Free Promise the Doctor by Marjorie Norrell Page A

back lanes of the terraces, and Cranberry Terrace was no exception.
    ‘All right,’ Joy agreed cheerfully. ‘Don’t blow your horn—it’s after hours. I’ll just give one ring on the bell and then Mum’ll know we’re back. I always do that when I’m coming in late.’
    She hurried out of the car and gave one sharp press to the bell in the door, then she was back in the car and beside Pete again even as the hall light came on and she knew Aileen was waiting, ready to put a match to the gas. ‘Been quite a day.’ The car was safely in the garage and Joy stood by the folding doors at the back, waiting for Pete to reach up and to lock them. ‘But I’ve enjoyed it.’
    He pulled the doors closed, reached up for the bolt, then, before she could move, his arms came down and were around her. For a moment Joy felt herself stiffen, then she tried to pull herself from his grasp, but she struggled in vain, and after a moment or so, feeling that such a struggle between herself and Pete was both a ridiculous and an undignified affair, she stood absolutely still.
    ‘That’s better.’ Pete’s voice was almost normal, but his hold on her slender form did not slacken, and she could feel his breath on her cheek, even though she turned her head.
    ‘Joy,’ he went on, suddenly breaking the strained silence which had fallen between them, ‘this isn’t the way I wanted—intended—things to be, not at all. But somehow events recently have pushed me into this. I don’t just mean what happened tonight. I mean everything that’s happened since Miss Barnes left her house and her money to you.’
    ‘It doesn’t make any difference to ... any of us, Pete,’ Joy said firmly, although she knew she was not speaking the truth. It was going to make a great deal of difference, not only to herself but to all of them, Pete included.
    ‘It does.’ Pete was normally a quiet, non-argumentative young man, but just now he was stirred as Joy had never known him to be stirred before. ‘It means, for one thing, that you, all of you, will be going away, going out of my life, unless I’m lucky enough to find some way of following you all later on ... and that doesn’t seem very likely at the present moment. But you know I shall follow you all just as soon as ever I can. You’re all the family I’ve got, Joy. Not that I’m worried about them—although I’m fond enough of you all, you know that. But it’s you I’m thinking of. Just you, Joy.’
    ‘You can come over and see us, just as soon as we get settled, Pete.’ She tried desperately to put things back on their old familiar footing, but he would not listen.
    ‘That isn’t what I mean at all,’ he said doggedly, ‘and you know quite well that it isn’t. I hadn’t intended to say anything like this to you for ages. Not for a few years yet, anyway. Mr. Simpson promised me a partnership in the firm if I “showed promise”, and I was quite content to try and work hard and work up to that in time. Mr. Abbicombe, the insurance broker, told me he could arrange for me to borrow enough money to put into the firm when the time came, and a reasonable way of repayment. Oh,’ he said with a sudden and totally unexpected bitterness she found strangely touching, ‘I’d got it all worked out. I was going to wait until I could have something to show you, something to prove I’d be able to take care of you, to take some of the burdens of the twins and their education, their future, some of the care of Lana from your shoulders ... and then this Miss Barnes has to come along and leave you with a house of your own, something I can’t hope to give you for years and years, and then only with a mortgage tacked on to it, if we’re lucky enough to get a mortgage, that is—and enough money to keep the place going, without it costing you as much as things are costing you now!’
    ‘Pete, I ...’
    ‘I know.’ He gave a despairing groan which was instantly shattered by his next spate of