Читать книгу The Day I Lost You: A heartfelt, emotion-packed, twist-filled read - Fionnuala Kearney - Страница 19

‘Charles Everard is insisting on seeing you. He’s refused to let the carers in and won’t accept anybody else. Will you have time to slip by and see him after morning surgery?’ Sarah, Theo’s PA, spoke through his open door and above the sounds of the busy waiting room opposite.

Theo looked at his watch, just as his mobile phone rang, his home number showing up on the display. He nodded agreement at Sarah, gestured to her to close the door behind her and answered his phone.

‘Bea, everything okay?’ It was, he realized, the first time she had ever called him, and coming so soon after his discussion with Finn, his heart was in his mouth.

‘Everything good, Theo. You wish I do shop for you?’ Bea’s English, though certainly better than his Spanish, sometimes left him feeling like he was playing charades.

‘Food,’ she continued. ‘You wish I get big food?’

She was offering to do the weekly food shop. He rubbed his eyes with his forefinger and thumb and sighed. The cupboards were indeed bare. He just didn’t seem to have the time to do everything he always did and add in the things Harriet used to do too. Everything food-related had been her domain. Since she had left, quick meals had been the order of the day, except on those rare occasions when he’d had time to buy fresh food, in which case Bea would always cook.

Her doing the food shopping made perfect sense. She had use of the car, the one Harriet hadn’t taken to London with her. Why not? Promising that he would drop some money off to her at lunchtime, he hung up the phone, trying not to think about how even buying food looked different since Harriet left.

Thirty minutes later he was driving to seventy-year-old Charles Everard’s house. Once a well-known artist, the man had lost his wife to cancer nine months earlier. Since then, he had been depressed, telling Theo that the light had gone out in his life. A recurring, chronic leg ulcer meant he had also been housebound for weeks, which didn’t help.

After the third knock on the door, Mr Everard answered. ‘Thanks for coming, Doc,’ he said, allowing Theo to pass by him along a narrow hallway lined with stacks of old magazines.

‘Bad day, Charles?’ he asked.

‘All bad days,’ his patient muttered in between bouts of spluttering.

‘That sounds rough; we’d better have a look at that chest.’ Theo watched as Charles took a seat in the only free chair in his living room, the sofa obscured by books and canvases and scattered painting-related paraphernalia. The television was on; a documentary about monkeys had been muted and Theo was momentarily distracted by primates scurrying across the screen. When he turned to face Charles, the man already had his shirt rolled up, exposing his skinny frame.

‘Can’t seem to shift this cough.’

Theo listened through his stethoscope, heard the rattle immediately. ‘Think you’ll need a course of antibiotics to shift it, Charles. I have a few to start you off, but Elaine will have a prescription filled for you.’

Charles wrinkled his nose. ‘Don’t want no women in here.’

‘Elaine is a friend and colleague, Charles. I trust her. She’s the only one who can get here every day and you have to let her in to dress that leg. No more of this ignoring her. She’s here to help take care of you.’

‘How’s your boy?’ Charles asked as he rolled his shirt down his shrinking middle.