When Will There Be Good News? Read Online Free PDF

hundreds and she Was always suddenly coming out with 'Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John' or 'Georgie Porgie pudding and pie'. She knew a lot of stuff that was very English and quite foreign to Reggie, who had been brought up on 'Katie Bairdie had a coo', and 'A fine wee lassie, a bonnie wee lassie was bonny wee Jeannie McCall'.
    Ifthe baby was asleep when she phoned, Dr Hunter asked Reggie to put the dog on instead. ('I forgot to mention something,' Dr Hunter said at the end of their 'interview' and Reggie thought, uh-oh, the baby's got two heads, the house is on the edge of a cliff, her husband's a crazy psycho, but Dr Hunter said, 'We have a dog. Do you like dogs?'
    'Totally. Love 'em. Really. Sweartogod.')
    Although the dog couldn't speak it seemed to understand the concept of phone conversations (,Hello, puppy, how's my gorgeous girl?') better than the baby did and it listened alertly to Dr Hunter's voice while Reggie held the receiver to its ear.
    Reggie had been alarmed when she first saw Sadie -a huge German shepherd who looked as if she should be guarding a building site. 'Neil was worried about how the dog would react when the baby came along,' Dr Hunter said. 'But I would trust her with my life, with the baby's life. I've known Sadie longer than I've known anyone except for Neil. I had a dog when I was a child but it died and then my father wouldn't let me get another one. He's dead now too, so it just goes to show.'
    Reggie wasn't sure what it went to show. 'Sorry,' Reggie said. 'For your loss.' Like they said in police dramas on TV She'd meant for the dead dog but Dr Hunter took it to mean her father. 'Don't be,' she said. 'He outlived himself a long time ago. Call me Jo.' Dr Hunter had quite a thing about dogs. 'Laika,' she would say, 'the first dog in space. She died of heat and stress after a few hours. She was rescued from an animal centre, she must have thought she was going to a home, to a family, and instead they sent her to the loneliest death in the world. How sad.'
    Dr Hunter's father continued a half-life in his books -he had been a writer -and Dr Hunter said he had once been very fashionable (,Famous in his day,' she laughed) but his books hadn't 'stood the test of time'. 'This is all that's left of him now,' she said, leafing through a musty book titled The Shopkeeper. 'Nothing of my mother left at all,' Dr Hunter said. 'Sometimes I think how nice it would be to have a brush o . R a co~b: an object that she touched every day, that was par t of her hfe. But It s all gone. Don't take anything for granted, Reggie.'
    'No fear of that, Dr H.'
    'Look away and it's gone.'
    'I know, believe me.'
    Dr Hunter had relegated a pile of her father's novels to an unstabl e heap in the corner of the little windowless boxroom on the top floor. It was a big cupboard really, 'not a room at all', Dr Hunter said, although actually it was bigger than Reggie's bedroom in Gorgie. Dr Hunter called it 'the junk repository' and it was full of all kinds of t~ings that no one knew what to do with -a single ski, a hockey stIck, an old duvet, a broken computer printer, a portable television that didn't work (Reggie had tried) and a large number ofornaments that had been Christmas or wedding presents. 'Quelle horreurf' Dr Hunter laughed when she occasionally poked her head in there. 'Some of this stuff is truly hideous,' she said to Reggie. Hideous or not, she couldn't throw them away because they were gifts and 'gifts had to be honoured'.
    'Except for Trojan horses,' Reggie said.
    'But, on the other hand, don't look a gift horse in the mouth,' Dr Hunter said.
    'Perhaps sometimes you should,' Reggie said.
    'Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes,' Dr Hunter said.
    'Totally.'
    N . O t honoured for ever, Reggie noticed, because every time a plastIC charity bag slipped through the letterbox Dr Hunter filled it with items from the junk repository and put it -rather guiltily -out on the doorstep. 'No matter how much I get rid of there's never