So he did remember her. Beth couldn’t suppress the smile that sprang to her lips. ‘Pretty much. Parallel universes will do that kind of thing.’
His face broke into a wide grin. ‘That they will.’ The gleam in his eyes extinguished suddenly. ‘And he was all on his own?’
‘He must have given the staff the slip when the ambulance crew handed over to Casualty. He was looking for you.’
Matt let out a growl of exasperation. ‘Jack, how many times have I told you—?’
Beth’s phone came to Jack’s rescue, vibrating suddenly in her pocket. ‘This must be Phyllis.’ She glanced at the caller display. ‘Here. You’d better speak to her.’ Phyllis had a knack of being able to speak in whole paragraphs before she needed to draw breath and Matt was more likely to be able to keep up with her on the phone.
He took the handset with a grin and pressed it against his ear. Barely getting a ‘hello’ in, he nodded and then a thumbs up in Beth’s direction told her that Mrs Green was not too badly hurt.
‘That’s great, Phyllis, thanks. I’ll take him up there to see her…Can you call—? Great…thanks.’ He snapped the phone shut and handed it back to Beth and then his attention was all for Jack, who had been fidgeting miserably in his seat. ‘Rough day, eh, mate?’
Jack nodded, sliding down from the chair towards Matt, who lifted him effortlessly into his arms. ‘Is Mrs Green really going be all right?’ Jack’s hands were clasped tightly around his father’s neck and he seemed to be wiping his nose on Matt’s shirt.
‘Yes. She’s hurt her wrist and her ribs are very sore, but they’re looking after her very well right here in the hospital. She’ll be as good as new before you know it.’ He tipped Jack’s face up towards his and Beth found herself smiling at the almost unbearable tenderness of the gesture. ‘We can go and see her later and you’ll be able to check her out for yourself. In the meantime, Phyllis is ringing your gran and she’ll come and fetch you.’
Jack brightened visibly, wriggling in his father’s grip, and Matt let him back down onto his feet. ‘That’s all right, Dad. I can stay with Beth.’
‘No. Beth’s got enough to do, without coming to our rescue every time you and I decide to get lost.’ He flashed her a delicious grin. Warm and confiding, with a hint of mischief. Perfectly calculated. Beth reckoned he had his patients eating out of his hand with that one.
The phone on his desk rang and Matt snatched it up. From the way that he listened first, rather than talking, it was obviously Phyllis on the other end. ‘Okay, thanks, Phyllis…No, I’ll work something out…Yeah, thanks, I’ll call you.’ He laid the handset back in its cradle and focused on the stack of patient files on his desk, a muscle twitching at the side of his jaw.
‘Childcare problems?’ It seemed a bit presumptuous to ask, but Matt was clearly torn between his son and his patients.
‘Yeah. I haven’t quite mastered the knack of being in two places at once yet.’
‘If you have patients to see then I can look after Jack. We have a children’s play area in the HTU, and I don’t have any appointments this afternoon. He’ll be quite safe. Marcie and I won’t let him out of our sight.’
It was an obvious solution, but for some reason Matt seemed intent on pursuing his original course of action. ‘Thank you, that’s kind, but I really can’t impose on you like that. Phyllis has offered to take care of him in my office if she can’t reach my mother.’
Jack tugged at his arm. ‘That’s all right, Dad. I’ll go with Beth and you can come and fetch me later. The hearing place is much nicer than your office.’
‘We’ve got paints. And glitter pens. We could make Mrs Green a get-well-soon card.’ Beth winked conspiratorially at Jack, who shot his father a pleading look.
Matt hesitated. It seemed there was one person, at least, who had the power to veto his instructions. ‘You’re going to do exactly as Beth tells you, aren’t you? Leave the messing around for tonight, when you get home.’
Jack’s outraged expression made it plain that messing about had never been further from his thoughts and Matt laughed down at his son. ‘Okay, then. Looks as if the lady with the glitter pens has outbid me.’
CHAPTER TWO
ALL afternoon, the grey eyes, which warmed to a colour he could not quite define when Beth smiled, had been beckoning to Matt and he had doggedly ignored the summons. Bitter experience had already taught him that distractions of this kind led to dangerous places. Anyway, no one had eyes that great, it must have been a trick of the light.
Slipping through the open door of the hearing therapy unit, he found himself in a small reception area, with a wide archway leading through to another room, which seemed to be set up as an informal association area. He could hear Jack’s voice and went to walk towards it when something in the boy’s tone made him stop.
‘My mum was in a road accident like Mrs Green.’ There was a silence and Matt started forward again, freezing again when he heard Jack continue.
‘She wasn’t all right, though. She died.’
There was a rustle, as if someone had moved in their seat, and he heard Beth’s voice, clear and melodic. ‘I would be very sad if that happened to me.’
Jack spoke again. ‘Is that how you say you feel sad? With your hand like that?’
‘Yes.’ There was a pause. ‘That’s right, Jack, you are telling me that you feel sad.’
Matt sagged back against the wall, unprepared for the violence of the emotion that had hit him. Jack was talking about his mother at last. After two years of hardly even referring to her his silence had been broken. His lips twisted at the irony of it. Jack’s silence had not been broken. He had found another way to express his feelings.
‘My dad feels sad, too, but he doesn’t say so.’ Jealousy stabbed at Matt, twisting the knife in his chest. Why was Jack talking to a virtual stranger when his own father had tried so hard to be there for him?
‘Sometimes when you feel sad, you try to hide that from the people you love the best.’ Matt shook his head as the words reached him. She was absolutely right, but it was more complicated than that. But Jack was never to know that. No one was.
‘It’s because I’m just a kid.’ There was a trace of resentment in Jack’s voice.
‘You’re not just anything. And it’s your dad’s job to look after you, Jack.’ Her tone invited no argument.
‘I bet no one had to look after you when you were a kid.’
Beth laughed. ‘Oh, yes, they did. Shall I tell you a secret?’
Perhaps he shouldn’t listen. On the other hand, the kind of secret you told to a child was unlikely to be anything too earth-shattering. Matt found himself leaning forward.
‘I’ve got a big brother called Charlie. When I was little, he could hear much better than I could, and I hated it when he tried to help me. It made me feel stupid, as if I couldn’t do anything right. I used to pretend I could hear things when I couldn’t.’
‘How did you do that?’
‘Oh, there are lots of ways you can tell what people are saying without hearing them. Even if you can’t see their lips properly to read them, the expressions on their faces can tell you what they’re thinking. You just have to look.’
Were his own secrets written on his face? Matt swallowed hard. Of course not, he was just being paranoid. Beth had made a connection with Jack, not him.
There was silence and then Beth spoke again. ‘I’m sure you do miss your mum. But you don’t need to finger-spell all the words. Look, you can say it like this.’
Matt squeezed his eyes shut. He would have given anything to hear Jack say the words that he knew were forming silently on his hands. But this would have to be enough for the moment. Beth had the tone exactly right—just a simple exercise in how to sign, which was allowing Jack to approach topics that he hadn’t spoken about before. Why on earth hadn’t he thought of something like that?
Dared he try to catch a glimpse of them? Standing here was torture, but he knew that it
was important to give Jack time to say everything he wanted to.
‘That’s right.’ Jack had obviously got the signs she had taught him correct. ‘Now, I’ll show you something else that you might want to say to your dad.’
‘I know what that is!’ Jack exclaimed excitedly, and there was silence again as he signed back to her.
‘No—look, like this.’
Another pause, and her soft laugh sounded, curling around Matt’s senses like a gentle summer breeze. ‘Well done, you’re very good at this.’
They had obviously concluded their business and Matt reckoned it was about time he got Jack home. He was going to have to wait to find out what it was that Beth had thought Jack might like to say to him, and the urge to see both of them was becoming irresistible. He stepped forward into the wide archway, as if he had just walked in through the door.
She caught sight of him, and for a moment all Matt could think about was that her eyes, still dancing with laughter, were even more compellingly beautiful than he had remembered.
It wasn’t just her eyes either. Every time he looked at her he seemed to find something else that fascinated him.
‘Hello, there.’ Her voice broke the spell, and Jack’s head, just visible above the back of the chair facing her, bobbed as he scrambled round to see his father. ‘We were just…’ Her hands moved almost unconsciously and Matt wondered whether the words that had not escaped her lips were being formed by her fingers.
Jack ran to him, throwing his hands around his waist, and Matt dropped his case, his hands on his son’s back, his eyes still imprisoned in the curve of her lips. Her hair was tied up in a messy bun, as if she had scraped it impatiently out of the way, little strands waving around her face in the kind of effect that a hairdresser might take hours to achieve. As she tilted her head towards him he caught sight of the cochlear implant that had been hidden by her hair the last time he had seen her.
It took a conscious effort to drag his gaze from her face and look down at Jack. ‘Have you been good for Beth?’ Even her name seemed to linger in his senses, brushing his lips like the promise of a kiss.
Jack nodded vigorously and Beth smiled at him. ‘It’s been a pleasure having him down here.’ She looked at her watch. ‘You’re a little early.’ The words were almost a reproach and her manner seemed slightly changed, a shade more distant than earlier on.
‘Yeah. One of my patients didn’t turn up for his appointment and a couple were early, so I’m ahead of schedule for once.’
She made no comment. Matt moved awkwardly into the room, hampered by the fact that Jack had slipped his fingers through his belt and was trying to tug him towards her. Suddenly, the way forward became blindingly obvious.
His fingers brushed her elbow and Beth almost yelped as she jumped back. She didn’t want him touching her, not now. Not after the bombshell that Jack had just dropped. Somewhere, alongside the sorrow at a woman’s death and the clawing regret that a child should have to suffer this, there had been sympathy for Matt. And however natural that might be, it was still an emotion. She didn’t trust herself with any kind of emotion when it came to Matt Sutherland.
‘I want to thank you for this afternoon. I really appreciate everything you’ve done for Jack.’ He had reacted to her start and was maintaining a safe distance now.
‘It’s been my pleasure. Jack’s been keeping me company and helping out with lots of different things.’ Jack wasn’t the problem. It was his father who was unsettling her.
Beth turned her back on both of them, on the pretext of collecting her coat and handbag. Now that Matt was out of range and out of sight, she could think more clearly and her hands unconsciously repeated the resolutions that the heat of his smile had reshaped into restrictions. Stand on your own two feet. No more dating.
When she looked around, Matt was already cajoling Jack into his coat, and she tucked the display boards that she was taking home under one arm and slung her handbag across her shoulder. Pausing to sign a goodbye to Jack, she made for the door.
Jack signed back to her and then turned to Matt. ‘You don’t know what I said to Beth, do you?’
‘Not a clue, mate.’ Matt gave her a conspiratorial wink that would have melted an iceberg. ‘Care to tell me?’
Jack shook his head and turned to Beth. ‘It’s our secret language and my dad doesn’t know what we’re saying.’
The son was so like his father, blond and blue eyed, but so unlike him as well. Jack was lively and open, his thoughts and feelings easy to read. ‘Not much of a secret around here, Jack. Everyone knows how to sign.’
‘Yes, but my dad doesn’t.’ Jack flashed Matt a look of reproach.
‘Well, perhaps you’ll teach me, then.’ Matt rumpled his son’s hair, his easy warmth surfacing again.
‘Beth could teach you.’ Jack stretched up towards his father confidingly. ‘Beth’s got a bionic ear.’
Jack looked at her for approval and Beth grinned. One of the things she liked about children was their ability to refer to her cochlear implant as if it was something to be proud of.
‘It’s pretty neat, isn’t it?’ Matt sounded as impressed as Jack had been. ‘All the same, I want you to teach me what you’ve learned today.’ His jaw tightened and Beth wondered again whether he had heard any of her conversation with Jack.
Jack heaved a theatrical sigh and waited at Matt’s side while Beth pulled her coat on and dumped the display boards outside the door, fishing in her handbag for her keys. Before she’d even slid the key into the lock, Matt had picked up the boards, tucking them under his arm along with his heavy-looking case. ‘Let me carry these to your car.’
‘No, that’s okay. My car’s in the garage, so I’m on the bus.’ The way he’d picked her things up, without asking, had put her on edge. If she had needed any help she would have said so.
‘In that case, let me give you a lift home. Where do you live?’
He gave her a ‘don’t argue’ look and Beth wondered how many people in Matt’s life contested his decisions. Probably not that many. ‘Easington. The bus goes from the hospital grounds practically to my door.’
‘And we go past Easington and can drop you off right at your door. Jack, pick Beth’s gloves up and bring them along.’ Beth looked down to where her gloves lay on the floor, realising that she must have dropped them out of her coat pocket. Before she could retrieve them, Jack had pounced on them and was rolling them up in the end of his father’s dark blue scarf.
She might have had few scruples about arguing with Matt, however lofty his position, but Jack was a different matter. From the smug look on Matt’s face he had obviously been banking on that very fact and was pleased to have been proved right. Beth swallowed her reservations, locked the doors of the hearing therapy unit and followed the two of them to the staff car park.
It was already dark and sleet was bouncing off the windscreen of the car. Out of the shelter of the city, the roads were thick with ice and Beth began to be thankful that she wasn’t waiting at a windy bus stop or sitting on a bus as it wound its way around all the neighbouring villages before finally reaching her own.
She’d be home soon. Safe and sound in the protective cocoon she’d made for herself after Pete had left. And Matt Sutherland would be driving away, taking his disturbing smile with him, along with all the reactions it provoked in her.
Without thinking, she brushed his arm to get his attention. The gesture, so automatic among the deaf, seemed suddenly too intimate and she snatched her hand away. ‘Turn left here. There’s a row of cottages a little way down. Mine’s the one at the far end.’
She was scrabbling for the doorhandle almost as soon as he drew up. He turned the engine off with a decisive motion and went to get out of the car. ‘Stay put, Jack, I’ve just got to talk to Beth for a moment.’
What now? She shivered impatiently in the cold night air as Matt retrieved her display boards from the boot, propping them up against the wheel arch instead of giving them str
aight to her.
‘Jack doesn’t talk much about his mother,’ he started stiffly. ‘I heard you talking with him and wanted to thank you.’
So he had heard. Beth licked her lips nervously. ‘I didn’t mean to pry into your business.’
‘You didn’t. Jack has every right to say whatever he likes to whoever he likes, he doesn’t need my permission. He doesn’t do it enough.’
‘I’m glad he felt he could talk about her today, then. I really did enjoy spending the afternoon with him, he’s a great kid.’
He nodded. ‘I…I hope we’ll see you again. It would be nice if you could join us for lunch some time. As a thank you. You’ve given him a way to express his feelings, and I’m truly grateful for that.’ She was pretty sure he had that engaging smile on his face again. Out here in the darkness it was difficult to tell.
‘Sometimes things that can’t be said one way can be said in another.’ Beth ignored Matt’s invitation and concentrated on Jack. ‘I’ve got some wall charts that show the finger-spelling alphabet and some simple signs. If he’d like one, I can drop it in to Phyllis next week some time.’ That seemed safe enough.
His voice warmed with enthusiasm. ‘Thank you, I’d really appreciate that. It won’t do him any harm to learn another language and…’ He was suddenly lost for words.
‘I know. Anything that gives him a voice. I understand, I used to do the same thing myself when I was little. All my secrets were signed.’ Apart from the one she’d told Jack. Beth flushed. If he’d heard that then no wonder he hadn’t taken her refusal of his offer of a lift too seriously.
He grinned and then the smile slid from his face. He was looking intently over her shoulder and Beth turned to face her cottage.
‘Do you leave a light on when you’re out?’
Through the front window she could see a light, glimmering unsteadily inside the house. As she strained to see where it was coming from the porch light flickered on and back off again as if it was trying to signal something. Her hand flew to her mouth as she caught her breath.
All She Wants for Christmas Page 2
