The Lavender House by Hilary Boyd

Author:Hilary Boyd [Boyd, Hilary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus

Chapter Twenty-Three

Frances smiled at the doctor. He really was very sweet, even though Nancy said he was useless. She didn’t mind if he was useless, though, because she hadn’t wanted to see him in the first place. This was the third time her dear daughter had made the appointment. Frances had managed to slide out of the first two, claiming she wasn’t feeling well enough. But it was tricky: if she said she was feeling too ill, then Nancy would get the bloody man round to the house anyway.

“Mrs. Havers . . .”

Dr. Henderson was saying something and she tried to listen. He’d been poking and prodding her for the last ten minutes and it hadn’t been pleasant. Her clothes felt all askew now and she longed to be at home and in peace.

“Mrs. Havers,” he was trying again, “I’m a bit concerned about the tenderness around your tummy. I’d like to take a closer look, see what’s going on. How do you feel about a few tests at the hospital?”

Idiot man, she thought. Does he think I haven’t graduated to the word “stomach” yet? As for how I “feel” about having tests . . . how the hell does he think I feel? Of course, I’m simply dying for it, I can hardly wait to sit for hours on one of those blue plastic chairs in some dreary NHS waiting room with rows of half-dead people staring at me, only to be told I have some ghastly disease they can do nothing about.

“What tests?”

“Well . . .” He put his head on one side again. Is there something wrong with his neck? “There’s a sort of scan called an endoscopy. We put a wee tube into your stomach with a camera on the end and look around, check things out. It doesn’t hurt at all.”

Frances glanced round at Nancy. It ought to be her seeing the doctor, she thought. Since that ghastly man had told her those lies about his wife, her daughter had got steadily paler and more miserable. She was worried about her. But it never did to rush into things where men were concerned. Especially when it involved sex. They were just too unreliable in their needs. She had never liked sex much. Hadn’t really seen the point of all that heavy breathing and thrashing about, all that . . . mess. Kenny hadn’t seemed to mind that she’d closed that door after Nancy was born. But then, of course, he’d made his own arrangements later on with little Miss Butter-wouldn’t-melt Julie, his devoted dental nurse, who had a bottom the size of three buses. Frances hadn’t minded, really. It was just sex and Kenny was always very discreet. She knew he adored her.

“I know what an endoscopy is,” she spoke tartly to the doctor, “and I don’t want one.” Wee tube? Who was he kidding? Her friend Barbara had had one and said it was more like a garden hose, that the Valium they’d given her hadn’t worked and she’d gagged so much they’d had to give up.

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.