‘Does Jamie know?’
‘Yes. He saw him briefly in Resus, but Gary was out of it. He just needed to know he was alive.’
She rubbed his arm comfortingly. ‘Sam, I’m so sorry. I’ll go now. Call me if there’s anything I can do.’
‘Sure. Thanks, you’re a star.’
He kissed her briefly on the cheek, his hand resting a moment longer on her shoulder, then he turned back to his family to pick up the pieces of yet another crisis.
How much more? How much more could he be asked to take? And how could she even conceivably put any more on him?
She left them to it and went home to bed, only to find the chocolate sauce bowl had been upended in the middle of her bed in all the confusion, and she thought of Sam making love to her, and the conversation they’d been having which had been so violently interrupted—a conversation they had yet to finish.
And she desperately needed to get to bed, but it was trashed, and the spare bed wasn’t made up.
Pulling the bedding off, she carried it back downstairs, stuffed the sheet into the washing machine and took the quilt into the sitting room and curled up on the sofa with it snuggled round her. She was cold, she realised, and shaking with reaction now it was all over and there was nothing more to do. She could feel the sobs rising in her chest and she tried to hold them back, but she could still see Gary fitting, the terrible moments as he fought for his young life, and suddenly it was all too much.
‘Oh, Sam, I need you,’ she sobbed. Cuddling the bedding closer, she buried her face in it, in the scent of Sam’s body, and wept for Gary and his family, and the close call Jamie had had, and Sam, struggling to hold it all together—and above all, the senselessness of the illness that had taken her away from him and wasted the last eleven years…
‘How are things?’
Sam gave her a weary smile, pushed her backwards into her treatment room and closed the door, then pulled her into his arms and held her without speaking for several minutes.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked softly, and he nodded, his head moving against her shoulder.
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘And Jamie? I didn’t like to ask too much last night, but I’ve been wondering.’
‘He’s OK. He’s very sore, and he’s got some spectacular bruises, but they did an ultrasound aorta scan and X-rayed him all over and—well, he’s fine. He’s got several fractures in his lower arm and wrist and hand, and his sternum’s really bruised from the seat belt, but on the whole he’s been incredibly lucky. Unlike Gary.’
She sighed and rubbed his back comfortingly. ‘Poor Amanda. Nick’s been to see her at the hospital and she’s devastated. She said everyone’s going to think he’s got his just deserts, but she’s heartbroken. She’s such a sweet woman, but hopelessly ineffectual. According to Nick her husband’s a total waste of space, and she keeps letting him back every time he’s out of prison. But at least she’s got proper contraceptive cover now, so she’s not still getting pregnant every time he’s out, and maybe the other children will learn by Gary’s mistakes and there might be a better chance for them.’
Sam let out his breath on a harsh sigh. ‘Maybe. At least he can’t hurt anyone else for a while now.’
‘No. Amanda said that herself, apparently. Poor woman. Oh, well, if he survives maybe it’ll be the making of him.’ She straightened up and looked into Sam’s red-rimmed, exhausted eyes. ‘You don’t look as if you had much sleep. What are you doing here? You should be at home in bed. They aren’t expecting you.’
‘I’ve brought Jamie in,’ he explained. ‘He needs another X-ray and a proper cast. Gabriel’s just checking him over for me. Could you put the cast on? My left hand’s not very useful, I might squeeze it too tight. No feedback.’
‘Of course.’
She went down to the X-ray room with him and she and Sam looked at the plates with Gabriel while Jamie sat on the chair and stared blankly at the wall opposite, his battered face expressionless.
‘Well, it looks good,’ Gabriel said, studying the films on the light box. ‘Nothing displaced. See here, a clean break of the radius and ulna, and two of the carpals, here and here, and the scaphoid and first metatarsal both have very fine cracks, but he’s been lucky and I think he can have a proper cast now. There’s only a little swelling. He’ll need the thumb held out to keep the scaphoid aligned, but he should be OK. It’ll need another X-ray in two weeks to check the alignment.’
‘Great. Thank you, Gabriel. So, Gemma, can you plaster it for him?’
‘Sure. Come on, Jamie, let’s see what we can do. What colour do you want?’
‘I don’t care,’ he said tonelessly, so she went for dark blue, and swiftly and carefully wrapped his arm in the fibreglass cast, checking it was comfortable and making him wiggle his fingers slightly, then glanced up at Sam. ‘Happy with the position?’
‘Very. You’ve done a lovely job, thank you.’
‘Thank the time I spent in A and E doing nothing else,’ she said, then smiled at Jamie. ‘Right, you’ll do,’ she said, squeezing his shoulder in support. ‘Keep it up, rest it and wiggle your fingers every few minutes. And don’t get the cast wet, don’t stick anything down it if it gets itchy and tell someone if it gets too tight or too loose or if your fingers swell or discolour. OK?’
‘I’m fine,’ he said, not looking at her, and she could see he was at the end of his rope.
‘Take him home, Sam, put him to bed—and get some sleep yourself,’ she said softly. ‘You both look done in.’
‘I can’t sleep,’ Jamie said. ‘I just keep seeing it.’
Sam put an arm gently round his shoulders. ‘You’ll be all right. Come on, mate, let’s go home and see if we can find a DVD.’
She watched them go, and Kate came out of the office and shook her head. ‘Poor boy. He must be so upset.’
‘He is—I think he feels guilty because he’s got away with it so lightly in comparison. I’ve just been putting a cast on for him to replace the back-slab. Which reminds me, how’s Jem’s wrist?’
‘Oh, he’s fine. Back at school and proudly showing it off to everyone. I think he wishes it had been broken! He’s feeling terribly guilty about Digger’s paw.’
‘He shouldn’t. Digger’s fine, he’s spending all his time on Linda’s knee at the moment, and now Jamie’s hurt he’ll be snuggled up to him as well, so he’s got plenty of company while he heals. He’ll be spoilt rotten.’
She watched Sam through the glass doors as he put Jamie in the car and then drove away, and she wondered how long it would be before they could spend any time alone together, and when, if ever, they’d finish that long-overdue conversation…
‘It’s been really odd at school today—quiet. Nobody likes Gary, but they all remember him, and of course the middle brother’s still there. It’s as if everyone’s holding their breath, waiting for the news.’
‘Mmm.’ Kate nodded at Rob and stirred the teapot thoughtfully. ‘Jem said how strange it was without Tel and Tassie. They’re above him and Matthew, of course, but he knows Tel.’ She didn’t let herself dwell on how he’d been so badly bullied by him, but somehow Rob knew that and gave her a gentle one-armed hug.
‘He’s OK now, Kate.’
‘I know. I’m just so glad he’s got Matthew for a friend.’
She looked up at him and smiled, and he stared down at her and for a moment she thought—no. Silly. Of course he wasn’t going to kiss her. Although if he did…
But he moved away, and she took a deep breath and poured the tea, and the moment was gone. Rob took the tea from her and looked out of the window to where the two boys were playing in the garden.
‘Can I ask something?’ he asked quietly.
She followed the direction of his eyes and thought, Oh, no. Please, no. ‘What?’
‘You and Nick…’
He let it hang there in the air, and she looked down into her tea while Rob waited.
Then, when it was obvious she wasn
’t going to reply, he sighed softly. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up. Forget I said anything.’
She hesitated, then blurted out, ‘Nobody knows.’
‘Nobody?’
She gave a strangled laugh. ‘Oh, Nick knows,’ she said, and wondered if her voice sounded as bitter as it felt. ‘But hardly anybody else, although that won’t last. It’s getting more and more obvious as he gets older, and it’s only a matter of time.’
She bit her lip, staring at Jem through the window and feeling her heart swell with love. ‘It was just once,’ she went on. ‘A stupid, stupid thing, and I know I ought to regret it, but—I love my son, Rob, and I wouldn’t turn the clock back and undo it for anything, because then I wouldn’t have him. He would never have existed, and I can’t imagine life without him.’
‘No. I know what you mean. Losing Annette broke my heart, but I don’t think I could ever have dealt with losing Matthew.’
She felt her eyes fill with tears. ‘I’m so sorry, Rob. It must have been dreadful.’
‘It was—but it’s a long time ago now, nearly five years, and I’m ready to move on.’
She looked up at him then, and realised he was talking about her, about them, and she thought, Yes, I’m ready, too. Not for a grand passion, maybe, because there’ll always only be Nick, but a gentle love, a caring friend, someone to share things with? I’m ready for that.
‘What are you doing on Friday night?’ she asked.
‘Why?’
‘Because the children are both at Alex Pentreath’s birthday party, and I wondered if you’d like to come for supper?’
He hesitated for a moment, then smiled. ‘That sounds very nice. Thank you. I’d love to.’
‘Good,’ she said with a smile. ‘More tea?’
Gary Lovelace made slight progress in the next few days, and by the end of the week he was downgraded from critical to stable. Not that many of the people in the village cared one way or the other, and not least Mr Polgrean, who was furious about his car and not at all surprised to hear that Jamie had been involved.
And because Jamie was getting better, Sam took him to see the man, to explain that he hadn’t been anything to do with its theft and to apologise for all the trouble he’d caused in the past, and after he grudgingly accepted his brother’s apology, he turned to Sam and said he owed him one, too.
‘This leg business. They said I could have died. You were right, and I had no business bringing up the past like that. If you’d walked away…’
‘I could have been struck off for neglect. Let’s just forget it and let bygones be bygones, shall we?’ he offered, and held out his hand to the crusty old fisherman.
And after an age, he took it, and Sam watched the anger and bitterness drain out of him. He took Jamie home, and the following day he returned to school, to Sam’s relief, as he had significant public exams coming up in the next few weeks, and then everything quietened down.
On the home front, at least. Sam was able to go back to work, and it was mayhem, because the tourists were starting to come in larger numbers, especially the surfers, and then Adam Donnelly dropped a bombshell into the mix.
‘Maggie and I have decided that the world’s a fascinating place and we want to go and see it before we settle down and have a family, so we’re going to be leaving Penhally at the end of August,’ he announced at their weekly staff meeting.
Amid the exclamations and ripple of comment, Sam wondered what the staffing implications would be—and if Nick would try and talk him into staying on full time.
He wasn’t sure, and he certainly didn’t know what his answer would be, but that would rather depend on Gemma, he thought, which brought up the subject of the conversation they’d been having when Jamie had phoned him on Monday night.
And it was Friday now, four days later, and he was still no nearer finding out why she’d left him.
But he’d promised to take Jamie over to the hospital this evening to see Gary, and his mother needed his attention, and he would just have to wait. It wasn’t the sort of conversation he wanted to rush. There was something she wasn’t telling him, something so hugely significant that it had led to the end of their marriage, and he wanted time to talk it through, to get right to the bottom of it and thrash it out, once and for all.
He’d waited nearly eleven years, after all. What difference could a few more days make?
Nick drummed his fingers on the kitchen table and stared blindly out of the window at the dark sea.
He was lonely. Lonely and bored, and he knew Jem was at a party tonight. He glanced at his watch. Ten to ten. Kate might still be up. He could drive past, see if there were any lights on. He wanted to talk to her about Polly Searle—or Polly Carrick, as she now was.
He couldn’t remember her at all, but he could remember her father, and he’d been a thoroughly nasty piece of work. No wonder she’d changed her name to her mother’s maiden name. He couldn’t remember much about her, because he’d not been her GP, of course, Phil had, but Kate would know.
And she was right, they could do with a woman doctor. He hated all the menopause stuff, it was utterly foreign to him and women got so emotional. Yes, a woman doctor would be good.
Tossing his keys in the air and catching them with a sweep of his arm, Nick headed out of the door, locking it behind him out of habit—not that he needed to, probably, with Gary Lovelace out of the frame for now, but old habits died hard.
He drove along Harbour Road past the fishing boats that were all getting ready to go out on the tide, and up Treligga Road to Kate’s house. He could see lights on, but as he approached he noticed a strange car on the drive.
Odd. She must have visitors.
And then he saw her cross in front of the kitchen window, and a man—Rob Werrick?—walked into view.
Damn. So he’d been right, they were seeing each other. Unless Rob was picking up something Matthew had left behind? That could be it.
Except, if that was the case, why was Rob looking down at Kate like that? And why…?
Oh, God. He watched in horror as Kate lifted her face to his kiss, then sat, transfixed, as the kiss grew more passionate.
No! But then they moved apart, and he felt a wave of relief, but it was short-lived. The landing light came on, then the bedroom light. And Kate reached up and closed the curtains.
He felt a wave of nausea wash over him and, spinning the wheel, he gunned the car back down the hill and out along the Harbour Road, up past the Smugglers’.
He didn’t stop, although he often dropped in for a quiet pint with Tony.
But not tonight. Tonight…
Tonight he just wanted to scream with frustration and bitterness and all the pent-up emotion that was normally locked down tight inside him, and until he had it under control, he was going nowhere.
But he couldn’t get the image of Kate and Rob out of his mind, and he was eaten up with a nameless emotion that felt suspiciously like jealousy.
Ridiculous. He didn’t even want Kate!
But he was damned if he wanted someone else having her, he thought bitterly. He contemplated going home and getting drunk, but dismissed the thought. There was a better way to deal with his frustration, and it was about time he dusted off his social life. Hauling his phone out of his pocket, he scrolled through his numbers, then paused and pressed the call button.
Moments later, it was answered, and he took a breath and leant back, calming himself.
‘Louise? It’s Nick. How are you? We haven’t spoken for a while—I’m sorry, I’ve been rather tied up. Look, are you busy? I was wondering if I could drop by…’
CHAPTER NINE
‘HOW’S Gary?’
‘Still in a coma.’ Sam sighed and dropped into his chair, and Gemma pushed the door shut and went over and put her arms round him.
‘I’m sorry. How’s Jamie taking it?’
‘He’s racked with guilt. Thinks he should have done more to stop him, though God knows what he
could have said to make him pay attention, when nobody else has ever succeeded. Even Gertrude Stanbury, our old headmistress, thinks he’s probably just a bad person, and she doesn’t write people off lightly. She never wrote me off.’
‘Because you weren’t a bad person, Sam. And neither is Jamie. Even if Mr Polgrean thinks you both are.’
‘Oh, not any more,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘He actually apologised for being rude last Monday, because they’d told him how close he’d got to losing his leg, and he realised that if I’d listened to him and walked off, he might have lost it. Or worse. And he even accepted Jamie’s apology for getting mixed up with Gary, so it was pretty cosy all round, really.’
‘Good grief, wonders will never cease,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘And your mum?’
‘Oh, she’s all right, I suppose, but still a bit shocked and she’s struggling to get over her own problems, but Lauren’s been great with her and she’s doing all right. Her hand’s still a bit weak and her legs are a little unsteady, but fundamentally she’s fantastic, considering.’
‘And the dog?’
‘He’s getting along.’
‘Good.’
Gemma perched on the edge of the desk facing him, and ran her finger over his knee thoughtfully.
‘So—does that mean you’re able to get out a bit more now?’
He raised a brow, the smile he couldn’t quite prevent playing around his mouth.
‘Well, that very much depends, of course, on what’s on offer.’
‘On offer? I was rather thinking it might be your turn to do the offering.’
He sat up slowly, leaning forwards and reaching up to pull her down onto his lap. ‘Well, now, let me think. How about dinner somewhere? Not the Smugglers’. Somewhere a bit more private, where we aren’t going to run into whoever’s acting as Town Crier this week. Somewhere like Padstow, or Rock?’
Caroline Anderson, Anne Fraser, Kate Hardy, Margaret McDonagh Page 12