Caroline Anderson, Anne Fraser, Kate Hardy, Margaret McDonagh Read online

  ‘It’s not Sam I’m worried about, Nick. It’s Gemma.’

  ‘Gemma?’

  He looked utterly confused, and for the hundredth time Kate wondered how he could be so incredibly obtuse and emotionally inept. ‘Yes, Gemma. Well, Sam and Gemma, to be absolutely accurate.’

  ‘What about them?’

  She shrugged. ‘I just wondered if it would be difficult for them.’

  ‘Difficult? Why on earth should it be difficult? They had a little fling eleven years ago. Why would that make any difference to them now? It’s in the past, Kate.’

  ‘Because they’re not over it? You can feel the tension coming off them in waves. It may be in the past, but it’s far from over, if the look on Gemma’s face is anything to go by, and when she’s in the room Sam doesn’t know where to look. And just because something’s in the past doesn’t mean it’s resolved,’ she added pointedly.

  He met her eyes then, a flicker of guilt in them. ‘Kate, I don’t want to talk about this.’

  ‘I know. You never do. But that won’t stop Jeremiah being your son, Nick, and one day you’re going to have to accept that, because one day I’m going to have to tell him before he finds out from somebody else.’

  ‘Who?’ he snapped sharply. ‘Who knows?’

  ‘Well, virtually no one—unless you count the tourist who pointed out how alike you are.’

  A dull run of colour stained his neck as he turned away. ‘I can’t deal with this now.’

  ‘You never can, Nick—and I’m beginning to wonder if you ever will until it’s thrust on you by circumstance. But you need to know that if Jem ever asks me, I won’t lie to him. I will tell him the truth. And he’ll have a right to know why his own father wouldn’t acknowledge him.’

  And without another word, she walked out, head held high and her heart pounding. She was sick of it. Sick of beating her head against a brick wall, sick of Nick stonewalling her on the subject, sickened by everything that had happened that summer—the same summer that Sam and Gemma had had their fling that was so obviously not forgotten.

  She just hoped that they had more luck resolving it than she’d had.

  To Sam’s surprise, remarkably few people commented on his presence in Gabriel’s surgery. There was a sign up in Reception telling the patients that he’d be covering Lucy for a while, and far from dragging him out into the car park and setting fire to him, they either smiled politely or ignored him.

  That was fine. He didn’t want or expect a rapturous welcome. He just wanted to do his job, and by eleven he was clawing the walls.

  And Gabriel must have realised it, because in the next gap between patients he pushed back his chair after the last patient and smiled at him.

  ‘OK. You don’t need me showing you how to do this. You can take over from me here now so I can go and do my calls, and Oliver’s around if you have a problem. I’ll be in this afternoon doing a surgery, so if you think of anything else you need to know, just buzz through and ask one of us, and we should get through the list nice and quickly. Which means I can get home and walk the dog in daylight!’

  ‘Lauren mentioned you’ve got a dog. I’m babysitting my mother’s—I’ll have to look out for you on the beach.’

  ‘Maybe we can meet up and sniff tails!’ he said with a laugh, and stood up. ‘Right, I have to get on, I have calls to make and then I need to amuse myself until afternoon surgery. I gather my fiancée is going to see you at one.’

  ‘Yes. Sorry. I didn’t mean to disrupt your lunchtime routine—’

  ‘Sans fait rien, it’s not a problem. You go and let her torture you, and I’ll wander into town and find us a sandwich from the shop when I’ve finished my calls. Tell her I’ll see her later.’

  He went out, and Sam carried on with his clinic, surprised at how easily it all came back to him. And how much he was enjoying it, although it was all a little cosy and he had no doubt at all that after a few weeks it would drive him absolutely mad.

  His last patient had just left when Hazel buzzed through. ‘Sam, I’ve got a gentleman here who needs to be seen this morning, and you’re the only doctor left in the surgery. Would you mind awfully taking a look at him?’

  ‘Of course not,’ he agreed, sighed quietly and wondering if he’d find time for lunch before he saw Lauren. Breakfast seemed to have passed him by and he was getting very hungry. Maybe there’d be a biscuit or two left in the staffroom.

  There was a tap on the door, and a man in late middle age came in and sat down.

  ‘Hello, Sam.’

  He frowned. There was a not-too-distant memory of some washing tied to the top of a tree, and he gave an inward groan. ‘Mr Reynolds.’

  ‘I see you haven’t forgotten me, then?’

  ‘Indeed not. Apparently it’s mutual.’ He gave a slight smile, and Mr Reynolds smiled back.

  ‘I didn’t expect to see you back here. I’m sorry about your mother.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said for what must have been the hundredth time since he’d come back. ‘So what can I do for you today, Mr Reynolds?’

  ‘It’s my angina. I just can’t seem to get on top of it today, and I’ve been puffing away on the old GTN and—well, I don’t know, it doesn’t seem to be making any difference.’

  ‘Just slip your jacket off, let’s check your blood pressure,’ Sam said. ‘Have you been overdoing it?’

  ‘I did a bit of gardening this morning, but I don’t know if it was a good idea.’

  ‘Well, your blood pressure’s a little high, and I can see you’re on medication for it, and you’re on a statin. Can you describe your symptoms?’ he asked as he took off the cuff and made a note of the reading. And what he heard, he didn’t like at all.

  ‘OK, I think just to be on the safe side I’m going to give you a little aspirin—you don’t have asthma, do you? No? OK, just chew this up and we’ll get a nurse to run an ECG on you—no, stay there, don’t get up. I’ll go and find someone. I just want to make sure nothing’s going on.’

  He left the door open and asked Hazel if there was a nurse free, just as Gemma came downstairs. ‘Do you want something done?’ she asked, and he nodded.

  ‘Please. An ECG for Mr Reynolds. His angina’s bothering him.’

  He lifted a brow, and Gemma nodded her understanding of the urgency. ‘I’ll get the ECG machine. His angina’s a bit unstable.’

  She came into his room wheeling the machine a few moments later, just as Sam had settled Mr Reynolds on the couch.

  ‘Hello, Ron, what’ve you been up to? I bet you’ve been gardening, haven’t you?’ she asked, peeling the backing off the electrodes and sticking them on Mr Reynolds’s hairy chest.

  ‘How did you guess?’

  She smiled, and Sam’s heart turned over. No wonder Mr Reynolds’s angina was unstable! ‘Ah, well, a little bird told me the family were coming for the weekend. I hope you’re all coming to the barbeque tomorrow.’

  ‘Wouldn’t miss it, Gemma. Never have.’

  ‘Excellent. Right, just lie still while I run the printout, and while I’ve got you there, I’m going to give you a little lecture about your diet, because I can see from your tummy that you’ve been down to the chippy a few times too many, haven’t you?’

  ‘Nothing gets by you, does it?’ he said with a little smile, and Gemma chuckled.

  ‘Not much, not in this village. And anyway, I saw you and Doreen sitting on the harbour wall eating them last Saturday. So it’ll be low-fat sausages for you at the barbeque tomorrow. I’ll get Dr Tremayne to buy some specially.’

  But just then the ECG trace began to flutter, and he pressed his hand to his chest and groaned.

  ‘Well, that’ll save worrying about the low-fat sausages,’ Sam murmured in her ear, and she stepped aside, raising the backrest as Sam took over and sat their patient up to ease the load on his heart. ‘I think you might be having a little heart attack, Ron, so I’m going to send you off to St Piran’s to get checked out.’

 
‘Are you sure? You do know what you’re doing, don’t you?’ he said with a wry grin. ‘Only I wouldn’t have wanted you to miss the lecture on heart attacks—Aaah!’

  ‘Just sit back and try to relax, and I’ll give you some painkillers. That should make it a bit easier. Gemma, could you ask Hazel to call the ambulance and his wife and then draw me up some diamorphine—ten milligrams, I think. Thank you. And you just lie there and thank your lucky stars I attended that lecture, Ron, and don’t you worry about a thing. It’s all under control.’

  And less than fifteen minutes later he was off to hospital, and Sam left Gemma tidying up the ECG machine.

  ‘Right, I’m sorry, I’ll have to leave you to it, I’m supposed to be seeing Lauren at one and I’m already late,’ he said, and with a resigned sigh Sam crossed the wide corridor and tapped on Lauren’s door.

  It opened instantly, and she came out with a smile. ‘Hi, Sam. Come on in.’

  He shut the door, then hesitated. Did he strip off to his boxers, or wait for her to take a history? ‘I’m sorry I’m late, I got held up with a patient.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Just peel your things off behind the screen and I’ll take a history as we go along. Maybe I’d better have a look at all your injuries today, and we can sort out a treatment plan.’

  ‘Well, good luck with that,’ he said with a dry chuckle, and dropped into the chair behind the screen while he took off his shoes and socks and unbuttoned his shirt. He really, really didn’t want to do this, but if he ignored the problem it would get worse, and he couldn’t expect to make progress if he neglected his physio. No gain without pain and all that, but he’d frankly had it with the pain and it was growing old very quickly.

  ‘OK, let’s go through this from the top because we’ve got no notes on you, of course. So—what exactly happened?’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  She picked up the specs off the desk and hefted them in her hand. Sam was bound to be going in to visit his mother later, and he’d just popped in for a chat with Lauren, presumably about another patient. She’d give them to him, he’d be able to take them to Mr Reynolds.

  And then she’d go for a walk along the harbour, maybe pick something up to eat on the way. Anything rather than sitting around in the staffroom and waiting for Sam to come in, and as long as they were both in the building, she’d be on edge.

  She tapped on Lauren’s door and stuck her head round without waiting for a reply, knowing that Lauren was free because Gabriel was out and her patients had all gone, but to her horror she wasn’t free. Not free at all, and the patient lying propped up her couch, wearing nothing but snug jersey boxers, was Sam.

  ‘Well, come in,’ he said drily, and she felt hot colour scorch her cheeks.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realize…’ She trailed off, her eyes taking in the still-purple scars that slashed across his chest and shoulder, then sucked in a breath as she saw his leg. The skin must have been torn as he’d slid along the ground, because the outside of his left thigh was a mess. He’d had skin grafts, but they could never cover it completely, she knew that. It would always leave a nasty, disfiguring scar. And lower down, on his shin, were the marks of an external fixator, and on the outside of his ankle further evidence of surgery.

  Dear God. He must have been through hell—was still going through it, if the faint sheen of sweat on his skin was anything to go by, and Lauren was standing there holding his foot in her hand and quietly waiting for Gemma to free herself from her trance and either say her piece or leave.

  ‘Sorry, I’ll—I just wanted to give you these. Mr Reynolds’s specs. I thought you could drop them into him at the hospital while you’re visiting Linda,’ she croaked, and, dumping them on the desk, she fled out of the room and ran out of the building, all thoughts of lunch forgotten, driven out by the image burned on her mind—the image of Sam, so severely wounded yet so dismissive of his injuries that she’d had no idea they had been so bad, or that he must have come so very, very close to death…

  She crossed the road and sat on the harbour wall, her shaking arms wrapped round her waist as she stared out over the muddy harbour where the fishing boats were stranded by the low tide, and tried to see something other than that image of his broken, damaged body on Lauren’s couch.

  And all the time she’d been staring at him, she realised, he’d been smiling a wry, bitter, twisted little smile that tore her heart in two.

  Something wet landed on her arm, and she looked down. Another drop landed, and this time she’d felt it sliding down her cheek.

  Stupid. So, so stupid. He didn’t want to know her. He’d promised to keep out of her way, had said he wanted to keep their relationship quiet. He sure as hell didn’t want her tears.

  But still they fell, as fast as she could swipe them away, and in the end she got off the wall and ran down beyond the lifeboat station to the rocks on the headland and sat hugging her knees until the shock had receded and she felt she’d regained her composure enough to go back to the surgery and face him.

  Then, and only then, did she stand up and turn round—and saw Sam, just a few feet away, perched on a rock and watching her with guarded eyes.

  ‘I’m so sorry I barged in,’ she began, but he just arched a brow.

  ‘You need to learn to wait when you knock.’

  ‘I know. Believe me, I wish I had.’

  ‘What—too shocking for you, was it? A little bit too real?’

  She felt sick. ‘Sam, don’t be horrible. You know it’s not that.’

  ‘Do I? I’m not sure what I know any more. And why the hell are you so upset? You walked away, Gemma. You didn’t want me then—so what’s changed enough now to make you cry?’

  Nothing. Nothing had changed. She’d always loved him—always wanted him, always missed him. And that was why she’d left him, why she’d gone away and done what she’d had to do alone, so that if the worst came to the worst, he could move on with his life without her.

  Except he hadn’t, apparently. Like her, he’d been in limbo. And like her, he’d almost died.

  She held his eyes. ‘Nothing’s changed, Sam. It was just the shock—I didn’t realise you’d been so badly injured. The other night, you gave me no idea it had been so bad.’

  He shrugged. ‘It was just one of those things. You get on with it, don’t you? I mean, you can’t change it, so what’s the point of bleating about it?’

  He walked slowly up to her, moving carefully over the rocks, and lifting his right hand he brushed away the tears that still stained her cheeks. Apart from the one tear the other night in the Smugglers’, he’d only ever seen her cry right at the end, when her parents had found out they were married and had said terrible, cruel things to her. And he hated to see her like this.

  ‘Don’t cry for me,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’m all right, Gemma. It’s over now, there’s no need to cry. I don’t need your pity, I’m fine.’

  But the tears were still leaking slowly from her eyes, welling up and sliding down her cheeks, glistening in the sunshine, and he couldn’t help himself. He tried to stop, tried to hold himself back, but somehow his lips were there, on her cheek, kissing away the tears.

  And then not just the tears. His mouth found hers, just lightly brushing it, their breath mingling as they took tiny, shallow gasps of air, little shuddering breaths as they slowly, tenderly explored the soft flesh they’d both ached for for so long.

  But it wasn’t enough. It could never be enough, and when a tiny, frantic little whimper escaped her, it was too much for him. With a ragged groan he threaded his fingers through her hair and took her mouth in a kiss so wild, so needy, so desperate that when he lifted his head long moments later it was like tearing away part of his soul.

  ‘Sam?’

  Her voice was trembling, her body quivering against him, and he forced himself to take a step back, to distance himself from the one person in the world who could still hurt him.

  ‘No, Gemma. I’m not going there again. I can’t
.’

  ‘I didn’t ask you to.’

  ‘But I want to,’ he said, the words dragged from him. ‘How can I want to? You walked away from me—you just walked away—why?’

  She felt pain close like a fist around her heart, wishing she could tell him the truth but not really knowing how, not now, after all this time. ‘We were kids, Sam. It was a long time ago. And maybe it was wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone, but at the time I felt I had no choice. My life was—it was going in a direction I hadn’t planned, and I didn’t know what to do. And I made a mistake.’

  ‘So—what are you saying, Gemma? You want to try again?’

  ‘No. Yes. I don’t know,’ she said tearfully, not wanting it to be like this, so very different from what she might have planned. ‘I really don’t know what I want, and I certainly don’t know you, not now. Maybe I never did. Maybe you never knew me. Maybe we need to find out who we are now, what we’re looking for—because we haven’t moved on, either of us, have we? Not really.’

  He stared at her, his eyes shielded again, although she could see the emotions on his face from the set of his lips and the slight flicker of a muscle in his jaw.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last, his voice taut. ‘I’m not sure I can do this. I don’t want to talk about it, and I haven’t got time for it. I’ve got other priorities now. I’ve got to go and do a surgery, and then I have to take Jamie to see my mother. He still hasn’t been.’

  ‘Maybe he’s frightened she’ll die? Or that she’ll lean on him, and he’s afraid he can’t cope? Sound familiar, Sam?’

  His laugh was bitter. ‘Yeah, but she won’t lean on him. She’ll lean on me, like she’s always done, because that’s my job, isn’t it? I’m the man of the house, the head of the family. And I don’t need it any more than I need this all raking up again. So forgive me if I don’t feel like exploring my emotions with you to see if you made a mistake or if you really did mean it when you walked out on us. I’ve got enough on my plate. You made your bed, Gemma. Go and lie in it.’

  And turning on his heel, he walked away and left her there, her slender hope for their future happiness in tatters.