by Joanna Neil
‘His intracranial pressure is down,’ the nurse told her, ‘and we’ve done another CT scan, which shows everything’s going along nicely. There’s no sign of the blood clot building up again.’
‘So you’ll be removing the drainage tube soon?’
‘In a day or so, I should think. He’s doing really well. We’re very pleased with him.’
Saffi was relieved. Danny was sitting up in bed, talking to his parents, and it looked as though his mother was showing him pictures in a story-book. She said cautiously, ‘Is there any sign of brain damage?’
The nurse shook her head. ‘Thankfully, no. He’s a very lucky boy.’
‘He is.’ Smiling, Saffi went back down to A and E to finish her shift. She was glad Danny was doing so well. Things could have turned out so differently if it hadn’t been for Matt’s prompt action.
‘Shall I help you with the patient in Room Three?’ Gina asked, cutting in on her thoughts. ‘It’s an infant with a bead lodged in her ear. You might need me to distract her while you try to get it out.’
‘Yes, okay. Thanks, Gina.’ Saffi frowned. It was an uncomfortable feeling, working with this woman, now that she’d remembered everything that had happened between her and Matt. She had to dredge up every ounce of professionalism she possessed in order to do her job properly, without letting her emotions get in the way.
‘Are you all right?’ Gina was studying her closely. ‘Matt said you were recovering new memories all the time. Has it upset you?’
Saffi closed her eyes briefly. ‘It has. It was bound to, don’t you think?’ She looked at Gina, beautiful, greeneyed, her hair shining with health. Was it any wonder that Matt’s head had been turned, especially if Gina had made a play for him?
‘There’s nothing going on between us, you know,’ Gina said quietly. ‘I’m engaged to be married—look.’ She held out her left hand, showing her sparkling diamond ring.
‘Oh, I see.’ Saffi’s brows drew together. ‘Congratulations.’ She hesitated. ‘That wasn’t actually what was bothering me.’
‘No.’ Gina’s voice was flat. ‘Matt said you’d remembered me being in his bedroom.’ She winced. ‘I wanted to get back with him after he’d finished with me, so I went to see him when I knew you were busy at work. He was friendly enough, but he didn’t want anything to do with me as a girlfriend and wanted me to leave, so I said was feeling ill…a bit sick, faint, and so on. I lied to you, Saffi.’
Saffi stared at her, shock holding her still, rooted to the spot. Had she made a terrible mistake?
‘I was desperate to make him want me. He said perhaps I should lie down for a while, undo my skirt to ease the pressure on my waist, and I did as he said. Only I undid a few more buttons on my blouse than was necessary. He just drew the curtains and left me alone. After a while, he came to see if I was all right.’
She swallowed hard. ‘I wanted him to love me, but he just saw me as a friend. I felt so unhappy, and when you turned up after your shift had ended, I wanted to finish things between you, the way he’d finished things with me. I thought, maybe, if he didn’t have you, he might turn to me after all.’ She pressed her lips together. ‘He never did.’
Saffi let out a long, shuddery breath. ‘It was all a lie? All of it?’
Gina nodded. ‘I’m sorry. I know what I did was stupid, hurtful. It’s just that I was hurting too, inside.’
Saffi’s head was reeling. All this time she’d refused to listen to Matt. She’d believed what Gina had said at the time, and she’d sent Matt away. Without trust, he’d said, there was nothing at all. He would never forgive her.
‘Saffi, I really am sorry.’
Saffi nodded. It took everything she had to keep going and she said now, ‘I’m glad you told me.’ She took in several long breaths to steady herself. What was she to do?
She gazed around her without seeing for a moment or two. Then gradually, the sights and sounds of the hospital came back into view and she said dully, ‘We’d better go and see what we can do about this bead.’
She made herself go into the room and talk soothingly to the little girl and her mother. ‘I’m going to look inside your ear with this,’ she said to the two-year-old, showing her the otoscope. ‘It won’t hurt, I promise.’
When she could see the shiny object, way down in the ear canal, she tried to gently remove it using special forceps, but when that didn’t do the trick, she asked Gina for suction equipment. After a few seconds, much to the mother’s relief, she’d retrieved the bead.
She left the room a few minutes later, leaving Gina to talk to the patient and her mother and clear away the equipment. The only thing on her mind was to find Matt and talk to him, though how she was going to persuade him to forgive her lack of trust was beyond her right now. He’d seemed to have made up his mind, finally, that there was no point any longer in trying to win her back. He’d decided she wasn’t worth the effort.
‘He went out on a call,’ Jake told her, ‘and I think he’s going to be tied up in meetings all afternoon. Do you want me to pass on a message?’
‘No, that’s all right, Jake. Thanks. I’ll catch up with him later.’
She arrived home feeling washed out and dreadful. How could she have been so blind, so certain that she’d had things right all this time?
She was pacing the floor of her living room when Jason turned up at the house, and she groaned inwardly. This was the last thing she needed, but some part of her insisted that even though he would never win her round she should let him say his piece. Wasn’t that where she’d gone wrong with Matt, by not listening to him?
They went back into the living room.
‘I’m going back to Hampshire tomorrow,’ Jason told her.
‘So soon? I thought you had another couple of days here?’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I have to go and see the head of a regional pharmacy service. It’s a new contact for me, and my bosses didn’t want me to miss it.’
She smiled. ‘It sounds as though your job is going really well. You must be pleased.’
He shrugged. ‘I work hard and make a lot of contacts, but I could have done without that one right now. I need more time here to persuade you that we belong together.’
‘It’s never going to happen, Jason,’ she said, unhappy because she had to hurt him yet again. ‘I don’t know how it was before, but I can’t see how we were ever a couple, to be honest. I don’t think I’ve changed so much from how I was before the accident.’ She still felt the same way about Matt as she’d always done, so how could it be any different with Jason? Something had to be wrong somewhere.
‘You’re being very cruel to me, Saffi. How can you say these things to me?’
She sent him a troubled look. ‘I don’t mean to be cruel. I’m trying to be straightforward with you, so that you don’t have any illusions as to how it will be.’
‘But I love you, and you loved me. How can that all have changed?’
Her expression was sad as she tried to explain, ‘I don’t think it was ever that way. It feels to me as though you’ve conjured something up in your mind and made it into something that never was. It’s what you want to believe.’
He moved closer to her. ‘You’re my blonde, beautiful, blue-eyed angel,’ he said. ‘How could I not love you?’
‘It isn’t love, Jason. You’re infatuated with someone you can’t have. Don’t you see that?’
‘All I see is you and me, together.’
He slid an arm around her and pulled her to him. ‘I’m not letting you go, Saffi. You’re mine, and sooner or later you’ll see that I’m right.’
He tried to kiss her and she pushed him away. ‘No, Jason, stop it.’
‘It’ll all come right, you’ll see.’ He ignored her protests and backed her up against the wall, clasping her wrists and pinning her there with his body.
‘I said no, Jason. Get off me. Let go of me.’ She struggled, trying to wriggle free, and as they tussled he somehow knock
ed over a stool. It fell against the wall with a crash, and it made her realise how determined he was. ‘Jason, this is crazy,’ she said. ‘Let me go.’
He tightened his grasp on her wrist and she stared up at him, frightened, afraid of what he might do. A startling image flashed across her mind, of another place, another time, when he’d grabbed her wrist in that very same way.
‘Oh, no…no…’ she cried. ‘This can’t be happening, not again.’ The last time he’d held on to her this way they’d been at the top of a flight of stairs. She’d tried to get away from him, and the next thing she’d known she’d been tumbling down and down and then there had just been blackness until she’d woken up in hospital.
‘You’re the reason I fell down the stairs. You were trying to stop me from breaking up with you.’ Her voice was rising with panic. ‘Please, Jason. Think about what you’re doing. Do you want it to happen all over again? Are you deliberately trying to hurt me?’
He didn’t get the chance to answer because all at once there was the sound of a key scraping in a lock, and Matt came rushing into the room through the connecting door.
‘Let go of her,’ he said in an ominously threatening voice. His jaw was clenched in anger and there was the fierce promise of retribution in his grey eyes.
Jason paled with fright. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Never mind that. Do as I said. Let her go.’
Jason hesitated for a few seconds too long, and Matt was on him right away, putting an arm around his neck and yanking him backwards, while at the same time hooking his leg from under him.
Matt gave him a push and Jason fell to the floor. Standing over him, his foot firmly placed over Jason’s arm, Matt glanced at Saffi.
‘Are you all right?’
Saffi resisted the urge to rub her sore wrists, and nodded. She was winded, breathing hard after the skirmish, and her heart was pounding as she wondered what she would have done if Matt hadn’t intervened. Perhaps a knee to the groin would have done the trick?
‘Let me up,’ Jason said, struggling to get to his feet.
Matt pushed him back down with his other foot. His balance and his strength were incredible, and Saffi realised his sessions at the gym had definitely paid off.
‘What do you want me to do with him? Do you want to call the police?’ Every time Jason made a move, Matt pushed him down again.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, filled with anxiety. ‘Do you think he’ll come back and try again?’
‘I won’t. I won’t do that.’ Jason’s voice shook as he became more desperate.
Matt ignored him. ‘I don’t think it’s very likely,’ he said, looking at Saffi. ‘If he does, he’ll certainly regret it, because I’ll do more than drag him off you next time. He’ll wish he’d never been born.’
‘I just want him out of here,’ she said, and Matt nodded.
He grasped Jason by the collar of his sweatshirt and dragged him to his feet. ‘You heard what she said. Get out of here, and don’t come back.’
He pushed him towards the front door and pulled it open wide. ‘Get in your car and don’t come within twenty miles of her, don’t phone her, don’t email, don’t write to her. If you try to contact her in any way, we’ll get an injunction against you. Are you clear on all that?’
Jason nodded, his face ashen. He must have realised he didn’t stand a chance against Matt, who was so much fitter and stronger than he was. He didn’t say another word but hurried over to his car and drove away as though he was terrified Matt would come after him.
‘Thank you for coming in and rescuing me,’ Saffi said when Matt returned to the living room. ‘I thought you would be out all day. I thought I was completely alone with him.’ The after-effects of her ordeal suddenly kicked in and she began to tremble. Feeling behind her for a seat, she sank down into the sofa and clasped her hands in her lap.
Matt came to sit beside her. After a moment of hesitation, as he appeared to be at war within himself, he wrapped his arms around her and held her until the trembling stopped. Then he said softly, ‘I’ll make you a hot, sweet drink. That should help you to feel better.’
She nodded silently. She would have gone after him, but her legs were weak and all the energy had drained out of her. The shock of Jason’s assault and the memory of how her fall down the stairs had come about were too much for her to take in. She started to shake all over again.
‘Here, drink this.’ Matt handed her a cup of tea and helped her to clasp her hands around it. He sat with her as she tried to gain control of herself.
‘Thank you for this.’ She swallowed some of the reviving tea and then slid the cup down onto the coffee table. ‘I can’t tell you how glad I am that you came through that door when you did.’ She sent him a puzzled look. ‘But I don’t understand how you were there, how you knew to come to me.’
‘I was afraid something like this might happen. Ben told me that you were talking in the garden yesterday. He said Jason was cross when you said you weren’t leaving here and he was angry when you asked him to go, and that started warning bells in my head.’ He grimaced. ‘I cancelled all my meetings so that I could be here, just in case I was needed.’
‘You did that, even though I’d been so awful to you?’ She clasped his hand, needing that small contact.
‘I was already watching out for trouble after you were followed the other night.’
‘By the black car?’
He nodded. ‘I’m fairly sure it was Jason in the car. He must have thought you were on your own—perhaps the headrests obscured his vision. Did you tell him you were going to the vet’s surgery?’
She frowned, thinking about it. ‘I don’t remember. I was busy and then…Oh, yes…he wanted to take me out and I said I couldn’t go with him because I had to take Mitzi to the vet.’
‘He must have been waiting there, ready to follow you home.’
‘But why would he do that?’
‘He’s obsessed with you. He must have followed you before. How was your other car damaged in a rear-end collision? Do you have any recollection of it?’
She nodded slowly, covering her face with her hands as the incident came back to her in bits and pieces. Getting herself together after a minute or so, she said, ‘It was when I wanted to finish things with him…he took to following me. When I wouldn’t stop the car, he drove me off the road.’ She looked at Matt. ‘He’s out of his mind, isn’t he? Perhaps we should have called the police after all, or tried to persuade him to get treatment?’
‘I doubt the police would do anything without proof. Were there any witnesses?’
She shook her head.
‘And when you fell down the stairs?’
‘No.’ It came out as a whisper, and she began to shake all over again. ‘He must have left me there at the foot of the stairs, knowing I needed help. But he did nothing. Apparently, it was Chloe who called for the ambulance when she arrived home from work. I don’t know how long I was lying there.’
He put his arms around her and drew her to him, gently stroking her silky hair. ‘It’s over now, Saffi. He won’t trouble you again.’ They stayed together that way for some time, and eventually he said softly, ‘It looks as though your memory’s come back in full force.’
She gave him a tremulous smile. ‘It does, doesn’t it?’ She gazed up at him, her brow puckering. ‘But why did I lose it so completely? I can understand partial amnesia because it was a bad head injury, but such a total loss is unusual—people don’t often recover their memories after such a loss.’
‘There’s probably a combination of reasons. The head injury is one, as you say, but your mind could have been shutting out the bad things, all the emotional trauma that you didn’t want to face…like your relationship with Jason.’
‘And the end of my relationship with you. That has been the worst of all.’ She looked at him anxiously, passing her tongue lightly over her dry lips. ‘Matt—I spoke to Gina before I left work today. She told me that
she’d lied to me.’ Her gaze meshed with his. ‘I’m so sorry I doubted you. You were right all along—I should have trusted you.’
‘We’ll have to start again, won’t we…and make a pact to always trust one another?’
‘Does that mean you forgive me?’ She looked at him in wonderment. ‘Do we have some kind of a future together?’
He looked into her blue eyes. ‘We’d better have a future. I’m not going to lose you again, Saffi. It’s been hell on earth for me these last few days…these last few years, even.’
‘But you don’t believe in long-term relationships, do you? Wasn’t that why you finished things with Gina, because you didn’t want any kind of commitment?’
‘I thought that was the reason at the time. It was what I told myself. But the truth is, Gina and I were never right for one another. She wanted to get serious, but I knew it would never work.’
He hesitated. ‘I never looked for commitment. But then I met you, and I could feel myself getting in deeper and deeper, knowing that you were the one woman I could love. But all the time I was afraid that it would go wrong, that it would end the way it always did with people I cared about…my parents, even my sister was lost to me when we ended up in separate foster-homes. I was afraid to love you in case I lost you. And then the very worst happened. You thought I’d cheated on you.’
He drew in a shuddery breath. ‘It made me even more wary of getting involved. When I met up with you again, here in Devon, I was so afraid of being hurt all over again. I told myself I needed to keep my distance, but it was too difficult and I ended up not being able to stay away. And after you remembered what had happened with Gina, I was devastated all over again. It was like my worst nightmare. I thought I’d lost you for ever.’
She lifted a hand to his face and stroked his cheek. ‘You haven’t lost me. I love you, Matt. I think I knew it almost from the first.’ She gently drew him towards her until their lips touched, and he gave a ragged groan, kissing her fiercely, with all the longing and desperation that had built up inside him.
‘Will you marry me, Saffi?’ His voice was husky with need. ‘I couldn’t bear to lose you again.’