Going Too Far

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘My God! The Helford mafia!’

  ‘Quite, never underestimate the power of the village gossips. Anyway, the police went round and questioned her and she got herself into a complete paddy, cried like a baby but resolutely refused to say a word. But she didn’t have to really – it was pretty obvious there was something going on. Even so, the police still didn’t have enough evidence to arrest Sam and Serena, so they were just biding their time and waiting for the pair of them to slip up, to start shifting the gear on to the market.’

  ‘Typical,’ I said bitterly. ‘All those boneheads in Helston ever do is bide their time. No killer instinct.’

  ‘Well, anyway, that’s why I shot up here so quickly. Last night Inspector Carter tipped me off that Sam might be involved and I had ghastly visions of him getting completely desperate and finishing you off. Black bin liners, as I said.’

  ‘You’re not kidding, he’s an absolute maniac, and completely unscrupulous too. My God, when I think of how he nearly ruined Bruce. He pretended to be so sympathetic – paying his bail, getting him a barrister –’

  ‘Who, incidentally, turns out to be Sam’s best man, so he’s hardly likely to shaft his best mate, is he?’

  ‘Really? Gosh, and I bet Bruce had a perfectly decent barrister all along.’ I shook my head. ‘God, I don’t know what I ever –’ I broke off abruptly.

  Nick grinned. ‘Saw in him?’

  ‘No, no, of course not, I wasn’t going to say that,’ I said quickly, desperately trying to fight the raging blush which was doing its best to liven up my features. I bit my lip. ‘Well, all right, perhaps I was, but the only reason I liked him was – well, I respected him, for his work, his films. Yes, I must admit I admired him and I –’

  ‘Fantasized about him?’ Nick was still grinning.

  ‘No! No, of course not!’ I was purple now.

  Nick laughed. ‘It’s OK, Polly, it’s not a crime. It would be a pretty stoic husband or wife who never thought about anyone of the opposite sex apart from their spouse.’

  I gasped. ‘Nick!’

  He roared with laughter. ‘I said think, not do! Thinking doesn’t constitute adultery, does it? Which is why ostensibly there was nothing wrong with you wearing that obscene pink skirt, dousing yourself in Chanel, lounging provocatively all over the dining table and generally flirting outrageously with that creep, because of course you never intended the flirting to go any further, did you?’ He raised his eyebrows quizzically at me.

  ‘No!’ I gasped. ‘No, of course not, not in a million years!’

  ‘Good. Just checking.’ His mouth twitched.

  I flushed to my toes and stared at the carpet. ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘Gosh, was I that obvious? I’m really sorry, Nick.’

  ‘Don’t be. It’s over now and I’m just winding you up. Anyway, I’m the one who should be apologising.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For not believing you when you said you couldn’t remember what had happened that night in London. Trouble was, Poll’ – he frowned and scratched his head – ‘it sounded like such an incredibly lame excuse. Like one of your typically terrible, extraordinarily bad lies.’

  I grinned. ‘Brilliant. The one and only time I tell the truth, it sounds like a lie. Terrific, isn’t it? I might just as well stick to lying. I’m obviously better at it.’

  ‘Speaking of which,’ he said, reaching into his pocket, ‘perhaps you could do some fast talking about this one?’ He handed me a piece of paper.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, unfolding it.

  ‘It’s a bill from Harrods car park, where your BMW has apparently been residing in splendour for over three weeks now. What d’you suggest, Polly, a remortgage on the house, perhaps? Sell all the Meissen that we’re hopefully about to recover?’

  ‘Oh my God!’ My hand flew to my mouth. ‘Nick, I can explain. I just completely forgot – well, no not forgot exactly, I knew it was there but – yes, I know! I thought – I thought Pippa was going to pick it up! Yes, that’s it. I seem to remember asking Pippa to get it out for me while I was away; she must have –’

  ‘Polly, don’t even think about wheedling your way out of this one!’ laughed Nick, squeezing me hard.

  ‘Ouch!’ I gasped. ‘Careful!’ I pulled his arm away.

  He sat back in surprise. ‘What? Did I hurt you?’

  ‘Oh no, it’s just that –’ I stared at him. Was this a good time? I’d been so terrified about breaking the news in case he thought the baby was Sam’s, but now that Sam was well out of the frame, now that Nick knew that nothing could possibly have happened …

  I smiled. ‘I’m pregnant.’

  He stared at me. ‘You’re what?’

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ I repeated, somewhat shyly. God, I was starting to blush again. ‘You know, having a baby.’

  He dropped his hands from my waist and his jaw dropped too.

  ‘You are?’ His eyes were wide with wonder. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really!’ I laughed. ‘Don’t look so astonished, Nick. It was bound to happen one day, you kept telling me so, remember?’

  He smiled, slowly and broadly. The smile became a beam, stretching right across his face. ‘You’re pregnant!’ he breathed. He kissed me hard on the mouth but the beam didn’t waver for a moment. I grinned back. We held hands, gazing at each other like a couple of teenagers. Suddenly his eyes narrowed. He looked at me carefully.

  ‘You’re sure about this, are you, Polly? I mean, you’ve been to see the doctor? Only I can just see you with some makeshift chemistry set, sending litmus paper blue and test tubes pink and getting thoroughly convinced you’re up the duff when in actual fact you’re just a bit late or –’

  ‘Of course I’m sure, and the word is gynaecologist, actually. I saw him a couple of days ago, I’m four or five weeks pregnant now,’ I said proudly.

  Nick peered at my tummy in wonder. ‘Wow. A month old. Hello, little chap.’

  ‘Or chap-ess,’ I corrected him.

  ‘Oh absolutely, or chap-ess. So – what’s that then, a February baby?’

  ‘Something like that,’ I grinned.

  ‘Try to get it all over with before I start lambing, would you?’

  ‘Nick!’ I bashed him with a cushion.

  He laughed and held me close. ‘Oh, Poll, I’m so pleased!’ Suddenly he drew back. ‘And you feel all right?’ he asked, looking concerned. ‘Not sick or anything?’

  ‘Oh no, that’s more or less passed now. I was as sick as a dog for a while, though, but – oooh, d’you know, now you come to mention it’ – I put my hand to my throat and looked a bit pained – ‘it seems to have come back. I do feel a bit queasy.’

  ‘Really? Glass of water?’ he asked, getting up anxiously.

  ‘Mmmm, please, might help – oh, and while you’re there, maybe a small piece of toast, with a smidgen of honey. Oh, and a chocolate biscuit if it’s not too much trouble.’

  Nick hastened to the kitchen.

  ‘Oh, and, Nick?’

  He hurried back, a glass of water in his hand.

  ‘Before you make the toast, d’you think you could just move that stool so I can put my feet up on it? Perfect – oh, and that cushion for my head … right a bit, down a bit … lovely … and perhaps you could find a rug or something for my knees? Super. Oh, is that my water? Thanks very – hey, what are you – hey, not on my face! Oh God, Nick, not down my – aaarh! All down my neck! Ugh, you bastard, I’ll get you for that, I’ll get you!’

  Chapter One

  Somewhere over the English Channel travelling north, closer to the white cliffs than to Cherbourg and whilst cruising at an altitude of thirty thousand feet, a voice came over the tannoy. I’d heard this chap before, when he’d filled us in on our flying speed and the appalling weather in London, and he’d struck me then as being a cut above the usual easyJet Laconic. His clipped, slightly pre-war tones and well-modulated vowels had a reassuring ring to them. A good man to have in a crisis.

  ‘
Ladies and gentlemen, I wonder if I could have your attention for a moment, please. Is there by any chance a doctor on board? If so, would they be kind enough to make themselves known to a member of the cabin crew. Many thanks.’

  I glanced up from Country Living, dragging myself away from the scatter cushions in faded Cabbages and Roses linen I fully intended to make but probably never would, to toss attractively around the Lloyd Loom chairs in the long grass of the orchard I would one day possess, complete with old-fashioned beehive and donkey. I turned to my husband. Raised enquiring eyebrows.

  He pretended he’d neither heard the announcement nor sensed my eloquent brows: he certainly didn’t look at them. He remained stolidly immobile, staring resolutely down at the Dan Brown he’d bought at Heathrow and had taken back and forth to Paris, but had yet to get beyond page twenty-seven. I pursed my lips, exhaled loudly and meaningfully through my nostrils and returned to my orchard.

  Two minutes later, the clipped tones were back. Still calm, still measured, but just a little more insistent.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry, but if there is a doctor or a nurse on board, we would be most grateful if they would come forward. We really do need some assistance.’

  I nudged my husband. ‘James.’

  ‘Hm?’

  His shoulders hunched in a telltale manner, chin disappearing right into his neck and his blue-and-white checked shirt.

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘They mean a doctor doctor,’ he murmured uncomfortably. ‘A GP, not a chiropodist.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, you’re a foot surgeon! Go on.’

  ‘There’ll be someone else,’ he muttered, pale-grey eyes glancing around nervously above his glasses, a trifle rattled I could tell.

  ‘Well, obviously, there isn’t, because they’ve asked twice. There could be someone dying. Just go.’

  ‘You know I hate this sort of thing, Flora. There’s bound to be someone with more general expertise, more –’

  ‘I really think, young man,’ said the elderly woman in the window seat beside him, a well-upholstered, imperious-looking matron who’d removed her spectacles to regard him pointedly and reprovingly over her tapestry, ‘that if you do have medical experience, you should go.’

  She made him sound like a conscientious objector.

  ‘Right. Yes. Yes, of course. All right, Flora, you don’t need to advertise me, thank you.’

  But I was already on my feet in the aisle to let him out, gesticulating wildly to a stewardess. ‘Here – over here. Make way, please.’ This to the queue of people waiting patiently beside us for the loo. We were quite close to the front as it was. ‘He’s a doctor.’

  ‘Make way?’ James repeated incredulously under his breath, shooting me an appalled look as the entire front section of the plane turned to look at the tall, lean, sandy-haired, middle-aged man who’d unfolded himself with effort from his seat and was now shuffling forwards, past the queue to the bog, mumbling apologies and looking, in his creased chinos and rumpled holiday shirt, more like a harassed librarian than a paramedic in a hurry.

  I sat back down again, feeling rather important, though I didn’t really sit: instead I perched on the arm of my aisle seat to get a better view. Luckily, a steward had redirected the queue to the loo at the back and I could now see that a little crowd of uniformed cabin crew had gathered around a young girl of about nine who was sitting on the floor, clearly in distress. In even more distress was the very beautiful woman in tight white jeans and a floral shirt standing over her, her hands over her mouth. She was pencil thin with a luxuriant mane of blonde hair, and her heavily accented voice rose in anguish.

  ‘Oh, mon dieu, I can’t do it again – I can’t!’

  I saw James approach and address her and she gabbled back gratefully in French, clutching his arm. I’m reasonably fluent, but at that range I couldn’t make it out, but then she switched back to English, saying, ‘And I have only one left – please – help!’

  She thrust something into my husband’s hand, at which point I was tapped on the shoulder from behind.

  ‘Excuse me, madam, would you mind taking your seat? We’re experiencing a spot of turbulence.’

  The glossy, lipsticked smile on the expertly made-up face of the stewardess meant business. The plane was indeed bumping around a bit. Reluctantly, I lowered my bottom, which obviously meant I missed the crucial moment, because when I craned my neck around the stewardess’s ample behind as she passed, the crowd at the front were on the floor and James was crouching with his back to me, clearly administering something. They’d tried to move the girl to a more secluded position and shield her with bodies, but a plane doesn’t yield much privacy. The blonde, clearly the mother, was the only one standing now, pushing frantic hands through her hair, clutching her mouth, unable to watch, but unable to turn away. My heart lurched for her. I remembered the time when Amelia shut her finger in the door and almost sliced the top off and I’d run away as James held it in place with a pack of frozen peas, and also when Tara coughed up blood in the sitting room and I’d raced upstairs, screaming for her father. You knew you had to help, but you loved them so much you couldn’t bear to watch. There was a muffled collective murmuring from the crew and then, without looking indecently ghoulish, I really couldn’t see any more, as the mother had dared to crouch down, obscuring James as well.

  I went back to my magazine. An interview with a woman from Colefax and Fowler informed me that, on the paint-effects front, Elephant’s Breath was all over. Everyone was coming into her Brooke Street showroom asking for chintzes and borders now. Borders. Blimey. I had rolls of the stuff in the attic. Did Laura Ashley circa 1980 count? Probably not. My mind wasn’t really on it, though, and I narrowed my eyes over my reading glasses. James had straightened up and was answering a series of quick-fire questions from the mother, whose relief was palpable, even though strain still showed in her eyes. My husband, typically, made light of it, brushing away what were clearly effusive thanks, and came back down the aisle, perhaps less hunched and beleaguered than when he’d gone up it, as quite a few passengers now regarded him with interest. I got up quickly to let him slide in and sit down. The ordeal was over and relief was on his face.

  ‘Well?’ I asked. The matron beside him was also agog, needlework abandoned in her lap.

  ‘Nut allergy,’ he reported. ‘She’d taken a crisp from the girl beside her and it must have been cooked in peanut oil. The mother realized what had happened but had never had to administer the EpiPen before, and she cocked it up the first time. She had a spare one but was too scared to do it in case she got it wrong again. The stewardess was about to have a stab.’

  ‘So you did it?’

  He nodded. Picked up Dan Brown.

  ‘Did it go all right?’

  ‘Seemed to. She’s not dead.’

  ‘Oh, James, well done you!’

  ‘Flora, I have given the odd injection.’

  ‘Yes, but still.’

  ‘I say, well done, young man,’ purred his beady-eyed neighbour approvingly. ‘I couldn’t help overhearing. I gather you’re a surgeon?’

  ‘Consultant surgeon,’ I told her proudly.

  ‘Ingrowing toenails, mostly,’ said James, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. ‘The odd stubborn verruca.’

  ‘Nonsense, he trained as an orthopaedic. He’s done hips, knees, everything, but he gets a lot of referrals from chiropodists these days, when it’s out of their sphere of expertise.’ I turned to James. ‘Will she be all right? The little girl?’

  ‘She’ll be fine. It just takes a few moments to kick in.’

  ‘Anaphylactic shock,’ I explained to my new friend across his lap. Like most doctors’ wives I considered myself to be highly qualified, a little knowledge often being a dangerous thing.

  ‘Ah,’ she agreed sagely, regarding James with enormous respect now, her pale, rheumy eyes wide. ‘Well, that’s extremely serious, isn’t it? I say, you saved her life.’
r />   James grunted modestly but didn’t raise his head from his book. His cheeks were slightly flushed, though, and I was pleased. Morale could not be said to be stratospheric in the Murray-Brown household at the moment, what with NHS cuts and his private practice dwindling. When he’d first decided to specialize, years ago, he’d chosen sports injuries, having been an avid cricketer in his youth, but that had become a very crowded field. He’d seen younger, more ambitious men overtake him, so he’d concentrated on cosmetic foot surgery instead. A mistake in retrospect, for whilst in a recession people would still pay to have a crucial knee operation, they might decide to live with their unsightly bunions and just buy wider shoes. He’d even joked with the children about getting a van, like Amelia’s boyfriend, who was a DJ, adding wheels to his trade, morphing into a mobile chiropodist, perhaps with a little butterfly logo on the side. ‘A website, too!’ Amelia had laughed, ‘I’ll design it for you.’ But I’d sensed a ghastly seriousness beneath his banter. He spent too much time in what we loosely called ‘the office’ at the top of our house in Clapham, aka the spare room, pretending to write articles for the Lancet but in fact doing the Telegraph crossword in record time, then rolling up the paper and waging war on the wasp nest outside the window. Not really what he’d spent seven years training at St Thomas’s for. This then, whilst not the Nobel Prize for Medicine, was a morale boost.

  I peered down the aisle. I could see the young mother standing at the front of the plane now, facing the passengers, her face a picture of relief, casting about, searching for him. I gave her a broad smile and pointed over my head extravagantly.

  ‘He’s here!’ I mouthed.

  She’d swept down the aisle in moments. Leaned right over me into James’s lap, blonde hair flowing. ‘Oh, I want to thank you so very much,’ she breathed gustily in broken English. ‘You saved my daughter’s life.’