine, but where’s Carrie?”

“Carrie’s really not well.” Elfrida got up from the table to collect Lucy’s sausages from the hot plate “I don’t think she’s got flu, but she certainly isn’t throwing this horrible cold off. Two sausages, or three?”

“Three, please, if there’s enough. Is she still in bed?”

“Yes, I looked in to see her, and she said she’d coughed all night, and hadn’t been able to sleep, and was feeling thoroughly fed up with herself. I took her up a cup of tea, but she doesn’t want anything to eat. When the Health Centre opens at nine, I’m going to ring Dr. Sinclair and ask if he’ll come around and have a look at her.”

“Does he make house calls?”

“The Health Centre’s only across the road.”

Lucy sat down to her sausages.

“In London, doctors never do house calls. You have to go and sit in the waiting room with all the other sick people. Gran always says you come out with more things wrong with you than when you went in. Do you think she’s going to be all right? Carrie, I mean. She must be all right for Christmas.”

“We’ll see what Dr. Sinclair says.”

“Can I go and see her?”

“I shouldn’t, until we know what’s wrong. It might be frightfully contagious and then you’d come out in spots. Or running sores. Like poor Job.”

Lucy ate her sausages, which were delicious, and Elfrida poured her a cup of coffee. She said, “It’s really disappointing, because we’d planned a long walk on the beach this morning, with Horace.”

“No reason why you shouldn’t go.”

“Will you come, Oscar?”

“I can’t, this morning. I’ve got a lot of letters to write, and then I’m going to get my hair cut. After that I’m going to the bookshop to order two books, and then I am going to pick up the meat from the butcher.”

“Oh, I see.” It was hard not to sound downcast.

He smiled.

“You can go on your own. Take Horace. He will guard you. You can be a lone explorer.”

Lucy brightened.

“Can I?”

“Of course.”

She mulled over this new prospect of freedom while she ate her sausages, and found that she was rather taken with the idea of setting out, with the dog, all by herself. For obvious reasons she was not allowed to go for long, solitary walks in London, and if she did have some arrangement made with Emma, her mother always had to know where she was going, and when she would be back.

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