‘Good holiday, Claire?’
It was two days later and Claire had returned to her job at the Hargreaves Centre. Her friend and fellow practice nurse, Penny Riley, had just joined her in one of the treatment rooms.
‘Er, yes, pretty good, thanks,’ Claire replied.
‘You don’t sound too sure,’ said Penny, peering closely at her. ‘Mind you, it couldn’t have been too much fun, having to go on your own like that at the last minute. Bit dull, was it?’
‘Actually, no, it was anything but dull,’ Claire replied with a wry smile.
‘Really?’ Penny raised her eyebrows. ‘Tell me more. Sounds interesting.’
‘Well, I got a bit caught up in the earth tremors.’
‘Did you?’ Penny stared at her. ‘We wondered about that at the time, but we came to the conclusion you were miles away from any of that.’
‘Well, I was, or rather I would have been if I’d stayed in Rome,’ said Claire. ‘Trouble was, I took a trip to Assisi on the day in question.’
‘Assisi?’ Penny had started to check some supplies that had just been delivered but she looked up sharply. ‘Heavens, wasn’t that near the affected area?’
‘Yes.’ Claire nodded. She’d not spoken of it until now. Mike hadn’t pursued the matter further and she’d found it easier not to bring it up again, even avoiding the issue with anyone else. But somehow Penny was different—Penny was her friend and they shared most things. ‘In actual fact I was in a building that partially collapsed,’ she admitted.
‘Good grief!’ Penny stared at her. ‘What happened?’
‘We’d gone into this building—it was an old monastery that is used as a museum these days…’
‘Who’s “we”?’ interrupted Penny curiously.
‘The people I was travelling with.’ Claire swallowed. ‘It was a coach party with people from the hotel I was staying in and some people from other hotels in Rome,’ she added. She suddenly had a mental picture of them all taking their seats on the coach on that fateful morning.
‘I see, yes, go on,’ Penny urged.
‘Well, we’d stopped off at this monastery,’ Claire continued. ‘It was high up in the hills just outside Assisi. We’d had a look at the church and the cloisters and we were in this huge room that had once been the monks’ refectory when there were these terrible rumbling and cracking noises.’
‘Was there no other warning?’ asked Penny.
‘Not really.’ Claire wrinkled her nose. ‘Although there was a strange sort of atmosphere that day—sort of electric, like waiting for something to happen. A bit like before a thunderstorm,’ she added, remembering Dominic’s predictions. As the memory of him sitting at the table in the street café on that first day they had spoken came into her mind, a sudden pain stabbed at her heart and she gulped. ‘Anyway,’ she went on at last, wondering whether Penny could possibly tell just how bad she was feeling, ‘like I say, the building we were in partially collapsed. The tremors must have caused a rift to open up underneath it, splitting some of the outer walls and dislodging the foundations. A huge section of the roof caved in, showering us with debris, and pillars and statues came crashing down all around us…’
Penny stared at her, aghast. ‘It must have been terrifying!’ she exclaimed.
‘It was.’ Claire nodded and as once again she heard those noises in her head and in her mouth tasted the choking dust she found that her hands were shaking.
‘Was anyone injured?’ asked Penny.
‘Oh, yes,’ Claire replied quietly. ‘Several people were injured, some quite badly.’
‘You could have all been killed!’
‘I know.’ Claire paused, unable for a moment to carry on, seeing only too clearly in her mind’s eye what at the time had appeared to be that bundle of dusty rags. ‘In fact,’ she went on at last, ‘someone was killed.’
‘How dreadful!’ Penny stared at her, obviously shocked and horrified at what she was hearing. ‘Was it someone you knew?’
‘No.’ Claire shook her head. ‘It was an elderly man whom we believe was working at the monastery. It was terrible really…poor man. Some of the party from my hotel were injured,’ she went on after a moment. ‘One woman had severe head injuries—she went into a coma and I later heard she had developed a blood clot. A man suffered a crushed femur, another lady had a heart attack and arrested. Oh, and just for good measure, another young woman was twelve weeks pregnant and thought she was about to miscarry…’ She paused. ‘And quite apart from all that, practically everyone suffered cuts and bruises.’
‘They must have been glad to have you there,’ said Penny in awe.
‘Well, yes, I guess so,’ Claire agreed. Taking a deep breath, she added, ‘Actually, there was a doctor in the party as well.’
‘That was a stroke of luck.’ Penny looked surprised. ‘It isn’t often that happens. Doctors are a bit like policemen in my experience, never around when you want one.’
‘I know.’ Claire nodded. ‘The trouble was, we had very few resources—it was improvisation all the way.’
‘What did you do?’ Penny was obviously intrigued now.
‘Ripped up garments for bandages and pressure pads, used table legs for splints. I tell you, I’d never been so pleased in my life to find I had a packet of wet wipes in my bag.’
‘What about the woman who arrested?’ asked Penny curiously.
‘We did basic resuscitation.’
‘You and the doctor?’
‘Yes.’ Claire gulped. ‘Me and the doctor.’
‘And did she survive?’
‘Oh, yes. The last I heard she was about to be discharged from an Assisi hospital in order to fly back to the UK.’
‘It sounds as if you coped admirably,’ said Penny.
‘Well, we did our best,’ Claire replied with a little shrug.
‘The worst bit, apart from lack of medical resources, was the fact that we had very little to eat or drink.’
‘So how long were you in there, for heaven’s sake?’ Penny’s large blue eyes widened.
‘Um…about thirty hours altogether, I think…’
‘Thirty hours!’ Penny almost choked. ‘You mean you were there overnight?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Claire replied. ‘You see, we weren’t the only ones needing to be rescued. Several of the villages round about had been badly hit. People had been killed or badly injured, houses had been demolished…the rescue services were stretched to their limits…’ She broke off, unable to continue as in a sudden, rather terrifying flashback, memories came flooding back. For a moment she was right there again amidst the chaos—the moans and screams, the battles to stop the bleeding on Diane’s and Peter’s head wounds, the crude efforts to set Ted’s leg and try to alleviate his pain and then the desperate attempt to resuscitate Evelyn.
‘It sounds absolutely dreadful,’ said Penny in consternation. Peering at Claire again, she said, ‘Claire, you’re shaking…’
‘No, I’m all right,’ Claire protested. ‘Really I am…’
‘But you’ve been through a dreadful experience.’
‘I was one of the lucky ones—I wasn’t even injured.’ She didn’t say why she had escaped injury, that it had been because Dominic had shielded her body. There was no way she could put that into words, not even to Penny.
‘Even so…’ Penny shook her head ‘…psychologically it must have been devastating.’ She paused. ‘Didn’t you have any water or food?’
‘We had one bottle of mineral water,’ Claire replied, ‘one can of Coke and one of some fizzy orange drink. Some people had sweets—peppermints and barley sugar, that sort of thing.’
‘And that was it?’ asked Penny incredulously. ‘How many of you were there, for heaven’s sake?’
‘Eighteen of us all together,’ Claire answered, then as an afterthought added, ‘It got a bit difficult at times, I can tell you, what with having to set up a latrine in one corner of the room and having a dead body in the other.’
‘
Oh, good grief.’ Penny’s hand flew to her mouth as if that aspect of the ordeal hadn’t occurred to her before. ‘And then, I suppose,’ she went on after a moment, ‘you had the heat to contend with as well?’
‘Well, it was hot outside certainly,’ Claire agreed, ‘but actually in the monastery itself it was cool and during the night it got really cold. The trouble was, most of us were only wearing thin summer clothes. One of the ladies had a cardigan and someone had a sweater which we used as best we could to cover up the injured.’
‘So how did you keep warm?’ asked Penny. She was clearly appalled at what she was hearing.
‘We had to huddle together,’ said Claire.
They were silent for a moment. ‘What about the doctor?’ asked Penny suddenly.
‘What about him?’ Claire looked up sharply, afraid that Penny, who knew her so well, was even now reading her mind, that in some way she knew what had happened, that it had been Dominic who had held her through that night to keep her warm, and at the same time she would know how much she was missing him.
‘Well, was he injured?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she replied, relieved that was all Penny had meant. ‘A piece of masonry fell on his shoulder. I…I managed to dress it for him as best I could.’
‘So was he elderly, this doctor?’
‘No, he wasn’t elderly—quite young really…’ Suddenly she found she couldn’t bear to even talk about him. ‘Penny,’ she said in sudden desperation, anything to change the subject, to steer the conversation away from what had happened next, afraid in some way that Penny would detect something amiss, ‘I really must get on.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I have a clinic starting in five minutes and I haven’t prepared anything.’
‘I’m not even sure that you should be here,’ said Penny doubtfully.
‘What do you mean?’ Claire stared at her friend.
‘You’ve had a severe shock, you’ve been through a terrible experience and I think you need some time to recuperate.’
‘Nonsense.’ Mentally Claire pulled herself together, trying to banish all thoughts of Dominic, at least until after she’d taken the morning clinic. ‘I’m perfectly all right. Like I told you, I was one of the lucky ones. There were others far worse off than me.’
‘Even so…’ Penny sounded far from convinced but, not giving her time to protest further, Claire collected the supplies and notes she needed and made her way to her own treatment room.
It turned out to be a fairly average Monday morning and Claire’s clinic was like countless others she had taken, with injections to be given, blood to be taken for testing, dressings on leg ulcers to be changed and plaster checks to be carried out on broken limbs.
Some of her patients were delighted to see her back and wanted to know about her holiday. She, however, was evasive when they asked about Italy and the fact that it had been in the news.
‘We were worried about you,’ said one elderly lady as Claire changed the dressings on her ankle. ‘I said to my Cyril, that’s where my nurse has gone and that I hoped you would be all right. Then someone here said you’d gone to Rome and Rome hadn’t been hit so we thought you probably were all right.’
She didn’t enlighten the patient or any of the others who asked, concentrating instead on how wonderful Rome had been, how warm the weather and how friendly the Italians. By the end of her clinic she was exhausted, and when Mike strode in as the last patient left she was practically incapable of offering any resistance.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he demanded.
‘Tell you what?’ she said warily.
‘About what happened to you in Italy?’
‘I—’ She was about to say that he hadn’t asked but he gave her no time.
‘I’ve been talking to Penny,’ he said.
‘She shouldn’t have said anything,’ protested Claire with a weak, dismissive little gesture.
‘I’m glad she did,’ said Mike. ‘She was worried about you, Claire.’
‘I’m all right, Mike, really I am.’
‘It sounds as if you were right in the thick of things. Penny said a building collapsed around you, is that right?’
‘Well, yes…’
‘That someone was killed, others were badly injured…’
‘Yes, but—’
‘That you were trapped for over twenty-four hours with precious little water or food?’
‘Yes, but, Mike, listen, please. I wasn’t injured,’ she protested. ‘I was one of the lucky ones.’
‘There is such a thing as post-traumatic stress syndrome,’ said Mike. ‘You of all people should know that.’
‘Well, yes, of course I know, but I can assure you I’m not suffering from that.’
‘You mean because you are a nurse you are immune to that sort of thing? Like Ben couldn’t accept the fact that he was stressed out, that it couldn’t happen to him because he is a doctor?’
‘Mike, please, I know what you’re saying.’ Claire lifted her hands in protest. ‘You’re wrong. I’m fine, really I am.’
‘Penny said you were very shaky earlier on,’ Mike persisted.
‘Maybe I was, just for a while when I was telling her about it,’ Claire admitted, ‘but I’m OK now. I just want to forget about it and put it behind me.’
‘Sorry, Claire.’ Mike stepped forward and, taking her chin tilted her face so that she was forced to look up into his. ‘I’m going to pull rank here. I want you to have some counselling and after that you are to take at least another week off. So, no arguments, because that’s the way it’s going to be.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
CLAIRE went to visit her father in Portsmouth. A visit was long overdue and in the end it seemed the perfect arrangement—the combination of a period of enforced recuperation following a couple of counselling sessions and the opportunity to spend some uninterrupted family time.
In recent years, following the death of his wife and his own retirement from his job with the Ministry of Defence, Claire’s father, Tom, had lived with his unmarried sister Marjorie in a bungalow on the outskirts of the naval town, which had been home since Claire’s childhood. They were both delighted to see Claire and when she was forced to give a reason for her impromptu visit they set about spoiling her and making her stay as pleasant as they could.
Once she had recounted the story of what had happened in Italy little more was said about it and her days were spent lazing in the garden, on trips out to lunch or on long walks on the beach with her father’s dog, Bosun.
Gradually the images of what had happened in Italy, which had been razor sharp in her mind, began to blur slightly at the edges and even the intense, heightened emotion she had felt for Dominic began to recede and take its place in her memory. She began to recognise that what she had felt for him had most probably been a reaction to circumstances.
In the first place, the initial attraction between them had been fuelled by the magic of Italy itself and the exhilaration of a holiday situation. What had followed had changed everything and determined the course of events—the drama, the heightened tension of the life-and-death situation and the fact that she and Dominic had been thrown so closely together in taking leading roles in caring for their companions.
As all this became clear Claire felt herself begin to relax and to let go. She would never see Dominic again. She knew that, just as she knew that eventually she would have to put all thoughts of what had happened between them right out of her mind and get on with the rest of her life.
It wasn’t going to be easy. She faced that fact on one of her early morning walks with Bosun across an endless expanse of hard wet sand as black-headed gulls wheeled and dipped above her, their plaintive cries mingling with the sounds of shipping in the Solent. Dominic had had a profound effect on her and what they had shared had shaken her to the very depths of her being, not least because she’d never experienced it before, not with Mike or with anyone else. But the fact that it was over eventually helped her to concentrate
her mind. Mike loved her, she was pretty sure of that. He sometimes had rather a detached way of showing it but deep down she knew he cared for her. No one knew what had taken place between herself and Dominic and Mike wasn’t likely to ever hear about it. She had to forget him, she told herself firmly for the umpteenth time, forget him and get on with her life.
‘So what’s happening with you and Mike?’ asked her father one morning as they sat together in the garden of the bungalow. Marjorie had gone shopping and they were alone, the only sounds those of a neighbour as he mowed his grass and an occasional whimper from Bosun as he twitched and chased rabbits in his dreams.
‘What do you mean?’ Claire cast Tom a glance and momentarily felt a pang as it suddenly hit her that he was looking older.
‘Well, is marriage on the cards?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know about that.’ Claire shook her head. ‘We may live together.’ She paused. ‘Would that bother you?’ she asked.
‘Probably not if you were happy with it,’ he replied.
‘But you would rather I was married.’ It was hardly a question.
Her father leaned back in his chair. ‘I’m a bit old-fashioned, Claire,’ he said with his slow smile, ‘but, yes, if I’m honest, I would like to see you happily married.’
‘It doesn’t bother you that Mike’s been married before—that he already has a family?’ asked Claire tentatively.
‘I don’t think so.’ Tom slowly shook his head. ‘I like Mike, and again if it’s what you want…I must admit, though, I had always imagined—your mother and I had always imagined,’ he corrected himself, ‘you getting married and having children of your own. Will Mike want more children?’ he added uncertainly.
‘No, Dad, I don’t think so.’
‘That’s a pity,’ said Tom, rubbing his chin. ‘It would have been nice for you to have children of your own.’
Her father’s words had echoed what Dominic had said and she felt a sudden pang deep inside, but what Dominic had said mustn’t matter now, she told herself fiercely, she had to put him right out of her mind.
‘You do love him, don’t you?’ Her father broke into her thoughts.
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