Past Tense Read Online Free PDF Page B

determinedly broad-minded.
    â€˜So what is he like, this grandson?’
    â€˜Quite nice,’ said Janet, frowning. ‘His clothes were a bit…well, un-English – and they didn’t fit very well. You see, he’s been working out in Lasserta for ages.’
    â€˜That’s somewhere in the East, isn’t it?’
    â€˜I think so,’ said Janet uncertainly, privately again resolving to get the atlas out as soon as she could. ‘He’s an engineer or something and both his parents were killed in an air crash out there two or three years ago, which is why his grandmother Josephine had to go into the nursing home.’
    â€˜That figures,’ said Dawn, adding sympathetically, ‘but it must have been a bit hard, all the same.’
    â€˜She was old, of course,’ said Janet a trifle defensively. ‘I mean, if she’d wanted us to visit her there she’d only have had to say and I’m sure we’d have gone. After all, she gave the Berebury Nursing Home our address, so she knew where we were, even if we didn’t know where she was.’
    â€˜That’s very odd,’ mused Dawn. ‘I mean, if she hadn’t any other family around you’d have thought she’d have been glad to have had any visitors at all, whoever they were.’ Realising that this didn’t sound exactly flattering, she added quickly, ‘But they say that the very old do get a bit funny, don’t they?’
    â€˜All that the grandson – he’s called Joe Short by the way—’
    â€˜Just like her,’ observed Dawn.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Didn’t you say she was called Josephine?’
    â€˜Oh, yes, I see what you mean now. Josephine and Joseph. All her grandson said to me was that she had got very deaf which had made telephoning a bit difficult as time went by.’
    â€˜He could have written.’
    â€˜I expect he did,’ said Janet. ‘No, wait a minute. I think they said at the nursing home that her eyesight had gone, too.’
    â€˜ Sans everything…’ said Dawn.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Shakespeare,’ said her friend dreamily. ‘ As You Like It . We did it in year twelve, remember? I loved Rosalind. That was the play with “ Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything…” in it. So sad.’
    Janet shuddered. ‘Don’t. It must be awful to get like that.’
    â€˜You must be able to eat still, though,’ countered Dawn, who was noticeably fond of her food. ‘Or you’d die.’
    Janet wasn’t listening. She couldn’t get back to telling Dawn about the funeral quickly enough. ‘And afterwards, we went back to the Almstone Towers and then…’ Her voice trailed away.
    â€˜And then…’ prompted Dawn.
    â€˜He sort of melted away and I didn’t see the going of him.’ She hesitated. ‘Now what I can’t decide, Dawn, is whether to ask him over here. What do you think? He seems to be quite alone.’
    â€˜And so are you,’ said Dawn perceptively.
    â€˜Exactly,’ said Janet, ‘and I don’t quite like to…not without Bill being here, if you know what I mean.’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Dawn. ‘I know what you mean.’
    â€˜After all, I don’t know him at all. I didn’t even know about him, did I?’ Janet brightened. ‘I expect he’ll be in touch, though, all the same.’
    She hadn’t realised how soon that would be. She had barely put the telephone down before it rang again and a rather husky voice said that it was Joe Short.
    â€˜Hullo, there,’ she said uncertainly.
    â€˜I’m sorry I didn’t see you again before you left the hotel,’ he apologised. ‘I got nabbed by an old friend of Granny’s from the Rowlettian Society. I’ve no idea who he was but he said he had known her very well in the past—’
    â€˜Hang on,’ Janet