Dear Doctor Lily Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    A shortish man was walking down the main hall, frowning as he came towards her. She looked him right in the face before she recognized the heavy eyebrows that ran into each other over his short nose and made his eyes look close together. Buddy out of uniform, in a plaid wool jacket over neat dark green trousers.
    Too late, she lifted her face into her closed-mouth smile and held out her arms with her shoes in one hand. He knew she had not recognized him.
    He looked not like himself. A stranger. Her heart battered against her flat chest in a panic to escape.
    â€˜Ida,’ he said, in that way he said it, half-way between Ahda and Eyeda, putting two slurred syllables into the
I
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    â€˜Hullo.’
    â€˜Where the hell have you been? I’ve been out of my mind. When I didn’t get no call from you, I thought, hell, what’s going on here?’
    â€˜I did send a cable.’
    â€˜Where to?’
    â€˜The Air Force base.’
    â€˜So how could I be there if I was here, waiting for you? What the hell. Put your shoes on.’
    â€˜They hurt. Aren’t you going to say hullo?’
    Ida stepped over the box and he put his arms round her, and now he did feel familiar, his arms like iron bands, his body pushing at her. He smelled of beer. He only kissed her very briefly because he was angry. His round childish face was petulant, the lips pushed out, the frown a dark roof over his aggrieved brown eyes.
    â€˜I know, I know, but I’m here, aren’t I? And it wasn’t my fault.’
    â€˜Well, shit,’ he said. ‘It’s a hell of a way to start our life.’
    â€˜Oh, shut up, stupid. It’s all right now. I’m here. Everything’s all right.’
    His frown softened. His pouting mouth relaxed into his smile for her, teasing, head on one side, wanting favours. Not a giving smile, it wasn’t, though. An asking one.
    Ida struggled into her shoes and the porter came back andwheeled her luggage outside. Buddy didn’t tip him enough, and the porter said, ‘That’ll be two bucks more, mac,’ quite happily. In England the porter wouldn’t say, ‘Give me another two quid, mate.’ He would just walk away and hate you.
    While Buddy went to get the car, Ida stood with her bags, loosening first one shoe, then the other, and panicked again. What if he never came back? What if he was so browned off that he got into the two-tone blue Plymouth and drove away and left her in a foreign land? She couldn’t just turn round and take the plane back to England, as if it were the tube.
    In England, she had thought she was quite tough, fighting for survival, fending off her family, getting that job in the hotel, chucking Jackson when it was obvious he was going to be nailed for the car theft. Here, she felt like a beginner. Buddy seemed to need her. That was surprising. She needed him, and until she’d found her feet here, she would have to get used to that. A dependant, she would be, as an Air Force wife, and that was how she felt, as cars and taxis and buses crowded past, three abreast, or stopped and picked up passengers, until finally she would be alone on this bit of pavement with her borrowed suitcases, which looked revoltingly shabby compared to other people’s luggage.
    â€˜Walked out on you, has he, Ida?’ Wally grabbed her arm and squeezed it. He was a great one for grabbing and touching and moving his foot about under the table. ‘Come on with me, then, ho ho.’ He wagged his head roguishly, and winked at the man in the black suit, who looked Ida up and down very coolly and said, ‘C’mon, Wal, better get a cab right away if we’re going to make that meeting.’
    â€˜Can’t leave this little lady alone.’
    â€˜My friend is fetching the car.’ Fiancé was a stupid word. Ida had not been able to say it, even at work, when she had shown her ring at the tea-break in the housekeeper’s