Secret Sins: A Callie Anson Read Online Free PDF Page A

it.’
    ‘You look knackered,’ said Triona bluntly. ‘How long have you been here?’
    Frances shook her head. ‘Oh, a few hours. I don’t usually work nights, but I was called in. Mrs. Godfrey asked for me, and the nurses knew she didn’t have long.’
    She might not look very wonderful, Frances was aware, but Triona herself looked worse than Frances would have expected, even given the earliness of the hour. Her hair was as tidy and professional-looking as usual, brushed back into a knot, but hereyes were shadowed, with blue smudges beneath them, telling of more than just an hour or two of missed sleep.
    They went back a long way together, did Frances and Triona, though they’d lost touch for a number of years. Frances still found it difficult to equate this elegant and mature woman with the passionate young firebrand Triona had once been. She must, Frances calculated, be a bit over thirty. In her prime, from Frances’ perspective of approaching fifty.
    Frances re-iterated her apologies for the early call. ‘I was really desperate,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know what else to do. The poor old thing was dreadfully upset. And if you’d seen the niece…’
    Triona waved her hand. ‘Don’t worry about it. You didn’t wake me, if that’s what’s bothering you.’
    ‘Are you okay?’ she asked impulsively.
    ‘Fine.’ Triona turned her head away.
    They had reached the cafe, crowded with hospital personnel grabbing something to eat or drink in between various duties. Frances scanned the room and spotted a table about to be vacated. ‘Why don’t you sit there,’ she suggested, ‘and I’ll join the queue. What would you like? Coffee? Tea?’
    ‘Coffee, please.’
    In a few minutes she was back at the table with a tray: coffee and bacon rolls. ‘I thought we ought to have something to eat,’ she said. ‘A bit of breakfast.’ Frances didn’t usually succumb to the lure of bacon rolls, but the smell of the bacon had been too tempting to resist on an empty stomach.
    ‘Thanks.’
    ‘You do eat bacon, don’t you? Heather, my daughter, has become a vegan. She’d probably never speak to me again if she saw me tucking into this.’
    ‘How is Heather?’ Triona took a plate and a mug from the tray and arranged them in front of her.
    ‘Fine, as far as I can tell. You know she’s married? And they’re coming for Christmas. So it won’t be long now.’
    ‘Yes, I remember you telling me.’
    ‘I’m looking forward to it,’ Frances said.
    She was looking forward to it, but that was only part of the truth. Part of her was dreading Christmas. She and Graham were due to meet their new son-in-law, an aging American dropout — with a ponytail—called Zack, who had managed to turn Heather into a self-righteous eschewer of any animal-derived product. It would be nut roast for Christmas this year.
    ‘Graham is well?’ Triona asked.
    ‘Yes, fine. Busy as always.’
    ‘And how is Leo?’
    Her dear friend, Leo Jackson. Frances gave an involuntary sigh. ‘I think he’s as well as could be expected.’
    ‘You know I don’t read newspapers. But I’m aware that they have a short attention span—they must have forgotten about him by now.’
    ‘Pretty much.’ Frances took a fortifying sip of coffee. ‘He’s dropped out of sight, and the press have moved on to their next victim.’
    Triona raised an eyebrow. ‘Gone into hiding, has he?’
    ‘Not exactly. He did at first, of course—the Bishop sent him off to a monastery. For reflection and counselling. But being Leo, he soon got fed up with that. Wanted action, not contemplation .’ She smiled, picturing him: a giant of a man, always on the move. ‘So he volunteered to go to the Caribbean. Hurricane relief work. The last I heard from him, he was helping to rebuild a church that was flattened.’
    She missed him terribly. He’d been a part of her life for years, a friend  who was always there—there with a word of encouragement , a hug. Through the