Read Online Goodbye, Janette by Harold Robbins - Free Book Online Page A

world in which we live.”
    “Your life is more important than what people think.”
    She nodded. “That’s the truth.”
    “Do you know the father?”
    She looked at him. “Why do you ask?”
    “It would be helpful if we could get a blood type from him. Just for the RH factor. After all it’s been almost seventeen years since your daughter was born and there could have been many changes in your system.”
    She thought for a moment. She had been with two men that month. But logically it had to be the American. She had been with him steadily the last three weeks of the month she had missed her first period. “Yes,” she answered.
    “Would he give you his blood type?”
    She shrugged her shoulders. “Who knows? He’s back in America now with his wife and children. I couldn’t write him, it might be embarrassing. I would have to call.”
    “It would be worth the call,” Doctor Pierre said.
    She nodded slowly and started to her feet. “I’ll do it.”
    He rose from his chair. “The nurse will give you a printed diet on the way out. Follow it carefully and you will keep your weight down. You will also get a supplementary list of vitamins and minerals to take every day to maintain your strength and energy. I would like to see you again in about a month.”
    She looked at him. “Are you sure we can’t do an abortion?”
    “It can be done but I don’t advise it,” he said. He met her gaze. “And don’t do anything foolish, because there are nine chances out of ten that you might die.”
    “I won’t do anything foolish, Doctor Pierre,” she said. “I promise.”
    “Good.” He smiled. “And send me the blood type if you get it.” He came around the desk and kissed her on the cheek. “And don’t worry, Tanya. We’ve all been through worse things.”
    She nodded. During the war he had been in a concentration camp. He still bore the numbered tattoo on his arms. Only the fact that he had been a doctor saved him from the gas chambers. Impulsively she kissed his cheek. “That’s true, Doctor Pierre,” she said. “Thank you.”
    ***
    Janette folded the blouse carefully and placed it in the valise, then stepped back. That was the last of the packing. She looked around her room carefully. Satisfied that nothing had been forgotten, she closed the valise and locked it, then placed it on the floor next to the other valise. Tomorrow morning at seven thirty she would be on the train to Switzerland and school.
    She walked back to her desk near the window and called her friend Marie-Thérése. The telephone rang a few times before Marie-Thérése picked it up. As usual, she sounded breathless. “Hello.”
    “I’m finished packing,” Janette said.
    “Oh, God,” Marie-Thérése exclaimed. “I haven’t even started yet.”
    “Would you like me to come over and help you?” Janette asked.
    “I sure would.” Marie-Thérése giggled. “But then we’d never get finished. Like last night.”
    Janette remembered. In the afternoon they had gone to an American movie on the Champs-Elysées.
Rebel Without a Cause
, featuring a new American star, James Dean. It was the fourth time each of them had seen the movie and it was about American kids just like them. Their parents didn’t understand them either. And there was something about James Dean that reached inside them. All either of them had to do was to close her eyes and she was Natalie Wood being held roughly in James Dean’s arms.
    This time on the way out of the theater, Marie-Thérése had bought a poster of James Dean. He was standing there in tight, worn jeans, skinny hips, and legs slightly bent, his face surly and angry, eyes peering defiantly out at them under a shock of brown-blond hair falling over his eyes. She wanted it for the wall over her bed in school.
    When they got home, Marie-Thérése took a valise from her closet and placed it on the bed. She opened it and placed the poster, still folded inside. “Might as well begin packing,” she had