Read Online Stolen by Lesley Pearse - Free Book Online Page A

Kutz then?’ Dale asked, touched by his affection for her friend, yet a little jealous too.
    ‘Almost nineteen. When I found out what the bitches she was sharing with were doing to her, I got her to come and live here with Adam and me. She always said that meeting me was like coming out of a dark place into the light. And for us she was our sister, mother, friend and housekeeper all rolled into one. We loved having her with us, she kind of balanced out our lives. That’s why I know she would’ve come back here to see us first if she was hurt, because we were her family.’
    ‘Did you tell DI Bryan this?’ Dale asked.
    ‘I tried to, but straight cops tend to see gay men as fanciful airheads. They don’t imagine we can form deep and meaningful relationships with women if we don’t have sex with them.’
    ‘Bryan didn’t come across like that to me,’ Dale retorted. ‘What did he say when you told him she must’ve gone with someone from the ship?’
    ‘I don’t think he believed I knew Lotte well enough to make such a statement. You probably don’t either?’
    ‘Oh, I do,’ Dale assured him. ‘You see, you talk about her in the same way as I do, so I know you’ve seen the same things in her as me.’
    Simon’s eyes dropped and a blush crept up his neck.
    ‘What is it?’ she asked.
    ‘I think I pushed too hard today, and that’s why she had the panic attack,’ he said. ‘You see, I mentioned Mark, and suddenly she couldn’t get her breath.’
    ‘Who was Mark?’ Dale asked.
    ‘A sailor she fell in love with. But if she remembered him she probably remembered everything else that came before him. That might have been too much for her.’
    As Dale was talking to Simon, Lotte was lying still in the hospital bed, her eyes shut, pretending to be asleep so no one would come and talk to her.
    Her heart was no longer racing, she wasn’t scared or agitated the way she had got when Simon and Adam were here. But that had happened because a sudden deluge of memories came back to her. It was like being hit by a hurricane, and she wasn’t even able to reassure Simon that it wasn’t anything in particular that he’d said, just that all at once she knew who he was, and all he’d meant to her.
    At nineteen she’d sat with him pouring out stuff she’d never told anyone before or since. He was the man who showed her how to deal with it. She was only too happy she could remember his part in her life, for it had been a very important one.
    Thanks to Simon she now knew why the hospital room seemed so familiar too. It was like the one Fleur was in just before she died.
    Lotte was never actually told there was something wrong with her sister. She could remember being puzzled as to why Fleur stopped going to dancing classes, and that she often didn’t go to school and seemed to sleep such a lot. But no one ever explained it.
    Perhaps her parents couldn’t face up to leukaemia themselves, let alone try to make it clear to their younger child. But not knowing Fleur was ill made all the special treatment she got, the treats, new clothes and toys, trips to anywhere she fancied, seem so terribly unfair.
    It was Fleur herself who told her in the end. Lotte had been given a good hiding and sent to bed without any tea for complaining when she was left with a neighbour while Mum and Dad took her sister to London. Fleur crept up to see her with some cake, a bottle of Tizer and a bag of toffees.
    ‘They only took me to a hospital,’ she said. ‘I had to have some special tests because I’ve got something wrong with my blood.’
    Lotte thought that if she never complained about anything ever again Fleur would get better. But she didn’t, she just got weaker, thinner and paler, and each time she was taken into hospital, she stayed longer.
    Lotte could remember Fleur’s tenth birthday very clearly. A room just like the one she was in now, but filled with flowers, cards, teddy bears, dolls and a cake like Cinderella’s