by Penny Parkes
‘You did good today,’ said Grace, clocking the expression on his face and knowing him all too well. ‘Don’t let a guilt-gherkin throw you off track.’ She held out a cocktail stick, with a perfect miniature cornichon speared on the end.
‘Ah Gracie,’ Dan said, as he ate it in one bite. ‘You could restore a man’s faith in human kindness, you could.’
She smiled and pinched one of his Turkish Delight from under his very nose. Dan didn’t even react. He’d have given her the whole bloody hamper if she’d only agree to going out with him.
Of course, that would be so much more likely if he ever actually asked her.
Holly came into the lounge, looking almost as knackered as he felt. ‘Did you know poor Harry Grant’s been fired?’ she asked Dan under her breath, her subtlety and discretion unnecessary amongst the escalating party atmosphere. ‘He just texted me his new phone number.’
‘I found out this morning,’ Dan said, offering her one of his Turkish Delight. ‘And there goes our greatest advocate.’
‘I could murder a doughnut,’ Holly sighed, looking around at all the fancy food and grimacing.
‘Or Derek Landers?’ suggested Dan. ‘I could work with that too.’
Taffy came over to join them. ‘Do we need to have a Partners’ Meeting?’ he asked quietly, sliding his arm around Holly’s waist and giving her a gentle squeeze by way of greeting. Dan simply nodded; there was no point getting into nitty-gritty detail and worrying all the staff until they’d got their facts straight – it was yet another adjustment to responsibility he was having trouble with, preferring as a rule to keep everything out in the open.
It was as though Taffy could read his mind, thought Dan for a moment, as his friend clocked his need for distraction and stepped up as always. Taffy leaned forward and thrust a jar of caviar in his face. ‘Tenner says you can’t eat this in three mouthfuls. I had a little taste and if this is what shopping at Fortnum’s entails, you can sign me up for Lidl right now.’
Dan sniffed the eggs, their glistening blackness oily in the warmth of the lounge. He hesitated, knowing they could all use a good laugh, but in the end sanity prevailed. He swallowed hard and pulled out his wallet, noticing Taffy’s face drop as he did so. ‘Alright then, Jones,’ he rallied, ‘if you’re so keen. Double or quits.’ He waved a twenty-pound note in the air and raised his eyebrows in hope rather than expectation. ‘And a rum and raisin fudge chaser—’
‘Deal!’ said Taffy, grabbing hold of a spoon and diving in, even as Holly turned away, looking nauseous at the very suggestion. The way Dan saw it, there would be plenty of time for regret later on.
Chapter 15
Taffy scratched at his hand absent-mindedly, irritating the skin to an angry red. ‘If your hand really itches, doesn’t that mean you’re coming into money?’ he asked, a hopeful lilt to his voice that showed he was only half joking. They’d been up late last night doing the maths on what the new addition to their family might do to their already precarious bank balance.
Holly looked up from the printout of the day’s staff training schedule and grinned. ‘Sadly, I think it’s more likely that you’re just allergic to something.’
‘Washing up, maybe?’ he suggested, his only request for their wedding list having been that they somehow find room in their tiny kitchen for a dishwasher.
‘Now that would be terrible,’ Holly agreed, only too aware how many hours they spent standing at the kitchen sink picking Weetabix off their cereal bowls and that neither of them were really trained for domesticity. ‘Do you know, I could be a qualified heart surgeon by now, if I’d spent as many hours in an OR as I have at that sink.’ Indeed, it was only the spectre of Cassie Holland and her green army that kept them from abandoning all decorum and filling their kitchen with disposable plates and cutlery. ‘It’s such a shame the smell of Fairy Liquid is making me queasy at the moment,’ she said quietly, teasing him. ‘But what can you do?’ She grinned, catching hold of his tie and pulling him in for a kiss.
‘That excuse won’t last for ever, you know, Graham,’ he replied, his voice full of affection. He’d become incredibly tactile and demonstrative the last few days, so much so that Holly had been very strict with him earlier – ‘People will begin to suspect,’ she’d remonstrated, as he’d brought her fruit salad and a smoothie at her desk. ‘Let’s have the scan and then we can tell everyone properly.’ Lizzie and Elsie had both been sworn to secrecy, but neither were renowned for their discretion, so in Taffy’s eyes, they might as well get on and share the glad tidings before they gave the game away themselves.
‘Any chance we can whizz through all this staff training by lunchtime and then work on staff morale at the pub? Morale is very important, you know,’ Taffy said seriously.
‘I do know,’ said Holly with feeling, ‘but if the debacle at the Country Show taught us one thing, it’s that a little more emergency training wouldn’t go astray around here. And it might give us all a little more confidence if we’re left to our own devices again. Let’s face it, if these cutbacks continue and we can’t stem the flow, that might be more often than we’re actually prepared for.’
‘And Alice arranged this, and set it all up, did she?’ Taffy said, impressed. He waved around the doctors’ lounge at the array of CPR dummies, bandages and defibrillator units. ‘I reckon that business with Jessica Hearst has spooked her far more than we’d realised.’
‘Thank God Jess is making a decent recovery now,’ agreed Holly, having received regular updates over the last few days as Jess’s condition had finally turned a corner. Not that she was home free – there were one or two complications that might yet take months to resolve – but there was no doubting that little Jessica Hearst had been incredibly lucky. And Holly could only hope that Alice might now begin to see that her part in that, and of course its legacy with this new training initiative, could only be positive.
Holly frowned for a moment. ‘Have you seen the Major recently?’ she asked, seemingly out of nowhere, but her mind making connections as she tried not to relive the accident.
Taffy shook his head. ‘I don’t think I have actually. Not even at the pub.’
They looked at each other in concern, both hit by the sudden guilty realisation that the Major had indeed been MIA since the show. ‘I’ll pop round later,’ Holly promised. ‘But it’s not like before though, is it, when he wouldn’t come in? I mean, we don’t need to worry really, because if something was wrong, he would have been to see us, right?’
‘Right,’ said Taffy, not sounding half as convincing as Holly would have liked.
The doctors’ lounge began to fill then, as every member of staff turned up for their obligatory training day – some enthusiastically like Alice, others bemoaning the early start, others joining their ranks as amateur volunteers – the more the merrier.
‘Aha! Come to see how to do this medicine business properly?’ Taffy teased Rupert Hallow, their thankfully good-humoured local vet. ‘With the missus up the duff, you’ll be wanting to learn how to do things properly, I suppose,’ Taffy teased him.
‘Well, we can’t all take the soft route and specialise in only one species,’ Rupert countered, lightly punching him on the shoulder. ‘But actually, yeah, the thought of a baby in the house does rather focus the mind, doesn’t it?’
Taffy nodded. ‘The number of times Ben or Tom have swallowed things—’ He gave a theatrical shudder and dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘I’d never been terrified of a grape before I moved in with Holly.’
Rupert nodded; Jemima’s hard-won pregnancy had been a long time coming and he was taking no chances. He bent down to pick up one of the CPR dummies, which apparently came in all shapes and sizes these days.
‘Aw, look, Fat Boy’s back,’ said Grace affectionately, as she walked up beside them and patted the plump resus-dummy on the head.
Rupert stiffened. ‘Now that’s hardly fair. I’m just being supportive. Jemima’s had all sorts of cravings, so I promis
ed we’d chub up together.’ He looked sheepish. ‘Really the very least I could do.’
Grace looked mortified, but before Taffy could call him out on so obvious a ploy to up his doughnut intake – or indeed adopt the concept as his own – the CPR trainer strode into the room, earnest expression, lace-up brogues and nononsense attitude firmly in place.
‘Right, we haven’t got long and there’s lots to get through, so divide into groups and we’ll refresh the basics,’ she said, her booming voice ploughing through every consonant. ‘I’m Josephine. Any questions, hands in the air, okay?’
‘Charisma levels critically low,’ whispered Dan in Holly’s ear, making her giggle. ‘Suggest immediate mouth-to-mouth.’
‘Jesus,’ sniggered Jason, ‘do we have to?’
Josephine strode over, mistaking Jason’s discomfort. ‘Now, just because your CPR dummy happens to be male, that doesn’t mean you should hesitate to get stuck in.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t,’ Jason said suggestively, with a seductive twitch of his eyebrow. ‘I’m remarkably easy either way.’
Lucy turned away, biting on her plait to stifle the giggles, only to snort unattractively and set herself off again. Holly grinned, loving that they really had become a team who worked together and played together as well.
‘So,’ continued Josephine, shooting their group a look of intense dislike, ‘you should take a moment to re-familiarise yourselves with the contents of each defibrillator kit. Check your plan of action, people – scissors to deal with clothing, razor for those with a hairy chest, microbial wipe to – what?’
Around the room, several hands had gone up. ‘We don’t seem to have a razor in our kit.’
‘Or ours,’ said Holly, after a moment’s searching.
‘Ah, now about that—’ Jason looked up at his colleagues and blushed. ‘Sorry, troops. Forgot to replace them. Had this really big cycling race and—’ A volley of latex gloves and bagels rained upon him, as his colleagues were unable to pass up the opportunity to penalise him for his endless vanity.
They soon settled into some semblance of organisation, not least because Josephine was a formidable presence in the room but also, of course, because, however high spirits were running this morning, they actually needed – and wanted – to know this stuff.
‘Now,’ opined Josephine a short while later, ‘who can actually tell me the leading cause of complications following an emergency admission?’
They looked from one to another for inspiration. ‘Jarring from transportation?’ ventured Alice, no prizes for guessing which case she was thinking of.
‘Infection to open wounds?’ suggested Holly, Charlotte Lansing’s arm still firmly in the forefront of her mind.
‘Would it surprise you,’ Josephine said as she glowered around the room with her hands on her sizeable hips, ‘to learn that it comes down to communication? Have we got our facts straight? Our information accurate? Name? Date of birth? Blood group? Even the nature or causation of the injury or illness itself.’
‘It’s true,’ interrupted Taffy. ‘I had a man come into the GUM clinic when I was a resident. Taken too much Viagra. His paperwork said he was circus-sized.’
‘Oh my God,’ gasped Alice, still easily shocked despite her constant professionalism.
‘He wasn’t really,’ Taffy quickly reassured her. ‘I mean, he did have the most enormous stiffy, but they just meant he was circumcised—’
‘Oh,’ she laughed nervously, embarrassed to have missed the joke that had everyone else in stitches.
Dan couldn’t resist joining in. ‘My very first consult on the wards – the chart said the patient needed checking anally. No wonder she was surprised when I told her the plan. She’d been expecting her annual hearing check!’ He looked inordinately pleased with yet another of his favourite spell-check jokes.
‘Yes, quite,’ cut in Josephine tartly, without even mustering a smile. ‘If you’ve quite finished with the adolescent – not to mention highly unoriginal – humour, perhaps we can move on?’
‘Burn!’ whispered Jason to Taffy and Dan as they visibly shrank under her disdain.
Josephine’s head whipped round like a bird of prey. ‘Excellent suggestion. Let’s talk about burns for a moment, shall we?’
Holly slipped away after lunch, confident in her suturing skills, but unable to clear the apprehension buzzing around in her mind. She called Lizzie as she walked across town, knowing that her friend always seemed to have her finger on the pulse of what was going on in Larkford. You could take the journalist away from the glossy magazine, but it turned out you couldn’t take the journalist out of the girl. ‘I can’t talk now,’ whispered Lizzie. ‘I’m at my reflexology appointment.’ She sighed blissfully. ‘I’ll call you later though, yes—’
She sounded so completely Zen that, for a moment at least, Holly strongly considered booking herself in there and then. Then she remembered exactly why Lizzie enjoyed her appointments quite so very much and decided it wasn’t for her. Her pregnancy hormones were driving her libido up the wall right now and it didn’t seem the time, or indeed the place, to experiment with new erogenous zones. Taffy would simply have to step up and do the decent thing, she thought, smiling to herself happily at the very idea.
She stopped in front of Waverly Manor, the Major’s family home since she didn’t know when, and the guilt returned like a punch to the chest. The thick branches of wisteria had shed their purple flowers and the bright acid greens of the honeysuckle had taken full advantage to snake in between, its aroma heavy and cloying. It was a stunning yet strangely unwelcoming façade.
She tapped gently on the oak front door, noticing as she did so that all the curtains were still drawn even mid-afternoon. Quite why she hadn’t simply called in to see Marion at the Spar she couldn’t say – perhaps, she confessed to herself, because she was looking for a slightly more objective report on the state of one Major Peregrine Waverly.
No reply.
She lifted the latch on the side gate, surprised to find it unlocked, and slipped through the archway into the back garden, the Major’s pride and joy. But instead of the usual manicured lawns and titivated borders she saw only neglect. You could easily have taken a hay crop off the lawn and the weeds had run riot.
‘I wondered if you might turn up,’ said a voice from the shadows of the loggia, as the Major stepped forward, hair unkempt, smoking a forbidden pipe and sporting a tattered, yet clearly expensive, silk dressing gown. ‘The wife dobbed me in, did she?’ he said tiredly, no trace of his dapper charm on show.
‘Nope,’ replied Holly, trying hard not to stare at his unusual dishevelment. ‘Thought I’d pop by for some advice about my garden.’ She paused. ‘Oh, and I was worried about you.’
The Major nodded; he looked utterly broken. ‘Is she alive?’ he asked after only a moment’s hesitation. ‘You can tell me. Did that poor little girl die?’
‘Oh Major!’ cried Holly. ‘No! She hasn’t died. She’s on the mend, truly. I had a call only this morning. I thought you knew—’ She broke off, wondering for a moment why exactly she’d supposed that. Presumably because secrets in Larkford were few and far between, and he was married to the local oracle?
He shook his head. ‘I’ve been sleeping in the study, or trying to. Haven’t seen Marion for days – she’s up with the lark and I, well, let’s say that sleep is a fickle friend right now.’ He paused, drawing in a shuddering breath. ‘So little Jessica is going to be okay? I mean, properly, truly okay?’
Holly nodded, wondering quite how much to share. ‘It might take a little time until she’s galloping around the parkland again, but she’s a gutsy one alright.’
The Major looked at her appraisingly. ‘Head injuries don’t go away overnight,’ he said astutely, refusing to be mollified. ‘How on earth do I look her in the eye, knowing it was my bravado and stupidity that caused all her pain?’ He leaned back against the crumbling wall of the loggia, its stonework seemingly bound into survival by cle
matis vines, just as the tightened belt on the Major’s robe seemed to be the only thing holding him together right now. He puffed on his pipe and stared into the distance, his newly sharpened cheekbones highlighted by the glancing sunlight.
He turned after a moment, the pain etched across his face. ‘Tell me what to do, Holly? Tell me what to do, to make this feeling go away?’
Holly took his hand and steered him, almost as if he were a child, through the open French windows and back into the kitchen. She poured him a mug of coffee from the pot on the side and sat down with him at the kitchen table.
‘You’re going to talk to your friends, to your wife, and share with us how you feel. We all know you didn’t set out to hurt anyone.’
‘But my ego caused all—’ he interrupted.
Holly waved his words away. ‘Your ego booked a plane. And frankly the pilot should have known better, but this isn’t a day in court.’
‘It didn’t even cross my mind,’ he said despondently. ‘I mean, the RAF chaps send their helicopters over all the time to dry out the cricket pitches—’
‘Major, for now, let’s just focus on the fact that you never intended to hurt anyone and that accidents do happen.’
‘Hmm,’ muttered the Major, not easily swayed from his stance that he was the living breathing catalyst for all of Jessica Hearst’s current misery.
But she was alive and recovering, Holly reminded herself when a flicker of doubt appeared in her own mind. And whilst the Major’s biplane had been sheer folly on his part, it had certainly not been malicious. His culpability was tenuous at best. In her experience, he would end up punishing himself for this far longer than any legal system ever could. In fact, if Lavinia Hearst wasn’t quite so litigious and vindictive, then a visit to Jessica might be just the ticket, but there was no way Holly was suggesting that right now, with the Major so obviously broken and fragile in front of her.
‘Can you maybe talk to Marion tonight, stop sleeping in the study? Tell her what you’ve told me and actually get some sleep?’
