Free The Old House on the Corner by Maureen Lee Page A

seven years younger than you.’ Despite himself, he was beginning to feel sorry for her. He would sooner she ranted and raged, attacked him, than face him with her tears.
    ‘I want to die,’ she sobbed. ‘If you don’t stop seeing this woman, Steve, I’ll kill meself.’
    A few days later, Steve’s supervisor called him into his office. Ken Crook was an ex-sergeant major in the Marines, a hearty, red-faced man in his sixties whose job would also shortly disappear. Lately, Steve had spent most of his time loading equipment and furniture into vans, there being hardly any patients left to push around.
    ‘Sit down, son, close the door,’ Ken said when Steve entered the room that was hardly bigger than a cupboard. He grinned amiably. ‘Seems like you’ve been a naughty boy. Either that, or someone’s got it in for you.’ He threw a letter across the desk. ‘That came this morning.’
    ‘Dear Sir,’ Steve read, ‘This is to inform you that Mr Steve Cartwright is having an affair with a married woman. Yours faithfully.’ There was no signature, nothing to say where it had come from, although he recognized Brenda’s sharp, pointed writing and felt a flood of bitter anger.
    ‘Short and to the point, eh!’ Ken guffawed. ‘Well, all I can say is, good luck to you, son. What people do out of working hours is none of the hospital’s business. Anyroad, there won’t be a bloody hospital by the end of the month. We’ll all be out of a job.’ He gave Steve a lewd wink. ‘I only wish it were me having the affair.’
    Kathleen’s husband and one of the doctors in the surgery where she worked had received similar letters. ‘Michael already knows and Dennis Burke asked if I was sleeping with a patient. Once he realized I wasn’t, hedidn’t care.’ She shuddered delicately. ‘But it’s horrible, Steve. Last night, the phone went twice, but there was no one there.’ She went on to say she’d taken the opportunity of giving in her notice. ‘It might be best if we moved away from Huddersfield and lived somewhere else. If we stay, I doubt if that malevolent daughter of yours will give us any peace. What do you think?’
    He didn’t tell Jean what Brenda had done. Jean was a broken woman. Day after day he would come home and find her in bed, her face haggard with weeping, telling him that she loved him, pleading with him to stay. She’d had her hair permed, bought a couple of nice frocks, but it only made her seem even more pathetic as she tried to compete with his beautiful Kathleen.
    He wanted to leave, find himself lodgings of some sort, while he waited for his job to come to an end and his life with Kathleen to start, but it seemed cowardly to shirk the small amount of responsibility he had left.
    For some reason, the girls kept well out of the way. Perhaps they thought that, left alone with their heartbroken mother, his own heart would be touched and he’d stay. Although the guilt was piling on him, choking him, the idea of staying with this sad, weeping woman didn’t enter his head. He was too much looking forward to being with Kathleen, although when they were together, his mind would be pre-occupied with Jean, who’d make herself ill if she didn’t pull herself together. It reminded him of the business with the new house. She hadn’t wanted one when the money was there, but all hell was let loose when she demanded a house and it was too late. Now she was doing the same thing with her husband.
    Kathleen had been writing after vacancies advertised in the medical press. There was, as always, a shortage ofdoctors, and replies usually arrived by return of post inviting her for interview.
    ‘Where would you like to live?’ she asked. ‘Brighton, Broadstairs, the Isle of Wight or Liverpool?’
    ‘Liverpool,’ Steve said instantly. It was a working-class city and he’d prefer to live amongst his own kind, not in some toffee-nosed, middle-class area where he’d feel out of place.
    ‘Good.’ She looked