The Fetch Read Online Free PDF

though, then closed the article, before creeping gently into bed beside Susan. She was breathing deeply and slowly, but he saw a glimmer of light reflected from her half-opened eyes.

    Early in the morning Susan crept out of bed and went to the downstairs telephone. Shaking badly, she dialled Dr Wilson’s private number. He sounded tired and distinctly fraught when he answered, and was not pleased when Susan began to press him for the telephone number of Michael’s birth-mother.
    ‘I explained the situation. Total confidentiality. And she does
not
want contact with you.’
    ‘I think she’s
making
contact with me. Did you give her our address?’
    ‘Certainlynot!’
    ‘Dr Wilson, please!’ Susan’s eyes stung and she blinked back the tears. She realized she was becoming anxious again, and took two or three very deep breaths. ‘Dr Wilson … All I want to do is talk to her. Just to ask her to leave us alone.’
    There was silence for a moment. Wilson was puzzled.
    ‘I’m sure you’re wrong, Susan. She can’t know where you are. The arrangements we made were
quite
definite. And I don’t need to remind you that we have stepped outside the law. Now
please
. Don’t press me. Michael’s mother does
not
want to be in touch with you. In fact, I happen to know that she’s abroad at the moment …’
    Susan sat down heavily. Abroad? Or is that what she had told Wilson? A ruse?
    She replaced the receiver and sat, silent and shaky, until Richard came down.

FOUR
    The party was verysuccessful, although it had been a tense and gloomy morning of preparation and a frantic dash to the church for the ceremony. Richard began to relax.
    He was pleased to see Susan laughing as well. She spent most of her time in the sitting room with Michael and her friend Jenny, but trusted Jenny enough to leave Michael in her care while she took various children to her studio room and showed them her collection of odd and ancient dolls.
    But in the way of these things, the party took over, an entity unto itself, and a form of chaos ruled the middle of the afternoon. At four o’clock Richard had lost touch with reality. It came as something of a relief. He had been fighting hard to keep a semblance of dignity and decorum in the festivities, but social entropy in the form of active children and equally active adults had finally taken its toll.
    His own family was bad enough. But Susan’s was something else …
    And their mutual friends were the worst of all! It was a case of ‘any excuse to have a party’, and party they had. With a vengeance.
    Richard wandered through the orchard at the bottom of his garden. A girl of mature looks but dressed in doll-like clothes breezed across the lawn, arms outstretched, golden hair flowing, an Isadora Duncan of mischief, heading for the hidden places of the garden, where childish screams told Richard that the medieval stonework of the old church at Ruckinghurst had been found – a few pieces only, which he had acquired from an antique shop and which he intended to make into a garden feature. The stones were now objects of fantasy and fantasizing. He heard a cry of, ‘There might be bones in the stones, the bones of giants.’ He left the excavation, confident that any giants’ bones in the sandstone would resist attemptsto remove them.
    In the kitchen the talk was of cricket, socialist politics and immunology. In the corner of the room a friend of Susan’s sat slumped in a chair, talking loudly about the trouble he was having with his publishers, using his reeking cigarette to emphasize each point. He hadn’t eaten and the champagne had gone to his head. His only audience was a child of about two who sat playing with bricks close by, watching the man with total bemusement.
    The sink was full of bottles.
    There was broken glass on the floor which Richard quickly swept up, despite being nearly bowled over by a gang of children playing a form of chase. The rule seemed to be: ‘If I catch you,