Read George Barnabas - 04 - Fourth Attempt for Free Online

whip, because I told her as well as you. Anyway it’s not like her to miss a party. She actually likes the vol-au-vents.’
    ‘I’ll talk to her tomorrow.’ George set her jaw. ‘I can’t have — Well, thanks for coming, you two. And tell Jane it’s all right, Alan, I do understand. Throwing up, is she?’ Alan went even redder, if that were possible, and started to stammer. She patted his shoulder affectionately. ‘It’s all right, Alan. We all know, you know. This is a hospital, remember. No secrets here.’
    Indeed, however hard the couple tried to hide the fact that Jane was in the very early stages of a pregnancy, everyone in the department knew about it, and were making snide comments about the speed with which the pair were launching themselves into parenthood. ‘Give her lots of glucose and a hint of salt and she’ll feel better,’ George said.
    She said her goodbyes to Professor Hunnisett, who assured her that he would indeed see her again since this was just a retirement from active clinical practice they were celebrating rather than a total eclipse of all his medical activities.
    ‘The work of the Institute of course often involves your special contribution,’ he said and beamed in a way that she found quite nauseous. Clearly the old boy was hoping to get cut-price work out of the department. Well, he’d have to deal with Ellen Archer, the Business Manager for the lab, not herself; she smiled sweetly at him and said, ‘Of course,’ before escaping downstairs to meet Zack Zacharius.
    As she went she was planning exactly what she’d have to say to Sheila next morning for her defection of duty tonight. Really, she thought furiously, goddamn Sheila. She’s getting too big for her boots altogether. She just took an early evening off and ignored what I told her about tonight. I really must do something about her.

3
              
    Zack wasn’t at the main door when she reached it, and she felt a stab of disappointment. He had tired of waiting for her, she told herself; after all, she’d taken rather longer to escape from the party than she had meant to. But all the same, he could have waited a little longer.
    Oh well, she thought, and pulled her silk jacket a little closer. The weather was unseasonably cool for June and she regretted not wearing something warmer than the red silk. The sooner she got home and into a thick tracksuit in which she could spend her evening curled up on her sofa watching TV, the better. And again she felt a stab of disappointment, but this time because of Gus.
    She’d done all she could to help him get his promotion to Superintendent, and when he’d got the job he most wanted, which was heading the Area Major Incident Team which covered the territory that included Ratcliffe Street nick, she had celebrated with him with enormous glee. But then she’d told him to get the job sorted first and himself well settled before they returned to the suggestion that had been made, in the heat of the investigation that had led to his getting the job, that they should be married. She had felt suddenly unsure of taking so massive a step, afraid of upsetting the status quo in which they were so comfortable. Well, comfortable most of the time.
    And now look at what had happened. The job was an onerous one and very absorbing. He loved it, and she was delighted for him, but she saw even less of him than she had during the bad times just before he left the rank of Detective Chief Inspector behind him, all during that awful summer when she had been so frightened for him and he’d been under a cloud. Now the only thing he was under was the warm sun of police approbation. There didn’t seem to be a committee on which he didn’t sit or a job of any importance that the powers-that-be didn’t want him for. And he, damn his eyes, accepted all the invitations with enthusiasm because, ‘Well, it’s the job, darlin’, ain’t it? You wouldn’t want to hold me back, would you?’
    And