The Daughter Read Online Free PDF

tail. His opaque eyes track me as I cross the kitchen. His neck is warm under my fingers when I clip on the lead; the deep fur has toughened with age. I shove the notebook and pencil into a pocket. The back door of the kitchen opens into the garden, which leads onto fields. Mother gave me the cottage before she died. It was lucky that she did; it gave me somewhere to hide.
    Lucky. Good luck, this is my lucky day, wish me luck. A trivial word to describe the weight of those swings of fate that open or close against you, like great doors banging in the wind. Naomi never thought she would need luck. She thought she had been born lucky. I thought she had been too; I thought we all had been. Only a year ago, I thought we had everything.
    It’s hard to see exactly where it began to change. I go back, over and over again, to different points in time, to work out where I could have altered fate. I could pick almost any moment in my life and twist it to a different shape. If I hadn’t decided to become a doctor, if Ted hadn’t taken the books out of my arms in the library years ago, if I hadn’t been rushing that afternoon in my office, if I’d had more time. Time was running out but I didn’t know it then.
    I climb the cliff path, waiting as Bertie jumps stiffly up the ledges of gray rock. At the top the wind blows spray against my mouth like rain. It seeps between my lips, salty, more like tears than rain.
    My mind goes to the afternoon in my doctor life, when the clock started ticking down the hours of Naomi’s last days with us. The afternoon I met Jade, the chili in my eye.
    Sitting on a rock, the sea and sky stretching in front of me, I pull the sketchbook from my pocket and begin to draw a toy giraffe, smudging the coat and making the edge of one ear ragged. Bertie settles to wait, his head on my feet, whining softly from time to time.
    On the second of November a year ago I had no way of knowing that we had only seventeen days left.
    BRISTOL, 2009
    SEVENTEEN DAYS BEFORE
    It had been raining all day. Patients were coming in off the narrow street with dripping clothes and wet hair, letting in the swish and rumble of the main road at the end of our little cul-­de-­sac. Our practice was near the docks, set back a little between a pine furniture shop and a rubbish-­strewn parking lot where the weeds grew high and thin through patches of broken tarmac. The streets nearby were dense with small Victorian terrace houses; when I drove to work, nudging the car through the narrowing streets, I would glimpse the dark water off the docks between old warehouses.
    The practice was popular, or perhaps just convenient. The small waiting room was always crammed with patients, though the few minutes we had for each never seemed enough. In the allotted seven minutes it was almost impossible to give ­people what they wanted. All the same, I thought they knew we were on their side; at least I thought so until that afternoon. I remember quite a lot; in particular I remember the smell.
    By late afternoon, my room smelled bad. Sweat, blood, and stale alcohol. Flesh took on a greenish color in the harsh overhead light. The blinds were drawn over the window to keep out the street, and in here it was as though that world didn’t exist. It was hot. Toys were scattered over the floor. The basin in the corner was full of bloody metal, covered over with blue paper towels.
    I was tired. Mrs. Bartlett’s examination had been difficult—­it had been hard to see the cervical polyp for the bleeding—­and she would need referral to a clinic tomorrow. I glanced at the list on my screen, and as I cleared the basin, then washed my hands, I thought about the next patient. A temporary resident. Yoska Jones. Polish? I yawned into the little mirror above the sink; my hair had escaped the clasp and was wildly curling around my face. My mascara had smudged again. I narrowed my eyes at my reflection, hoping his