The Real Fantasy

by Caroline Anderson

  His head snapped up. ‘What business is it of yours?’ he asked furiously.

  ‘Business? I’ll tell you what business it is! You weren’t about to stop kissing me there, Matthew, and I wasn’t about to stop you, either. That kiss was going all the way, and we both know it. So tell me, and stop beating around the bush.’

  She stared him down, and after a minute he turned away, his eyes closing. He had the grace to look ashamed. ‘No, I’m not sleeping with her,’ he said heavily. ‘It’s never become that serious—’

  ‘She looked pretty damn serious.’

  He sighed. ‘Yes. I think perhaps she is. I hadn’t realised. Look, I ought to go and talk to her.’

  ‘Yes, I think you should,’ Linsey said shortly. ‘You’ve got some fence-mending to do and, judging by the look on her face, it’s going to take some pretty fancy footwork to get you out of the mire you’re in. You’d better take me home.’

  She stalked out of the door, walked to the gate and held it open. The drive back was accomplished in silence, and, having seen her in, Matthew drove rapidly away in the direction of Lymington.

  She didn’t envy him one little bit, but it was his own fault. He had no business philandering with her if there was another woman on the scene. She went up to her flat, made a cup of tea, sat curled in the big chair that Matthew had sat in earlier and reflected on how their evening would have ended if Jan hadn’t turned up.

  In bed, without a doubt—unless they hadn’t even made it that far. They had both been well past the point of reason.

  And that was another thing. If he wasn’t sleeping with Jan, then it seemed unlikely that he would have a supply of condoms to hand, and Linsey certainly didn’t carry anything like that round with her. For the past few years at least, she had been too busy to hold down a relationship, and with the exception of this evening’s regrettable lapse she had never found herself wanting to go to bed with anyone without knowing him very well first.

  It seemed, then, that Jan might have done her a favour by turning up out of the blue. She didn’t feel grateful, though—far from it. She sipped her tea, closed her eyes and groaned softly. She could still feel his lips, and the moist velvet sweep of his tongue—

  She whimpered with frustration. Her body still throbbed with longing, and she was racked with a fierce urge to wrap herself around him and draw him into herself, both physically and spiritually.

  She catapulted out of the chair, dumped the mug on the table and changed into her jogging gear. Damn and blast the man, she would run off the frustration.

  She let herself out and jogged down the road to the high street, then down to the sea front and along the beach. It was quiet now; the trippers had mostly gone home, and apart from the odd person walking a dog she was alone. She ran to the end of the prom, then turned and ran back inland, cutting across the park and then down and back along the leafy street to the practice.

  There was a light on, she saw to her dismay. Not Matthew, she thought; please, not Matthew. But it was Tim, calling in to collect some notes before a visit.

  ‘Hi,’ he said cheerily. ‘That looks very healthy.’

  She laughed, leaning against the reception counter and taking her pulse. A hundred and sixty-two. Fine. She let it settle and chatted to Tim for a moment.

  Then she heard a door open behind her and her heartbeat picked up again. ‘Linsey?’

  She turned and looked at him. He looked grim, and, softy that she was, she felt sorry for him.

  ‘Can I have a word with you?’

  ‘Sure. See you, Tim.’

  She went past Matthew, up the stairs to her flat. He followed slowly—reluctantly?

  ‘Where have you been?’ he asked, his eyes scanning her shorts and vest-top.

  ‘Jogging. Why?’

  He shrugged. ‘Just wondered.’ His eyes swept up and locked with hers. ‘I saw Jan.’

  She looked closely at him, at the faint red imprint of a hand on his cheek. ‘I see you did. I gather she was unimpressed.’

  ‘You might say that.’ He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, pacing across her sitting room to stand at the window, staring out at the darkening sky. ‘I shouldn’t have done what I did. Whether she’d seen us or not, I shouldn’t have done it. I hope you’ll believe me if I tell you that I didn’t take you back there with the intention of making love to you.’

  ‘I invited myself.’

  ‘I could have said no. Even when we arrived, I had no intention of doing what I did.’

  ‘Kissing me?’

  ‘Making love to you.’

  ‘Is that what you were doing?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said softly, turning towards her. ‘You know that.’

  Her heart thumped again.

  ‘I just want you to know I won’t do it again.’

  She nodded, perversely disappointed. ‘OK. Will you be able to patch things up with Jan?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. She’s made it clear she doesn’t want to see me again. We had a long chat. She’s been feeling discontented with our relationship for some time, apparently, but she’s never said anything.’ He sighed again and turned back to the window. ‘That’s the second time, you know.’

  She frowned, not understanding. ‘The second time that what?’

  ‘That my obsession with you has messed up a relationship.’

  She found that very interesting. ‘Obsession?’ she said carefully.

  ‘Obsession. After I fished you out of the river I couldn’t get you out of my mind. I kept dreaming about you falling in and not being able to find you under the water. Sometimes I’d find you but I couldn’t pull you free. Always, before you fell, you turned your head and looked at me, and I started to walk towards you.’

  He laughed bitterly. ‘I made the mistake of telling Sara about it. She was highly unimpressed—so unimpressed, in fact, that she walked out a little while later.’

  ‘But you couldn’t help your dreams!’ Linsey protested, appalled that she could have ruined his life all those years ago. She knew about the dreams—oh, yes. All about them. ‘You had no control over them.’

  He gave a little grunt of laughter. ‘No—but she didn’t have to like it. Ah, well, it might never have worked anyway.’

  ‘And Jan?’

  He smiled without humour. ‘Ah, yes, Jan. I was going to ask her to marry me.’

  ‘And yet you could kiss me like that?’ Linsey said in disbelief.

  ‘Apparently. I never kissed her like that, you know. Not even remotely. I never wanted to.’

  ‘But you wanted to kiss me.’

  His eyes locked with hers. ‘Yes. I wanted to kiss you. I still do, but I won’t.’

  She took a steadying breath. ‘Do you want me to go?’ He was silent for a long time, then shook his head. ‘No. It won’t do any good. My relationship with Jan has been shown for what it is, and with Rhys off we need all the help we can get. You going won’t help solve anything at all.’

  ‘I just thought, if it was what you wanted...’

  ‘You know what I want. I want to take that vest-top and peel it over your head, and strip those shorts off you inch by inch, and then put you in the shower and get in with you and wash every inch of you. Then I want to lift you out and dry you, and take you to bed and make love to you until you can’t stand up for a fortnight.

  ‘But I won’t,’ he added, ‘because that wouldn’t solve anything either. So we’ll work together, side by side, and I’ll give you tutorials, and we’ll be good kids and keep our hands to ourselves, and if we get really lucky we’ll manage to sleep for a few minutes every night without being racked by lust. How does that sound?’

  She almost said, Tedious, but thought better of it. ‘We’ll give it a try,’ she said instead.

  ‘It’ll work, Linsey,’ he vowed. ‘It has to, because I’ve got to go on with my life, and I can’t allow you to mess it up again.’

  It was almost hurtful the way he said that. She could have told him that for
years she hadn’t been able to kiss anyone with her eyes open because their eyes had been the wrong colour. She could have told him that her two affairs had been boring and awful, and in the throes of the nearest that she had ever come to ecstasy she hadn’t felt one tenth of what she had felt with him that evening.

  She didn’t, though. She simply said, ‘I’m sorry.’ And she was. She knew the impact she was having on his life. It was entirely mutual—and unbelievably difficult to live with.

  Suddenly a year seemed a long, long time...

  CHAPTER FIVE

  BEING flung in at the deep end was often the best way to learn a job, Linsey thought. It was also the most tiring. Despite the fraught and difficult evening that she had had with Matthew, Linsey fell into bed that night and slept dreamlessly until six.

  Then she got up and padded downstairs to the surgery, switched off the burglar alarm and settled down in her consulting room with a cup of coffee and the morning’s notes. There were one or two patients whom she was a bit concerned about and would have liked to consult Rhys on, but she didn’t like to disturb him. She didn’t feel she knew him well enough to intrude on his personal problems, and Matthew could probably answer the questions.

  She chewed the end of her pen and flicked through the rest of the notes—no problems. So there were just the two; the man who had had an operation for cancer of the prostate some months before, and a young woman whom Rhys was investigating for Crohn’s disease, a serious bowel disorder.

  She decided to shower and dress and then perhaps phone Matthew and ask him to come in early to go over them with her; she was halfway up the stairs when she heard her own phone ringing.

  She ran up and answered it on the fourth ring, and was surprised to hear Rhys’s voice.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, and wondered what she was supposed to know.

  ‘Hi. Look, Linsey, I’m sorry I woke you but I was a bit worried about a couple of my patients.’

  She smiled. ‘You didn’t wake me. I was downstairs looking at the notes a minute ago. Why don’t you go first? And then I’ll ask you about the two I’m concerned about.’

  ‘OK,’ he agreed, sounding relieved. ‘The main one is a woman who’s presented with symptoms of severe haemolytic anaemia. The thing is, I’ve been turning it over in my mind and there’s something I can’t get hold of. Could you dig out her notes and perhaps even get her back in and check up on her? Her name’s Nana Dickenson—Suzanne will know her. There must be something I’ve missed, but I’m damned if I know what it is.’

  Linsey scribbled the name down, then asked about the other patient.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Carter. I think she’s got Crohn’s. Would you ask Matthew to look at her?’

  ‘Sure—she was one of my queries. The other’s Mr Joiner—he was referred for CA prostate and he’s come back. You don’t know what for, I suppose?’

  Rhys didn’t. ‘Watch out for bone pain. That’s the most common site for metastases—primarily the hip, spine and ribs. He’s also had heart problems in the past which might be playing up again—the heat might be getting to him. If it’s insidious, give it to him straight. He’s very acute and won’t miss a trick, and if you try and bamboozle him he’ll immediately assume he’s got a fortnight left to live.’

  ‘OK,’ she said, feeling far from OK. She really felt that news such as that should be conveyed by someone who knew the patient, but that was ridiculous. He might have an ingrowing toenail! She would have to play it by ear.

  ‘Don’t feel you have to cope alone,’ Rhys said reassuringly. ‘Ring me if you’re worried. I won’t mind at all.’

  ‘I will.’ She bit her lip. She could hardly ignore his situation, and not acknowledging it would be even worse. ‘Rhys, I’m sorry about your problems,’ she said gently.

  There was a moment’s silence when she thought she’d done the wrong thing, then he said, ‘Thanks,’ gruffly and cleared his throat. ‘I’m very grateful to you for stepping in like this,’ he added. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  ‘Don’t panic,’ she hastened to reassure him. ‘I was going crazy watching Matthew work while I twiddled my thumbs. Please don’t rush back on my account!’

  He chuckled, just barely, but it was a chuckle nevertheless. ‘Thanks, Linsey. You’re a star. I’ll take you out to dinner when I’ve got everything settled here—to say thank you.’

  ‘You don’t have to thank me—’ she protested, but he cut her off.

  ‘I do. You can have no idea how much it helps to know the practice isn’t in the lurch—Oh, blast, Mark’s woken up. They couldn’t sleep last night, the older two. They don’t understand.’ He laughed bleakly. ‘Damn it, I don’t understand. I have to go. I’ll be here most of the day. Remember, ring if you’ve got a problem.’

  ‘I will. Thanks, Rhys.’

  She cradled the phone gently. Poor man. He sounded exhausted. He probably had hardly slept all night, if at all.

  She showered, dressed and breakfasted, then went downstairs again and jotted pencil notes against Mr Joiner and Mrs Carter. She’d get Suzanne to deal with Mrs Dickenson, and in the meantime she’d check the notes and see what pathology had turned up—probably nothing but there was no harm in looking.

  Matthew knocked and came in just as she was getting ready to start her surgery.

  ‘Hi,’ he murmured.

  She met his eyes, then her own skittered away. She didn’t want to remember that kiss—especially if there wasn’t going to be another one.

  ‘Hi,’ she replied.

  ‘Any problems?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ve spoken to Rhys—he rang at seven-thirty.’

  ‘How was he?’

  She sighed. ‘He sounded pretty rough, really. I tried to assure him I could cope, but I don’t know if he believed me.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ Matthew reminded her. ‘I’m just next door if you start to disappear without trace.’

  She smiled at him, and her heart thudded at the answering quirk to his lips. Damn and blast, why did she find the man so attractive?

  ‘By the way, can you tell the patients if they ask that Rhys is away for personal reasons? Don’t go into details, but don’t say he’s on holiday, either, because he had a fortnight in June and they get uppity if we’re seen to be enjoying ourselves.’

  His grin was infectious and did incredible things to his eyes and her blood pressure. She sighed as he closed the door, then she pressed the buzzer for her first patient. Please God let it be straightforward. After that smile she was going to have trouble concentrating on her own name!

  Her surgery was fairly uneventful in the end, except that, as Rhys had suggested might be the case, Mr Joiner was complaining of backache. He had no previous history, and Linsey’s suspicions were immediately aroused.

  ‘When are you seeing your consultant again?’ she asked him.

  ‘Tomorrow, as it happens,’ he said. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’d like you to mention it to him. He can arrange X-rays as he’s on the spot, and it might have some relevance to your treatment.’

  His face clouded. ‘You mean secondaries.’

  She put her pen down and met his eyes. ‘There is a slight possibility, yes,’ she agreed gently. ‘However, there’s no need to be concerned at this stage. He’ll arrange an X-ray and will discuss the result with you. It’s much more likely to be a touch of arthritis or just good old back trouble, but I feel we should eliminate the possibility of anything more serious.’

  He shook his head. ‘No. I had a feeling it was this. I’ll see him tomorrow and we’ll go from there, but I had a feeling.’

  ‘Of course, if it is, and I’m not saying it is, catching it early with radiotherapy can make a huge difference.’

  He smiled gently at her. ‘Don’t try to soften it. I know it’s curtains. I’m sixty-seven. I’ve had a good life. I’d rather go now, quickly, than linger on to ninety-seven like my old grandfather. He was blind, deaf and helpless for ten years before he died. Terribl
e. No, my dear, I don’t want a lengthy prison sentence. I’d rather have the electric chair.’

  He stood up stiffly and smiled at her once again, and then left, a stick and his pride holding him upright.

  She filled in his notes, saw the last two patients and went out to Reception.

  ‘April, could you do me a favour and check up on Mrs Dickenson, please?’

  ‘Nana? Sure. She’s not looking too good, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I gathered. Have we had a blood-test result?’

  April called the patient’s records up on the screen, scrolled through the notes and nodded. ‘Yes. Haemolytic anaemia. Red cell count is recorded as very low. Here, have a look.’

  Linsey scanned the screen and pursed her lips. ‘Wow. I think we’d better arrange for her admission to Lymington Hospital for a blood transfusion, just to be on the safe side, and I need to look in the textbooks.’

  She pulled out a haematology reference book from the shelf and sat with it open at haemolytic anaemia, waiting for divine inspiration to strike.

  It didn’t. She shouldn’t have been surprised.

  Tim came out of his surgery, grabbed the notes of his visits and left. He had no ideas.

  ‘I’ve put you down for the emergency surgery, by the way,’ April warned her. ‘The first patient will be here in a minute.’

  ‘Fine,’ Linsey mumbled. She was scanning the notes, and nothing made any sense.

  Matthew came and added his two-penn’orth, but they still got nowhere. Then Suzanne came out of her office.

  ‘Who are you talking about?’ she asked.

  ‘Nana Dickenson.’

  ‘Oh, I know. Husband Tiny owns the kebab house. Well, not her husband, really. She’s divorced—lives with him. They’ve got three children. She’s Greek.’

  Matthew and Linsey turned to each other and smiled. ‘Favism,’ they said together.

  ‘What?’ April said with a frown.

  ‘Favism. It’s peculiar to areas of the Mediterranean. They have a fairly common genetic condition known as G6PD deficiency, and basically they’re missing an enzyme that protects the red cells from attack by certain chemicals. In the case of affected Greeks, it’s the chemical contained in broad beans—fava beans is the other name for them, hence the name favism.’