16
Dorrie looked at the clock and said, reaching for the tattered old gardening jacket that hung behind the back door, ‘Still time to get an hour or so in, before the light goes. Where’s the pepper dust? That blessed tomcat from over the road is paying my garden far too much attention.’
‘And I suppose I’d better slip over and see how Hannah is,’ Sam said.
Dorrie thrust her feet into her rubber gardening clogs. She looked up through her round specs at her nephew, hesitated and then said softly, ‘Suppose nothing, Sam. Help her if you can, but don’t go letting yourself in for something you’ll regret, just because you’re sorry for her.’
‘Set your mind at rest. All that was over a long, long time since.’
‘Ah, but does she know that?’
As so often happened, Dorrie, under her vague exterior,
