He gave a deep laugh. ‘I wouldn’t like to be in his shoes when he gets out of hospital. Aunt Mary might be a gentle soul but I’m sure she’ll make him pay for his deviousness!’
‘I expect she’ll forgive him in the end. She must be so relieved that he’s going to be all right,’ Beth said firmly.
Adam shrugged. ‘I’m sure you’re right. They have a great marriage. If anyone needs any tips on how to make a relationship work, they only need to look at that pair.’
‘A good role model for you?’ she suggested, suddenly curious about the state of Adam’s own love life. He hadn’t mentioned that he was married but suddenly the thought that he might have a wife and family was strangely unpalatable, and not just because it could have repercussions on what she wanted to ask him.
‘Oh, I decided a long time ago that marriage wasn’t for me. Once bitten, twice shy, as the saying goes.’
Beth frowned. That seemed to imply that he’d been let down at some point, and she couldn’t help wondering if it had anything to do with her sister. Claire had always claimed that her relationship with Adam Knight had been strictly fun, but had he felt the same about it?
The idea troubled her. However, before she could try to find out more he suddenly sighed. ‘Anyway, enough of all that. You must be itching to put your feet up for half an hour before evening surgery and here I am, rabbiting on. You’re too good a listener, Beth. You remind me of Claire in that respect as well.’
She summoned a smile, although she couldn’t deny that the comparison was disquieting. She had loved Claire and should have been pleased to be compared favourably to her, but the thought that Adam was measuring her against her sister troubled her.
‘I shall take that as a compliment,’ she said, refusing to dwell on the idea. There were far more pressing matters to focus on, but was this the right moment to tell him? He was obviously tired from all the travelling so maybe it would be better to leave it until tomorrow when he would be better able to cope with the news.
It was a relief to be able to put off the moment a while longer and she smiled at him. ‘Right, I’m away upstairs for a cup of tea.’
‘You’re living in the flat over the surgery?’ Adam asked in surprise.
‘Yes. It was a real bonus because I couldn’t have afforded anywhere as big otherwise. A bedsit certainly wouldn’t have been suitable when—’ She just managed to stop in time. Adam looked at her curiously, his brows drawing together into a slight frown.
‘Why wouldn’t a bedsit have been suitable?’ he asked flatly before an odd expression crossed his face. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. It’s none of my business if you’re living with someone.’
‘I’m not,’ she admitted huskily because it still hurt to recall what had happened. ‘I was in a relationship for quite some time but we split up a few months ago. That’s why I needed a place to live when I took the job in Winton. I moved out of the house we’d been sharing after I broke off our engagement.’
‘Tough. It must have been a difficult time for you.’
Adam reached over and squeezed her hand in a genuine show of sympathy, and for some reason she felt some of the hurt dissolve. It was all very strange so that it was an effort to reply calmly when he bade her goodbye.
Beth went up to the flat and made herself a cup of tea then opened the back door. There was a flight of steps leading from the flat to the car park, with a small balcony at the top. She’d filled some plastic tubs with colourful plants and had bought a small bench seat from the local garden centre and had arranged them out there.
It was her own little oasis of calm, the place she went to when she wanted to think, and there was a lot to think about at the moment, most of it centred on one person, funnily enough—Adam Knight. The man she had searched for for so long.
He wasn’t anything like she had imagined he would be.
Evening surgery was packed. Even Eileen looked frazzled by the end of the night. Chris Andrews looked positively grey with fatigue when Beth bumped into him on her way to the office.
‘What a night!’ he declared. ‘Don’t folk know that it’s summer and that coughs, colds and other such nasties should have been left well behind by now?’
Beth smiled sympathetically. ‘It’s hard to believe that we could have an outbreak of flu at this time of the year. It’s the start of the hay fever season soon.’
‘Which means more running eyes and stuffy noses.’ Chris sounded really downhearted. ‘Sometimes I feel like packing in this job and going off beachcombing. There has to be more to life than this!’
‘It should get better now that Adam is here,’ she said, trying to sound encouraging because she could tell that Chris was down in the dumps.
‘It should. I only wish he was staying here on a permanent basis, but this isn’t his scene at all.’ Chris shrugged when she looked at him. ‘Adam has itchy feet and I can’t see him ever settling down in any one place. He prefers the nomadic life—no ties, no commitments other than to his work. Mind you, I’m starting to think he has the right idea. I must have been mad to opt for the life of a GP!’
Chris didn’t appear to expect her to say anything, thankfully enough. Beth went into the office and checked her list for the following morning, but she couldn’t help thinking about what she had just heard. Not that it had come as a surprise. She had guessed a long time ago that Adam Knight was the type of man who avoided any kind of commitment. It made it that more difficult to assess how he would react to what she had to tell him.
It was a worrying thought but she tried to put it out of her head as she went up to the flat and changed out of her uniform. She was a little later than usual so she didn’t waste time as she slipped on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, then pulled the pins out of her hair and quickly ran her fingers through it.
The gleaming red-gold strands swirled around her shoulders as she opened the back door, catching the last rays of evening sunlight. The light was so bright that her eyes were momentarily dazzled when she stepped onto the balcony and she didn’t see the man who was sitting on the bench. It was only when he spoke that she realised he was there.
‘Hello, Beth. I wonder if you could spare me a minute.’
She gasped and pressed a hand to her racing heart. ‘You scared the wits out of me, Adam!’
‘Sorry.’ He stood up and looked pointedly at the door. ‘Perhaps we could go back inside?’
Beth swallowed hard, wondering what it was about the way he was looking at her that made her feel so nervous. ‘I was just on my way out. Can’t it wait till tomorrow?’
‘I’m afraid not. We’ve wasted most of a day as it is.’ He sat back down on the bench although his eyes never left her face. ‘It was you who phoned me this morning, wasn’t it? I wish I had recognised your voice sooner but I was still rather hungover from the flight.’
He treated her to a cool smile when she didn’t reply. ‘If you’re wondering how I discovered it had been you calling then you have the wonders of modern technology to thank. I’d forgotten to set the answering machine before I left this morning, you see. A stupid mistake, bearing in mind I was hoping that the airline would phone about my missing baggage.
‘Anyway, I checked to see if there had been any calls by dialling one-four-seven-one, and there’d been just the one, first thing this morning. Aunt Mary keeps a list of numbers by the phone and, lo and behold, there it was—the number for the surgery flat. The bit of the puzzle I can’t solve is why you were phoning me. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you did say that we hadn’t met before today?’
‘No we hadn’t, but I…I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for a while,’ she admitted shakily.
‘I see. And are you going to tell me why? Or are we going to skirt around it for another day?’ He laughed hollowly. ‘I told you earlier that I had a feeling there was something I was missing. You denied it then but I do hope that you aren’t going to try and deny it now?’
Her face stung at the mockery she
heard in his voice. Maybe he didn’t realise how difficult this was for her but she resented the fact that he saw fit to ridicule her. ‘I apologise for lying to you. My only excuse is that it was a shock to have you turning up like that.’
She stared defiantly at him. ‘As I told you before, I had no idea that you had any connections with the surgery. Claire never told me that.’
‘Ah, yes, Claire. Funny how it all seems to come back to her. This is all to do with your sister, isn’t it?’
He leant forward and Beth could see the tension that had grooved deep lines on either side of his mouth. ‘I guessed that as soon as I worked out that it had been you phoning me this morning. It’s the only link you and I have. I knew your sister very well at one time, Beth, as you know. However, I haven’t seen her in years. So what possible reason could you have for seeking me out after all this time?’
Beth could feel her heart racing. The drumming beat was making her feel sick. So much hinged on how Adam took what she had to tell him that she was scared to death in case she made a mess of it.
She stared into his deep blue eyes, realising how familiar they were. Such a wonderful shade of blue, the thick black lashes that framed them simply highlighting the intensity of their colour…
She swung round and hurried back inside the flat then went straight to her bedroom. Adam was still sitting exactly where she had left him when she went outside again. The sun was lower in the sky now and his face was partly in shadow. It made it difficult to gauge his expression but she drove all thought of how he might react from her mind. She had to tell him the truth, no matter what happened afterwards!
‘I want you to take a look at this,’ she said huskily, her voice quavering because the tension was almost palpable at that moment. She handed him the photograph then turned away, not wanting to see his reaction.
The sky was red and purple now, streaked with gold along the horizon as the sun slid from the sky. Maybe Claire was looking down on them from that sea of glorious colour, and if she was then Beth prayed that her sister would understand why she had no choice but to break her word.
‘Who is she?’
She heard the tremor in his voice and her heart ached because she knew instinctively that he was going to find her answer painful. Maybe he had suspected why Claire had asked to see him all those years ago, but it was one thing to dismiss a suspicion and another to ignore a fact. There was a gentleness in her voice when she replied that she hadn’t expected to hear there because suddenly she cared how he took this news, cared not just because of Hannah but because of Adam himself.
‘Her name is Hannah and she’s six years old. She’s Claire’s daughter.’
She heard his swift intake of breath but she couldn’t stop, couldn’t let herself think of anything else at that moment except what had to be done. ‘She’s your daughter, too, Adam.’
Afterwards, she was never sure if the silence had lasted only in her imagination. It seemed to run on and on yet even though she was physically aching to say something, she couldn’t break it. She needed Adam to speak first so that she could decide how to handle the situation from that point on.
‘I didn’t know. I had no idea…’
Beth heard him take a deep breath but his voice was raw with pain and a host of things that made her eyes prickle with tears. ‘Claire never told me. She never, ever told me!’
‘I know she didn’t.’ She swung round, surprised by the need she felt to reassure him. His face was completely in shadow now but she saw the glitter of moisture on his cheeks and her heart quailed because of what else she had to tell him soon.
‘Claire decided not to tell you in that letter she sent you but…’
‘What letter?’ he demanded immediately. ‘I never received any letter.’
‘Claire wrote to you when she found out that she was pregnant,’ she said slowly. ‘She didn’t want to, but I persuaded her that she should.’
‘I never received a letter from her,’ he said, and his tone was so harsh and flat that Beth knew at once that he was telling her the truth. She shrugged, not sure what to say because this new development had shaken her. For all these years she had blamed him for not replying, suspected him of deliberately avoiding his responsibilities, yet suddenly she realised that she had been doing him an injustice. The crazy thing was how relieved she felt.
‘I don’t know what happened to it, then. All I know is that Claire wrote and asked if she could see you. She was going to tell you about the baby if she thought it was the best thing to do…’
‘What do you mean if it was the best thing to do? It was my child, damn it! I had the right to know!’
Beth heard the anger in his voice and knew that she had to find a way to explain her sister’s actions. ‘She wanted to do what was right for everyone concerned…you, the baby and herself.’
‘Really? How very good of her.’ His anger rose on a sudden wave and seemed to envelop them both. ‘What it boils down to is that she was going to sit in judgement on me, decide whether or not I was fit to be told that I had a child! How could that be right? You tell me that!’
‘Don’t! There’s no point getting angry with Claire. She didn’t do it to hurt you.’
It took just a couple of steps to reach the bench but Beth’s heart was aching when she saw how tightly his fingers were clutching the photograph. Adam was angry but more importantly he was upset and she wanted to help him understand because it might help.
‘You and Claire hadn’t planned on having a child and she didn’t want your whole life to be disrupted as a result of it. So she made the decision to try and find out how you would feel about the idea before she told you.’
‘And decided when I didn’t answer her letter that that was the end of it. It let her off the hook, didn’t it? Gave her an excuse not to contact me again. I hadn’t bothered replying so obviously I wasn’t interested. Was that what you both thought?’
She sighed, wishing that she could deny it. ‘She wasn’t to know that you hadn’t received the letter.’
‘Maybe not. But surely the possibility should have occurred to her. Claire knew that I was planning on going overseas. It wouldn’t take a genius to work out that the letter might not have reached me. She knew very well that she could have got in touch with me through my uncle, but she didn’t make any attempt to do so, did she? She conveniently wrote me out of my child’s life!’
Beth touched his hand and it felt icy despite the warmth of the evening air. ‘All I can do is repeat what I’ve just told you, that Claire did what she thought was best. You must try to believe that.’
‘It isn’t easy. All these years and I never knew that I had a daughter.’ He stared at the picture then ran his hand over his eyes. ‘I can’t seem to take it in. If you hadn’t told me, I would never have known about her…’
He stopped and she felt his hand clench on the photograph. His voice seemed to grate when he continued, vibrating along her nerves, filling her with apprehension. ‘Why did you tell me? You said that you’d spent a long time tracking me down but why now? You could have told me when your sister died, or at any point during these past seven years, but you didn’t. So why did you suddenly decide that it was time I knew about Hannah?’
Beth removed her hand abruptly. This was the really difficult part and she wasn’t sure that she could deal with it.
Only she had no choice.
‘Because Hannah desperately needs your help,’ she explained huskily, struggling to keep control of her emotions. ‘Six months ago she started being ill, you see. She was tired and listless all the time. At first I wondered if it was a reaction to Claire’s death even though she seemed to have accepted it.’
She knew that she was laying the ground, trying to lessen the shock so she continued when he didn’t say anything. ‘I was so worried about her that I took her to the doctor and he ordered some tests to be done. When the results came back they showed that Hannah had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.’
‘God!’ He stood up and paced to the top of the steps then swung round. ‘How has she responded to treatment? I take it that she’s in hospital?’
‘Very well and, yes, she is in hospital. She’s been in St Jude’s for several months now,’ she explained quietly.
‘And what’s the prognosis? Has the consultant said what her chances are?’ he rapped out.
Beth sensed that he needed to hear all the facts to help him deal with the shock he’d had. ‘Mr Guest—that’s Hannah’s consultant—is very pleased with her. He’s confident that she’ll be in remission soon.’
‘Thank heaven for that!’ He took a deep breath and she saw a shudder run through him. ‘So what happens next?’
‘Once remission is achieved then, hopefully, Hannah will have a bone-marrow transplant. Apparently, they do that straight away nowadays once a child is in remission.’
She paused, choosing her words with care because this part was so important. ‘The problem is that the hospital hasn’t found a suitable donor for her. They’ve gone through all the usual channels and I’ve been tested, but they’ve drawn a blank. I was hoping that if I did manage to find you, you might be willing to be tested. I know it’s a lot to ask…’
She stopped when he swore under his breath. He turned back to her and the expression on his face made her tremble because it was so ferocious. Her heart turned over because she couldn’t bear it if he refused.
‘It’s her only chance, Adam! If Hannah doesn’t get this bone-marrow transplant then her chances of survival are virtually nil. Please, say that you’ll think about it.’
‘I don’t need to think about it! What kind of a man do you think I am?’ His blue eyes seemed to burn with an inner fire as he glared at her. ‘This is my child we’re talking about—my daughter. I’d give up my life if it would help her!’
‘You mean that you’ll do it? You’ll be tested?’ It was almost too much to take in. She stared at him and saw an expression of intense pain cross his face.
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