Never Say Goodbye Read Online Free PDF Page A

thinking about it if she hadn’t read a piece in the paper this morning about how many women’s lives could be saved if they’d only get tested as soon as something unusual showed up.
    She wasn’t going to ignore it any longer. She’d ring the surgery tomorrow to make an appointment, which she probably wouldn’t get for a week or more, and by then the swelling would no doubt have gone down of its own accord. If it had, she’d cancel her session to make room for someone who really needed it.
    ‘I’m not hiding anything,’ she told Lily firmly. ‘Now let me get ready, will you? We’ve got a vicar to see and a wedding to start arranging.’

Chapter Two
    ‘ THIS ONE! THIS one! Please Auntie Bel, can we have this one?’
    Isabella Monkton looked down at her niece and nephew’s upturned faces, and so much love surged into her smile that it broke into a laugh. ‘But it’s huge,’ she protested. ‘It’ll take us a week to decorate it.’
    ‘That’s all right, we’ll help,’ seven-year-old Oscar promised, turning to his five-year-old sister for support.
    ‘Yes, we will,’ Nell agreed earnestly. Her adorable blue eyes were so like her mother’s, Isabella’s twin sister, that Bel sometimes felt Natalia was looking back at her from wherever she was now. Nell had her mother’s silky blonde hair too, and her rosebud mouth. In fact she was a little replica of Natalia, or Isabella, depending which of the twins you were looking at. Whether Nell had also inherited something of her mother’s character, only time would tell, Bel guessed, though she was certainly starting to show early signs of it. ‘And if we have a really big tree,’ Nell was explaining knowledgeably, ‘Father Christmas will definitely be able to find us.’
    ‘Mm,’ Bel responded, as though assessing the merit of this. ‘And I suppose there’ll be more room for him to leave presents underneath it, as well?’
    Oscar’s face lit up as Nell jumped up and down in glee.
    Turning to the young lad who’d been wandering up and down the rows of Christmas trees with them, helping to make the choice, Bel said, ‘It seems we’re going to have this one. Can you deliver?’
    ‘Of course,’ he replied, giving Oscar a wink. ‘I’ll bring it in my sleigh, shall I?’
    Nell gasped excitedly. ‘Have you got a sleigh?’ she cried. ‘Auntie Bel, he’s got a sleigh!’
    ‘Don’t you need snow to drive a sleigh?’ Oscar pointed out.
    The lad looked perplexed. ‘You’re right,’ he decided. ‘So if we haven’t had any by the time I’m ready to bring this, I’ll put it on the lorry. How does that sound?’
    ‘Good idea,’ Oscar agreed. ‘Can you bring it today? We don’t live very far from here, do we Auntie Bel?’
    Loving that they considered her home theirs, and why wouldn’t they when they spent so much time there, she said, ‘Just a couple of miles. We’re on Bay View Road, at the Westleigh end. Do you know it?’
    ‘I sure do,’ he responded in his broad West Country burr. ‘We’ve got a few more deliveries scheduled to go up that way today, so I’d say it should be with you by five, six at the latest. Will you be home by then?’
    The children’s anxious eyes came to Bel.
    ‘We’ll make sure we are,’ she told them. ‘Now, I guess we’d better pay for this eight-foot monster and choose some more ornaments, because I’m sure we don’t have enough to fill it.’
    ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Nell cried, already skipping back towards the garden centre’s Christmas grotto.
    ‘And you said we could have a hot chocolate,’ Oscar reminded her, as they followed.
    ‘And you were going to decide whether you want one here, or down on Kesterly seafront,’ she reminded them.
    ‘Here,’ they echoed together.
    After filling a small trolley with dozens of glittering stars, baubles, angels and lights, and handing over almost two hundred pounds at the checkout, Bel steered her little charges into the crowded cafeteria. Being the first