‘It’s going to be hard on Mum, having to go through the pain and recuperation period without knowing whether it’ll make much difference to the outcome.’
‘Far better than not going through it and thinking it could have made a difference.’
‘I’m not going to be able to get out much. It’s going to be difficult keeping the house going and looking after Alice and keeping up with work. I don’t want to take time off before I really have to because it could mean waiting another year or more to get into the GP training scheme.’
‘I can help,’ Toni said decisively. ‘We can take Alice out at weekends to let your mother rest. I can cook for you at your home.’ His thumbs were stroking her palms. ‘I can be here whenever you need to escape. To have someone to talk to. To hold you. Whatever you need, Pippa.’
The kind of things any good friend would offer at a time like this. Was it so wrong to want more?
‘I need you.’ Pip confessed. ‘I think I would like you to hold me, Toni. Is that all right?’
Toni said something in Italian as he pushed back his chair and helped Pip to her feet. Into his arms. Whatever it was, the tone made her feel as though it was her giving something to him instead of so completely the other way round. He still made it feel like that when he took her to his bed a short time later.
Their love-making had a quality that could never have been there the first time. Could never have been there at all, if not for the sadness Pip was having to deal with. It was about far more than physical attraction or release. It was a confirmation of intent. A willingness to be there no matter what. To provide comfort.
Love, even? The kind of love that could endure and last a lifetime?
Maybe. But it didn’t matter if it wasn’t because right now Pip was living from moment to moment.
And this moment was perfect.
‘You are supposed to come straight home after school. It’s nearly six o’clock! Where the hell have you been?’
‘At the mall. With Dayna.’
‘Why weren’t you answering your phone? I’ve been worried sick.’
‘My phone’s dead. I forgot to charge it last night.’
‘That’s not good enough, Alice. I’ve got more than enough to do right now, without having to worry about where you are.’
‘Who said you had to worry? If I’m old enough to be home by myself, I’m old enough to go to the mall if I want to. It’s only ten minutes’ walk away. You can’t stop me!’
‘Don’t bet on it!’
They were so alike, Toni thought as he watched Pip and Alice facing each other off across the kitchen table. Pip had probably been just as independent and determined when she had been Alice’s age. He couldn’t imagine Pip treating Shona with such disdain, however. Was it a generational thing or was it that the dynamic between this particular mother and daughter was flawed? Despite nearly two weeks of trying to establish new routines and roles, Pip was clearly still struggling to find her feet.
From Toni’s perspective, it was easy to see where the problem lay. Due to circumstances entrenched over many years, Pip was firmly cast in the role of a big sister. Much closer to being a friend than a parent. A dynamic that worked brilliantly on some occasions, such as the hilarious afternoon last weekend when Toni had offered to give Alice her first driving lesson and Pip had supervised from the back seat of the car. Or the night at home when Alice had tried to teach both Pip and Toni the dance moves she had picked up from the new music video she had borrowed from Dayna.
At other times, though, like now, Pip had no idea where to put boundary lines. It suggested a total lack of confidence in her ability as a parent. Of being prepared to risk popularity to provide the kind of control and guidance a child needed. And if she didn’t take the plunge now, it wasn’t going to get any easier as Alice headed into adolescence. The shadow of having to take on this role permanently had to be weighing heavily on Pip’s mind, but Toni was holding back from making any promises of being there to help.
It was a privilege, being allowed inclusion in this family at such a time. A chance to show Pippa how deeply he cared but also a chance to make sure his trust in her was not misplaced. He couldn’t afford to make a mistake. Not just for himself. Or for Pippa. Alice was important, too. It was a trial by fire for this romance but Toni wasn’t put off. Not at all. In a curious way, he was enjoying the argument. The dynamics of being on the inside of a normal family-style dispute that could be heated but the underlying love was never lost. Just the kind of interaction that had been missing from his own life.
‘Just don’t do it again,’ Pip was saying. ‘In future, you let me know where you are and what time you’ll be home.’
‘OK.’
Toni wasn’t surprised at how readily Alice agreed to such a minor restriction to her freedom. Text messages could easily be less than honest, couldn’t they? He had the horrible feeling Pip was buying into a whole lot more trouble but it wasn’t his place to intervene. As much as he would like to be more, he was still merely an observer. Moral support for Pip. Only included because it was what Pip wanted.
‘That’s cool.’ Alice sounded placating now. ‘What’s for dinner?’
‘Spaghetti Bolognese,’ Toni told her.
Alice groaned. ‘I think I’m turning into an Italian.’
‘Don’t knock it.’ Pip’s tone was short. ‘It’s only thanks to Toni that you’re getting fed at all tonight.’
‘Don’t stress,’ Alice commanded. ‘How’s Nona?’
‘A little better. Are you going to come and visit her tonight?’
‘Nah. I’ve got a heap of homework to do. She’s always asleep when I come in anyway.’
‘She still knows when you’re there.’
‘She’s been in hospital for ages.’
‘There were some complications after her operation. Now they need to work out the best diet for her when she gets home.’
‘Oh.’ The unspoken complaint that the visits and someone else being the centre of everybody’s attention were becoming tedious hung in the air, and Toni found himself gritting his teeth.
Alice had no idea how sick her grandmother was and Toni was convinced it would be better for her to know the truth despite Pip’s acquiescence to Shona’s wish of keeping it from the child. He wasn’t about to push the issue, however. Pip was dealing with more than enough, without him adding to her stress levels. She was looking even more pale and tired this evening and what Toni wanted to do was to take her in his arms and look after her—another argument was the last thing she needed. What if she really disagreed with him? Would she ask him to step aside and let her manage her own family in her own way? Toni wasn’t ready to test those boundaries. He didn’t want to step aside.
‘When’s she coming home?’ Alice was looking at her phone—the half-smile suggesting she had received a welcome message.
‘In a few days.’
‘That’s good.’ But Alice’s attention was now on the screen of her mobile phone as she responded to a text message. Did Pip not notice the blatant discrepancy of batteries that were no longer flat?
‘You should get on with that homework. Dinner won’t be for half an hour and if you get it done, you could come into the hospital with me later.’
Pip turned to Toni when Alice left the kitchen and he was only too willing to accept her kiss.
‘Sorry,’ she murmured.
‘What for?’
‘Having to listen to us scrapping. Just what you need after a long day at work.’
‘You don’t need it either.’ Toni kissed her again. ‘I wish I could make this easier for you.’
‘You are. I wouldn’t have coped so far without you. You’re a rock.’
‘I could do more.’ He could talk to Alice. Maybe tell her a few home truths and explain the necessity for making her changed relationship with her mother more positive. It was quite possible she would appreciate the opportunity to make her own, real contribution to this family in a time of crisi
s.
‘You don’t need to,’ Pip assured him. ‘It’ll be better when Mum’s back at home. Things will settle down then.’
‘Time of death.’ Pip looked wearily at her watch. ‘Three forty-five p.m.’
The frail body of their ninety-three-year-old patient was a silent testimony to failure. Pip had spent nearly two hours trying to hold back the inevitable after this elderly woman had come in with severe heart failure exacerbated by pneumonia. She gently closed the woman’s eyes and then stripped off her gloves. ‘Are any relatives here?’
‘No.’ Suzie was starting to pick up wrappers and discarded equipment. They had known they were probably fighting a losing battle when faced with heart failure bad enough to cause the bloodstained froth the woman had presented with around her mouth, but Pip had tried everything.
Oxygen, nitrates, morphine, diuretics. Continuous positive airway pressure via a face mask and a raft of other drugs to try and combat the ensuing cardiac rhythm abnormalities. They had gone through the protocol for the subsequent cardiac arrest but Pip had called it well before the time they might have spent on another patient. It had been clearly pointless but at least they all knew they had given it a shot.
‘It was a neighbour who called the ambulance,’ Suzie said. ‘And there’s no next of kin listed in her notes.’
No family to talk to, then. Nobody to mourn the loss of a mother or grandmother. There were still things Pip needed to do for this patient, however. Forms to fill in. Did she have enough information to complete a death certificate herself or would she need to refer the case to the coroner?
‘I need to have a word to Brian before I do the death certificate,’ she told Suzie. ‘You OK to finish up in here?’
‘Absolutely.’ Suzie touched Pip’s arm. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Sure. She was ninety-three after all and she’d been battling increasing heart failure for a while, by the look of her notes. I guess any death just comes a bit close to home at the moment.’
‘How is your mother?’
‘Picking up. She’s able to get out of bed for part of the day now and I don’t feel so bad leaving her when I’m at work.’ Which wasn’t quite true. Pip was carrying a sense of guilt with her on a permanent basis but she couldn’t afford to interrupt her training programme for too long and Shona wasn’t about to let her. How would she support Alice if she let herself slip too far back? ‘She’s got a good friend who comes every day to stay with her and she has been taking her to some of the radiotherapy appointments. I’ll have to take leave if she deteriorates, though.’
Or should that have been ‘when’ not ‘if’, Shona deteriorated. With a last look at the patient on the bed in Resus 2, Pip moved to find her senior colleague to check on death-certificate requirements. It was hard to try and shake off the weight of sadness that still caught her out at times but it was hardly unexpected just now, having tried and then failed to prevent someone dying.
‘The notes are pretty comprehensive,’ Brian told her a short time later. ‘And you got a chest X-ray done, which confirms the pneumonia. See if you can get hold of her GP, but I think the background we’ve got here and the length of time you were treating her in ED means there’s no reason for you not to complete certificating the cause of death.’ He gave Pip an intense glance. ‘You look done in.’
‘It hasn’t been a great day,’ Pip admitted. ‘And this wasn’t the best way to finish.’
The GP’s receptionist promised to return the phone call as soon as the doctor was between patients. Pip stayed sitting beside the telephone at the central desk, filling in what she could on the forms.
Thank goodness her working day would soon be over. It hadn’t been all that great even at its beginning, but whose fault had that been?
Staying up until the early hours, preparing a casserole for tonight’s dinner so that all Shona needed to do was turn the oven on. Making a school lunch for Alice and ironing the horrible pleats into the skirt of her school uniform. It could all have been done at a much more reasonable hour if Pip hadn’t spent the evening with Toni.
It had been the first time they had been alone together at his house in longer than she cared to count, and Pip wouldn’t have gone if Shona and her friend, Mary, hadn’t virtually pushed her out the door.
‘We’re going to play Scrabble,’ Shona had said. ‘And I intend to win.’
‘I’ll be here until you get home,’ Mary had added. ‘And I don’t expect to see you this side of midnight. Shona’s told me all about that gorgeous young man of yours.’
Alice had been on the computer, instant messaging her friends, and had seemed completely disinterested in the fact that Pip had been going out.
‘Have fun,’ had been all she’d said.
‘Fun’ wasn’t exactly in Pip’s vocabulary these days, but the time with Toni had been like a temporary release from prison. An escape into paradise.
And she hadn’t felt guilty. Well, not much, anyway. Surely she owed Toni that little bit of time and undivided attention? He’d been amazing ever since the news of Shona’s diagnosis. If she’d needed a test to see whether she’d found the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, she couldn’t have devised a better one. A trial by fire, no less, that he was passing with flying colours.
Being overtired to start her working day had been a small price to pay for the reprieve last night had given her.
In response to the beeping and message on her pager, Pip lifted the telephone receiver to take the incoming call, fully expecting to find herself talking to her patient’s GP.
But the name wasn’t right.
‘Bob Henley, did you say?’
‘That’s right. I’m the headmaster at Alice’s school.’
Pip drew in a quick breath. ‘Is she all right?’
‘She’s not unwell.’ The headmaster cleared his throat. ‘We do have a bit of a problem that we need to discuss, though, and I’d rather not do it on the phone. Would it be possible for you to come to the school?’
‘Of course.’ It was just another aspect of parenting she was going to have to get used to. What on earth had Alice done to get herself into trouble? ‘When? I’m almost finished work for today. I could come almost immediately.’
‘That might be best. I’ve got Alice here in my office at the moment. We’ll both be waiting for you.’
CHAPTER SIX
ALICE was sitting, all alone, on a seat outside the headmaster’s office.
Pip finally slowed her pace. ‘What’s going on, Alice?’
‘Nothing.’
Which turned out to be precisely what the headmaster was concerned about.
‘Alice just isn’t doing anything at the moment,’ he informed Pip. ‘No work in class, no homework, no effort in any direction that we can detect. We’re worried about her.’
‘Oh.’ Pip looked at Alice, who was now slumped in a chair beside her in front of Bob Henley’s desk. She was staring at the floor and gave no indication that she was at all bothered by the fact she was in trouble.
Where had the child gone, who had rushed home from school eager to share the day’s accomplishments or bathe in the glow of parental pride engendered by a good end-of-term report?
Pip couldn’t also help wondering where those pleats she had painstakingly pressed into Alice’s school uniform last night had gone. Melted by the large splodge of green paint, perhaps? Her gaze travelled swiftly over her daughter as though seeing her from Bob’s point of view. A lot of hair had escaped the ponytail, a thread dangled from a drooping hem on the stained uniform and socks that should have been knee-high were slumped around ankles. From head to toe, Alice looked scruffy. And supremely bored.
‘We’ve had to confiscate her mobile phone and separate her from her friend, Dayna. Their behaviour in class has simply become too disruptive.’
‘I had no idea,’ Pip sighed.
‘Of course not. We thought it would be helpful to bring you into the picture sooner rather than later.’ Bob
made a steeple of his fingers. ‘This has been a rather dramatic change for Alice over the last couple of months. I wondered if you knew of anything going on outside school that could be making the difference.’
Pip sat up a little straighter. Had she been neglectful as a parent in not informing the school of Shona’s illness? She hadn’t even thought of doing so, thanks to Shona’s insistence that things remain as normal as possible for Alice’s sake.
To give her time to get used to changes.
Like the change her relationship with Toni was causing.
If the school had noticed a difference over a period of nearly two months, that meant the deterioration in Alice’s behaviour coincided with Pip’s relationship with Toni and predated any hidden tension she might have picked up since the diagnosis of Shona’s illness. But it had been Alice who had encouraged Pip to find a boyfriend. Did she now resent the fact that Pip had someone else of significance in her life?
And if that resentment was enough to cause the negative change in attitude at school, how much worse would it be in a few months’ time—or however long Shona might have left?
A clear flash of her own resentment towards her mother in initially withholding the truth about her condition swept through Pip. As well as another resentment that Toni had sparked by suggesting Shona was wrong in trying to protect Alice like this. That children had as much right to honesty as adults did. That they might find that trying to protect her would only make things a lot worse in the long term.
This seemed to be a clear warning that Toni was right.
‘Things are a bit unsettled at home just now,’ Pip told the headmaster. ‘Alice’s grandmother isn’t well.’
‘I’m sorry. Is it serious?’
Pip gave a single, brief nod. Bob Henley looked taken aback and his gaze flicked to Alice, but she was still staring at the floor and gave every impression of not listening to a word being said around her.
‘I’m sorry,’ Bob repeated. ‘Is there some way the school can help?’
‘We’re managing,’ Pip assured him. ‘At least, I thought we were. I guess I haven’t been taking as much notice of Alice as I should have been in regard to homework and so on.’
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