The Ideal Choice

by Caroline Anderson

  ‘Of course not. The consultant will want to check out the rest of your family, though, to make sure that the cancers that have been detected are the sort that are familial and haven’t been just a run of bad luck, but from what you’ve told me I’m almost certain you’re right, and I shall certainly back you in any referral.’

  Mrs Long sighed and shook her head. ‘Heavens, you can have no idea what a relief it is to be believed. I mean, my husband agrees, but he could be overreacting too.’

  Tricia shook her head. ‘I don’t think so—not at all. Of course, the impact of this operation on you physically might be less than you imagine if you have reconstructive surgery at the same time. If all they do is remove the breast tissue and replace it with a fluid-filled implant, you won’t even look or feel that different after a little while, so I don’t think the business of being disfigured needs to distress you too much.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ the woman told her bluntly. ‘That’s not what life’s all about. I don’t care what I look like, just so long as I’m alive.’

  ‘But it would be a nice bonus.’

  She smiled. ‘It would be wonderful to have breasts that couldn’t grow lumps and kill me, whatever shape they were.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Tricia replied, responding to the warmth of the woman’s smile. ‘Mrs Long, you know I will have to discuss this with Dr Williams, as you’re his patient?’

  ‘That’s fine. I just thought a woman might understand better, at least at first. I just wanted to sound you out, see if another woman thought I was crazy.’

  Trivia shook her head. ‘I don’t think you’re crazy at all. Let me talk to him and discuss who to refer you to, and then we’ll get you to come in again for another chat.’

  ‘Don’t you need to examine me?’

  She shook her head again. ‘No. You haven’t found a lump, have you?’

  ‘No—not for want of trying. There’s nothing there that I can find, but my sister’s was picked up on the mammogram and she couldn’t feel it at all.’

  ‘I’ll check you if you like.’

  ‘No. There’s no point. I know my own lumps and bumps inside out.’ She hesitated for a moment, looking suddenly thoughtful. ‘Oh, Lord, I hope it works, but if it does...I know it’s silly but I’ll feel as if I’ve bottled out.’

  ‘Now, that is crazy. Understandable, though.’ Tricia reached out and touched Mrs Long’s arm. ‘I know it probably sounds like a platitude, but I am very sorry about your family. However, you mustn’t let a sort of perverse loyalty stop you from taking this step if you really feel it’s the right thing for you.’

  ‘I do. I know it is really. It just seems tough on the others. I wouldn’t have thought of it if it hadn’t been for a woman on the television making me think about it.’

  ‘Was that what gave you the idea?’

  ‘Yes. She’d had a terrible family history too, and she’d had it done and said it was marvellous to be free of the fear. That was when I realised just how frightened I was, and my husband said he was too. I know it’s right for me.’

  Tricia nodded. ‘I’m not going to be here very long because I’m just covering Dr Wheeler’s maternity leave, but I’ll make sure Dr Williams knows all about it and I’m sure he’ll give you all the help and support you need.’

  Mrs Long left then, pausing at the door to thank Tricia once again for listening and taking her seriously. Tricia stared at the door for a moment, pondering the next step, and then before she buzzed the next patient she rang Reception. ‘Is Rhys still in surgery?’ she asked.

  ‘No, he’s here. Do you want to talk to him?’

  ‘Please.’

  A moment later Rhys’s voice came on the line, gruff and a little harassed. ‘Yes?’

  And hello to you too, she thought. ‘I need to speak to you about a patient.’

  ‘Mine or yours?’

  ‘Yours.’

  ‘OK, fire away—or will it take longer than five seconds?’

  She laughed. ‘Just a little more.’

  His sigh was heavy. ‘Look, I have to go. The child-minder’s rung to say she’s feeling unwell and could I pick the children up early—I don’t suppose you feel like coming to my house when you finish here? Unless it will wait until tomorrow?’

  Tricia chewed her lip. It would wait—of course it would—but would tomorrow be any better? ‘Do you mind? It’s not that urgent, but it would be nice to have time to sit and go through it all properly.’

  ‘Bring the notes. I’ll see you when you’re ready.’

  ‘OK,.’

  She cradled the phone, called the next patient and worked her way through to the end of her surgery. There was nothing complicated fortunately, and so it wasn’t many minutes before she was following Rhys out of the surgery.

  That, of course, had a downside.

  When she arrived at the house, the first sound to greet her was the dull roar of a vacuum cleaner. It was a sound that she was all too familiar with, and with a sinking heart she walked up to the front door.

  Better do it officially, she thought, and not assume he wants me to come to the back door. This isn’t the country.

  She rang the bell, but the roar of the vacuum was punctuated by screams and giggles and Rhys’s yelled instructions, and with a sigh she went round to the back door and tapped, then turned the handle.

  The door swung open to reveal a familiar scene. ‘Oh, dear,’ she sighed, and, ignoring the mess, went through into the sitting room. Doodle was hiding behind the sofa and greeted her with a whine and a wag of his tail, and the three children appeared out of the woodwork and grinned, talking to her nineteen to the dozen.

  Rhys, however, was oblivious. Tricia bent down to hear what Emma was saying, and just as she spoke the dreadful noise stopped.

  ‘My finger’s better!’ Emma yelled into the sudden silence, then giggled.

  ‘I know that,’ Rhys said, still with his back to her. ‘Have you put your dirty clothes in the washing basket yet?’

  ‘Daddy, she’s here.’

  Rhys, down on his knees now, shovelling Lego into an old ice-cream tub, turned towards the door and gave a sickly grin. ‘Hi.’ He glanced round and shrugged. ‘Sorry about the mess.’

  She let the smile out. ‘Looks like home,’ she said softly. ‘Shall I make us a cup of tea?’

  ‘Can I have juice?’

  ‘I want blackcurrant—’

  ‘Is there any milk?’ Tricia asked.

  Rhys shut his eyes. ‘I expect so. I’ll come in a minute when I’ve put this lot away. Who was playing with it?’

  ‘Mark,’ Emma said.

  ‘Emma,’ Mark said.

  ‘All of us,’ Bibby said.

  ‘Right. In that case, you three clear it up and Dr Page and I will make the tea.’

  Well, she thought, he’s learning. They went back into the kitchen and he sighed and stabbed his hand through his hair. ‘Oh, hell’s teeth. We’ll go in the garden.’

  He made a tray of drinks—tea for them, assorted cold drinks for the children—and, putting a packet of chocolate biscuits on the tray, he headed through the door into the relative tranquillity of the garden.

  It didn’t last. Moments later the children came pouring out and scrambled all over him, mugging him for the biscuits and squabbling about who was first and who had put the most Lego away and who was stupid. If she closed her eyes, Tricia thought, she could have turned the clock back fifteen years. The scene had a sort of ghastly nostalgia to it...

  Then Rhys’s deep voice cut through the babble. ‘Right, scoot, please. We’ve got something to talk about. Go and play in the sandpit for a while.’

  ‘Can we have another biscuit?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Two?’

  ‘No, one. Go on.’

  Finally they were left alone, and Rhys turned to her with a rueful grin. ‘Sorry about that. Right, you wanted to talk to me.’

  ‘Yes. Belinda Long—twenty-eight, dark hair, married, no
children. She sees you for contraceptive purposes. Otherwise the last visit was three years ago for a virus.’

  He nodded. ‘I think I know her. Go on.’

  ‘Family history of breast cancer. She came to see me today to ask if she can have a bilateral mastectomy, just so she doesn’t get it too.’

  His eyebrows shot up. ‘Really? What’s the history like?’

  ‘Dire. Mother, aunt, sister, cousin—oh, and grandmother.’

  ‘Any fatalities?’

  ‘Mother and grandmother so far, aunt on the way out, sister has a recurrence.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘Quite.’

  He studied her thoughtfully. ‘What did you say?’ ‘I told her I thought she was right.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Once I’d heard the history, yes. If it was me, I wouldn’t hesitate.’

  He sighed. ‘No, nor me. However, the consultant may not be so easily persuaded, and she might have to go privately.’

  ‘Why? If he’ll do it privately, why not on the NHS?’

  ‘Because he may not be able to justify the use of health-service funds for an operation for prophylactic reasons without any evidence of active disease in the patient herself.’

  ‘And yet he’d do it privately? That’s crazy.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s life. And at the moment it’s also speculation.’

  ‘But what if she can’t pay? Does she have to die first?’

  ‘Shh,’ he soothed, and she realised she’d raised her voice.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘It just seems rather hard.’

  His smile was gentle and understanding. ‘I know. I’ll talk to the consultant. There are several in Southampton, some more approachable than others. I’ll check my facts, but there’s one I think is more likely to play ball with us. The other problem is time, because she’s got no evidence of the disease she may find she’s on a waiting list and that might be more than she can cope with, having made the decision.’

  Tricia sipped her tea. ‘I think that’s very likely. I wonder if she’s got the money?’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll find it from somewhere if she possibly can. You never know, she might be in a private health scheme anyway.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope so, because it’s taken a lot of courage for her to get this far. It would be so easy to take the usual “it won’t happen to me” attitude. That’s why people drive too fast and drink too much and take all sorts of other stupid risks.’

  Like sitting here with you, she could have added, but she didn’t because for once they weren’t fighting and that old demon sex appeal was lying dormant, snoozing like the dog in the evening sun.

  She was about to quit while she was ahead and leave when the children came running over.

  ‘Are you staying to supper?’ they asked. “Cos we’re having fish and chips.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think—’

  ‘Oh, please! You must. You wanted to look at my train set,’ Mark told her.

  ‘And I wanted to show you my new dolly Daddy got me for breaking my finger—’

  ‘An’ I want you to read me a story,’ Bibby said around her thumb. Tricia was sure it was sandy, but the child didn’t seem to mind.

  She glanced at Rhys for guidance, but he shrugged. ‘Join us. It’s not very exciting, I’m afraid, and one of us will have to go out and get it.’

  She smiled. ‘I tell you what—why don’t I go out and get it for all of us?’

  ‘Do you know the right place?’ Emma asked.

  ‘The right place? I thought fish and chips was fish and chips!’

  ‘What?’ Rhys said with a chuckle. ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘You have to go to the mobile man in Lymington,’ Mark informed her, ‘but it’s very difficult to find.’

  She grinned at Rhys over their heads. ‘I can imagine a mobile man would be.’

  His eyes creased. ‘Not really. He’s on the quay in the evenings.’

  ‘So I could find it.’

  Mark screwed up his face. ‘We-e-ell—maybe.’

  ‘Only maybe? Hmm. OK, so, either I can go and probably get lost, or you could all stay here and help me clear up the kitchen while Daddy goes—’

  There was a chorus of disapproval, interrupted by Rhys’s chuckle. ‘Or on the other hand,’ he suggested with the glimmer of a smile in his eyes, ‘we could all go, and eat it walking along the front.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ The children bounced up and down, much more taken with that idea.

  ‘We get to go to bed late!’ Emma confided to Tricia. ‘We always do when we walk along the front in Lymington because we go too far and then we have to come back and our legs are tired so we can’t walk fast—’

  ‘And then Emma whinges,’ Mark said scornfully.

  ‘Bibby whinges too,’ Emma said defensively, ‘but Daddy carries her. It’s not fair.’

  ‘That’s ’cos I’m a baby and it’s too late for me to be up, so I’m reelly, reelly tired,’ Bibby said sagely.

  ‘Oh, well, it doesn’t hurt every now and again,’ Rhys said, stifling his smile. ‘OK, kids, go and get a jumper in case it gets chilly.’

  The children dashed for the house, whooping with glee and barging each other out of the way, and Tricia turned to Rhys. ‘Chilly?’ she said with a laugh. ‘You think there’s the slightest danger of it getting chilly?’

  His grin was wry. ‘Fortunately not—unless they get their way and we’re very, very late!’

  The children ran out of the house again, armed with an assortment of jumpers that Tricia was sure they wouldn’t need, and Rhys sent them all back inside. ‘Loo first,’ he said.

  They scattered, and while they were gone Rhys locked the doors and closed the windows, then called the dog before helping Bibby off the loo.

  Then they were off at last, loaded into the big car with Bibby in the child seat in the middle and Emma and Mark on booster seats, the dog in the back.

  Tricia was in the one spare seat, in the front next to Rhys, and she was suddenly very conscious of sitting in Judy’s place. Was he? Did it occur to him to look at it that way?

  Apparently not. He seemed more relaxed that she had ever seen him, and as they turned onto the quay in Lymington and parked the car she wondered if Linsey had misjudged his attitude. Perhaps he wasn’t so anti-women after all—or perhaps he was only anti-Judy? Who could blame him, after all that had happened?

  The fish and chip van was where they’d said it would be, next to the pub at the top of the slipway, and Tricia sat on the sea wall with Doodle and the children while Rhys queued.

  He came back with a pile of foil-lined bags steaming with piping hot chips and firm, juicy fish in crisp batter. ‘Wickedly sinful, but delicious,’ he said with a grin as he handed Tricia hers.

  They walked along towards the yacht club, Rhys like a mother hen with a cluster of little chicks, Tricia in their wake with Doodle as they went along a narrow stretch of road without a pavement; then the left-hand side opened out to the river again with a wide stretch of grass, and they found themselves a deserted spot on the sea wall, sat with their legs hanging over the mud and watched for crabs at the edge of the water a few feet away.

  Mark threw down a chip and two tiny crabs fought over it in a monumental tug of war. Rhys threw another one with deadly accuracy, and the weaker crab released the first chip and made off with the second, bigger one.

  Tricia raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Sorry for the underdog?’ she teased.

  ‘Undercrab?’

  They shared a smile, then suddenly something changed, as if the world tilted a little on its axis, and her smile slipped, driven out by the wave of need that engulfed her. She looked away. What a time for such awareness—in broad daylight with his children sitting between them like a row of baby chicks!

  He was busy now flaking Bibby’s fish to make sure there were no bones, and as she looked up he was licking his fingers.

  He froze, his hand still at his mouth, and th
en slowly, deliberately he sucked the tip of each finger. Heat flamed in her cheeks.

  ‘Look, Dr Page, a ferry!’ Mark said, tugging at her sleeve. She dragged her eyes away from Rhys and looked across the water. ‘It’s going to the Isle of Wight. Daddy’s going to take us one day—aren’t you, Dad?’

  ‘One day,’ Rhys said, and his voice was husky.

  She closed her eyes. Why this man? she thought. Why him, with his problems and hang-ups and adorable children that she just wanted to sweep into her arms and hug to bits? Not to mention what she wanted to do with Rhys—

  ‘Are you asleep?’

  She opened her eyes and turned to the children.

  ‘No—just resting my eyes and listening.’

  ‘Listening?’

  ‘Mmm—shut your eyes and see what you can hear.’

  Their lids came down dutifully, and she looked beyond them to Rhys. He was watching her, his eyes searching, heated, alive with awareness. Tricia couldn’t look away. She was trapped by his gaze, by the need that was written in his eyes.

  ‘I can hear seagulls,’ Mark announced.

  ‘Me too—and a boat.’

  ‘Doodle’s panting.’

  There was a promise in those eyes, she thought—or a threat. Later, he was saying. When the children were asleep? Or in a week or so, or another month? She wasn’t sure. She just knew that he wanted her, and she was powerless to resist...

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘THANKS for spending this evening with us. The kids enjoyed your company.’

  Tricia, sitting next to Rhys under the apple tree in his garden, wondered if that was a dismissal. So he thought the kids had enjoyed her company. Just the kids? Probably. She had found it fun—not just the walk in Lymington but the bedtime routine afterwards: helping to bath the children and get them to bed, the story-telling, the last hugs and kisses—it was all so familiar and comfortable and dear to her. But Rhys? Had her presence made any difference to him?

  ‘How about you?’ she asked, trying to inject a teasing note into her voice. ‘Did you enjoy my company, or were the smiles all just for the benefit of the children?’

  He smiled then, fleedngly—a flash of white in the almost-darkness. ‘I don’t know if “enjoy” is the word I’d use. Watching you playing with the children, chasing about on the grass with the dog, carrying Bibby on your shoulders so I could carry Emma, then tucking them up in bed after their baths, telling them stories—it’s a sort of sublime torture really. Life poking its tongue out at me. Happy ever after and all that jazz.’