Read Online The Back of Beyond by Doris Davidson - Free Book Online Page B

at the end of the week. I’d better not waste any more time, though. Mam’ll be wondering what I’m doing. I near forgot, how’s your mother keeping?’
    â€˜She’s not very great, but the doctor says there’s nothing more he can do for her.’
    â€˜I’m sorry to hear that, Lexie. Tell her I was asking for her.’
    â€˜I’ll do that, Alice. Cheerio just now, then.’
    Lexie waited until Alice cycled off before turning the placard on the door to ‘Closed’, and putting the snib down. It was on one o’clock, and she knew her mother would be waiting for her dinner, though she just picked at it like a sparrow, but the girl still didn’t hurry to attend to her like she usually did. Hearing about Dougal’s engagement had unsettled her. Alistair had always copied his pal in everything he did, so it was a sure bet that he’d be looking for a girlfriend now.
    If only he’d come back, even for a wee while, she’d do her utmost to make him see that she was the one for him, that he was the one for her. She had gone out with a few of the local lads since he’d been away, but she hadn’t found one that could make her pain go away. She had loved her father so much, right up to that awful evening when he didn’t come home from the choir practice. She could still hardly bear to think about it. Even when she woke in the night, she pushed it aside and dwelt only on Alistair, assuring herself that even if he had deserted her as well, his absence wouldn’t last much longer.
    When he came home, he would understand. He would sympathize, make it all right. He wouldn’t be like the folk that said her father had put Nancy Lawrie in the family way then run off with her. It wasn’t true! It couldn’t be true, no matter what they said!
    If she didn’t have her mother to consider, she’d go to London to be with Alistair. His sister would give her the address of his lodgings … she could pretend she just wanted to drop him a friendly note, for old times’ sake. But there was her mother to consider. She had gone steadily downhill since … The doctor was the only one who had done anything to help at that awful time, Doctor Birnie, that was. He had given them both sleeping pills as soon as he came, and had left a small supply to see them through the next few days as well. The police had been useless. They had sworn they were searching for her father, but as far as they were concerned he hadn’t committed a crime, so they weren’t really bothered.
    Tam and Nettie Lawrie, Nancy’s parents, had fared no better. It had been glaringly obvious that the police believed the two missing persons were together – though they’d disappeared on different days – and had likely been saying, ‘Good luck to them.’ Poor Nettie had been in such a state, Tam had given up his job and taken her to be beside her sister, but they’d never said where she bade.
    They were lucky getting away from Forvit, Lexie reflected, for she was stuck here until her mother’s illness took its final toll. The new doctor – he was still called new though he’d come well over a year ago – had only diagnosed the cancer last summer, and had told her, the daughter, that it was too far gone to treat. Not that there was a treatment for cancer. It was just a case of not letting a soul know what she was suffering from – there were still folk that thought it was catching – and waiting for the end.
    Yet, however long it took, however much she came to resent the responsibility and drudgery of caring for her, she would never deliberately cut her mother’s life short, much as she might feel tempted to stop her pain. How could God let this happen? It was a crying shame, that’s what it was. As if the woman hadn’t gone through enough already, with the whole village saying her man had left her for a girl young