You still haven’t answered me.
Are you intending to? Do you think this is NOT IMPORTANT?????
Jesus.
It’s only the most important thing IN OUR LIFE. And how you can go about your day so calmly … I don’t know. It makes me want to weep.
We need to talk, so, so badly. And I know some of this is my fault, but until we start untying the knots TOGETHER, how will we know who’s pulling which string? How?
The thing is, Sam, sometimes I don’t even know if you have a string. It’s that bad. I DON’T KNOW IF YOU HAVE A STRING.
I can see you shaking your head, Mr. Denial. But it is. It’s THAT BAD, OK???
If you were a human being with a shred of emotion, you’d be crying by now. I know I am. And that’s another thing—I have a ten o’clock with Carter, which you have now FUCKED UP, as I left my FUCKING MASCARA at home.
So, be proud of yourself.
Willow
My eyes are like saucers. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.
I read it over again—and suddenly find myself giggling. I know I shouldn’t. It’s not funny. She’s obviously really upset. And I know I’ve said some pretty screwy things to Magnus when I’ve been pissed and hormonal. But I would never, ever put them in an email and get his assistant to print it out—
My head bobs up in realization. Shit! There’s no Violet anymore. No one’s going to print it out and put it on Sam’s desk. He won’t know about it and he won’t reply and Willow will get even more livid. The awful thing is, this thought makes me want to giggle again.
I wonder if this is a bad day or if she’s always this intense. I can’t resist typing Willow in the search engine, and a whole series of emails pop up. There’s one from yesterday, with the title Are you trying to fuck me or fuck WITH me, Sam? Or CAN’T YOU DECIDE??? and I get another fit of the giggles. Yikes. They must have one of those up and down relationships. Maybe they throw things at each other and shriek and bellow, then have mad passionate sex in the kitchen—
Beyonce blasts out from the phone, and I nearly drop it as I see Sam Mobile appear on the screen. I have a sudden mad thought that he’s psychic and knows I’ve been spying on his love life.
No more snooping, I hastily promise myself. No more Willow searches. I count to three—then press answer.
“Oh, hi there!” I try to sound relaxed and guiltless, like I was just thinking about something else altogether and not at all imagining him screwing his fiancee amid a pile of broken crockery.
“Did I have an email from Ned Murdoch this morning?” he launches in without so much as a “Hi.”
“No. I’ve sent all your emails over. Good morning to you too,” I add brightly. “I’m really well, how about you?”
“I thought you might have missed one.” He completely ignores my little dig. “It’s extremely important.”
“Well, I’m extremely thorough,” I retort pointedly. “Believe me, everything that’s coming in to this phone, you’re getting. And there wasn’t anything from Ned Murdoch. Someone called Willow just emailed, by the way,” I add casually. “I’ll forward it on. There’s an attachment, which sounded quite important. But obviously I didn’t look at it at all. Or read it or anything.”
“Hrrrmm.” He gives a kind of noncommittal growl. “So, have you found your ring?”
“Not yet,” I admit reluctantly. “But I’m sure it’ll turn up.”
“You should inform your insurers anyway, you know. They sometimes have a time limit for claiming. Colleague of mine got caught out that way.”
Insurers? Time limits?
I suddenly feel clammy with guilt. I’ve given this no thought at all. I haven’t checked up on my insurance or the Tavishes’ insurance or anything. Instead, I’ve been standing at a pedestrian crossing, missing my chance to walk, reading other people’s emails and laughing at them. Priorities, Poppy.
“Right,” I manage at last. “Yes, I knew that. I’m on it.”
I ring off and stand motionless for a moment, the traffic whizzing in front of me. It’s like he’s pricked my bubble. I have to come clean. It’s the Tavishes’ ring. They should know it’s lost. I’ll have to tell them.
Hi there! It’s me, the girl you don’t want your son to marry, and, guess what? I’ve lost your priceless family ring!
I’ll give myself twelve more hours, I abruptly decide, pressing the pedestrian button again. Just in case. Just in case.
And then I’ll tell them.
I always thought I might be a dentist. Several of my family are dentists, and it always seemed like a pretty decent career. But then, when I was fifteen, my school sent me on a weeklong work experience placement at the physio unit at our local hospital. All the therapists were so enthusiastic about what they did that focusing only on teeth suddenly felt a bit narrow for me. And I’ve never regretted my decision for a moment. It just suits me, being a physio.
First Fit Physio Studio is exactly eighteen minutes’ walk from my flat in Balham, past Costa, and next to Greggs, the baker. It’s not the grandest practice in the world—I’d probably earn more if I went to some smart sports center or a big hospital. But I’ve been working there ever since I qualified and can’t imagine working anywhere else. Plus, I work with friends. You wouldn’t give that up in a hurry, would you?
I arrive at nine o’clock, expecting to have the usual staff meeting. We have one every Thursday morning, where we discuss patients and targets, new therapies, the latest research, stuff like that.24 There’s one particular patient I want to talk about, actually: Mrs. Randall, my sweet sixty-five-year-old with the ligament problem. She’s pretty much recovered—but last week she came in twice, and this week she’s booked three appointments. I’ve told her she just needs to exercise at home with her Dyna-Bands, but she insists she needs my help. I think she’s become totally dependent on us—which might be good for the cash register but is not good for her.
So I’m quite looking forward to the meeting. But, to my surprise, the meeting room is set up differently from usual. The table has been pulled to one end of the room, with two chairs behind it—and there’s a sole chair facing it in the middle of the room. It looks like an interview setup.
The reception door pings to signal that someone’s entered, and I turn to see Annalise coming in with a Costa coffee tray. She’s got some complicated braided arrangement in her long blond hair, and she looks like a Greek goddess.
“Hi, Annalise! What’s up?”
“You’d better talk to Ruby.” She gives me a sidelong look, without smiling.
“What?”
“I don’t think I should say.” She takes a sip of cappuccino, eyeing me secretively over the top.
What’s up now? Annalise’s quite prickly—in fact, she’s a bit of a child. She goes all quiet and sulky, and then it comes out that yesterday you asked her for that file too impatiently and hurt her feelings.
Ruby is the opposite. She’s got smooth latte-colored skin, a huge, motherly bust, and is packed so full of common sense it’s practically wafting out of her ears. The minute you’re in her company, you feel saner, calmer, jollier, and stronger. No wonder this physio practice has been a success. I mean, Annalise and I are OK at what we do, but Ruby is the star turn. Everyone loves her. Men, women, grannies, kids. She also put up the money for the business,25 so she’s officially my boss.
“Morning, babe.” Ruby comes breezing out from her treatment room, beaming her usual wide smile. Her hair has been back-combed and pinned in a bun, with intricate twisted sections on either side. Both Annalise and Ruby are totally into their hairdos—it’s almost a competition between them. “Now, look, it’s a real pain, but I have to give you a disciplinary hearing.”
“What?” I gape at her.
“Not my fault!” She lifts her hands. “I want to get accreditation from this new body, the PFFA. I’ve just been reading the material, and it says if your staff chat up the patients you have to discipline them. We should have done it anyway, you know
that, but now I need to have the notes ready for the inspector. We’ll get it done really quickly.”
“I didn’t chat him up,” I say defensively. “He chatted me up!”
“I think the panel will decide that, don’t you?” chimes in Annalise forbiddingly. She looks so grave, I feel a tickle of worry. “I told you you’d been unethical,” she adds. “You should be prosecuted.”
“Prosecuted?” I appeal to Ruby. I can’t believe this is happening. Back when Magnus proposed, Ruby said it was such a romantic story she wanted to cry, and that, OK, strictly it was against the rules, but in her opinion love conquered all, and please could she be a bridesmaid?
“Annalise, you don’t mean ‘prosecuted.’ ” Ruby rolls her eyes. “Come on. Let’s convene the panel.”
“Who’s on the panel?”
“Us,” says Ruby blithely. “Annalise and me. I know we should have an external person, but I didn’t know who to get. I’ll tell the inspector I had someone lined up and they were ill.” She glances at her watch. “OK, we’ve got twenty minutes. Morning, Angela!” she adds cheerily as our receptionist pushes the front door open. “Don’t let any calls through, OK?”
Angela just nods and sniffs and dumps her rucksack on the floor. She has a boyfriend in a band, so she’s never very communicative in the mornings.
“Oh, Poppy,” Ruby says over her shoulder as she leads the way into the meeting room. “I was supposed to give you two weeks’ notice to prepare. You don’t need that, do you? Can we say you had it? Because there’s only a week and a bit till the wedding, so it would mean dragging you away from your honeymoon or leaving it till you’re back, and I really want to get the paperwork done….”
She’s ushering me to the sole chair, marooned in the middle of the floor, while she and Annalise take their seats behind the table. Any minute I expect a bright light to shine in my eyes. This is horrible. Everything’s suddenly turned. It’s them against me.
“Are you going to fire me?” I feel ridiculously panicked.
“No! Of course not!” Ruby is unscrewing her pen. “Don’t be silly!”
“We might,” says Annalise, shooting me an ominous look.
She’s obviously loving her role as chief henchwoman. I know what this is all about. It’s because I got Magnus and she didn’t.
Here’s the thing. Annalise’s the beautiful one. Even I want to stare at her all day, and I’m a girl. If you’d said to anyone last year, “Which of these three will land a guy and be engaged by next summer?” they’d have said immediately, “Annalise.”
So I can understand her point of view. She must look in the mirror and see herself (Greek goddess) and then see me (lanky legs, dark hair; best feature—long eyelashes) and think: WTF?
Plus, as I said, Magnus was originally booked with her. And at the last minute we switched appointments. Which is not my fault.
“So.” Ruby looks up from her foolscap pad. “Let’s run over the facts, Miss Wyatt. On December fifteenth last year, you treated a Mr. Magnus Tavish here at the clinic.”
“Yes.”
“For what form of injury?”
“A sprained wrist sustained while skiing.”
“And during this appointment, did he show any … inappropriate interest in you? Or you in him?”
I cast my mind back to that first instant Magnus walked into my room. He was wearing a long gray tweed coat, and his tawny hair was glistening with rain and his face was flushed from walking. He was ten minutes late, and he immediately rushed over, clasped both my hands, and said, “I’m most terribly sorry,” in this lovely, well-educated voice.
“I … er … no,” I say defensively. “It was just a standard appointment.”
Even as I say this, I know it’s not true. In standard appointments, your heart doesn’t start to pound as you take the patient’s arm. The hairs on the back of your neck don’t rise. You don’t hold on to his hand very slightly longer than you need to.
Not that I can say any of this. I really would be fired.
“I treated the patient over the course of a number of appointments.” I try to sound calm and professional. “By the time we realized our affection for each other, his treatment was over. It was therefore totally ethical.”
“He told me it was love at first sight!” shoots back Annalise. “How do you explain that? He told me you were instantly attracted to each other and he wanted to ravish you right there on the couch. He said he’d never known anything so sexy as you in your uniform.”
I’m going to shoot Magnus. What did he have to say that for?
“Objection!” I glower at her. “That evidence was procured while under the influence of alcohol and in a nonprofessional capacity. It therefore cannot be allowed in court.”
“Yes, it can! And you are under oath!” She jabs a finger at me.
“Objection sustained,” Ruby interrupts, and looks up from writing, a distant, wistful look in her eyes. “Was it really love at first sight?” She leans forward, her great big uniformed bosom bulging everywhere. “Did you know?”
I close my eyes and try to visualize that day. I’m not sure what I knew, except I wanted to ravish him on the couch too.
“Yes,” I say at last. “I think so.”
“It’s so romantic.” Ruby sighs.
“And wrong!” Annalise chimes in sharply. “The minute he showed any interest in you, you should have said, ‘Sir, this is inappropriate behavior. I would like this session to end and for you to transfer to another therapist.’ “
“Oh, another therapist!” I can’t help a short laugh. “Like you, by any chance?”
“Maybe! Why not?”
“And what if he’d shown interest in you?”
She lifts her chin proudly. “I would have handled it without compromising my ethical principles.”
“I was ethical!” I say in outrage. “I was totally ethical!”
“Oh yes?” She narrows her eyes like a prosecuting barrister. “What led you to suggest exchanging appointments with me in the first place, Miss Wyatt? Had you in fact already Googled him and decided you wanted him for yourself?”
Aren’t we over this?
“Annalise, you wanted to swap appointments! I never suggested anything! I had no idea who he was! So if you feel like you missed out, tough luck. Don’t swap next time!”
For a moment, Annalise says nothing, She’s getting pinker and pinker in the face.
“I know,” she bursts out at last, and bangs a fist to her forehead. “I know! I was so stupid. Why did I swap?”
“So what?” cuts in Ruby firmly. “Annalise, get over it. Magnus obviously wasn’t meant for you, he was meant for Poppy. So what does it matter?”
Annalise is silent. I can tell she isn’t convinced.
“It’s not fair,” she mutters at last. “Do you know how many bankers I’ve massaged at the London Marathon? Do you know how much effort I’ve made?”
Annalise cottoned on to the London Marathon a few years ago, when she was watching it on telly and realized it was stuffed full of fit, motivated guys in their forties, who were probably single because all they did was go running, and, OK, forties was a bit old, but think what kind of salary they must be on.
So she’s been volunteering as an emergency physiotherapist every year since. She makes a beeline for all the attractive men and works their calf muscles or whatever, while fixing them with her huge blue eyes and telling them she’s always supported that charity too.26
To be fair, she’s got lots of dates out of it—one guy even took her to Paris—but nothing long-term or serious, which is what she wants. What she won’t admit, of course, is that she’s extremely picky. She pretends that she wants a “really nice, straightforward guy with good values,” but she’s had several of those desperately in love with her and she dumped them, even the really good-looking actor (his stage play ended and he had no other work coming up). What she’s really after is a guy who looks like he’s out of a Gillette commercial, with a m
assive salary and/or a title. Preferably both. I think that’s why she’s so mad about losing Magnus, since he’s Dr. She once asked me if he would become Professor one day and I said probably yes, and she went a kind of green.
Ruby scribbles something else down, then screws her pen lid on. “Well, I think we’ve covered the facts. Well done, everyone.”
“Aren’t you going to give her a warning or something?” Annalise is still pouting.
“Oh, fair point.” Ruby nods, then clears her throat. “Poppy, don’t do it again.”
“OK.” I shrug.
“I’ll put that in writing, show it to the inspector; that’ll shut him up. By the way, did I tell you I’ve found the perfect strapless bra to go under my bridesmaid’s dress?” Ruby beams at me, back to her usual cheery self. “Aquamarine satin. It’s lush.”
“Sounds amazing!” I get up and reach for the Costa coffee tray. “Is one of these for me?”
“I got you a flat white,” says Annalise grudgingly. “With nutmeg.”
As I take it, Ruby gives a small gasp. “Poppy! Haven’t you found your ring?”
I look up to see both Annalise and Ruby staring at my left hand.
“No,” I admit reluctantly. “I mean, I’m sure it’ll turn up somewhere.”
“Shit.” Annalise has a hand over her mouth.
“I thought you found it.” Ruby is frowning. “I’m sure somebody said you’d found it.”
“No. Not yet.”
I’m really not enjoying their reaction. Neither of them is saying “Not to worry” or “These things happen.” They both look horrified, even Ruby.
“So, what will you do?” Ruby’s brows are knitted.
“What did Magnus say?” chips in Annalise.
“I …” I take a gulp of flat white, playing for time. “I haven’t told him yet.”
“Sheeesh,” Ruby exhales.
“How much is it worth?” Trust Annalise to ask all the questions I don’t want to think about.
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