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.However, I couldn’t do it alone.We had to tell his family, from whom we had kept it all a secret.They just thought our marital problems were down to me being a dope who wouldn’t do the right thing by her man.‘He was terrified,’ she said, shaking her head again.‘More scared of their reaction than of the bookies who were tapping their feet in the background.But there was no way we could sort it out ourselves.In the end he needn’t have worried.’‘Because his family blamed you.’‘He shoots, he scores.But I knew they would anyway.In fact I was banking on it.That way they would pull out all the stops to sort their poor son’s life out and get him back on his feet for a new start, free of that dreadful strumpet.’‘So they made good with the big cheque?’‘Not quite.Prof Ponsonby may have blamed me, but he still knew his son had a lesson to learn, and probably feared that if the slate was wiped clean, Jeremy might start all over again.He paid off the bookies’ debts, but – using his considerable influence – arranged with the hospital that a large – and I mean painful – slice of Jeremy’s monthly wages be paid into his own bank account over two years until the debt was cleared.’‘Why with the hospital? Why not just work out a direct debit?’‘Because Jeremy could stop a direct debit with one phone call.This way there was no opt-out.Jeremy was happy enough with it.I think he had a sense of redemption in paying it off himself, although I didn’t burst the bubble by asking when he would be buying me a new car or replacing any of the various domestic appliances and items of jewellery he had flogged.‘Anyway, I was too busy sorting my life out to want to settle scores.I had decided to get out of medicine a good while back, and had got on to an anaesthetics rotation round about the time Jeremy moved out.It wasn’t easy; if you get your MRCP then switch to anaesthetics, fine, but they don’t like the thought that you’re trying your luck there because you couldn’t hack it in medicine.I was lucky, I suppose.I think my problems were a badly kept secret in the medical community and my desire for a fresh start was appreciated, but what really clinched it was that most of the interviewing consultant anaesthetists hated Professor Ponsonby’s guts.’‘Ah yes,’ said Parlabane, eyes twinkling.‘The pungent odour of politics.So how much did you see of Jeremy after that?’‘Occasional encounter in the canteen or a corridor.Less so in recent months as he had been working over at the George Romero a lot.’‘The what?’‘The George Romanes Hospital.It’s an attached geriatric hospital, a granny-dumping site.Some of us call it the George Romero because it’s full of the living dead.’‘And how was he when you did see him?’‘In a hurry.Before, he would take time to talk to me, I think because he needed me to be nice to him for conscience-salving reassurance.The few times I saw him over the past four, five months, he tended to dash past and make excuses, and when I did buttonhole him he seemed.’‘Nervous? Jumpy?’‘No.Distant, maybe.Guarded.I got the impression he feared – given what we’d been through – that I could see through him, and presumably there was something he didn’t want me to see.I suspected he might have been gambling again, but it could as easily have been the fact that he was going out with that nurse.’‘Why should he worry about you knowing that?’Sarah laughed, the note of albeit mischievous humour like a brief drop of rain on the parched desert of bitterness she had just dragged Parlabane across.‘I was always a bit brutal about doctors going out with nurses.And Jeremy was never done slagging nurses off, so maybe he was afraid of what I would think about him seeing one.’‘But when he was murdered, did you return to the idea that he might have been gambling again?’‘It was there, but it wasn’t writ large.I should emphasise that at the time I didn’t think he was acting weird at all.I just thought it was symptomatic of our separation, evidence that we were drifting apart.But the reason it stuck in my mind was that while I knew where my life was headed, I was curious as to where Jeremy was drifting to.It was clues to that that I was looking for in his flat, a sense of where his life had been going without me.I suppose I still wanted to know where he would have ended up otherwise.‘But part of me couldn’t help suspecting – after the fact – that being murdered was where Jeremy was headed, was where he was going to end up.’FIFTEENBlast.The police had released that malnourished local scruff and were maintaining a worrying silence about who they now sought for Ponsonby’s murder.Worry, worry, worry.Stephen Lime had felt like this before.An ice-walking limbo period, all plans, all hopes, all feelings suspended until further notice.He hated risk, hated the thought that some other factor, some other person could hold the balance of his future.The time before, it had been stupid.Unlucky, certainly, but still rather stupid.But he had got out of it, come away wiser.A cheap lesson, really, and it had come with the first-time bonus of Darren’s seemingly undisposable services [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.However, I couldn’t do it alone.We had to tell his family, from whom we had kept it all a secret.They just thought our marital problems were down to me being a dope who wouldn’t do the right thing by her man.‘He was terrified,’ she said, shaking her head again.‘More scared of their reaction than of the bookies who were tapping their feet in the background.But there was no way we could sort it out ourselves.In the end he needn’t have worried.’‘Because his family blamed you.’‘He shoots, he scores.But I knew they would anyway.In fact I was banking on it.That way they would pull out all the stops to sort their poor son’s life out and get him back on his feet for a new start, free of that dreadful strumpet.’‘So they made good with the big cheque?’‘Not quite.Prof Ponsonby may have blamed me, but he still knew his son had a lesson to learn, and probably feared that if the slate was wiped clean, Jeremy might start all over again.He paid off the bookies’ debts, but – using his considerable influence – arranged with the hospital that a large – and I mean painful – slice of Jeremy’s monthly wages be paid into his own bank account over two years until the debt was cleared.’‘Why with the hospital? Why not just work out a direct debit?’‘Because Jeremy could stop a direct debit with one phone call.This way there was no opt-out.Jeremy was happy enough with it.I think he had a sense of redemption in paying it off himself, although I didn’t burst the bubble by asking when he would be buying me a new car or replacing any of the various domestic appliances and items of jewellery he had flogged.‘Anyway, I was too busy sorting my life out to want to settle scores.I had decided to get out of medicine a good while back, and had got on to an anaesthetics rotation round about the time Jeremy moved out.It wasn’t easy; if you get your MRCP then switch to anaesthetics, fine, but they don’t like the thought that you’re trying your luck there because you couldn’t hack it in medicine.I was lucky, I suppose.I think my problems were a badly kept secret in the medical community and my desire for a fresh start was appreciated, but what really clinched it was that most of the interviewing consultant anaesthetists hated Professor Ponsonby’s guts.’‘Ah yes,’ said Parlabane, eyes twinkling.‘The pungent odour of politics.So how much did you see of Jeremy after that?’‘Occasional encounter in the canteen or a corridor.Less so in recent months as he had been working over at the George Romero a lot.’‘The what?’‘The George Romanes Hospital.It’s an attached geriatric hospital, a granny-dumping site.Some of us call it the George Romero because it’s full of the living dead.’‘And how was he when you did see him?’‘In a hurry.Before, he would take time to talk to me, I think because he needed me to be nice to him for conscience-salving reassurance.The few times I saw him over the past four, five months, he tended to dash past and make excuses, and when I did buttonhole him he seemed.’‘Nervous? Jumpy?’‘No.Distant, maybe.Guarded.I got the impression he feared – given what we’d been through – that I could see through him, and presumably there was something he didn’t want me to see.I suspected he might have been gambling again, but it could as easily have been the fact that he was going out with that nurse.’‘Why should he worry about you knowing that?’Sarah laughed, the note of albeit mischievous humour like a brief drop of rain on the parched desert of bitterness she had just dragged Parlabane across.‘I was always a bit brutal about doctors going out with nurses.And Jeremy was never done slagging nurses off, so maybe he was afraid of what I would think about him seeing one.’‘But when he was murdered, did you return to the idea that he might have been gambling again?’‘It was there, but it wasn’t writ large.I should emphasise that at the time I didn’t think he was acting weird at all.I just thought it was symptomatic of our separation, evidence that we were drifting apart.But the reason it stuck in my mind was that while I knew where my life was headed, I was curious as to where Jeremy was drifting to.It was clues to that that I was looking for in his flat, a sense of where his life had been going without me.I suppose I still wanted to know where he would have ended up otherwise.‘But part of me couldn’t help suspecting – after the fact – that being murdered was where Jeremy was headed, was where he was going to end up.’FIFTEENBlast.The police had released that malnourished local scruff and were maintaining a worrying silence about who they now sought for Ponsonby’s murder.Worry, worry, worry.Stephen Lime had felt like this before.An ice-walking limbo period, all plans, all hopes, all feelings suspended until further notice.He hated risk, hated the thought that some other factor, some other person could hold the balance of his future.The time before, it had been stupid.Unlucky, certainly, but still rather stupid.But he had got out of it, come away wiser.A cheap lesson, really, and it had come with the first-time bonus of Darren’s seemingly undisposable services [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]