No Good Reason (3 page)

*

“Sorry about the curry.” Her expression downcast, Meg proffered a fresh brew and a packet of chocolate HobNobs like a peace offering.

Sanne took the mug and patted the sofa cushions, waiting until Meg had slumped beside her before she replied. “How many times do I have to tell you?” She stroked her fingers through the rough mess of Meg’s hair. “The gravy was fine, and you’re being a silly sod. Now, eat your biscuits.”

Meg made no move toward the packet. Her grip on her mug was so tight that her knuckles were turning white. “Think I’m going to end up like my mum, San?” She spoke in an undertone, her breath whispering against Sanne’s cheek.

“No, I don’t,” Sanne said without hesitation. The possibility was too awful to consider. “I think you’ve always been a scatterbrain, and your shifts just make it worse.” She almost spilled her tea as Meg sat upright, worry stark on her face.

“I wonder sometimes. It can run in the family, you know.”

“I know, love, but lots of things can do that, so there’s no point fretting about it.”

“Hmm.” Meg toyed with the packet of HobNobs, looking unconvinced.

“Come on,” Sanne chided her gently, not wanting her to slip into a funk. “Get them open before your tea goes cold.”

The packet rustled as Meg let out her breath and took a biscuit. She dunked it in her tea, held it for a couple of seconds, and pulled it out the instant before it collapsed. Her success seeming to buoy her mood, she ate the biscuit with enthusiasm. “How’s your dad?” she asked.

Sanne bit into her own HobNob, crumbs scattering on her lap as she made a so-so gesture with the remnant. “He’s slightly less yellow.”

“That’s good. Your mum okay?”

“Fine. I’ll probably go and see them tomorrow while I’m off.”

“Say hello to your mum from me.”

“Of course.”

The welfare of their respective families adequately covered, they fell into an easy silence, broken only by an occasional pop from the fire and by the satisfied slurping as they drank their tea. Sanne stretched her legs out on the ottoman, her toes kneading the air contentedly. She only realised she had dozed off when Meg’s voice jolted her awake.

“So, what happened with Phoebe?” A sharp elbow nudging into her ribcage punctuated the question.

“Phoebe was nice,” she said, rubbing the sore spot. “Blond, bubbly, posh.”

“Ooh.” Meg wiggled her foot against Sanne’s. “Tell me more.”

“Educated at Oxford. Spoke all proper-like.”

“What was she doing up here? Working?”

“Researching.” Sanne watched embers rising from the fire. She had really liked Phoebe. It had been a promising date, for the first few hours.

Cradling her mug in both hands, Meg leaned forward, her curiosity piqued. “Researching what? Does she work at the uni or something?”

Sanne let out a short laugh. She wished it had been that simple. “No, she was researching, uh, well, me.”

Meg’s eyes narrowed as she waited for the punch line. When it didn’t come, she sat back against the cushions with a thump. “Are you having me on?”

“Nope. We’re sitting there, chatting away over coffee, all very civilised. Then, out of nowhere, she tells me that she’s a trainee journalist and that she’s researching a piece about women in the police force. She’d managed to find my details through some random Googling, pretty much stalked me to the pub that night we first met, and, oh, would I mind awfully if she asked me some questions?”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Wish I was.” Sanne giggled, Meg’s incredulity finally letting her see the funny side. “She whipped out this Dictaphone, set it next to the after dinner mints, and opened up a pad full of notes.”

“Oh dear.” Meg’s cheeks reddened as she tried to remain composed and appropriately sympathetic. When she spoke again, she sounded as if she were being strangled. “Did she at least pay for the meal?”

“Too bloody right she did. Y’know, I hope she’s got a day job, because I snuck a peek at her notes, and her spelling was crap.”

Meg laughed, inadvertently dropped her HobNob into her mug, and spent the next minute attempting to fish it back out.

“I’m glad my tragic love life amuses you,” Sanne said.

Meg gave up and finished her tea, biscuit and all. “At least you have one. I can’t remember the last time I kissed a girl that wasn’t you.”

“Oh, that’s just charming.” There was no malice in Sanne’s words, and she felt the familiar flutter in her stomach as she looked at Meg in the firelight. “No,” she said firmly, as much to persuade herself as to dissuade Meg. “I’ve got plans for tomorrow. Loads of stuff to do.”

The plates and mugs clattered as she stacked them up with clumsy fingers. Meg stooped to help her, and the sensation of their arms brushing together sent a thrill right through Sanne. She caught her breath at the same time Meg did and shook her head in despair. It was no wonder their love lives were such a bloody disaster.

“Are you on an early tomorrow?” she asked. The mundane nature of her question was all it took to break the tension. She heard Meg chuckle ruefully as they both turned their attention back to tidying.

“Yep. Seven till whenever, if it’s anything like today.” Meg straightened, her hands full of sauce bottles, and nodded for Sanne to lead the way to the kitchen. “Have you got anything more exciting planned for your day of leisure than visiting your parents?”

The water that Sanne had set running hit the edge of a plate, and she had to raise her voice above the splashes. “I’m getting up early for a run, and then I need to thin out my radishes, pick some lettuce before it goes to seed, and—” She frowned at Meg. “Why are you shaking your head?”

“Honey, you lost me at ‘getting up early for a run.’”

Sanne started the washing up, clattering the cutlery in indignation. “We can’t all laze about on our arses on our days off. I like to spend mine running. And do you want fresh salad this summer, or do you want to keep buying those limp, overpriced bits of leaves from Asda?”

“I want fresh salad, please.” Meg’s response was muffled by the tea towel she was hiding behind, and she squealed as Sanne dashed soapy water at her.

“Come and fix my leaky washing machine for me, and you can have all the salad you can eat. Deal?”

They shook on it, their hands slippery and full of bubbles.

“Text me your route tomorrow,” Meg said, her voice suddenly serious. “Because I know you. You’ll be up at the crack of dawn, and no one else will be around.”

“Sounds perfect.” Sanne touched Meg’s cheek gently. “I’ll have my phone, whistle, water, survival bag, and a first aid kit. I go up on Corvenden Moss all the time. I’ll be fine.” She dropped her hand away and used a clean tea towel to dry the suds she had left on Meg’s face. “But I do love you for worrying about me.”

Moments like this made Sanne grateful she lived somewhere remote. She had woken to soft morning light shining through the gaps around her curtains, while the scent of freshly cut grass and clean air filled her bedroom. She lay still, contemplating the idyllic peace.

It lasted only twenty seconds or so, however, before it was shattered by the raucous
cock-a-doodle-doo
of the rooster in the garden as he imitated a particularly obnoxious alarm clock. He woke all six chickens in his harem, who protested en masse. Sanne stuck her head under her pillow to drown out their squawking and once again thanked her lucky stars that she didn’t have any close neighbours. Fortunately, she was a morning person, not that her job gave her much choice in the matter. She lived about half an hour away from the police headquarters, a commute that could easily be doubled in winter, when the roads threading across the Pennines and connecting the cities of Manchester and Sheffield were often closed by snow.

There was a series of creaks as she climbed out of bed: the mattress, the floorboards, both of her knees. At thirty-three years old and with a long history of fell running, she felt as if her joints needed a good oiling first thing in the morning. Confident of her privacy, she opened the window wide and worked through her routine of stretches. Although a shower was somewhat superfluous, given that she would be mud-spattered and sweaty within the hour, she set it as hot as it would go and let it ease the remaining stiffness from her muscles. She dressed herself in front of the mirror, rolling her eyes at her towel-mussed hair. Like Meg, she kept it short, but a wayward, dogged waviness made styling it next to impossible. One gust of wind was all it would take to destroy anything she might achieve with gel or clips, and the weather in the Peak District was seldom placid. She ran a comb through it just for the hell of it and scowled at the result. Maybe next time she had it cut, she would go for broke and get rid of it all. Contemplating such an act of rebellion, however, quickly turned her scowl into a self-deprecating grin. She had no doubt that Meg would have embraced the challenge in a heartbeat, but her own nature was inclined toward conformity. She knew she would never have the guts to go through with it.

Leaving the mirror behind, she headed for the kitchen, with her reflection, captured in a series of framed photographs, tracking her down the stairs.
Bemused
was probably the politest word to describe people’s reaction to her. She was only five foot four, with hazel eyes, dark brown hair, and a northern English accent. She couldn’t have looked or sounded less Scandinavian if she’d tried, and yet fate and her mum’s bloody-mindedness had saddled her with the name Sanne Jensen. Mispronunciations occurred daily, “Sayne” and “Sanney” being the most popular. If someone had given her a pound coin every time she’d said “Actually, it’s ‘Sanner,’” she’d have been able to retire years ago.

“Fat bloody chance of that,” she muttered, toasting her mum’s stubborn streak with a mango and banana smoothie.

Sunlight poured into the small, tatty kitchen, hiding its flaws and casting rainbows through the water dripping from the faulty tap over the sink. Sanne had bought the cottage for its views and its land, but she had grown to love the old, weathered building for its sheer resilience. Wind, rain, and snow battered it year in, year out, and the worst it ever did was lose a tile or two from its roof. Beyond the kitchen window, hills dominated the landscape, their wild beauty a far cry from the cluttered streets where she had grown up. The dull browns of a cool spring had finally been replaced with lush shoots of bracken and bilberry, while lower in the valley the pastures were dotted pink with foxgloves. Summer arrived late in the Peak District, and the breeze carried with it the bleating of lambs still much smaller than their lowland cousins.

Surrounded by ever-changing scenery, Sanne was fond of each season in its own way, but this was her favourite time of the year to go fell running. She checked her pack one last time and scooped up her keys. The hens scattered as she jogged down the driveway to her car. The rooster just glared from the car’s roof.

“Hop it, Git Face.”

He ruffled his feathers but didn’t budge an inch.

“Oh, you’ll move soon enough, you little bugger,” she said and started the engine.

*

The stretcher collided with the bed, sending a jolt through its patient and forcing Meg to make a grab for the endotracheal tube protruding from his mouth.

“Easy, everyone. We’ll get him across on my count, okay?” She had to raise her voice above the mêlée, keeping a grip on the tube as the team around her prepared to slide the unconscious man from the stretcher. According to the ambulance pre-alert, he was only in his forties, but he was morbidly obese, naked aside from a pair of soiled boxer shorts, and had one foot firmly in the morgue. His belly jiggled as he landed on the mattress, a motion inadvertently worsened by the nurse resuming CPR.

“Bit of hush while I check this, please,” Meg said.

Squeezing the ventilation bag at a steady rate, she assessed the placement of the ET tube with her stethoscope. They could become dislodged during rapid transfers, but this one was right where it needed to be.

“Lovely.” She smiled at Kathy, the paramedic responsible for its insertion, who smiled back in relief. “Go ahead, hon. Everyone else, listen up.”

“Okay. Jimmy Taylor, forty-five years old. Found in a collapsed state by his wife at approximately six thirty. She was doing CPR when we arrived, but hadn’t been able to shift him off the bed. Initially in VF, shocked once, straight into asystole. He’s had”—Kathy checked the back of her glove, on which she’d scribbled her drugs—“four adrenaline. Due another about now. He’s a type two diabetic. Sugars are eight point six. High blood pressure and high cholesterol. Smokes thirty a day.”

“Cheers,” Meg said, wincing as the F1 from her previous shift made another mess of inserting a cannula. “Get him booked in as soon as, will you?”

“No worries. Wife should be here in a mo. She’s coming down with the Rapid Response para. Oh, and she said he’s allergic to strawberries.”

“Right, no strawberries. Probably the least of his worries.” Meg shook her head as Kathy laughed. “Go and put the kettle on.”

“Rhythm change.” A keen-eyed nurse was watching the monitor. “PEA.”

“Most likely due to the adrenaline.” Still pumping the bag with one hand, Meg peeled open Jimmy’s eyelids to find two blown pupils. “He’s already fixed and dilated. I don’t think we’re getting anything meaningful back from this.”

A murmur of assent rippled through the team. The F1 looked pale but resolute, under no illusions about the inevitable outcome of their efforts. Meg sighed. Even for one in such lousy general health, Jimmy had died far too young.

“Let’s give him the benefit, eh? We’ll have a look at his gases and go another couple of loops.” She glanced up at the red-faced nurse who was still doing compressions. “And can someone please take over from Liz before she pegs out as well?”

*

The doors to Resus edged open just as Meg dialled the oxygen down and disconnected the ET tube. She unplugged the monitor, and the alarm that had been sounding intermittently for the last half hour ceased.

Kathy poked her head through a gap in the curtains. “Mrs. Taylor’s in the Rellies’ Room.” She looked at Jimmy Taylor, splayed out and cooling on the bed. “Poor sod. They have three kids: ten, twelve, and fifteen.”