A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [78]
She was very ashamed of that now. Dan certainly didn’t deserve what she’d put him through – he washed her, dressed her, cooked and cleaned. And all the time he’d been so comforting and understanding, even when she was impossible and he wasn’t a hundred per cent himself. But thankfully now, aside from the limitations of her arm being in plaster, she felt like her old self again.
The doctor had given Dan the all-clear at the end of last week. Apart from the bald patch on the back of his head where they’d shaved it to stitch the wound, and some bruising on his chest, he seemed none the worse for his ordeal, and he’d gone back to work on Monday. Fifi missed him; the days seemed very long and empty without him around. She wished he hadn’t agreed to work all day today, but he said they needed the money and she supposed he was only being sensible.
But being alone had forced her to do things herself. She’d even mastered peeling potatoes with her left hand, and writing letters, though they looked as though a child had written them, and cleaning up. She could use the fingers on her right hand to support things, but they were stiff still and her arm ached if she used them for too long.
Despite her mother’s gloomy prediction, her job had been kept open for her, in fact she’d had flowers and a very sympathetic letter from her boss. She hoped that she could go back at the beginning of September when the plaster came off.
A child crying somewhere made Fifi lean forward in her seat, but she couldn’t see the child outside, or work out which house the crying might be coming from. The milk float came rattling along and drowned it out. She watched the milkman leap out, grab a handful of bottles, then run from door to door depositing them and picking up the empties.
Frank’s voice wafted up to her as he called to the milkman to ask if he had any eggs on the float. Then another male voice joined theirs, asking Frank if he had last night’s Evening Standard. She guessed it was Mr Helass, two doors down, but without leaning out of the window she couldn’t see her side of the street.
One good thing to come out of both her and Dan ending up in hospital was that they’d got to know so many of their neighbours far better. As Dan had pointed out to her, all of them had been incredibly kind. Miss Diamond had made several meals for them, including the beef casserole Fifi had been mean enough to mock on her first day home. Stan had got their shopping, and lots of other neighbours had brought them newspapers, magazines, fruit and chocolates. Frank and Miss Diamond had been running up and down stairs constantly for the first few days, wanting to help in any way they could.
Yet it was Yvette Fifi felt most indebted to. She came over every day for the first two weeks. She did whatever she saw needed doing, whether that was changing the sheets on the bed or a bit of washing up or ironing, in a gentle, unpushy way that didn’t make them feel awkward. But it was the comfort she gave Fifi when she was at her lowest that helped the most.
Whoever would have thought that a distinctly odd French spinster would be the only person capable of getting her to talk about how she felt? Yvette alone seemed to understand all the conflicting feelings Fifi had experienced when she found she was pregnant. She didn’t pooh-pooh Fifi’s belief that it was her fault she lost the baby. Instead she talked through these things, making Fifi see that imagining it was a punishment because she hadn’t been ecstatic with delight right from conception was ridiculous, but at the same time quite normal, and that most women who miscarried felt much the same.
She was equally wise about the rift between Fifi and her mother, and suggested that the causes were almost certainly based on something in Fifi’s childhood.
‘If she always had to worry