Read Online A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy by Ann Cleeves - Free Book Online

clear on a number of occasions. This is your last chance, lad, they had said. Screw this up and you’ll be away. For a long time. They had frightened him with their descriptions of the youth custody establishment and he knew they were all on the same side as the police. There had been times of crisis before, but then he had turned to Dorothea Cassidy, seeking her out in the vicarage, lurking in the street until she came out. Now he knew that was impossible and Dorothea Cassidy would never help him again.
    Emily Bowman sat by the window of her flat and looked out with irritation at Clive Stringer. What was the boy doing, loitering on the pavement with that vacant look on his face? Really, they paid enough rent for the flats in Armstrong House to be entitled to staff with at least a modicum of intelligence. She sat back on the chair and felt the sting of burned skin on her shoulder as it touched the cushion. Her irritation was the result of her tiredness and the late arrival of the ambulance. Clive Stringer had his uses and he had always been an easy target for her annoyance.
    Emily Bowman was tempted for a moment to ring for the warden to ask if there was any news of the ambulance but she knew it would be futile. There would be no news. She would have liked some tea, weak and fragrant with a sugary biscuit, but had no energy to get up and make her way to the kitchen. She looked around the room with a detached and calculating eye. Her furniture was solid, of good quality. She had chosen it herself. Her husband had been a decent man, but had a taste for the vulgar and she had allowed him to take no decisions about the house. She moved in the chair and tried to make herself more comfortable as she dreamed of the old life, before Arthur died. They had lived in a bungalow in the best part of town. Arthur had never been promoted in the bank as she had hoped he might be, but he had given her security, a certain position. She had been chair of the Townswomen’s Guild for three years before she moved to Armstrong House. She closed her eyes and dozed, listening all the time for the ambulance, becoming slowly and more uncomfortably aware that she needed the lavatory.
    I was strong then, she thought. Independent. Just like Dorothea Cassidy. I never thought it would come to this.
    For five weeks Emily Bowman had spent every weekday morning in this state of anxious anticipation. By Fridays she was exhausted. First there was the wait for the ambulance which was supposed to arrive at nine and was always late. Eventually it would come and the warden would help her outside, grasping her arm and patting her hand as if she needed reassurance when all she wanted was for the ordeal to be over. Then there was the bumpy and interminable drive round country lanes and suburban side streets while other patients were collected, the traffic jams at the lights on the Town Moor, the painfully slow crawl past badly parked cars in the hospital complex.
    The arrival of the ambulance at the Radiotherapy Centre at Newcastle General Hospital was only the beginning of the waiting. As soon as she got to the centre she would go as fast as she could to the ladies’ cloakroom to remove the undergarments of which the radiographers disapproved so strongly. ‘Wear loose clothes, Mrs Bowman,’ they would say. ‘You’ll be much more comfy without a bra. Look at the state of your skin. Have you used the powder regularly?’ Mrs Bowman did not tell them that the smell of the talcum powder they had given her to put on the affected area made her feel sick, or that she would never consider going without a bra, so the daily deception became necessary.
    She would emerge from the toilet with her bra and vest in her handbag, like a naughty schoolgirl, mildly triumphant that she had not been caught, only to find that there was no need for the rush. There was always a different excuse for the delay. They said that the machine had been switched off for maintenance or that they