The Middle Child Read Online Free PDF

cried, storming out into the back garden.  She instantly lit a cigarette and slugged more of the whisky down her throat.  The heat blazed a trail from her tongue to her stomach.
         "Alex, will you please come inside and give Beth a hand?" Catherine said, closing the kitchen door behind her.
         "You may be able to enter into this charade and pretend that we’ve all lost our dear, sweet mother but I refuse to be a part of it."
         "Forget her.  It’s Beth who needs us now.  It’s important to her…"
         "I don’t give a shit.  Don’t you get it, Catherine?  You two are nothing to me.  You’re strangers.  I don’t know either one of you."
         Alex saw the hurt that flashed over Catherine’s features.
         "You don’t mean that," Catherine said, uncertainly.  "We’re sisters.  We have to help and support each other."
         "I don’t need your fucking support.  I’ve managed quite well without it and she chose to stay here."
         Alex could see the effect her words were having on Catherine but she didn’t care.  Too many years had passed since any relationship between the three of them meant anything.  "We’re strangers, Catherine.  Accept it and stop trying to gloss over it.  Let Beth play the grieving daughter and you help her along but don’t expect anything from me."
         "You came," Catherine said, gently.
         "I’m here to make sure that the evil bitch is really dead at last.  Now I’m sure of that I’m going to get on the next train back to Birmingham and resume my life, safe in the knowledge that I never have to give that woman another thought."
         "Do you really think it’s that easy?"
         "It was before today."
         "So, you never thought about it?"
         "Just fuck off back in there and play the good Samaritan.  You don’t want to dessert Beth again like you did all those years ago."
         Alex saw Catherine’s face pale and she knew she had struck a nerve.
         "Is that what you think?"
         Alex stuck her chin forward defiantly.
         "You think I just left you both?"
         "I don't give a shit what you did to me.  I was fine.  Beth was weaker.  She needed you."
         Alex felt emotion burning at the back of her throat.  She swallowed the rest of the whisky to expunge it.
         "But I didn’t…"
         "Save it for someone who cares," Alex spat, regaining hold of the anger and bitterness that had kept her insulated for years.
         "Just come inside and help Beth…"
         "Fuck off and leave me alone.  She chose to do the Florence Nightingale thing and stay with the evil bitch for all these years so she can wallow in the grief now."
         "You can’t mean that," Catherine said, looking horrified.
         "Of course I mean it.  She reeks of martyrdom and self-sacrifice.  She had plenty of opportunities to get away and she chose to stay."
         "You know full well that mother had her first stroke within three months of you running away.  Beth saw it as her duty to take care of her."
         "It was her duty to stuff a pillow over the bitch’s mouth and suffocate her."
         "Don’t say that," Catherine protesting, casting a glance at the kitchen window.  Beth looked out, an anxious expression on her face.  The vulnerability and fear in her eyes hit Alex somewhere beneath her ribcage but she wasn’t sure where.
         "She hates it when we argue," Catherine observed, reaching for Alex’s cigarette.  She took a draw and then stamped it out.
         "Yeah, and we both know the consequences of that, don’t we?"
         Alex lit another cigarette and offered one to Catherine.  They smoked in silence.  Alex guessed that they were locked in the same memory of the devastating event that had taken place when Beth was eight.  It was a day that neither of them would ever forget.
         Catherine threw the cigarette into the