by Karen Swan
‘. . . Huh. A really shit DJ,’ Tara tutted as ‘Ice Ice Baby’ came on.
‘So who are you with now? Are you married?’ Liv remained on topic, still watching her, and Tara could detect a coldness in her gaze. Her family’s wealth made her an object of constant scrutiny. People wanted to know what that kind of wealth looked like, close up. Even people who had known her once.
‘God, no. I’m seeing a guy called Rory. He’s a senior reg in cardio at Chelsea and Westminster.’
‘Younger too?’
‘No, two years older than me.’
‘But you’re a consultant already.’
‘Yes.’
Liv’s eyebrows shot up. ‘And he’s cool with that?’
Tara shrugged. ‘Well, I guess he has to be. I’m not getting a demotion for him.’
Liv looked bemused. ‘Is it serious?’
‘Define serious.’ Tara gave one of her signature dismissive shrugs. ‘We’ve been together a year or so now. We’ve talked about us getting our own place.’
‘I sense a “but”.’
Tara wrinkled her nose. ‘No, no “but”. Things are just pretty good the way they are and I’m of the “if it ain’t broke” school of dating.’ Rory had suggested moving in together enough times to prove he was serious, but if there wasn’t an overwhelming reason to do it, there also wasn’t one why they shouldn’t. They got on so well, shared the same interests, understood the demands of each other’s jobs; the sex was good. He liked having money but wasn’t consumed by it; he’d come from enough affluence to live in a certain way without really having to think about it. Life with him would continue to be uncomplicated and steady. Perfectly, quietly happy.
‘Oh, I hear ya. I moved in with Ben, the dentist – remember him?’
‘Just about.’ Strawberry blonde, jug ears. She was her mother’s daughter after all.
‘Three years we were together before we took the big leap. I was convinced he was The One – my mother had chosen her outfit, I was all ready to order the flowers. Then two weeks with the same front door key and it was over. Never again.’
‘It’s not for everyone,’ Tara sighed. ‘We can’t all be like Sophie.’
To everyone’s astonishment, Sophie had married at twenty-three to a small livery yard owner and was now back living in Shropshire with three black labs, a Welsh cob and a flock of ducklings.
‘I swear to God, I thought she’d be the last of us to get hitched, not the first!’
‘She did too, no doubt,’ Tara shrugged. ‘Have you seen anyone else recently?’ ‘Anyone else’ specifically meant their old uni group.
‘Annie and I text, meet up for a drink whenever she’s in town, which isn’t all that often.’
‘Last I heard she was in Brussels?’
‘Yeah. Conducting a torrid affair with a Euro MP who’s married with four kids.’
‘Nice,’ Tara said flatly.
‘How about you? You still see Hols a lot, don’t you?’
‘Yes, we’re at Tommy’s together.’
‘Of course. Nothing will break you two up.’
Tara smiled, hearing the edge in Liv’s words. ‘And Charlie lives in Chalk Farm, so we see her occasionally – when our shifts allow us something as incredible as an evening off.’
‘Well, quite. Is she still with her girlfriend?’
‘Yep, that’s been a while now actually. Three, four years?’
‘So maybe they’ll be the ones walking down the aisle next.’
‘Could be.’ Tara felt something on her shoulder and turned, just as Rory slid his hand over her bare skin and gently squeezed the back of her neck.
‘Your five minutes is up,’ he said to her with a wink, before looking over at Liv. ‘Hi. Rory Hutchings.’
‘Olivia Manley.’ Liv shot Tara a knowing look as they shook hands and Tara tried to appraise her partner with fresh eyes; she didn’t consider him Master of the Universe material. He looked as good in a white coat as in a DJ, true; and she’d always liked tall men; and of course he had a good career, great prospects . . . It was sweet he’d brought her bag over, holding the sequin clutch casually in one hand like it was a sweater, her award for the Overseas Enterprise sticking out the top.
‘Liv and I were at Imperial together.’
‘That would explain the dirty laughs I could hear over the music. You two look like you’re hatching a plot.’
‘Old habits die hard, I guess,’ Tara sighed, sliding her arm around his waist and putting her head upon his shoulder. ‘Is it really time to go?’
‘I’m afraid so.’ He knew the drill.
She looked back regretfully at her old friend. Part of her felt bad for leaving her here on her own. ‘Liv, it’s been so lovely bumping into you.’
‘And you! Let’s stay in touch, okay?’
‘Definitely. Are you on social?’
‘Are you kidding?’ Liv quipped. ‘It’s the only way my family knows I’m alive!’
‘Nice to meet you, Liv,’ Rory said, beginning to lead Tara away.
‘Listen, next time Annie’s in town, we could all meet for dinner perhaps?’ Liv called after her. ‘Get Charlie and Hols along too.’
‘That’d be great!’ Tara said back over her shoulder, one hand raised in acknowledgement.
They meandered through the crowd, heading for the exit.
‘Sounds fun,’ Rory said, his hand on the small of her back.
‘What does?’
‘Dinner with the girls.’
‘Oh. That. It’ll never happen,’ she muttered, looking in her bag for her coat ticket.
‘Why not?’
‘Because that time has gone.’
‘I thought you said you were old friends?’
‘Back then, at uni, yes. But we’re different people now.’
Rory looked bemused. ‘Only superficially, surely? You’re fitter now for sure. Better dressed. You have more expensive tastes in wine. But fundamentally you’re the same person you were back then.’
She shook her head, one eyebrow arched as if amused by his nostalgia. ‘No.’
‘No? You’re not the person they knew?’
She found the ticket and handed it to the clerk. ‘I’m not the person I knew. Thank God!’
‘Why d’you say that?’
‘Because I was an idiot back then. I almost threw my entire life away on . . .’ Her voice snagged. ‘Pipe dreams.’
He frowned. ‘So what changed?’
‘I grew up,’ she shrugged. ‘I focused on what I wanted and became the person you see before you now.’ She walked over to him, still feeling the effects of all that wine, pressing a hand against his chest, her face angled coquettishly towards his. ‘Any complaints with that, Dr Hutchings?’ she asked in a lowered voice.
He smiled. ‘Definitely not.’
‘Good. So then take me home.’
Rory stirred, lifting his head momentarily from the pillow as though he sensed she had gone, before turning onto the other cheek and succumbing to sleep again in the next moment. His skin looked pale in the moonlight, with just a faint tan line on his thighs and lower back from their break on Harbour Island at New Year; by contrast, it had taken a good few weeks for his ski-goggle tan to go down in March after he refused her suncream on a cloudy day in Zermatt; the nurses had taken the mickey out of him every time he did his ward rounds and kept paging him to the burns department.
He always slept so soundly, it amazed her. Sometimes she watched him, just to see how he did it. It was like everything inside him just . . . switched off. When she closed her eyes, it was the complete opposite: everything switched on, loud, neon bright, wide awake; voices ran through her head, memories surfaced like bodies from ponds, her heart sped up. And even when she did drop off, invariably she woke again with a start, like klaxons were ringing in her head for her attention.
She was largely used to it. Being an ICU doctor hardly sat well with eight-hour sleep cycles anyway. She had spent years being dragg
ed from snatched sleep by a pager, but tonight had been worse than usual. Her mind wouldn’t switch off at all and the wine she’d drunk at dinner to try to . . . dim the day’s horrors, had left her agitated and restless. Her headache was worse than ever.
From her spot on the window seat across the room, she stared out over the sleeping city. Never fully dark, the sky was a dusty charcoal; there were no stars that she could see even though she knew they had to be there. All the birds were asleep, no owls resident in the horse chestnut and limes here, and even the neighbourhood cats were prowling elsewhere tonight. She had a feeling not just of aloneness, but of nothingness. Like existing in a vacuum. She wanted to cry but couldn’t. She wanted to sleep but couldn’t. She wanted to run away but couldn’t. Not quite yet anyway . . . There was another day to get through, somehow.
She closed her eyes as the physical memory of the small blade pressing her finger reasserted itself. She thought she would always feel it now, when her thumb pressed that particular part of her finger pad – this statistical loss not just part of her clinical record now, but her body.
She still couldn’t work out how it had happened. The nurse had counted the implements into the sharps bag, all present and correct. If she had only noticed the blade was missing, there would have been time to go back into that tiny body and fish for it. Instead with every move, every breath, every peristaltic squeeze, it had cut the child a little deeper, a little longer until there were too many to count. Quite literally, it had been death by a thousand cuts.
Tara wanted to blame someone else – to believe it was the nurse’s fault, or the scalpel manufacturer’s – but she knew it was hers. As the consultant on duty, the buck stopped with her. That was what it meant to be the boss, her father had always told her that. ‘You take the rough with the smooth, Piglet.’ A child had died because of her negligence and she would have to live with that knowledge.
She turned to get back into bed. Her shift started at nine and it was now four. Somehow, she needed to find rest, go hunting for it. She picked her way carefully over the plush carpet, her hand brushing the evening dress that now lay carefully draped over the back of a bedroom chair. Rory’s dinner suit was equally considerately folded and laid out. Surgeons, by nature, weren’t messy types – they liked order, knowing exactly where everything was, so that the hands could move and the brain could work automatically. On autopilot. She was good at that.
She slid down the sheet and pulled the covers back over her. She looked at Rory asleep. He looked younger, his features almost toddler-soft as his lips slackened, a flush in his cheeks. She wondered why she hadn’t told him about her day and the trauma it contained. She had simply come down to the taxi and greeted him with a smile, her ‘face done’, as her mother would have said and the new dress on. Perhaps if it had mattered less, she might have been more inclined to share. They usually talked about their days and what they’d done; he was a doctor, after all, he got it. People died all the time, it was part of the job. But this felt different, like she’d failed. Because to lose a child . . . There was nothing in this world worse than that.
Chapter Eleven
Holly’s hand gripped Tara’s arm tightly as she came and joined her in the terminal building. Tara was standing stiffly in front of the large window, blindly watching the pilot run through checks for the plane that was going to take them away from here. It was eight on the nose and, as feared, Holly had come straight from the hospital, albeit scrubs off and back in the clothes she had rolled out of bed and picked up off the floor this morning. Her trainers thankfully no longer had specks of someone’s regurgitated carrots on them.
‘I heard about the girl.’
Tara felt the lump in her throat swell again as she stared out over the runway with studied intensity, her muscles rigid. She had called in sick for the first time in her career. She knew the disruption it would bring, her colleagues forced to cover for her, another consultant drafted in on call, her patients waking to find themselves with a new doctor – but to work after a night of no sleep at all would have been as bad as operating drunk or high. She was used to broken sleep, but seven hours of staring at the ceiling was another level altogether and she had spent the day on the sofa, exhausted and unable to rest. Sleep fluttered around her head like an angry crow, diving at her but never quite making contact. Every time she closed her eyes . . . And now her glands were up and her head felt clamped in a vice that was being ratcheted ever tighter. A holiday had never been more needed.
‘It’s always worse when it’s a kid,’ Holly murmured, getting it.
Tara nodded again, her reply needing a few more seconds of focus before the word could be formed. ‘Yes.’ If she could only erase the sight of that small, punished body on her operating table, if she could only forget that stinging sharpness against her blood-soaked fingertips.
‘I remember my first. Mohammad Parveneh; seven and a half. Hit and run.’ Holly’s voice cracked on ‘run’. ‘They caught up with the bastard within the hour. He got three years for careless driving, was out in half that.’ She swallowed. ‘It really made me question whether I was cut out for it; I didn’t think I could hack it. Sometimes this job makes you feel like you only see the worst of people—’
‘Mum!’
They both turned as the drumbeat of trainered feet rolled down the tile floor.
‘Most excellent boy!’ Holly grinned, instantly sinking to her heels, her arms outstretched just in time for a skinny, long-legged, dark-haired, ultra-fast torpedo to spin into them. Her nightmare cast off by a dream.
Tara smiled as she watched Holly kiss Jimmy’s head, tousling his silky hair as if to rough it up.
Dev brought up the rear, towing two large suitcases and Jimmy’s enormous Liverpool holdall strapped across his body. He hadn’t put on a pound in ten years and looked like he might crumple in half from the weight of his load, his glasses slipping down his nose but with no free hand left to push them up.
Holly stood again and did it for him, greeting him with a casually affectionate kiss. ‘Did you turn off the immersion?’
‘Yes. And changed the cat litter,’ he said, before she could ask. ‘And watered the basil and put it by the window.’
‘With the little gap open at the top?’
‘Yes, and the safety locks tightened.’
Holly visibly relaxed. ‘Good.’ Her signature enormous smile spread across her face, and it really was like a dawn. ‘Well, then in that case I’m defo ready to go on holiday.’ She leaned into Tara and squeezed her arm again, dropping her head on her shoulder, both sympathetic and encouraging at once.
Dev shot Tara his usual bemused look. ‘Hi Twig.’
‘Hey Dev,’ she smiled.
Jimmy looked up at her. He was a beautiful boy, seemingly having inherited the best of both his parents – caramel-coloured skin, his father’s fine bone structure, his mother’s light eyes. ‘Aunty Twig, is it true we’re going on a private plane?’
She looked down at him and wrinkled her nose. ‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Do they have Dr Pepper?’
‘Absolutely not,’ Holly said firmly, turning away to double-check for the passports in Dev’s bumbag. She was outrageously hypocritical and was firmly of the ‘do as I say, not as I do’ school of parenting.
Tara winked at him and pressed a finger to her lips. ‘Lots of fresh juices.’
‘And still water, I hope?’ Holly asked over her shoulder. ‘Carbonated is shit for their teeth.’
‘Mummy potty-mouth!’ Jimmy cried, as Dev had taught him to every time his mother swore.
‘Ugh,’ she groaned, reaching into her jacket pocket and giving her son a pound.
Jimmy looked at it, pleased. Tara suspected he was probably quite well-off if Holly paid up every time she was supposed to.
The stairs were being lowered to the tarmac; it was time to go.
‘Where’s Rory? I thought he was coming?’ Dev asked, looking worried. He relied on Rory’s calm presence
as an antidote to the two women together.
‘Don’t worry, he is. He got stuck in traffic on the A40. More worrying is, where are Miles and Zac?’
‘Oh God,’ Holly groaned. ‘Please don’t tell me I’m going to be the only person with hairy legs on this holiday?’
In spite of her misery, Tara chuckled. Dev shook his head and huddled his wife in close, kissing her on the temple. ‘Well, we may as well wait for them on board. At least we can sit down and have something to drink.’
‘Ooh,’ Holly said, her tired eyes brightening.
‘I’m starving!’ Jimmy almost shouted.
Tara picked up her small, neatly packed bag and led them through the automatic doors, from the air-conditioned cool of the terminal to the sizzling heat of the runway. London was baking in the hottest July on record – and it was still only the seventeenth of the month. The tropical rains of Costa Rica were going to be a welcome respite.
Two steps behind her, the Motha family bickered over bags, until Jimmy sprinted ahead and straight up the steps into the plane.
‘Jimmy, no! Come back here!’ Holly yelled. ‘Fuck.’
‘Hols, it’s fine,’ she said reassuringly. ‘He’s not doing any harm.’
‘Now, technically we don’t know that. He could be up to anything.’ She looked at Dev. ‘Did you search him for Sharpies?’
‘Hi Sandy, how are you?’ Tara said with a tired nod to the flight attendant as they climbed the steps.
‘It’s a pleasure to welcome you on board again, Doctor Tremain,’ the attendant said, taking her travel bag.
Jimmy was already standing by the bar, his hand plunged up to the wrist in a bowl of chocolate eclairs. Holly just burst out laughing at the sight of all the cream quilted leather and burred wood tables. Everything was so plush and manicured, it had the effect of making them look untidy. ‘Oh God,’ she gasped. ‘It actually is just like you see it on the Kardashians!’