Read Online Hidden by Derick Parsons, John Amy - Free Book Online
Authors: Derick Parsons, John Amy
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all this agonizing. She was young, free and single, at liberty to do whatever she pleased, with whomever pleased her. Sleeping with a patient’s father was nothing to be proud of, but it wasn’t a crime either, and she needn’t beat herself up about it.
She was out of the quiet city now and well on her way to the two-bedroom basement apartment in Monkstown that she was trying to learn to call home. It was a nice flat, in a nice area, but in her mind home was still the house in Dalkey in which she had grown up. After her father had.. .been killed, her mother had brought her to live with her sister Josie and her family. Between Uncle George, her Aunt Josie and their four boys that house had been Kate’s -an only child- first real experience of what she had come to consider proper family life. Fights, shouting, mess, sharing, noise and love had poured over quiet, shy, damaged Kate like a warm tidal wave of uninhibited emotion, and within a few short weeks the chaos of the Turner household felt like home to her. Her cousins had made her feel like one of the family from the start, and as the only girl in the house -albeit a chubby twelve year old with braces- they had jealously fought one another for her attention.
Kate smiled to herself as she remembered how her first boyfriend, when she was sixteen, had had to run the gauntlet of her glowering Uncle and four equally hostile cousins, all of whom seemed to be waiting for poor Charlie to make the slightest wrong move before tearing him apart. Charlie hadn’t lasted long -had not unsurprisingly been scared off- and although furious at the time Kate now realized it was symptomatic of how deeply she had been cocooned in the warmth of their love and concern.
Her Aunt and Uncle had been marvelous right from the very beginning, possibly because they had wanted and been denied a little girl themselves. Certainly Kate and her mother had never once felt like interlopers, had never fe lt that they were imposing or were in any way a nuisance. Which said all that was necessary about the good-heartedness of the Turner family. Looking back later Kate often thought that the years spent in that house were the happiest of her life. As a child or an adult. And after her mother had died, from breast cancer detected too late, Aunt Josie had as good as adopted her, and had comforted her through her difficult late teens before putting Kate through university with her own four.
After Kate had left for England Uncle George had taken advantage o f the ill-fated Civil Service relocation program to return to his native Cork, and easy-going Aunt Josie had agreed to the move without any great fuss, which was how she dealt with most of life’s crises. If they had not moved Kate would almost certainly be living with them now, thirty-four or not. Two of the boys, Sean and Oisin, had remained in Dublin but both were married with young children, so staying with either of them when she returned from England had been out of the question. Well, in Kate’s mind at least; they had seen things differently and both had tried to get her to stay with them.
What their respective wives would have thought of this arrangement Kate shuddered to think but she need never find out as she had of course declined. She considered them more brothers than cousins but wasn’t about to impose herself on them, or on women whom she had met only a handful of times before. And so in spite of living in the same city they had largely left her life. They certainly had not forgotten her, but with careers and growing families to occupy them Kate saw less of them than she would have liked. The house in Dalkey had long since been sold, too, a fact which hurt Kate almost as much as the absence of her Aunt and Uncle; that house was the embodiment of everything good in her childhood, the chalice of almost all her happy memories.
Thinking about it Kate shook her head ruefully, for there was an even
She was out of the quiet city now and well on her way to the two-bedroom basement apartment in Monkstown that she was trying to learn to call home. It was a nice flat, in a nice area, but in her mind home was still the house in Dalkey in which she had grown up. After her father had.. .been killed, her mother had brought her to live with her sister Josie and her family. Between Uncle George, her Aunt Josie and their four boys that house had been Kate’s -an only child- first real experience of what she had come to consider proper family life. Fights, shouting, mess, sharing, noise and love had poured over quiet, shy, damaged Kate like a warm tidal wave of uninhibited emotion, and within a few short weeks the chaos of the Turner household felt like home to her. Her cousins had made her feel like one of the family from the start, and as the only girl in the house -albeit a chubby twelve year old with braces- they had jealously fought one another for her attention.
Kate smiled to herself as she remembered how her first boyfriend, when she was sixteen, had had to run the gauntlet of her glowering Uncle and four equally hostile cousins, all of whom seemed to be waiting for poor Charlie to make the slightest wrong move before tearing him apart. Charlie hadn’t lasted long -had not unsurprisingly been scared off- and although furious at the time Kate now realized it was symptomatic of how deeply she had been cocooned in the warmth of their love and concern.
Her Aunt and Uncle had been marvelous right from the very beginning, possibly because they had wanted and been denied a little girl themselves. Certainly Kate and her mother had never once felt like interlopers, had never fe lt that they were imposing or were in any way a nuisance. Which said all that was necessary about the good-heartedness of the Turner family. Looking back later Kate often thought that the years spent in that house were the happiest of her life. As a child or an adult. And after her mother had died, from breast cancer detected too late, Aunt Josie had as good as adopted her, and had comforted her through her difficult late teens before putting Kate through university with her own four.
After Kate had left for England Uncle George had taken advantage o f the ill-fated Civil Service relocation program to return to his native Cork, and easy-going Aunt Josie had agreed to the move without any great fuss, which was how she dealt with most of life’s crises. If they had not moved Kate would almost certainly be living with them now, thirty-four or not. Two of the boys, Sean and Oisin, had remained in Dublin but both were married with young children, so staying with either of them when she returned from England had been out of the question. Well, in Kate’s mind at least; they had seen things differently and both had tried to get her to stay with them.
What their respective wives would have thought of this arrangement Kate shuddered to think but she need never find out as she had of course declined. She considered them more brothers than cousins but wasn’t about to impose herself on them, or on women whom she had met only a handful of times before. And so in spite of living in the same city they had largely left her life. They certainly had not forgotten her, but with careers and growing families to occupy them Kate saw less of them than she would have liked. The house in Dalkey had long since been sold, too, a fact which hurt Kate almost as much as the absence of her Aunt and Uncle; that house was the embodiment of everything good in her childhood, the chalice of almost all her happy memories.
Thinking about it Kate shook her head ruefully, for there was an even
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