Questions Of Trust: A Medical Romance (3 page)

‘Now, now, Dr Carlyle,’ he murmured to himself. ‘Behave.’

He pulled in to the short driveway at the front of his house and, freeing Kelly from her seat and helping her down, he started rummaging in his mind for ideas about supper for them both.

Chapter Two

The email was waiting for Chloe when she logged on.

Dear Ms Edwards
, it ran.
Thanks for your submitted articles, which we enjoyed very much. I particularly liked the one from the
Camden Express
about the plight of the homeless population in the area – very insightful, and dare I say it, quite moving. You’re clearly a writer of considerable talent.

I’m afraid you might find Pemberham a little parochial for your liking, but I’m intrigued by the proposal that you made for a one-off article, about a journalist from the city who relocates to a country town. It’s the kind of human interest story that would go down well with our readers, and I’ve no doubt your style would be popular. How about a 2,000-word piece on this theme? If you’re still interested, email me back for our terms and conditions of service.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes,

Mike Sellers, Editor-In-Chief,
Pemberham Gazette

Chloe felt a small fist of triumph raise itself in her chest. It was a start. A 2,000-word article didn’t give her much breathing space to be creative, but that was the essence of good journalism: brevity with style. She’d been in town for a day and a half, and already she had paying work. That was what mattered.

An early riser, by habit but also by necessity since Jake had learned to walk, Chloe had got up at six, just like on any normal working day, and after breakfasting with Jake she’d sat at the tiny dining room table with a mug of coffee and opened her laptop. Yesterday had been spent unpacking and neatening the cottage up, and although it needed a touch of finesse and a lick of paint here and there, those were details that could wait.

She began to outline her article while Jake played happily on his own on the rug where she could see him. Already she’d decided on a mildly self-deprecating tone, portraying herself as a big city girl haplessly out of her depth. It certainly wouldn’t do to come across as brash or cocksure; that would put readers off from the word go. The trouble was, she hadn’t been in town long enough for any amusing episodes to have occurred that might illustrate the culture clash between city and country at which she was aiming. And she didn’t want to make anything up.

Chloe took a sip of coffee and stared at the floral print wallpaper, thinking vaguely that that would most likely have to go at some point in the future. A thought drifted unbidden into her awareness.

Why not use the encounter at the doctor’s surgery?

As always when an idea occurred to her, she began typing notes before her analytical thought processes had a chance to get to work and possibly ruin the concept.
GP surgery – expecting conveyor-belt treatment – instead, personal greeting by name from one of the doctors and invitation to drop into his office
.

She looked at what she’d written. No, it wouldn’t do. The readers might get the impression she was suggesting doctors in Pemberham were at best underworked, at worst lazy. Plus, it was a small town, with only two GP practices. Many readers would work out, or guess, who the doctor was that she was referring to. That would be too personal an element for an article like this, and Dr Carlyle himself might hear about it and take offence.

So, over the next couple of hours, with occasional interruptions to attend to Jake when he needed to use the potty or simply wanted a hug, Chloe concocted a wry tale of a rather naïve professional woman rediscovering the simple pleasures of everyday life, of interactions with a community that existed quite successfully and happily outside the hurly burly of city life. She took pains all the while to avoid sounding patronising or sardonic, except when referring to her own mild ineptitude.

She wrote, and rewrote, and polished the article until it gleamed. Then, conscious as all experienced writers learn to become that too much revision could rub the life out of a piece of writing, she pronounced it finished.

Rereading it, this time with a potential reader’s eye rather than an editor’s, she felt a glow of pride. The style, the lively, quirky prose, were undoubtedly
her
. And the details of the story, while carefully selected and often embellished, were true to life.

But the narrator of the piece, the woman relating the tale, most emphatically
wasn’t
her.

The woman gave no indication that she was weighed down by a grief like a set of medieval chains. Or that the future, in truth, terrified her, because she was going to have to provide for her infant son, and was going to have to do it alone.

Or that her every emotion, every action, was being acted out on a bedrock of that most corrosive of all human afflictions: a profound bitterness which nobody, not her parents or her closest friends, could possibly guess she harboured.

Chloe shut her eyes for a moment. She was aware she had let herself down. Long ago, she’d vowed that part of her new life with Jake would involve her never brooding, never dwelling on what had happened, and what might have been. Brooding created fertile ground for the weeds of apathy and despair to take root. And she couldn’t allow that to happen. She owed it to Jake, even more than to herself, not to permit it.

She drained the last dregs of her third mug of coffee and fired back an email to the editor of the
Pemberham Gazette
with her article attached, then opened a blank document and began to jot down ideas for further pieces.

***

Tom stepped out of the surgery door into brilliant sunshine, the kind of fresh golden light you only really saw for a brief period at the beginning of the spring before the haze of summer set in. For a moment he stopped, savouring the prickle of the blossoms in his nostrils, the gentle intermittent breeze on his face.

It was 12.30 in the afternoon. He’d finished his morning surgery on time, and had a leisurely half hour to wend his way across town to pick Kelly up from the nursery. There were a few errands to be done this afternoon, including a visit to the supermarket, but he enjoyed even mundane tasks such as these when he had his daughter as company. Four precious hours with her, and then the sitter would take over and he’d be back at work for the evening shift.

He’d turned the key in the Ford’s ignition when the phone rang on the seat beside him.

Tom glanced down, saw the name that came up on the screen. He hesitated through one ring. Two. The vibrating phone shuddered in a slow circle on the seat.

He could ignore it, let it go to voicemail. Pick Kelly up, have a nice afternoon with her. Then, when it was time for him to go back to work, listen to the message. But he knew it wouldn’t be as straightforward as that, knew there’d be another call, and another, until he relented.

Sighing, he killed the engine and picked up the handset, thumbed the green button.

‘Hello, Rebecca,’ he said.

‘Tom.’

The sound of her voice made him close his eyes, a complex mix of emotions flooding through him as always.

‘I’m just on my way to pick Kelly up from nursery,’ he said.

‘I’m fine, Tom, and thank you for asking,’ she said. He closed his eyes again. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t keep you long. I just wanted to remind you about the twenty-fifth.’

She fell silent. Tom said, ‘The twenty-fifth?’ It was next week Friday. ‘What’s –’

‘You
have
forgotten. I thought so. Just as well I’m ringing, then, isn’t it?’

‘Hang on. Give me a minute.’ He racked his brains. Down the line he seemed to sense her enjoying his discomfort.

After thirty seconds he gave up. ‘Sorry. Remind me.’

‘Andrew and I are going away to Paris for the weekend, and we’re taking Kelly with us. Remember?’

It hit him like a spotlight being turned on full beam. ‘Oh, God. Is that next week?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you said it was months ahead.’

‘It was. When we discussed it. Before Christmas.’

‘Before Christmas? Surely not.’ But he dimly recalled the conversation, the sleet falling outside as he struggled to get Kelly ready for some outing or other, desperate for his ex-wife to finish her phone call to him so that he could get on. And she was absolutely right. He’d agreed to send Kelly away with Rebecca and the other man. Now, with the prospect looming of being separated from his daughter for a full two and a half days, he felt sick with anguish.

‘Andrew will come and pick her up on Friday afternoon –’

‘No.’
He spoke more forcefully than he’d intended. ‘Where are you flying from?’

‘Stansted, but –’

‘I’ll bring her there. Let me know the time.’ He hadn’t planned for this, so he’d have to find some way of taking next Friday afternoon off. It wouldn’t be easy. But he didn’t want that other man spending any longer with Kelly than was strictly necessary.

‘All right.’ She sighed heavily.
Theatrically
, Tom thought.

‘One more thing, while you’re on the line,’ said Tom.

She waited.

‘You haven’t given Kelly a toy monkey at all, have you?’

‘She hates monkeys,’ Rebecca said, an unmistakeable edge of scorn in her voice. ‘You should know that. Why do you ask?’

‘No reason. Bye.’

He dropped the phone on the seat once more and set off.

Kelly was as thrilled to see him as ever. Tom knew he should bring up the subject of her trip away with her mother and Andrew next week, but he couldn’t bear to on this glorious spring afternoon. He couldn’t face the excitement she’d display.

On the way home he fumbled in his attaché case which he’d propped in the passenger footwell and held up the soft toy monkey for her to see.

‘Is this yours?’

‘
No
, Daddy,’ she scoffed. ‘I hate monkeys.’

‘Thought so,’ he said.

‘Whose is it?’

‘I don’t know. I found it in my bag this morning.’

He’d assumed it was Kelly’s, but it must belong to one of his child patients who’d dropped it into his open attaché case in his consulting room by mistake, or as a prank. Well, he’d drop it off with the receptionists later that evening and they could hand it back when its owner came looking for it.

The mild depression that clung to him after every conversation he had with Rebecca these days lifted as he and Kelly made pasta and Bolognese sauce for lunch, inexpertly and messily. By the time their laughter had started to ebb and they’d finished tidying up, it was gone two o’clock. Less than three hours of precious afternoon time left together. And they still had to go shopping.

There was a large supermarket fifteen minutes’ drive out of town, but for convenience Tom preferred the smaller one in Pemberham’s central shopping area. He procured a trolley and hoisted Kelly up into the child seat in the front, resisting the childish urge to race around the aisles at top speed with her. It wouldn’t do for the local doctor to be seen behaving like a buffoon.

Several people smiled, nodded and said hello as he strolled the aisles. Thankfully none started telling him about their medical problems, a hazard most doctors faced outside the work environment. The pile of groceries in the trolley grew into a small mountain, and as luck would have it Tom had picked a trolley with a stiff wheel so that it kept listing to one side. He struggled to steer it round one particularly troublesome corner when he crashed it side-on into a stationary trolley at the end of the aisle.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered to the woman who’d turned sharply at the sound of the impact.

Then: ‘Hi.’

It was the new patient from yesterday, Chloe Edwards. Her little boy, Jake, was like Kelly ensconced in the seat at the front of the trolley. Mrs Edwards’s eyes widened. Then her expression softened in recognition.

‘Dr Carlyle. Hello.’

‘Sorry about the collision. Wonky wheel.’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘Hey, Jake. How’s Wolf?’

‘Fine.’ The little boy grinned in recognition. His mother smiled, a little tightly, Tom thought. She was in trousers, a jeans jacket and a white T-shirt. Tom tried not to look at her figure, at the swell of her breasts through the cotton.

‘This is Kelly,’ he said. Never a shy child, Kelly stared openly at the new boy and his mother. Tom nudged his daughter and stage-whispered from the corner of his mouth: ‘Hey, you. Some manners, if you don’t mind.’

There were greetings all round, and Tom thought the ice was cracked a little, if not quite broken. He was smiling his goodbyes when a thought struck him.

‘Jake, did you bring anyone else when you came to see me yesterday? Any other animal as well as Wolf?’

He saw Chloe’s eyes widen again and her glance dart to her son. ‘Jake? What about George?’

Tom squinted at the boy. ‘George wouldn’t happen to be a monkey, now would he? A purple one?’