Free Secret Sins: A Callie Anson by Kate Charles Page B

gender. She glanced at Morag and caught another shiver. ‘Listen, if you’d rather go to a caff and warm up with a coffee—’
    ‘I’m all right.’ She smiled. ‘Wee Bella wouldn’t be best pleased with that. Look at her—she’s having a grand time.’

    The worst ones, thought Neville, were the ones who screamed and shouted and refused to believe what they were being told. Rachel Norton wasn’t like that. She sat very still, her arms wrapped round her huge belly, and shook with silent sobs.
    He stood awkwardly, wishing like anything that Yolanda Fish were there. Sid Cowley, in his new subordinate role, wasn’t proving very useful. It was if he had opted out: your case now, Guv. You deal with it.
    Neville caught Cowley‘s eye and mouthed the word ‘tea.’
    Cowley appeared grateful for the chance to escape; he headed for the back of the house.
    To Neville the room seemed stuffy and overheated, its radiator chugging away efficiently. After the damp chill outside, it was like a hothouse in there. Neville felt a trickle of sweat down the middle of his back. He closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight of Rachel Norton’s distorted face. Her eyes were screwed up, her mouth twisted. She wasn’t having the baby right here on the spot, was she?
    After what seemed like an age, Sid Cowley returned with an inexpertly assembled tea tray and put it down on the coffee table. At least he’d remembered the sugar. Neville poured the tea into an incongruous Homer Simpson mug and spooned in three sugars.
    Rachel Norton just looked at him, still saying nothing. She made no effort to take the mug from him when he held it out to her, forcing Neville to kneel beside her and wrap her hands round it, guiding it to her mouth. ‘Drink it,’ he ordered. ‘It will do you good.’
    She complied with a sip, then grimaced. ‘I hate sweet tea.’
    ‘It’s good for shock.’
    ‘Too hot. Too sweet.’ Rachel’s words caught in her throat. Another gush of tears followed. ‘Trevor likes…liked…two sugars.’
    There was nothing to say to that.
    ‘His favourite mug,’ Rachel added, swallowing hard. ‘Homer Simpson. His hero.’
    On the mug, the round-bellied man with yellow skin and three hairs on the top of his head held up a can of beer. ‘Everything’s better with Duff,’ it proclaimed.

    ‘There’s a chance that it’s treatable,’ Morag said in her matter-of -fact way. ‘They’re not making any promises, of course, but it isn’t totally hopeless.’
    ‘That’s good,’ Callie said, feeling utterly inadequate.
    ‘But the treatment won’t be pleasant. Lots of drugs with nasty side-effects.’
    Bella trotted on ahead of them through the park, ecstatic to be there, not minding the cold. Callie wished that her ordination training had provided a course on the right thing to say in moments like this; as it was, she had to feel her way through it, relying on common sense and empathy—and on God. ‘Isn’t it lucky that your son is nearby. Your family. They’ll help you through it, Morag.’
    The older woman’s laugh was loud, but totally without mirth. ‘Angus? You must be joking.’

    Yolanda Fish had not always been in the police force. For more than twenty years she had been a midwife. Then, after the notorious murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence and the enquiry which followed, the Metropolitan Police had made an active effort to recruit minorities and train them as Family Liaison Officers in accordance with the enquiry’s formal recommendations . Yolanda’s husband Eli, a career policeman, had learned about the initiative and had encouraged her to apply.
    Ready for a mid-life career change, she’d never looked back. ‘It was either this or the Church,’ she often quipped. ‘And I don’t look good in black.’
    The job fitted her like a glove. She had all the necessary qualities in abundance: compassion, tact, common sense. Yolanda was, in the true sense of the word, a wise woman, and a caring one. Her