Read Online Death Before Time by Andrew Puckett - Free Book Online Page B

lose him.”
    They’d met when they’d been assigned to the same crew and one of those strange friendships between a big man and a small man began.
    “He was larger than life, always fooling around, and yet you had the feeling it was all a bit of a front …he was always on about his wife and kids, especially when he’d had a few … kept a photo of them in his wallet …
    “I know he didn’t want to go back to the docks after the war. We had all kinds of plans – we were going to go to Australia and start an engineering firm, or a car sales business in the smoke, or a sheep farm in the north …
    “That was the thing about the war, once you’d done a job like we had as aircrew and been respected for it, there was no way you were going back to forelock pulling.”
    *
    This had been Harold’s problem when he’d eventually de-mobbed and gone back to the brewery where he’d worked before. They had expected him to go back to forelock pulling, and when he argued the point, he was sacked.
    He’d gone to Australia, intending to settle there; become a rep, got engaged, got jilted, came home again. He soon found another job and within a year, he was married and settled down.
    “It was a mistake,” he said. “The rebound.”
    He and Janet had one child, a daughter they called Christine. The birth was difficult, and afterwards, so was sex, for Janet.
    “She’d never liked it much anyway, an’ being a rep, I could get it elsewhere. So I did.”
    It was Christine who’d held the marriage together. Then, when she was seventeen, she’d become pregnant. She’d wanted to have the baby, but they’d persuaded her to have an abortion on medical grounds.
    “Another mistake - she became impossible after that and left home. We didn’t try to stop her and she vanished.”
    And vanished completely, so far as Harold was concerned. He knew Janet was still in touch with her, because she told him Christine was married and had a son. He and Janet had divorced, and when she’d later died, he hadn’t been able to tell Christine about the funeral because he’d had no idea where she was. He’d never heard from her since.
    “That’s why I want this radiotherapy, Fraser. I hired a private dick when I knew I’d got cancer, to find her an’ beg her to come an’ see me before I died. He’s traced her to America and says he’ll find her soon.”
    He looked up. “I haven’t been a good man, Fraser. I’ve been a rotten husband and father. But I want to see her and my grandson before I die; I want to tell her I’m sorry. That’s why I need a couple more months. Thing is Fraser, am I going to get them?”
    Fraser cleared his throat. “Aye, I think so, given a bit of luck, and you’re due that, Harold. You’re starting the radiotherapy tomorrow, aren’t you?”
    A nod.
    “Well, Dr Armitage wouldn’t have okayed it if he didn’t think it would work.” He paused. “There’s also the will to live. If you want to enough, you can do it.”
    “I do want to Fraser. Thanks.”
    After a pause, Fraser said, “Have you told Dr Armitage or Dr Tate about your daughter?”
    “No,” he said, “And I don’t want to. It’s no one else’s business. I only told you because of Jamie.”
    Fraser seriously thought about telling Philip or Edwina, or even Helen, but decided in the end to respect Harold’s wishes.
    He realised anyway as he brooded over his pint that evening that he didn’t want to tell Helen anything that might seem to increase the intimacy between them. He knew he wanted to finish the affair, regretted now ever having started it.
    Why? Was it guilt so soon after Frances?
    Aye, and it was getting worse, but that wasn’t all there was to it. After her initial coolness, he’d been surprised how quickly Helen had changed towards him …
    He found her cloying, claustrophobic even – the girlie way she spoke to him sometimes, the way she made too much of things, pressurised him … every time he went to her house, she