Charlie Read Online Free PDF Page B

would ever be able to walk again unaided because all the bones in her knees had been shattered.
    Would she be able to stay alone at ‘Windways’ while her mother was in hospital? Would she still be able to be the Carnival Queen?
    Detective Inspector Willows had gone away, but before he left he said he would return in the morning to question Sylvia and get her permission to go through her husband’s private papers to find out more about his business interests. Charlie had a sickening feeling this would bring even more trouble.
    On her own, with nothing else to do to distract her from thoughts of what she’d seen for herself and heard from her own mother’s lips that afternoon, she knew those two men were almost certainly trying to find out from her where Jin was. As their attack on her was so brutal, it followed that Jin must have done something nasty to them.
    Adding that to all the questions she had been unable to answer adequately for the police, her mother’s dark moods, her fear of the police, and the rows between her parents, it became increasingly obvious to Charlie that her father couldn’t possibly be the respectable businessman she’d always believed him to be.
    That thought hurt her the most because she loved him. She supposed she loved her mother too, but she never felt it the way she did with her father. He was the one she ran to, the one she confided in, played with, laughed with, who provided the sunshine and warmth which were lacking in her mother.
    He was her rock, unfailingly good-humoured, comforting, stable and dependable. He spoke often of honour, he despised liars, bullies and thugs, in fact to her mind he had all the virtues gentlemen were supposed to have.
    It was as if she was standing on the edge of a cliff, and the ground was slowly slipping away beneath her feet. As she tried to pull herself back by clutching on to good memories of her father, so they seemed to shrink and slip through her hands. All at once she sensed that everything she had taken for granted in her life was under threat.
    Just before ten the ward sister opened the door of the waiting room and beckoned for Charlie to come with her. ‘You may see your mother now, just for a few minutes,’ she said.
    ‘Is she better?’ Charlie was still enough of a child to imagine nurses and doctors could accomplish miracles.
    Sister half smiled. She had a worn-looking face, and a soft Welsh lilt to her voice. ‘Well, she’s conscious again, that’s something. She won’t be up to talking much until tomorrow, but she’ll feel better for seeing you.’
    The sister led Charlie along a corridor, explaining her mother was in a room on her own. Charlie had never been inside Dartmouth Hospital until today, even though it was situated right on the quay and as familiar a building as the post office and bank. Other people had said hospitals made them feel sick, but she hadn’t felt that way, despite the peculiar smells and the serious business of tending the sick going on all around her; yet as she walked into her mother’s room and saw her lying flat on her back with a drip in her arm, and a sort of cage contraption holding the bedclothes away from her legs, Charlie suddenly felt faint.
    For the first time ever Sylvia looked forty. Her tan seemed to have faded, without lipstick her lips were bloodless, her blonde hair appeared greasy and lank.
    ‘It’s me, Charlie. How are you feeling?’ Charlie whispered as she approached the bed. Sylvia’s eyes were closed; her lashes without the usual thick mascara were thin and very fair.
    Her eyelids fluttered and opened just a crack. ‘Poorly,’ she said as if with great effort. ‘My legs!’
    Charlie glanced at the cage under the covers. Sister’s words earlier about making no predictions for the future still rang in her ears.
    ‘They’ll be fine, Mummy,’ she lied. ‘You’ll be walking and dancing again in no time.’
    Her mother’s eyes opened just a little wider, they looked like cold