Read Online The Chosen Dead (Jenny Cooper 5) by M. R. Hall - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: M. R. Hall
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Michael’s hand even as he tried to tug it away.
‘Yes?’
‘Dad wants to talk to you.’
‘Your father? What about?’ She steeled herself. A call from David could only ever mean he was angry, usually about something she had done.
‘It’s about a colleague of his – Ed someone?’
‘Ed Freeman?’
Ross nodded. ‘His daughter’s died.’
Jenny hurried through to the sitting room and grabbed the receiver.
‘David? Ross said Ed Freeman’s—’
‘Yes,’ he interrupted, in the clipped, urgent tone he used in a crisis. ‘Sophie fell ill this morning and died at five o’clock this afternoon. I only just heard.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ Jenny pictured David’s one and only goddaughter as a pretty, black-haired girl of eight, but knew she must be a teenager by now. ‘What happened?’
‘Some sort of infection. That’s all I know.’
‘Should I call them?’
David said, ‘I would be careful about that. She died in the Vale. You’re going to be the coroner and Ed’s going to want some answers . . .’
‘What is it, David?’
‘I need to talk to you properly. Can you get into town for six?’
‘In the morning?’
‘My list starts at seven. Shall we meet in my office?’
And just as she had during fifteen years of marriage, Jenny agreed to do as he asked.
SIX
T HEY HAD SLEPT TOGETHER like married couples did, avoiding rather than seeking out each other’s touch. Jenny wasn’t so much grieving for the bright, pretty girl she remembered from the family parties of her former existence, as shocked by the thought of a vibrant life so suddenly extinguished. Her mood had rubbed off on Michael, who was shifting and turning in a restless, nightmare-haunted sleep. She could tell he was back in the cockpit, raining fire on dusty villages, tormented by images of broken bodies and bloody sand. Feeling for him, she reached over and stroked his arm, but he’d jerked away from her, leaving her feeling more isolated lying next to him than she would have done alone. Ross had reacted to the news of Sophie Freeman’s death with a concerned formality that hid whatever lay beneath. She had never understood why men found it so hard to express perfectly normal emotions. Did they feel more or less acutely than she did? Where, she wondered, did all those tears go?
She left the house before either of them woke, leaving them, she hoped, to make more of a success communicating with each other over breakfast than they had at dinner. She trusted Michael to make an attempt, but Ross remained a partial mystery to her; just as she thought she was learning to predict his reactions, he wrong-footed her again. She had tried. If they loved her, they would, too.
She approached David’s consulting room on the third floor of the Severn Vale District Hospital with a sharpening sensation of dread. A consultant cardio-thoracic surgeon, his working life had been spent exclusively with patients confronted with their mortality. Approving of those who went under the knife without a word of complaint, and dismissive of those who ‘whimpered and blubbed’, he had treated Jenny’s ‘episode’ (he had refused ever to call it a breakdown) as if it were something akin to an embarrassing skin complaint. During the numb, lifeless months after she had been rendered helpless, he would look at her uncomprehendingly, as if frightened that if he drew too close he might catch the contagion, too. She knocked, feeling all the old history rushing back to meet her.
He answered the door with an abruptness that made her start.
‘Jenny. I didn’t think you’d make it. Come in.’
David’s room was as functional and forbidding as she remembered it; a place to feel the cold press of a stethoscope and bleak words of diagnosis from a man as enviably fit as a fifty-year-old could hope to be. It was as if his tall, lean squash-player’s frame radiated judgement against the weak-willed and sick.
Jenny purposefully avoided sitting in the
‘Yes?’
‘Dad wants to talk to you.’
‘Your father? What about?’ She steeled herself. A call from David could only ever mean he was angry, usually about something she had done.
‘It’s about a colleague of his – Ed someone?’
‘Ed Freeman?’
Ross nodded. ‘His daughter’s died.’
Jenny hurried through to the sitting room and grabbed the receiver.
‘David? Ross said Ed Freeman’s—’
‘Yes,’ he interrupted, in the clipped, urgent tone he used in a crisis. ‘Sophie fell ill this morning and died at five o’clock this afternoon. I only just heard.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ Jenny pictured David’s one and only goddaughter as a pretty, black-haired girl of eight, but knew she must be a teenager by now. ‘What happened?’
‘Some sort of infection. That’s all I know.’
‘Should I call them?’
David said, ‘I would be careful about that. She died in the Vale. You’re going to be the coroner and Ed’s going to want some answers . . .’
‘What is it, David?’
‘I need to talk to you properly. Can you get into town for six?’
‘In the morning?’
‘My list starts at seven. Shall we meet in my office?’
And just as she had during fifteen years of marriage, Jenny agreed to do as he asked.
SIX
T HEY HAD SLEPT TOGETHER like married couples did, avoiding rather than seeking out each other’s touch. Jenny wasn’t so much grieving for the bright, pretty girl she remembered from the family parties of her former existence, as shocked by the thought of a vibrant life so suddenly extinguished. Her mood had rubbed off on Michael, who was shifting and turning in a restless, nightmare-haunted sleep. She could tell he was back in the cockpit, raining fire on dusty villages, tormented by images of broken bodies and bloody sand. Feeling for him, she reached over and stroked his arm, but he’d jerked away from her, leaving her feeling more isolated lying next to him than she would have done alone. Ross had reacted to the news of Sophie Freeman’s death with a concerned formality that hid whatever lay beneath. She had never understood why men found it so hard to express perfectly normal emotions. Did they feel more or less acutely than she did? Where, she wondered, did all those tears go?
She left the house before either of them woke, leaving them, she hoped, to make more of a success communicating with each other over breakfast than they had at dinner. She trusted Michael to make an attempt, but Ross remained a partial mystery to her; just as she thought she was learning to predict his reactions, he wrong-footed her again. She had tried. If they loved her, they would, too.
She approached David’s consulting room on the third floor of the Severn Vale District Hospital with a sharpening sensation of dread. A consultant cardio-thoracic surgeon, his working life had been spent exclusively with patients confronted with their mortality. Approving of those who went under the knife without a word of complaint, and dismissive of those who ‘whimpered and blubbed’, he had treated Jenny’s ‘episode’ (he had refused ever to call it a breakdown) as if it were something akin to an embarrassing skin complaint. During the numb, lifeless months after she had been rendered helpless, he would look at her uncomprehendingly, as if frightened that if he drew too close he might catch the contagion, too. She knocked, feeling all the old history rushing back to meet her.
He answered the door with an abruptness that made her start.
‘Jenny. I didn’t think you’d make it. Come in.’
David’s room was as functional and forbidding as she remembered it; a place to feel the cold press of a stethoscope and bleak words of diagnosis from a man as enviably fit as a fifty-year-old could hope to be. It was as if his tall, lean squash-player’s frame radiated judgement against the weak-willed and sick.
Jenny purposefully avoided sitting in the
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