‘Tea, coffee or water, Mike Barber, as you very well know,’ the practice’s head receptionist said quellingly. ‘And you behave yourself or I’ll be having a word with your mother.’
He pulled a face. ‘That’s put me properly in my place…one of the penalties of living in the same town all your life.’
‘But it can’t be too bad a place if so many people want to come back here to live. Dr Nick, for example,’ Maggie pointed out, as they followed Hazel up the stairs to the staffroom, trying to take her mind off what was about to happen. It wasn’t an accident that they hadn’t called in at the practice over the last two and a half weeks. It had been a deliberate ploy on her part to put off as long as possible the meeting that would bring back one of the most distressing days of her life.
‘Nick’s far from the only one to come back—there’s also our newest recruit to the practice. He’s an old Penhally boy, too,’ Hazel said with a broad smile for someone who had just followed them into the room. ‘Maggie, I don’t know whether you’ll remember him from when you were both at school here. He would have been several years above you. It’s—’
‘Adam Donnelly,’ she whispered with her heart in her throat when she met those serious dark eyes for the first time in more than a year.
He was wearing a smart charcoal-grey suit that made him look every inch the respectable GP, but the shirt wasn’t commonplace white but a clear blue that drew attention to the almost navy blue of his eyes. Had he remembered that she’d been the one to tell him that would happen?
At least she’d never been silly enough to tell him just how much those deep blue eyes had always affected her. That had been one of her secrets, as was the fact that she’d been head over heels in love with him long before he’d disappeared off to medical school.
Unfortunately, even though she tried to force herself not to react, those dark eyes still elicited the same response they always had…for all the good it would do her.
‘Maggie,’ he said with a nod of acknowledgement, but that single word in that unforgettable husky voice was enough to rip all the scars wide open again. The last time she’d heard it she’d been wrapped in his arms, believing…
‘My goodness, you’ve got good memories!’ Hazel exclaimed. ‘You can’t have seen each other since Adam went away to medical school, because his mother moved away from Penhally after…Oh, it must be ten years or so ago,’ she finished hastily, clearly uncomfortable that she’d all but brought up the storm when Adam’s father had been one of those who had died.
‘We have met since then, Hazel,’ Maggie said, taking pity on the poor woman’s embarrassment. She held Adam’s gaze deliberately as she continued lightly, ‘We happened to bump into each other one day about a year ago when I went up to London to do one of my courses.’ Nonchalant, that was what she’d been aiming for, but however it sounded it was better if everything was out in the open. After all, if she had known then that he…
‘And then we got involved when there was an accident on the underground,’ Adam added, but his casual tone sounded far more genuine than her own. ‘We were on the spot and were able to provide some assistance until the people with the proper equipment could arrive.’
Maggie marvelled that he could make the whole incident sound so inconsequential. It had given her nightmares for months as she’d relived every second of…
‘So, people, is it tea or coffee today?’ Hazel asked as she bustled across to the kitchenette to fill the kettle. ‘And there might even be some biscuits left in the tin as Nick’s been out on patient visits all afternoon.’
Maggie had been waiting for her chance to refuse, but the mention of Hazel’s biscuits changed her mind in a hurry.
‘What sort of biscuits? Your special Cornish fairings?’ she asked, eager for a taste so reminiscent of the happier days of her childhood. ‘I’d love one.’
‘If you’ve got some spare, I wouldn’t mind having one, too, Hazel,’ said the elegant older man on the other side of the room as he looked up from scanning a handful of envelopes by the practice mail rack. ‘Your famous biscuits are one reason why I agreed to come out of retirement to help young Nick when the Avantis went back to Italy and he didn’t have enough staff to run the practice properly.’
‘It’s very kind of you to say so, Dr Fletcher,’ Hazel said with an extra wash of pink to her cheeks. ‘The Cornish fairings are Nick’s favourites,’ she added with a happy smile as she gave the tin an experimental shake then opened it.
‘They’re fast becoming my favourites, too,’ Adam said with a grin as he managed to take two at once, and the mouthful Maggie had just taken turned to dust in her mouth at the unexpected glimpse of the grin that had captivated her right from the first time she’d seen it.
Then she’d been a lowly fifteen-year-old and Adam had been one of the seniors, heading into his last year at school. He’d been so far out of her orbit that he shouldn’t have even noticed the skinny little girl staring at him while her heart had tried to beat its way out of her flat chest.
But he had noticed her and had sent her a grin exactly like the one he’d just sent to Hazel, and she’d been utterly captivated.
The whole of that year she’d spent haunting the corridors, hoping for a glimpse of him, and gradually from an easygoing grin their relationship had graduated through breathless pleasantries to actual conversations while they’d waited for the bus to take them to and from school.
By the time her sixteenth birthday had come around they’d confided so many secrets and ambitions to each other—including the fact that he was aiming for a career in medicine—but one thing she would always remember was the fact that it had been the day when Adam had kissed her for the first time.
Then he’d gone away to begin his training and, apart from that dreadful week when he’d returned to support his mother through the wait until his father’s body had been found, then the heart-breaking memorial service that the whole of Penhally seemed to have attended, this was the first time Adam had ever returned to the town of his birth.
So, why now? she wondered as he and Mike discovered a mutual interest in the mining history of Cornwall. She couldn’t imagine that the beautiful willowy blonde in their wedding photo would appreciate burying herself in a rural place like this. She was definitely a London person and would probably only feel at home in the more pretentiously exclusive corners of the county.
Well, at least I won’t be called on to socialise with her, she thought, stifling the pang that her lack of choices over her career brought. She would have loved to have become a doctor, too—would have loved nothing more than to have followed Adam through medical school. But it wasn’t to be. In her final year at school her mother had been diagnosed with cancer and there had been no way that she could have countenanced the idea of leaving the last beloved member of her family without support while she underwent the gruelling rounds of chemotherapy, surgery and then more chemotherapy.
Still, Maggie couldn’t imagine that a GP’s wife would be terribly keen to socialise with a mere paramedic. Not that she saw her profession as inferior, just different. Paramedics were often the first people to see a patient and it was in their hands that patients’ lives rested while they were stabilised for transportation to hospital. Far fewer accident victims would survive were it not for the existence of paramedics. But even though she was proud of what they were able to do for accident victims and of the green uniform she wore, she had to admit that they were still definitely from different echelons in the medical hierarchy.
She managed to keep herself on the edge of the conversation so that she didn’t draw Hazel’s attention. She certainly didn’t want to make it obvious that she was avoiding speaking to Adam, but just when she was trying to find a way to edge towards the door unnoticed, there was a disturbance somewhere out in the street.
‘Nick!’screamed a woman’s voice. ‘Somebody! Help!’
‘That sounds almost like Kate Althorp,’ Hazel said, her eyes wide. ‘Oh, no!
There must have been an accident in the boatyard.’
Adam and Mike were already heading for the stairs, their longer legs outstripping Maggie’s so that she was playing catch-up by the time they reached the reception area.
‘What’s the matter, Kate?’ Adam demanded, his eyes already beginning a primary survey of the white, shaking woman in front of him. ‘Where are you hurt? Was it the machinery in the boatyard?’
‘It’s not me. It’s Jem…’ She held up her clenched fist and they saw the mobile phone for the first time. ‘He rang me and said that there’s been an accident and they’re hurt.’
‘What accident and who’s hurt?’ demanded Nick Tremayne, as he appeared from the direction of his consulting room, a bewildered patient following him into the hallway.
‘Jem phoned me,’ Kate said through chattering teeth, her whole body vibrating with the onset of shock. ‘He’s with some other boys. They went exploring and there’s been a rockfall in a mine. They’re hurt.’
‘Which mine, Kate?’ Nick had shouldered Adam aside and was gripping her shoulders in both hands now, as though he thought he could force her to hold herself together and concentrate. ‘There are hundreds of the things all over Cornwall.’
‘I know that, but I don’t know which one!’ she wailed. Maggie automatically stepped forward when she saw that the woman’s knees were about to fail her, but Nick had the situation in hand, wrapping an arm around Kate and swiftly lowering her onto the nearest chair.
‘You’re wasting time, Kate. Stop yowling and think!’ he said sharply, and they all heard her draw in a shocked breath, her dark eyes wide with hurt at his apparently brutal treatment. But his curtness obviously had the desired effect because she was no longer out of control.
‘He didn’t tell me which mine,’ she said, tears still streaming down her pale cheeks. ‘And I tried to ring him back but the signal was too weak. You know how poor reception can be around here.’
‘Well, what did he say?’ Nick demanded.
‘That they were exploring in the mine and…and something…or someone…fell and they’re hurt. Oh, God, Nick, he’s hurt. My baby’s hurt and I don’t know where he is or—?’
‘They?’ Nick snapped. ‘Who are they…his friends? Who are his friends? And where were they going to play?’
‘They’re…I don’t know…’ She shook her head. ‘Some boys from the school, I think. He just waved goodbye to me and said he’d be back for tea and…and…’ She nearly lost it again but there must have been something in Nick’s face that forced her to hang onto her control. ‘They looked a bit older than him, but he’s so tall for his age…He only got his bike for Christmas and he’s already starting to grow out of it and—’
‘They were on bikes?’ Maggie interrupted as an image suddenly leapt into her head, the one she’d spotted through the windscreen of the ambulance of a tangle of brightly coloured bicycle frames half-hidden behind some gorse bushes. ‘Did you say there were four or five of them, all on bikes?’
‘Yes! You saw them? Oh, Maggie, where were they? You could have brought them down to the surgery in the ambulance. Surely, if they were hurt, you could have—’
‘Kate,’ she interrupted gently, ‘I didn’t actually see any of the boys, but I’m almost certain that I know where their bikes are.’ She turned towards her colleague. ‘Mike, you remember where you had to stop the ambulance when Mr Dinnis…when I had to take care of Mr Dinnis?’ Sometimes patient confidentiality could be a nuisance when you had to be so careful to watch every word. ‘Well, I could see some gorse over the stone wall and there were several bikes there. I couldn’t see how many but there were anything up to half a dozen.’
‘Take me there, please!’ Kate demanded, surging to her feet wild-eyed. ‘I’ve got to find my son. He’s all I’ve got left of…of…’
‘You’re not going anywhere until we’ve contacted the emergency services,’ Nick said firmly, pressing her back into her seat. ‘We need to—’
‘I already dialled 999 and told them Jem was stuck down a mine.’ It was Kate’s turn to interrupt. ‘They said they were going to send emergency services to Penhally…to meet up here, at the surgery…’
‘That’s because all our staff have done emergency rescue training…as you know well because you were the one to arrange it when you were practice manager,’ Nick reminded her.
‘In the meantime, I could go up the hill with Maggie and Mike and see if we can find out if we’ve got the right mine,’ Adam suggested, and even as Maggie’s brain registered that he’d had a good idea, her heart sank at the thought of being any closer to him than absolutely necessary.
She was still coming to terms with the fact that he was just as heart-breakingly handsome as ever and that he was for ever out of reach. The prospect of having to work with him on a regular basis wasn’t something she wanted to contemplate.
In fact, it might be the only thing that could persuade her to move away from her beloved Penhally.
‘Good idea, Adam,’ Nick agreed, even though it was obvious that he would rather be the one in the thick of any activity. ‘We’ll wait to hear from you and lead the rescue teams up to you if Maggie’s right.’
Maggie saw Mike beckoning her to the ambulance and realised that he’d gone out to take details from despatch of their next callout. If it was another heart-attack victim, like Walter Dinnis, she would have no option but to give Adam directions to the place she’d seen the bikes and leave him to find his own way. She was not in charge of determining priorities when the emergency calls came through and would have to go where she was told.
‘That was Dispatch,’ Mike confirmed. ‘They know we’re almost at the end of our shift but they’re telling us to stay on duty here and do whatever we can until they can send out a replacement crew to relieve us.’
‘Shall I come with you?’ Adam asked. ‘Or would it be better if I followed you in my own vehicle?’
‘It’s your choice,’ Maggie said briskly, grateful that if he were to come with them, he’d have to travel in the back of the vehicle. She didn’t feel as if she was ready for any closer contact until she’d got her emotions a little better under control around him. It would be nice to know something simple…such as whether she loved him or loathed him after the way they’d parted a year ago.
‘If you’re coming with us you’ll have to hop in the back and hang on—tight!’ Mike called out. ‘That twisting hill out of Penhally isn’t comfortable at the best of times, and it’s downright evil in an ambulance.’
‘I’ll follow you in my car, then,’ he said as Maggie double-checked that the back doors were firmly closed and raced towards the passenger door to climb into the cab.
Mike was already reversing the ungainly vehicle out of the surgery car park as Adam put the key in the ignition of his car, and when the ambulance driver gunned the powerful engine along the road edging the harbour, with blue lights and siren both going, Adam was surprised to see just how fast he was having to travel to keep up with them.
A middle-aged car driver tried to dispute priority as they approached the narrow bottleneck of Harbour Bridge but rapidly changed his mind when Mike flipped the headlights up full and drove straight at him. Adam had no difficulty following in his wake but at Higher Bridge they both had to slow down just long enough to negotiate the tight corner onto the narrow bridge with the massive granite parapets—they wouldn’t be going anywhere if they sideswiped one of those—and then he could hear the full-throated roar of the engine that told him that Mike was using every ounce of power to pull up the winding road out of the steep-sided valley as quickly as possible.
Even though it had been years since he’d lived in Penhally, the road was familiar enough that Adam could almost switch to automatic pilot to drive it, his thoughts centred on the woman travelling in the vehicle up ahead rather than on where they were going and why.
A major part of the reason why he’d signed on as a locum at Penhally Bay Surgery had been because Maggie
still lived and worked in the area, but he’d been completely bowled over when he’d come into the staffroom a little while ago and found her standing there, the ultimate professional in her paramedic’s uniform.
Her new hairstyle had been a bit of a shock, too. A year ago she’d still been wearing it in the same shoulder-length bob that he’d always known, tied back into a shiny dark ponytail for practicality, but he had to admit that the shorter style suited her elfin beauty even better, and highlighted all the colours that went to make her unusual hazel eyes.
He pulled a face when he replayed the expression on her face when she’d caught sight of him. It certainly hadn’t been warmly welcoming but, then, what had he expected? He’d made a complete mess of things the last time he’d seen her and even though it had been unintentional, he knew he’d hurt her.
That was another reason why he was back in Penhally…to see if he could persuade her to listen while he explained exactly what had been going on in his chaotic life a year ago, to tell her that he hadn’t deliberately set out to make her go against everything she believed in…that there had been extenuating circumstances that…
‘Forget it for now,’ he growled aloud when he saw the indicator signal that the vehicle ahead was going to pull off the road and slowed his own car ready to follow. ‘There’s nothing you can do about it until we find out where these kids are and what kind of help they need.’
Talking to Maggie, making her understand and, hopefully, getting her to forgive him and let him back into her life was why he was here, but that would all have to wait until he could persuade her to meet up with him after work.
For now he was going to have to switch his brain into rescue mode and, as hard as it would be, he’d have to force himself to forget that the slender woman up ahead was anything other than a professional colleague.
CHAPTER TWO
‘SLOW down a bit, Mike. I saw the bikes just up here on the left,’ Maggie said, peering through the gathering gloom in attempt to spot the right clump of gorse bushes over the top of the stone wall, glad that they were nearly there.
Caroline Anderson, Sara Morgan, Josie Metcalfe, Jennifer Taylor Page 34