The Missing Sister by Lucinda Riley EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Lucinda Riley
- Language: English
- Genre: 20th Century Historical Romance
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I saw my
father die. I was standing pretty much where I was now, leaning over the
wooden veranda that surrounded our house and staring out at the grape
pickers working their way along the neat rows of vines, heavily pregnant
with this year’s yield. I was just about to walk down the steps to join them
when out of the corner of my eye I saw the man-mountain that was my
father suddenly disappear from sight.
At first I thought he had knelt down
to collect a stray cluster of grapes – he detested waste of any kind, which he
put down to the Presbyterian mindset of his Scottish parents – but then I
saw the pickers from the rows nearby dash towards him. It was a good
hundred-metre run from the veranda to reach him, and by the time I got
there, someone had ripped open his shirt and was trying to resuscitate him,
pumping his chest and giving mouth-to-mouth, while another had called
111. It took twenty minutes for the ambulance to arrive.
Even as he was lifted onto the stretcher, I could see from his already
waxy complexion that I would never again hear his deep powerful voice
that held so much gravitas, yet could turn to a throaty chuckle in a second.
As tears streamed down my cheeks, I kissed him gently on his own ruddy,
weatherbeaten one, told him I loved him and said goodbye. Looking back,
the whole dreadful experience had been surreal – the transition from being
so full of life to, well . . . nothing but an empty, lifeless body, was
impossible to take in.
After months of suffering pains in his chest, but pretending they were
indigestion, Dad had finally been persuaded to go to the doctor. He’d been
told that he had high cholesterol, and that he must stick to a strict diet. My
mother and I had despaired as he’d continued to eat what he wanted and
drink a bottle of his own red wine at dinner every night.
So it should hardly
have been a shock when the worst eventually happened. Perhaps we had
believed him indestructible, his large personality and bonhomie aiding the
illusion, but as my mother had rather darkly pointed out, we’re all simply
flesh and bone at the end of the day. At least he’d lived the way he wished
to until the very end. He’d also been seventy-three, a fact I simply couldn’t
compute, given his physical strength and zest for life.
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