Read Online When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Kate Atkinson
Tags: Fiction, General, Thrillers, Mystery & Detective, Missing Persons, Physicians (General practice)
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were thrust into her cardigan pockets. She wasn't walking, she was strolling. From nowhere to nowhere. It felt all wrong. He came to a stop and rolled down the window.
As the woman neared the car she gave him a smile and a nod. 'Can I give you a lift?' he asked. (,Don't ever take lifts from strangers, not even if you 'ye lost in the middle ofnowhere, not ifthey say they know your mother, that they have a puppy in the back, that they're a policeman. ')
The woman laughed in a pleasant way -no fear or suspicion -and shook her head. 'You're going the wrong way,' she said. Local accent. She gestured with her arm in the direction he had just come from and said, 'I've not got far to go.'
'It looks like snow,' Jackson said. Why wasn't she wearing a coat, did they breed them to be more hardy up here? She contemplated the sky for a moment and then said to him, 'Oh, no, I don't think so. Don't worry about it,' before giving him a kind of half-wave and carrying on with her unseasonable saunter. He could hardly pursue her, either on foot or in the car, she would think he was a psycho. She must be heading for a farmhouse that he had missed. Perhaps it was in a dip, or over the brow of a hill. Or invisible. 'As we say in this part of the world,' he said to the Discovery, 'there's nowt so queer as folk.'
The day was dimming down and he wondered how dark it would be when the winter sun finally gave up the struggle. Country dark, he supposed. He switched on his lights.
In his rear-view mirror, he watched the woman growing smaller and smaller until she disappeared into the gathering dusk. She never looked back. In her shoes, in her librarian moccasins, he would definitely have looked back.
He was a man on the road, a man trying to get home. It was about the destination, not the journey. Everyone was trying to get home. Everyone, everywhere, all the time.
It was dark now. He drove on,just a poor wayfaring stranger. Was he progressing from this world to that which was to come? You're going the wrong way, she had said. She had meant he was going the wrong way for her. Hadn't she? Or was there a message in her words? A sign? Was he going the wrong way, the wrong way for what? The road had to end up somewhere, even ifit was where it began. 'Don't,' he said out loud to himself. 'Don't get into that existential crap.' Yea, though I walk through the valley ifthe shadow of death.
Just when he had decided that they were lost for ever in the Twilight Zone, they drove over the brow of a hill and he saw the glittering lights ofvehicles on the A1 down below, the lost highway, a great grey artery of logic, helping to speed cars from one known destination to another. Alleluia.
She Would Get the Flowers Hersel f SHE WOULD DRIVE INTO TOWN AND GO TO MAXWELL'S IN CASTLE Street and get the florist to put something together for her, something elegant. Blue, for the living room -a flat-backed basket arrangement for the fireplace -would he have delphiniums? Was it too late for delphiniums? Of course, it didn't matter what the season was, florists didn't get their flowers from gardens, they got them from glasshouses in Holland. And Kenya. They grew flowers in Kenya where there probably wasn't enough drinking water for the people who lived there, let alone for irrigating flowers, and then they flew the flowers over in planes that dumped tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It was wrong but she needed flowers.
Could you need a flower? When they went shopping for her engagement ring in Alistir Tait's in Rose Street, Patrick said to the jeweller, 'This beautiful woman needs a big diamond.' It sounded corny in retrospect but it had been charming at the time. Sort of. Patrick chose an old diamond in a new setting and Louise wondered what poor bugger had dug that out of the heart of darkness a long time ago. Blood on her hands.
Patrick was an orthopaedic surgeon and was used to being i n charge. 'Orthopaedics is just hammers and chisels really, a superio r
As the woman neared the car she gave him a smile and a nod. 'Can I give you a lift?' he asked. (,Don't ever take lifts from strangers, not even if you 'ye lost in the middle ofnowhere, not ifthey say they know your mother, that they have a puppy in the back, that they're a policeman. ')
The woman laughed in a pleasant way -no fear or suspicion -and shook her head. 'You're going the wrong way,' she said. Local accent. She gestured with her arm in the direction he had just come from and said, 'I've not got far to go.'
'It looks like snow,' Jackson said. Why wasn't she wearing a coat, did they breed them to be more hardy up here? She contemplated the sky for a moment and then said to him, 'Oh, no, I don't think so. Don't worry about it,' before giving him a kind of half-wave and carrying on with her unseasonable saunter. He could hardly pursue her, either on foot or in the car, she would think he was a psycho. She must be heading for a farmhouse that he had missed. Perhaps it was in a dip, or over the brow of a hill. Or invisible. 'As we say in this part of the world,' he said to the Discovery, 'there's nowt so queer as folk.'
The day was dimming down and he wondered how dark it would be when the winter sun finally gave up the struggle. Country dark, he supposed. He switched on his lights.
In his rear-view mirror, he watched the woman growing smaller and smaller until she disappeared into the gathering dusk. She never looked back. In her shoes, in her librarian moccasins, he would definitely have looked back.
He was a man on the road, a man trying to get home. It was about the destination, not the journey. Everyone was trying to get home. Everyone, everywhere, all the time.
It was dark now. He drove on,just a poor wayfaring stranger. Was he progressing from this world to that which was to come? You're going the wrong way, she had said. She had meant he was going the wrong way for her. Hadn't she? Or was there a message in her words? A sign? Was he going the wrong way, the wrong way for what? The road had to end up somewhere, even ifit was where it began. 'Don't,' he said out loud to himself. 'Don't get into that existential crap.' Yea, though I walk through the valley ifthe shadow of death.
Just when he had decided that they were lost for ever in the Twilight Zone, they drove over the brow of a hill and he saw the glittering lights ofvehicles on the A1 down below, the lost highway, a great grey artery of logic, helping to speed cars from one known destination to another. Alleluia.
She Would Get the Flowers Hersel f SHE WOULD DRIVE INTO TOWN AND GO TO MAXWELL'S IN CASTLE Street and get the florist to put something together for her, something elegant. Blue, for the living room -a flat-backed basket arrangement for the fireplace -would he have delphiniums? Was it too late for delphiniums? Of course, it didn't matter what the season was, florists didn't get their flowers from gardens, they got them from glasshouses in Holland. And Kenya. They grew flowers in Kenya where there probably wasn't enough drinking water for the people who lived there, let alone for irrigating flowers, and then they flew the flowers over in planes that dumped tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It was wrong but she needed flowers.
Could you need a flower? When they went shopping for her engagement ring in Alistir Tait's in Rose Street, Patrick said to the jeweller, 'This beautiful woman needs a big diamond.' It sounded corny in retrospect but it had been charming at the time. Sort of. Patrick chose an old diamond in a new setting and Louise wondered what poor bugger had dug that out of the heart of darkness a long time ago. Blood on her hands.
Patrick was an orthopaedic surgeon and was used to being i n charge. 'Orthopaedics is just hammers and chisels really, a superio r
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