Guilty Secret

by Josie Metcalfe

  ‘This is the sort of situation that local people don’t usually have to face,’ she grumbled. ‘If they’ve got family living all around them they can call on any number of people in an emergency. As a single mum, I’m reliant on finding willing employees or my whole system collapses.’

  Jack was silent for a moment, just long enough for Frankie to regret sounding off like that. As a single man he didn’t really want to know about the arrangements she had to make to enable her to fulfil her duties.

  ‘How big is your couch?’ he demanded suddenly, startling her out of her preoccupation.

  ‘My couch?’ she repeated stupidly, wondering if a headache could affect her hearing. She must have missed part of the conversation.

  ‘Is it long enough for me to stretch out full length?’ he continued. ‘Because if it is, and if you can guarantee that your two sleep right through the night and don’t need taking to the bathroom, I can just as easily catch up on my rest at your place as mine.’

  Frankie blinked, completely taken aback by the unexpected offer. It seemed so out of character for a man who prided himself on being footloose and fancy-free, but it would certainly solve her problem.

  ‘That’s very generous of you, but…Are you sure, Jack? If you’re so tired, wouldn’t you rather be at home in your own bed?’

  ‘What makes you think I can’t sleep in any bed?’ he teased with a sudden flash of his bad-boy grin. Then he was serious again. ‘It’s not so long since my medical training that I can’t remember how to sleep standing up if I have to. Anyway, Frankie, look on the bright side. There’s no telling if you’ll even be called out tonight, so we might both get a full night’s sleep.’

  Frankie was desperate enough not to want to put him off, and with the minimum of fuss they arranged that he would go home to collect an overnight bag and then join her little family for supper.

  Their peaceful night never happened.

  Almost as soon as the practice closed Frankie’s mobile phone began to ring with messages from the after-hours service to visit one patient after another.

  There was an angina patient whose severe attack wasn’t responding to treatment. When she reached his isolated cottage she quickly realised that he needed immediate admission to hospital.

  Then it was back to the outskirts of Edenthwaite where there was a young woman barely at the end of the first trimester of her pregnancy with unexpected pain and bleeding. She was in such a state of panic that hospital admission for observation would be the only way to calm her and her frantic husband down.

  There was no point trying to explain to the two of them that, wherever she was, bed rest was all that could be offered. Frankie realised that they needed the emotional support of high-tech hospital surroundings while nature took its course. All she could do was hope that things turned out to have a happy ending.

  Of course, there were far more calls than necessary from people who thought a home visit and a prescription for antibiotics would magically stop the onset of flu. She was becoming heartily sick of having to explain over and over again that antibiotics weren’t the answer, and could actually make the problem worse.

  In between, she’d barely had time to stick her head round her front door to check that Laura and Katie had remembered to do their homework and that Jack was coping with the two of them before she was off again. This time the patient was an elderly man with all the painful symptoms of a blocked catheter.

  An hysterical mother of a six-month-old with an attack of croup was almost the most draining case, and by the time she left the steam-filled bathroom to a much-relieved mother and child, her clothes were damp right through and she was absolutely limp with exhaustion.

  It was almost midnight before Frankie was able to call back at the house again.

  She didn’t have much hope that she would be able to stay long, not the way her luck was running tonight. At least she would be able to check up to see if Jack was still coping all right, although the fact that he hadn’t phoned her must be a good indication that nothing disastrous had happened while he’d been in charge.

  When she saw that all the rooms seemed to be in darkness she breathed a sigh of relief. At least her amateur child-minder was catching up on his sleep, she thought as she reversed quietly into the drive to be ready for a quick getaway.

  Mindful that she didn’t want to wake anyone, she opened the front door as silently as possible, toeing off her shoes just inside the door before she started to creep towards the kitchen.

  The fact that the little light had been left on over the cooker didn’t worry her. She’d been known to forget it herself. All she was concentrating on was making her way to the kettle when a voice emerged from the darkness beside her, nearly scaring her out of her wits.

  The kettle’s just boiled. Tea or coffee?’

  ‘Nick?’ she gasped and whirled around, her heart beating so fast it almost felt as if it was going to leap out of her throat.

  The light was only just strong enough to reach him, painting sculptural highlights down one side of his clever face and revealing the lean fingers wrapped around a mug on the table.

  ‘Wh-what on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘Jack had to leave,’ he said succinctly, and reached out to raise the teapot in her direction. ‘Want to get a cup for some of this?’

  ‘Had to leave?’ she parroted, automatically turning and reaching into the cupboard for one of her favourite bone china mugs. ‘Why? And what are you doing here?’

  As if he’d been doing it for years, Nick took the mug from her when she offered it and poured the tea exactly the way she liked it.

  ‘He was called in for an obstetric case that turned a bit tricky so he called me to take over here.’

  She leant back against the row of cupboards, the edge of the work surface pressing uncomfortably into her back. She ached to sink into a chair to rest her weary body, but even taking a seat on the opposite side of the table would take her far too close to him.

  ‘But why you?’ she persisted, then suddenly realised she was beginning to sound like a record stuck in the same groove.

  ‘Because he knows that the girls are comfortable with me and wouldn’t be frightened if they woke to find me here, so he phoned to find out if I was available,’ he said simply.

  Just like that, the prosaic reason for his presence became obvious.

  For a moment her imagination had been whirling with all sorts of crazy ideas, half of them probably fuelled by their mutual guilt.

  Initially, her heart had leapt with fright when his voice had emerged out of the darkness, but it had pounded even harder when she’d realised just who it was sitting in the silent gloom of her kitchen.

  For just a moment she’d had to admit to herself that she’d been missing him and had hoped that his presence in her home had meant that he’d been missing her just as much.

  Those were the thoughts that needed to be squashed most fiercely.

  He was an engaged man with his whole life planned out ahead of him, a life that didn’t include her, so she wasn’t going to allow herself to miss him any more.

  She buried her nose in the warm steam rising from the mug for a moment then forced herself to start some sort of conversation. She might be aware of everything about him, from the rumpled hair and open neck of his shirt to the casual jeans and naked feet splayed under her table, but she would behave as if they were no more than friendly colleagues if it killed her.

  ‘Have you been here long?’ she began politely, and could have groaned when she realised how inane it sounded. This wasn’t some social wine-and-cheese party, this was the middle of the night in her kitchen with the man who could set her blood on fire with little more than a glance from his deep blue eyes.

  ‘An hour or so. Maybe two,’ he replied, equally politely, but she was sure she could see the glint of humour in those eyes.

  Tongue-tied and totally unable to think of anything else to say, she felt the silence in the dimly lit room be
gin to stretch to uncomfortable lengths. Even though she knew that any conversation between them could turn into a minefield, she was almost relieved when he finally spoke.

  ‘Look, Frankie, if there’s a bit of a lull in the calls, do you think it would be a good idea if we went to bed?’

  She choked on her tea, gasping and wheezing as a mouthful went down the wrong way.

  It didn’t help when he leapt to his feet to relieve her of the mug then wrapped a supporting arm around her shoulders.

  The temptation to lean against his strength was almost overwhelming but she forced herself to turn away and brace her hands on the edge of the sink.

  ‘Anything I can do?’ he offered, but she waved him off with one hand while she reached for the roll of paper towel to stifle the paroxysm of coughing.

  If only she didn’t keep replaying his words inside her head she might have been able to catch her breath sooner. As it was, all she could hear was ‘wouldn’t it be a good idea if we went to bed?’ playing over and over, and her body’s intimate response telling her in no uncertain terms that it agreed.

  Tired as she was, it was almost a relief when her mobile phone demanded her attention, signalling the need for yet another foray into the night.

  She was stepping into her shoes by the front door when Nick spoke, his voice far too close for comfort as the husky words wrapped around her in the darkness.

  ‘I actually meant that we should sleep in separate beds,’ he said softly, and her cheeks suddenly felt as though they ought to be glowing. Could the wretched man read her mind? Was she that obvious?

  ‘I’ll be here when you get back, so don’t worry about the girls,’ he added, then waited until she was stepping out into the night before he finished in a voice edged with unexpected intensity. ‘Drive carefully, Frankie. Come home safe.’

  ‘Frankie, could I have a word with you?’ said an uncertain voice behind her, and she turned to find Vicky standing there.

  Instantly, guilt made her stomach clench tight, compounding the vague discomfort that had followed her all morning. She’d had yesterday off to catch up on her sleep after a very busy night on call but she still wasn’t feeling right. If she was going down with this wretched flu…

  ‘I know this is going to sound really strange, especially as we don’t really know each other, but…well…Nick talks about your girls so much that we thought…well, it was Joe who suggested it, actually, but do you think they’d like to be bridesmaids?’

  Frankie was startled by the unexpected invitation and didn’t know what to think except that the feelings of guilt seemed to be growing with each day.

  Vicky was such a lovely young woman, bright, intelligent and, by all accounts, excellent at her job. It was hardly her fault that the eight years difference in their ages seemed like a hundred years to Frankie, or that Frankie could hardly bear to look her in the face.

  All she could think about each time she saw her was that she’d spent two unforgettable nights with the unsuspecting woman’s fiancé.

  ‘Joe suggested it?’ she repeated in puzzlement, latching onto the first thing she thought of to stop the whirling tangle in her head.

  What on earth did Joseph Faraday have to do with Nick’s and Vicky’s wedding arrangements? He was a fellow GP, but outside duty hours the widower usually kept himself very much to himself, behaving far more like an elderly recluse than a handsome thirty-seven-year-old.

  ‘He came up to see one of his patients and we were talking over a cup of coffee,’ Vicky explained hurriedly, the sudden flare of heat over her cheeks and the way she couldn’t meet Frankie’s eyes giving her an almost furtive air.

  Takes one to know one, Frankie thought, wondering what else Vicky might have been talking about. At least her faithfulness to Nick wouldn’t be in question, not after waiting twelve years for the man she loved.

  ‘But wouldn’t you rather choose attendants from among your friends and relations?’ she asked, abandoning useless speculation to return the conversation to the original topic.

  ‘That’s rather the point,’ the younger woman admitted. ‘There aren’t any young relatives to invite, and I didn’t really want to have colleagues because otherwise I’d have to have at least a dozen of them if I didn’t want to put any noses out of joint. Your two would solve the problem perfectly. Apart from the fact that Nick’s become so fond of them, they’re young enough to look pretty but old enough to be counted on to behave.’

  ‘As the person who taught them their manners, I thank you,’ Frankie said with a mock curtsey, but under cover of the joking she was trying to decide what to do.

  Even if she’d been invited to the wedding, and as a member of the practice it was almost a given that she would be, she’d decided that she was going to find a cast-iron reason not to attend.

  Her initial explosive attraction to Nick hadn’t abated in the least on closer acquaintance. In fact, if he hadn’t been several years younger than herself and already engaged to Vicky, she might almost have entertained daydreams of marrying the man herself.

  If she were to agree to Laura and Katie being bridesmaids, she would have no option but to be there, watching from the congregation while the man she craved with a hunger she’d never known before made his promises to another woman.

  But if she turned the invitation down and Laura and Katie got to hear about it…Was she prepared for the fact that the two of them would probably never speak to her again?

  Ever since Laura had been old enough to start school, she’d been coming home at intervals with excited news of the participation of yet another of her classmates in a wedding. Frankie hadn’t a clue why both girls had become so enthralled with the idea. It had taken a long time for them to grasp the fact that, as the daughters of an only child, there would be no family wedding for them to serve in.

  An invitation out of the blue to dress up in special clothes and be the centre of attention would be viewed as manna from heaven.

  Was it guilt or just plain common sense that was urging caution? How did Nick feel about the idea and how could she find out without upsetting Vicky? She knew he got on well with the girls, but was he really happy to have them foisted on his wedding?

  ‘I’m sure the two of them would be over the moon, but would you mind if I took a day or two to think about it?’ she temporised uneasily. ‘I know it’s not a case of rent-a-kid, but as we’re not related in any way to either family, and the girls don’t know you…’

  ‘I don’t mind at all,’ Vicky said with an understanding smile which incomprehensibly had Frankie gritting her teeth.

  With her long blonde hair, blue eyes and perfect body, did Vicky Lawrence also have to be so nice?

  ‘I can understand why you’d want to think about it, but I hope you don’t mind if I keep my fingers crossed. Nick has told me what great kids they are.’

  It was nearly an hour later that Frankie finally isolated something that had been niggling at the back of her memory ever since she’d spoken with Vicky.

  Ultimately, it was an inconsequential thing, but for some reason it seemed very significant to her that it was the first time she’d heard the younger woman call Nick anything other than his old nickname, Johnny.

  For some reason that left her feeling curiously unsettled, almost as though Vicky were talking about another man. For twelve years she’d been in love with Johnny, her childhood idol, and now she was planning her marriage to Nick.

  Frankie shrugged. It wasn’t really any of her business what they called each other, was it? All she had to do was come to a decision about her daughters’ involvement in the celebration.

  The fact that something inside her was rebelling at the very idea of having to watch the man making his vows to another woman was just another thing she was going to have to learn to live with.

  ‘You’re looking pensive, my dear,’ said a dearly familiar voice, and she realised that Norman Castle had come into the room while she’d been sunk in her own thoughts.

>   ‘Trying to decide whether I’m just tired or if I’m going down with flu,’ she retorted wearily. ‘Why is it that although February is the shortest month, it always seems to drag on interminably.’

  ‘I believe it’s something to do with our bodies’ depressive response to shorter hours of daylight,’ he answered with the familiar air of pedantry that sometimes overtook him. ‘Angela and I wanted to cheer everybody up with a bit of a party. We thought of throwing a belated engagement bash for Nick and Vicky, but almost as soon as we got rid of all the coach-crash victims we started with the flu epidemic, so it just hasn’t been feasible.’

  ‘That would have been nice,’ she said, hoping she sounded more sincere than she felt. ‘Perhaps you could do it when everything’s back to normal.’

  ‘There’s no point if they’re getting married only a few weeks later. I think we’re going to have to think of another idea. See if you can come up with something that will lift all our spirits.’

  ‘The only thing on my immediate horizon is Katie’s tenth birthday at the end of the month.’

  ‘Ten already?’ he marvelled, sounding every bit like a proud surrogate grandfather. ‘And how old is your younger one now? Seven, or is it eight?’

  ‘Katie is the younger one,’ she pointed out wryly. ‘Laura is eleven. She’ll be starting senior school in September.’

  ‘Oh, my life, doesn’t time pass so quickly?’ he exclaimed. ‘It doesn’t seem but a minute ago that you arrived here with two little cherubs in tow.’

  ‘And yet sometimes it feels like a million light years ago,’ she countered. ‘It feels almost as if I’ve always lived in Edenthwaite.’

  ‘That’s what we like to hear,’ he said with beaming approval. ‘Wait till you’re my age and find that your younger patients are the third and fourth generation of the first ones you treated as a newcomer.’

  Somehow, today, that prospect seemed more a cause for depression than something to look forward to, but Frankie wouldn’t hurt his feelings by telling him so.

  Still, there wasn’t time to brood. In speaking about Katie’s fast-approaching birthday, she’d reminded herself that she still had to plan what she was going to do to celebrate the event.