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Out on a Limb [Secure eReader (recommended)/Mobipocket/Microsoft Reader/Adobe Reader 7]
eBook by Lynne Barrett-Lee
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eBook Category: Romance/Romance
eBook Description:  'My mother has just the two modes of operation. Either slightly dramatic or seriously dramatic. That this is the latter means just the one thing. That my day is about to get worse...' And for single mum, Abbie, life is complex enough. So once her eldest son, Seb, has gone on his gap year, she's decided it's time to make changes. She's just left her old job and started a new one (to escape the gorgeous man-who-turned-out-to-be-married), and is planning some space for herself at long last. But fate seems to have something else in mind for Abbie, in the shape of her demanding and incorrigible mother, whose feckless fourth husband, Hugo, has just died. Temporarily in a wheelchair after a recent knee op, Diana--retired TV fitness icon and dancer--will need looking after, so will have to move in. Still, Abbie tells herself--gritting her teeth--it won't be for more than a few weeks... However, Abbie hasn't figured on the sudden arrival of Hugo's 20 years' estranged son. A suave TV Weatherman, Gabriel Ash not only owns the deeds to what they thought was Hugo's house, but also has plans of his own...
eBook Publisher: Accent/Accent
Fictionwise Release Date: August 2007
Available eBook Formats [Secure eReader (recommended)/Mobipocket/Microsoft Reader/Adobe Reader 7 - What's this?]: SECURE MOBIPOCKET FORMAT (579 KB], SECURE MICROSOFT READER FORMAT (416 KB] - Requires Microsoft Reader 2.1.1 for PCs, or Microsoft Reader 2.2.2 on Pocket PC 2002 handheld devices. Some older Pocket PCs can be upgraded. Learn More., SECURE EREADER (RECOMMENDED) FORMAT (341 KB], SECURE ADOBE READER 7 FORMAT (1.5 MB]
Secure Adobe Reader 7: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud enabled
Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
Microsoft Reader ISBN, eReader (recommended) ISBN: 97819051709781905170
 
IT?S NOT EVERY DAY you get given a leg.
?It seemed the perfect parting gift,? my friend Dee explains
helpfully, as she presents it to me. ?Kind of symbolic. Losing you
is going to be like losing a limb, so we thought we should make it
official.?
?I don?t know what to say,? I respond, because you tend not to
know what to say when someone presents you with a leg, do you?
?Except thank you. This really means a lot. Such a lot. I?d have it
mounted in the clinic but I?m not sure I should. I might scare
away all my patients.?
The leg, which is a prosthetic lower one (complete with ankle
and foot, obviously), has been in the orthopaedics outpatient
department for as long as anyone can remember, and has always
been an object of mystery. Nobody has ever known how it got
here or where it came from. It just turned up one day, in prehistory,
almost, and no one ever hopped in to claim it. Since then
it?s been our mascot. Our orthopaedic lucky charm.
And now its mine to take home with me, and everyone?s
signed it. I?m having to work hard not to burst into tears.
It?s pretty grim leaving somewhere when you don?t want to go. I
don?t think I appreciated just how grim it would be until the
moment when I took possession of the limb. After all, it was my
choice, wasn?t it? But it?s funny the way parties ? such merry
occasions ? are so good at making people sad. Though
understandable, given that it?s a leaving party. And given the
circumstances of this particular leaving, I guess. Up to now, I?ve
always left what I?ve left in a state of readiness and expectation.
School, university, the PTA, my marriage. With some sadness, of
course, the odd regret or two, a trace of apprehension about the
future, for certain, but those feelings, up to now, have always
been tempered with the thrill of moving on to something new.
We tend not to do grand parties at Highfield Park Hospital.
Not unless somebody important?s showing up. Like the Queen, or Prince Charles, or someone famous off the telly. It?s said that
some time back Bruce Forsyth paid a visit. But it?s only a
rumour. There?s no evidence.
My own leaving party, which has not been graced with any
dignitaries bar me, has been taking place in the same outpatient
clinic that has been home to the leg all these years. Happening
amongst the frayed easy chairs and tired pot plants and coverless
copies of Take a Break and My Weekly, on a floor thinly carpeted
with NHS issue carpet tiles, and bound by walls that are
similarly, if much more thickly, carpeted, with an aggregate of
paperwork that spews from strained push pins in irritable gusts
whenever the automatic doors open. Charts of skeletons, charts of
muscles, pictures of smiling pensioners, instructions for operating
the vending machines, yellowed thank you letters, posters
advertising upcoming fundraising activities, children?s madly
scribbled pictures, and the map of the world with the stuck-on
string arrows that lead you to handwritten laminated lists that tell
you what vaccinations you need to go where.
And in the bottom right corner of the bottom right cork board,
a little yellow rabbit, aged and dusty, which has been attached to
the wall by a silver-topped drawing pin, by its ear, for as long as I
can remember. Funny to think that the owner of that rabbit is
probably in high school by now.
I glance across at it and I wonder if I will miss the sight of that
little rabbit as much as that little rabbit must have been missed
when it was left here.
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