Five Hundred Miles From You: the brand new, life-affirming, escapist novel of 2020 from the Sunday Times bestselling author

by Jenny Colgan

  Chapter Eleven

  The sun rose at six a.m., approaching the March equinox, and Cormac was there to see it, partly because he’d been caught up in making sure the operation went all right, and partly because he had to wait for Tim, who needed to sleep an acceptable amount of time before he was allowed to drive the ambulance back again.

  He didn’t mind. He’d sat with the parents for a while. Then, as Joan was still back in Kirrinfief, he took the calls from the hospital office in London, after explaining who he was. He was a little intimidated talking to the world-class teaching hospital – it felt a bit like taking an exam – but he explained as much of Islay’s back story and state of mind as he could, and felt they were more or less doing all right.

  The plane had landed at shortly after one and another ambulance was despatched and greenlighted, screaming through the streets with absolutely no cares who it woke in the process. Cormac had watched as they’d jumped out of the back, running. The icebox was so small, so inconsequential-looking, like nothing, even though it contained the whole world.

  How amazing. And also, the sheer luck: the tissue matched with astonishing exactness. He watched as they dashed in, said a wee prayer. Wondered, briefly, about the person who had sacrificed his life to give it. To think how very, very lucky they were here! Or should be.

  Lissa gave up at six a.m. It was light. She closed her heavy, crusty eyes, opened them again and thought at least she could get first in the shower, wash it all away. That was one good thing about the nurses’ accommodation: it was triumphantly overheated, which meant almost limitless amounts of hot water, as long as you didn’t mind the low water pressure that made it dribble.

  She stood under the shower, hair tied up, for as long as she could. She should probably turn it to cold to wake herself up, but she couldn’t bear it. Her whole body hung down. She was weary and grotty and grimy to her bones, even as she stood in the shower, and absolutely dreading the case meeting, whatever Kim-Ange said.

  Chapter Twelve

  The next few weeks were awful for Lissa. She received a written warning but more than that, she could see people pointing and talking about her. The young doctor had apparently been furious.

  She tried to bury herself in her work, and by going out with friends. But she couldn’t sleep. Not at all. Every time she lay down, she saw that young boy’s beautiful face bleeding out. She heard herself screaming at him, saw the ambulance lights flash against the wet pavement. She called Ezra, but he wasn’t answering anyone. She couldn’t blame him.

  During her years in A&E, she’d become steeled to practically anything. But when it was someone you knew, that was different. She got crankier and more careless, so exhausted she was in tears half the time. Not even Kim-Ange could cheer her up, even when she dated a man who liked to go to conventions dressed as a rhinoceros and wanted to know whether she, Kim-Ange, had ever considered doing the same and whether or not she would like to.

  Kai’s funeral was exactly what Lissa had feared: a massive community outburst of misery and sadness and rage. His entire school was there as well as his church. The whole of his estate, it seemed, turned up to pay their respects, singing and crying, spilling out of the large church and onto the street. It was a paroxysm of agony and grief, though his mother tried to stay dignified and the pastor tried to calm the anger at the terrible waste which was obvious in the crowd. Ezra didn’t even look at her.

  Lissa felt sick but that was nothing new these days. She wasn’t sleeping well at all, and felt her heart race at the smallest thing. She wasn’t doing well at work either; she could tell. Her regulars had all noticed and remarked upon it, missing her normal cheery demeanour.

  But the spark had gone out of her. She was terrified of everything now: loud noises, even the ambulance sirens she heard every five minutes going in and out of hospitals, sudden movements. It felt like her heart was bursting out of her chest every five minutes. Whenever she tried to get some rest, she was bolt upright again, in agony. She tried sleeping pills but they made her feel worse than ever – foggy and disconnected – and she was scared they were going to make her drive the car.

  At the church, she linked arms with Kim-Ange, whose large presence was always a comfort. Today Kim-Ange’s hair was bright burgundy but thankfully she was wearing black rather than the orange and purple she favoured. Okay, it was a fuzzy-wuzzy coat that made her look like an enormous bear, but Lissa found it comforting nevertheless and leaned in as they approached the incredibly busy church. You could hear it a mile away. Traffic had stopped. People were standing crying in the street.

  They found a tiny spot on a pew. Nobody ever liked to budge up to Kim-Ange. This bothered Kim-Ange not a bit, and she scooshed her sizeable bottom along the pew as far as she could and patted the seat beside her.

  ‘Come on, darling.’

  Lissa sat down. She was trembling, and patted her pocket with the tissues in, just to make sure it was all right. She got through many tissues these days.

  There was a lot of noise and hustle and bustle; it seemed half the world was there. But suddenly there was a hush as the doors at the back of the church suddenly opened. It was like a wedding, Lissa thought, her heart racing. Only of course, so very wrong.

  The choir stood to the side, their numbers absolutely packed out too. Very softly and sweetly, they began to sing ‘Swing low, sweet chariot’ gently and the pallbearers began a slow, long march down the aisle, carrying a pure white coffin.

  Lissa collapsed. She was sobbing so hard she couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t her boy, wasn’t her tragedy. She was drawing attention to herself. This was awful, completely inappropriate. People were looking at her crossly, and she didn’t know what to do, even as she sounded louder than the choir. Someone tutted. Righteous and noisy grief was expected from contemporaries, and family, and young people. Not from a thirty-year-old young professional who didn’t even know the family.

  Kim-Ange looked at her, made a decision and half dragged, half hauled her outside. She set her down quite roughly on a park bench. There were still mourners trying to get in, who watched them with interest.

  ‘Breathe,’ said Kim-Ange, and when Lissa didn’t respond, she pushed her head between her knees.

  ‘Breathe!’

  The brusque tone, oddly, was just what Lissa needed. Being told what to do without having to think about it. The panic attack was intense, but gradually her heart rate slowed, the blood returned to her head and she started to feel ever so slightly better.

  ‘Sister,’ said Kim-Ange, rubbing her back, as she finally came back to herself, ‘this cannot go on. This really cannot go on. Also, the walls in our rooms are really thin and I can hear you getting up and pacing about half the night and it’s extremely annoying. But I am mostly thinking about you. Although also when you have a shower at 5 a.m. you make a lot of noise. But also. For you. This cannot go on.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lissa liked the HR director Valerie Mnotse, always had done, had found her to be a friend and mentor, supportive of her career choices when working in the community was often seen as second-best. Valerie got it. She understood the importance of connecting the hospital with the people that used it, and how the better the care they got at home, the less likely they were to boomerang straight back to the hospital, clogging up A&E because they were so endlessly confused with a labyrinthine system, feeling bad but couldn’t get a GP appointment. But this morning, Valerie looked grave.

  ‘Health care in London is always difficult,’ she started carefully.

  Lissa was about to fire back that she wasn’t burnt out, she was fine, she was a good nurse, she knew she was . . . but she found, suddenly, that she couldn’t get the words out – couldn’t get any words out – because she was going to cry again.

  No. She couldn’t. She couldn’t cry in front of Valerie, the most immaculate, punctilious woman she knew. She had to be strong. She’d defied her family to go to nursing school and get her university qualifications.
She’d done it by herself, and worked in some of the toughest, most deprived wards in the entire country – the whole of Europe, in fact. She could do it. She could . . .

  ‘It’s all right to cry,’ said Valerie, pushing over a box of tissues.

  Lissa felt the tears leak down her face and was furious with herself. If she showed weakness, they were going to move her, she knew it.

  Lissa nodded slowly as Valerie picked up her phone.

  ‘Could you send Juan in? Thanks.’

  A slight man Lissa had seen around came in, looking neutral and nodding to her. She was terrified suddenly.

  ‘What’s happening? Am I getting fired?’

  ‘No, you’re not getting fired,’ said Valerie. ‘If we had the resources, we’d sign you off. But we don’t.’

  ‘I don’t need to be signed off! I’m fine!’

  ‘We think,’ said Juan softly, ‘that you might need to recalibrate.’

  ‘That I might need to what?’

  ‘We want you to see someone,’ said Juan. ‘We’ve assigned you a counsellor from occupational health. And—’

  ‘We think maybe a quieter beat,’ said Valerie. ‘Just for three months. Just to give you a chance to breathe, to have another look at your approach.’

  ‘We really feel this programme works well,’ said Juan. ‘We’re desperately trying not to lose you. You must see that.’

  He handed her a leaflet with pictures of lovely rolling green fields on it, the sun going down over some cows.

  ‘What’s this?’ said Lissa sullenly.

  ‘Just . . . about your options. We do swaps with rural practitioners who want to broaden their skills. Like a student exchange.’

  ‘I’m not a student!’

  ‘We’ve found the programme mutually beneficial,’ said Juan.

  ‘Lissa,’ said Valerie quite firmly. ‘I’d highly recommend you give it some very serious thought.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Islay’s recovery was going well, and Cormac called the London hospital to update them. Transplants happened in total secrecy and Cormac knew better than to ask. But what accident involving a fifteen-year-old could be anything other than a dreadful tragedy? Instead he conveyed as soberly as possible that Patient B had come through the operation and was currently in intensive care, that the prognosis was good, possibly even extremely good, and that everything was proceeding as usefully as possible.

  The voice at the other end of the phone paused.

  ‘And you’re the NPL?’ he said, looking something up on his computer.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Cormac warily.

  ‘Cormac MacPherson?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Because I’m looking at your HR form here.’

  ‘Are you now?’ said Cormac, instantly wary.

  ‘You haven’t always been an NPL, have you?’

  There was a long pause. Cormac hadn’t been expecting this at all.

  ‘No. I was an Army medic. Why?’

  ‘Have you heard of the exchange programme?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The three-month exchange programme. You could move up a grade. We have a place opening up here.’

  ‘I’m no’ moving to London!’

  ‘The idea is to bolster the skills of people in different areas. So if you’ve always worked in a rural district, you might benefit from some more acute specialisation, that kind of thing. And vice versa.’

  ‘You mean you’re looking for somewhere to dump your burnouts,’ said Cormac tartly. He might live in a village, but he wasn’t its idiot. There was a wry chuckle at the other end of the line.

  ‘I think you’d be good down here,’ came the voice. ‘Let me send you the brochure.’

  ‘Aye, whatever,’ said Cormac, who then hung up and thought no more about it.

  He headed home and had a long shower. He found himself missing having someone to talk to, remembering the black-humoured camaraderie of the Army. He wondered if the London frontlines were like that. Probably.

  He went out into the village to pick up some of the good local butter they did up at Lennox’s farm. Lennox wasn’t much of a talker, but the farm produce was spot on. He picked some local bacon too. It would make quite the sandwich.

  Kirrinfief is a village arranged around a central cobbled square, with a war memorial in the middle, Wullie’s pub on the corner, Mrs Murray’s general store, a hunting and fishing shop, three antiques/bits and bobbery stores, a bakery and, most days, a little book bus that stops to sell books. It is nestled in the hills, hidden away near Loch Ness but not on the main tourist routes. Any tourists who do stumble upon it, though, are generally taken by its atmosphere; it has an air of timelessness, a Brigadoon, which won’t last long as soon as you hear old Alasdair and Wullie shouting at you from outside the pub, although they mean well really. The sleeper train from London to Fort William runs close by; otherwise, it is a haven of peace and tranquillity, and that is just how people like it. Well. Mostly.

  Cormac stalked across the square. It was a cold but sunny day; a few ambitious crocuses were pushing their way up in between the cobbles. He got three steps before an old lady stopped him. ‘Oooh, Cormac, what was all that kerfuffle with young Islay?’

  He smiled politely.

  ‘Och, you know I cannae talk about that, Mrs Norrie.’

  ‘Yes, well, everybody already knows,’ she said rather sniffily.

  ‘Well then.’

  Mrs Murray in the shop was even more direct.

  ‘Why did I see that young Emer in here earlier sniffing and buying three bars of Dairy Milk?’ she said. ‘That’s not like her, young slim thing that she is. Three! Were they for you?’

  ‘No,’ said Cormac.

  ‘Well then,’ said Mrs Murray, as if that proved something. ‘How’s your ma?’

  ‘She’s good,’ said Cormac slowly. He hadn’t seen her in a fortnight, which was a lot round here. Rawdon had been commended for something and she’d wanted to talk about that in a rather emphatic way.

  ‘Still fussing you about your job?’

  ‘I’ll just take this cheese,’ said Cormac, smiling heartily. The shop was so overstuffed with things, he had to lean over the counter away from the newspapers. ‘Thanks, Mrs Murray.’

  ‘Oh well,’ said Mrs Murray – who took rather a lot quite personally – as Cormac escaped.

  He got home to an email from London. The brochure had a picture of bright high skyscrapers. ‘Secondments in a fast-moving environment!’ he read. ‘Update your skills. Experience a high-paced community in central London and sharpen your clinical skills!’

  Cormac had been to central London with a girlfriend long ago. They’d been to the Imperial War Museum, eaten at a steak house where they’d had to sit in the window and get gawped at by other tourists and the food was absolutely awful, then gone to see a West End show about a lady murderer which had made him fall asleep fifteen minutes in. That relationship hadn’t lasted longer either.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Valerie had sent Lissa home for the day – which was anxiety-creating enough in itself – and Lissa found the crowds on Tottenham Court Road rather overwhelming. She crossed and stumbled over the vast, honking, polluted Euston Road, and escaped into the relative quiet of Regent’s Park. It was too warm for this early in the spring. It should feel good, the sunshine, but it wasn’t: it felt ominous and scary; the world shifting and changing beneath her feet. Every teenage boy she passed, every laugh they gave or when they were shoving around with their mates, crowding her off the pavement, playing their music too loud, every single one made her flinch, made her want to grab them, hard, shout at them in their faces to be safe, to keep safe, to stay indoors, not to draw attention to themselves.

  But they were teenage boys. It was part of their make-up to yell, to beef, to get into each other’s faces. They felt invincible. Indeed, with their towering sizes and their massive trainers, they looked invincible.

  But they were as fragile as d
ay-old lambs. Lissa hurried on.

  She could feel her breathing speeding up again, her heart pounding in her chest, and tried to calm herself down. She sat down near a bright wave of daffodils and concentrated on breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth as much as she could, in and out, slowly and not rushing, trying to get her equilibrium back, even as she wanted to scream, to scream to everyone that the world wasn’t safe. It wasn’t safe.

  She swallowed hard. Maybe Valerie and Juan were right. She couldn’t work like this; couldn’t think like this. But it would pass, wouldn’t it? Would it?

  She opened up the leaflet they had given her. With its soothing view of rolling hills, it looked more like a funeral planning leaflet. Oh God. She couldn’t bear it. If she felt bad, what on earth was life like now for his mother? How did you go on? How could anybody go on?

  Nevertheless, she started to read.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jake and Cormac were having a pint in the pub, nodding hello to Philip and Wullie, and petting Alasdair, the cheerful sheepdog who lived there and appeared in perfect and glossy health despite living on a major dietary supplement of beer, nuts and pickled onion crisps. It was a chilly evening, but the sun had come down purple in the sky, which was a pretty sight to render anyone more or less cheerful about the world. They’d even persuaded their friend Lennox in for half an hour, although it would literally be half an hour, and he’d be glancing at his watch for most of it. He had a wee lad at home and wouldn’t miss bathtime for the world.