Because she’d planned to spend the evening with Max, Harry was staying with her mother, and so she didn’t have to worry about him. She got out of bed and dressed quickly in her jeans and a sweater against the chilly night, and ran out to her car. She’d go round and see him and apologise, and then maybe stay the night.
If he forgave her.
The house was in darkness. It was after midnight, so it
A terrible cold fear crawled over her, seeping into her bones and filling her with a hideous dread.
‘No!’ she whispered. ‘Not again. Max, no!’
She threw the door open and ran round the bonnet, hammering on his front door with her fists. ‘Max!’ she screamed. ‘Max! Wake up. Open the door! Open the door!’
She slid to the step, her face against the cool wood burning with emotion and anxiety. She lifted her fist again and dropped it feebly against the door, a sob rising in her throat. ‘Max? Please, Max, no…’
It was her fault. She’d driven him away, pushed him too hard, made an already difficult situation intolerable for him, and so he’d left her, gone away without a word.
‘You promised,’ she wept brokenly. ‘You promised to tell me…’
She pounded the door again. ‘Max! Damn you, answer the door!’
A light came on down the lane, in the neighbouring cottage a few hundred yards away. She saw a curtain twitch, and bit her lip. She had to live in this village. She couldn’t be found weeping and ranting on his doorstep.
Mustering the last remnants of her common sense, she struggled to her feet and climbed back into the car. She couldn’t drive away, though. She couldn’t see, and the faster she blinked, the faster she misted up again.
‘Oh, hell,’ she mumbled, scrubbing her eyes with a tissue. ‘Max, you promised…’
She gave up fighting, folded her arms over the steering-wheel and wept until she was too exhausted to move.
She was woken by the car door opening, and Max’s voice anxiously rousing her.
‘Annie? Are you all right? What’s wrong? Dear God, my love, what is it?’
He was here! He hadn’t left—or if he had, he’d come back! And he’d called her his love. She sat up stiffly and met his troubled eyes. ‘I thought you’d gone,’ she said simply.
Max was gutted. He looked at her, so dear, so precious, at the grief in her face and the pain in her eyes, and he dragged her from the car and crushed her to his chest.
‘Silly girl, of course I haven’t gone!’ he said roughly. ‘I’ve been with my parents—I stayed the night. I’ve just come back to shower and change for work.’
‘I couldn’t believe it,’ she told him, staring incredulously at him, touching his face as if to make sure he was real. ‘I thought you’d left again without telling me, and you promised, but I was unfair to you—that’s why I came back, to apologise, and you weren’t here…’ She hiccuped to a halt, and Max hugged her again, guilt stabbing through him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered into her hair. ‘You weren’t unfair, you were right. I went to tell my parents about Harry.’
Her head snapped up and her eyes locked with his. ‘And?’ she said hopefully.
He sighed. ‘They want to meet him.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ she said softly. ‘Oh, Max, that’s wonderful—’
‘I still don’t want him to know—not yet, at least.’ He heard that last qualifying remark, and wondered if Annie had noticed it.
Damn. ‘Slip of the tongue,’ he told her, watching the hope die in her eyes and hating himself. ‘Annie, don’t. I’ve had all I can deal with for now, and you have, too. Come inside—I need you. I missed you last night.’
‘I missed you, too. I always miss you.’
He hugged her, unable to speak, and once through the door he drew her into his arms and kissed her hungrily. He didn’t want to think any more, didn’t want to ponder on the right course of action. He just wanted to hold her, to love her, to lose himself in her sweet warmth and let her love wash over him.
‘Where’s Harry?’ he asked softly.
‘With my parents. He’s been there for the night.’
He remembered now. It seemed so long ago. He’d sat up with his parents, talking to them, until nearly one, and it was only six now. He held out his hand, and she took it, and wordlessly he led her upstairs to his bedroom and took her in his arms again.
‘We’ll be late,’ she protested half-heartedly.
‘No, we won’t. I promise.’
He lied. She left him in the shower and rushed home, and they arrived almost simultaneously in their separate cars a scant two minutes late.
‘Well, we almost made it,’ he said with a wry smile, and she laughed softly and disappeared to collect her notes.
He checked his messages, scooped up his notes and went into his consulting room. His parents had been thrilled about Harry, he thought, and he was sure it was because they’d thought he’d never have another chance. He’d taken advantage of the sperm bank facilites—just in
Funny, until Annie had pointed it out it had never occurred to him that he was cheating them of their grandson.
He’d have to set up an impromptu get-together—a casual drop-in that gave them all a chance to meet without ceremony. Perhaps if they arrived just as he was taking Annie and Harry out for the day. They could join in…
Hmm. Interesting thought. He picked up the first set of patient notes, scanned them briefly and pressed the buzzer. He’d have to see what they were all doing this weekend, perhaps.
He soon forgot about his parents and Harry. It was a busy morning, made more hectic by a number of patients who came to see him with a whole list of things wrong with them.
‘While I’m here, Doctor…’ It was becoming an oft-repeated remark that was threatening to mess up his schedules beyond redemption.
Then Valerie Hawkshead was brought in by her husband as an emergency. They had been driving through town, and she’d had a seizure in the car. Could he see her?
He could. He was puzzled, and concerned. She’d come in two or three weeks ago and had had an urgent referral to a neurologist, once he’d dismissed any other obvious cause of her forgetfulness and headaches. She’d been sent back to him as suffering from depression with retardation, and needing drug therapy to alleviate this.
Unhappy with the diagnosis, he’d given her something suitable and was following her up regularly. This, though,
It was also potentially much more serious, he felt, and his unease grew when he saw her.
She was depressed, listless, her eyes seemed unfocussed and she had clearly gone downhill drastically. She was also suffering from a blinding headache, and needed urgent hospital assessment.
‘I want her to go back to the hospital for a scan,’ he told her husband. ‘I’m not happy. This is not what I would have expected, and I think we need to find out what’s caused it and why. I think it’s perhaps a little bit more complicated than we’d all anticipated.’
He wrote a letter, handed it to them and asked them to go straight to the hospital radiology department. If, as he suspected, they found a brain tumour, and provided they were able to remove it successfully, she might find all her symptoms resolved themselves.
If not—well, if not, it could be terminal.
Assuming he was correct, of course. There was always a chance that he was mistaken, but he feared not. There was still the possibility of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease—CJD, or mad cow disease as it was commonly and mistakenly called—or syphilis in a late stage. He couldn’t tell, and there was no future in speculating.
That the hospital would admit her he was sure. He wondered how her family would cope, and how she would progress, and not for the first time he was frustrated that he would be unlikely to see their story through to the end.
The lack of continuity in patient care distressed him—so many times he picked up things that had a long-term treatment
There was an answer, of course. Annie was pushing him to
wards it, but he didn’t feel it was fair to his patients. What if he came out of remission and had to go for treatment, and was off for some weeks or months? Was it fair to expect patients to have to make do with a locum under those circumstances?
And, anyway, he thought drily, no practice in its right mind would take him on, knowing he had lymphoma. It was too risky, too uncertain a future to gamble on.
Whatever.
He pressed the buzzer for his next patient, suddenly aware that he’d been staring into space and had a queue of patients still to see.
Lack of sleep and too much emotion, he thought tiredly. Perhaps tonight he’d go round and visit Annie and Harry, and just sit and chat for a while, then go home for an early night.
He must remember to ask how Jill Fraser was getting on, on the subject of continuity and follow-up. Perhaps he’d even pop in to see her.
The doorbell rang, and Anna dusted her hands on her apron and followed Harry down the hall.
‘Hello, sunshine,’ Max said to the child, then looked up at her and smiled.
The sun came out in her heart, and she smiled back, holding the door wide. ‘Come on in. We’re still not ready—Harry’s been helping me.’
‘Of course. It’s going to be good, isn’t it, Harry?’
Harry nodded. ‘I put the eyes in,’ he informed Max.
His eyebrows shot up, and Anna laughed again. ‘In the gingerbread men. Nothing ghastly, don’t worry. I’m not doing culinary experiments.’
‘I’m relieved to hear it. Listen, I’m just going to pop in and have a chat to Jill for a moment, OK? I won’t be long. Put the kettle on, I’m dying of thirst.’
He kissed her floury cheek and went out again, and she closed the door and went back to the kitchen to finish the preparations. They were having a barbecue, with chicken breasts cut into chunks and skewered with peppers, tiny onions and cherry tomatoes, and organic sausages in buns with fried onions, and loads of salad, the gingerbread men to follow.
Assuming they ever got into the oven.
‘Harry, darling, that’s enough buttons. Let’s cook them now.’ She slipped the tray into the oven, Harry standing well back as instructed, and then she told him he could sit down opposite the oven door and watch for them to go nicely brown.
‘They’re brown, Mummy,’ he called excitedly almost before she was out of the kitchen.
‘Harry, they can’t be. Give them five minutes. Look—see the clock? See this long hand? When it gets to here, look again. All right?’
He nodded, and watched the clock unblinkingly. Every time she came back into the kitchen for something else, he was still in the same position, until in the end he called her again.
‘Not quite. Watch the hand to here,’ she said, and then the doorbell rang again.
Harry pelted down the hall and struggled to reach the lock, and she took the safety catch off the top and opened it to let Max in.
‘How is she?’ she asked, following Harry slowly down the hall.
‘Better, she thinks. I suspect it’s as much because someone noticed as it is the St John’s wort, but it is supposed to be very good. She certainly seems more cheerful and on top of things, but that might be because the baby’s better.’
‘Are you here for the evening now?’ she asked with a smile.
‘Yes. Come here.’ He glanced down the hall at Harry, glued to the clock, and propelled her into the sitting room.
‘They’re ready,’ Harry yelled, and Max laughed softly and kissed her anyway, just briefly.
‘Later,’ she promised, and then there was a scream from the kitchen and Max dropped her and sprinted down the hall.
She ran after him, to find him holding Harry screaming over the sink, cold water already running over his arm. There was a thin white line across his forearm—from the edge of the oven, she imagined—and guilt savaged her.
‘What were you doing, darling?’ she asked, soothing his brow and hugging him.
‘They were ready,’ he sobbed. ‘I just wanted to take them out before they got burnted.’
‘I’ll take them out. You stay there with Max and let that cool down.’
‘Right. Leave them alone. They’re for pudding, understand? Later.’
He nodded miserably, perched on the draining-board with Max holding his arm firmly but gently under the water. ‘I just di’n’t want them to get burnted,’ he said again, and buried his face in her shoulder.
‘I think it’s all right. Have you got anything to put on it?’ Max asked.
‘Aloe vera—that’s it there,’ she said, pointing to a spiky succulent on the window sill. ‘Just break a piece off and slice it up the middle, but mind the spikes at the sides.’
‘What do you do with it then?’ he asked, slicing with her vegetable knife.
‘Tape it on for the night. By tomorrow it won’t hurt and will almost have cleared up. It’s a bit slimy, but it works wonders.’
She dried Harry’s arm, and then taped the piece of juicy leaf in place. ‘There,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘Now, let’s go and start the barbecue before anything else happens.’
‘Want a gingerbread man,’ Harry said petulantly.
‘No, they’re hot, you’ll burn your tongue and I can’t stick aloe vera on that. Anyway, they’re for pudding.’
They went outside, just in time to see the cat legging it down the garden with a string of sausages in tow.
‘Oh, Felix, you horrible cat!’ she wailed.
‘Just for that you can starve,’ Anna said repressively.
‘I could nip to the shop for some burgers,’ he offered.
‘They’re shut. Don’t worry, I’ve got more in the freezer. I swear, one day I’m going to skin that cat.’
‘A likely story,’ Max said mildly, settling down in one of her garden chairs in the shade of the apple tree. ‘This is such a pretty garden,’ he murmured, looking round.
She glanced at it, and wondered if he could see the years of work that had gone into rescuing it from dereliction. Not that she’d done it alone, or the house. Her father and mother had been wonderful, in between telling her she was mad and ought to live with them instead of buying her own place, but she’d wanted privacy and a little emotional distance, and most of the time she was sure she’d done the right thing.
She found more sausages, and they cooked them and the chicken kebabs when the coals were hot, and then they had Harry’s over-buttoned and slightly under-done gingerbread men for pudding with a dollop of organic ice cream which was the wickedest thing she’d ever tasted.
‘This can’t be healthy,’ Max remarked, scraping the last trace from his bowl.
She laughed. ‘Who said anything about healthy? It’s stuffed with cholesterol and calories. It’s just organic—it’s not poisoned with sprays and chemicals and hormones and antibiotics. It doesn’t mean it can’t be wicked.’
‘I want more,’ Harry announced, but she shook her head.
‘You’ve had more than enough to eat, young man. It’s time for your bath and bed—you’re late, and you’ve had too many nights with Grannie recently.’
‘Then ask nicely,’ Max told him, firmly but gently.
‘Please, will you bath me?’ he asked him, and Max, only too willing by the look on his face, took his son by the hand and led him into the house, while Anna cleared up the dishes, washed up and indulged herself in a little sentimental cry.
Another memory, she thought.
Max had forgotten how easy it was to get wet, bathing young children. He hadn’t spent all that much time with his nephews and nieces recently, but it all came flooding back, as it were.
I blame it on the mother, he thought wryly, getting another soaking from the water-pistol. Giving up, he wrestled it from the child, chucked it into the basin and pushed his sleeves up further.
‘Right, hairwash and out,’ he said, and laid the child back to wet his hair. He shampooed it carefully, laid him down again to rinse it and once more marvelled at how like h
is nephew Thomas Harry was.
A great wave of love washed over him, and he lifted the boy out, wrapped him in a towel and sat down on the lid of the loo seat to dry him. He squirmed and giggled and tried to get away, but Max managed to pin him down until he’d tickled him dry all over, and then he chased him along the corridor to his bedroom, bribed him into his pyjamas with the promise of an extra-long story, then settled down at the head of the bed, Harry tucked under his arm and a book in his hand.
That was how Anna found them an hour later, both fast asleep.
He needn’t have worried. Harry rolled over, snuggling down under the quilt with a little sleepy noise, and they went downstairs.
They didn’t talk for fear of disturbing him, but Max was glad of the silence. To be honest, he didn’t think he could speak. Emotion was welling up in him, and when they reached the sitting room, as if she understood exactly what he felt, Anna opened her arms and hugged him.
‘You don’t have to go,’ she reminded him. ‘You could be part of this.’
He swallowed hard. ‘Don’t, please. Not tonight. Just hold me.’
So she held him, her hands tracing lazy circles on his back, and he dropped his head into the curve of her neck and let the soothing touch wash over him.
She was right. He could stay—but at what cost to them? And could he really ask them to pay the price?
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘ABOUT my parents,’ Max said the following day.
They were sitting in the tiny bit of garden at the back of the practice, perched on the wall in the sunshine, taking a well-earned rest. ‘What about your parents?’ Anna asked, blowing the steam off the top of her coffee.
‘How about you and Harry coming to my place on Sunday for tea in the garden, and they can just “drop in”, as it were, in passing?’
Anna sensed that it was a huge step forwards for Max, one he was taking reluctantly for the sake of his parents. ‘Sounds fine,’ she told him, concentrating on her coffee so he wouldn’t see how pleased she was. ‘What time do you want us? And do you want help with the tea?’
He grinned wryly. ‘I was going to ask the tearoom for some goodies,’ he confessed. ‘Supporting local industry and all that.’
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