Life Sentence by Judith Cutler

Author:Judith Cutler [Judith Cutler]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780749015794
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2013-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Two

Mark retired to her sofa and promptly fell asleep again while she was dealing with her own mail. Laughing perhaps dourly to herself, she slipped upstairs to change. Before coming back downstairs to load the washing machine, on impulse she popped into her study to check her emails. Most people contacted her at work, of course, but a small and loyal group of friends were prepared to tolerate the delays incumbent on using her personal address. Friends! When was it she’d last had time for a social life? When she hobnobbed with women or indeed men from work, there was a small but perceptible recognition that she had outstripped and thus out earned them. She’d never had too many friends outside the police, apart from a handful she’d met while she was doing her PhD who reminded her that out there was a world without hierarchies. Some of Ian’s friends kept in touch, whether for kindness to his memory or because they liked her she was never sure.

Today, spam apart, there were only a couple of messages. The first leapt from the screen with such righteous – perhaps, self-righteous – indignation that she knew it came from Hazel, in response to her suggestion to the Aged Ps’ social worker. Was it only this morning that she’d made it? The social worker must have taken her desperate suggestion seriously.

Phone calls from Stornaway were so expensive during the day that Hazel eschewed them. In any case, it seemed to Fran that she much preferred polishing her phrases so that they pierced with maximum pain. Hazel might not be hauling in an indecent salary (was Fran’s indecent? She had an idea that she earned every penny), but working she was, and in the name of the Lord. Had Fran never realised the vital role of the minister’s wife in the kirk community?

Which century was she living in? And then Fran corrected herself: for the twenty-first century woman, wasn’t staying at home the new going out?

So what should she do with the email, of which there was considerably more? Simply delete it? Or she could zing a reply back, pointing out that Hazel was a lady of leisure, those kids of her holy husband well away from the nest now. She had time enough on her hands: let her select a finger and sit and spin!

Hardly.

But perhaps inside that burning ball of her resentment there was a nugget of common sense. Hazel’s work from the manse would no doubt bring her into contact with a lot of crotchety old folk, and with social workers whose sensibilities were all atremble. Perhaps it genuinely was lack of finance that had kept her away from Devon for the last five years, and Hazel was too stiff-necked to admit it.

Hi, Hazel

Seems those social workers got the wrong end of the stick when I spoke to them this morning. The truth is, I don’t have your experience in dealing with health professionals – an arrant lie, this, given her close contact with social services over many issues during her career.

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