Sunrise for Two (9 page)

Harry sat in the bathroom
and gathered her thoughts. How could he rescue her then get it so
wrong? When he had told her friends, the men whose opinion of her
mattered, that she had fallen in public, she had felt like crying.
She replayed his thoughtless words in her head, feeling her throat
catch again. Then she took a deep breath and wheeled back outside,
she had faced far worse at school.

Chris felt his anger
melting, her hair was slightly tousled and the tremor of tiredness
had returned to her hands. When he looked closer, her big dark eyes
looked suspiciously full of tears, and he hoped desperately he was
not the cause. He wanted more than anything to pick her up again
and carry her back to her sofa. “Shall I take you home Harry?” Mike
asked quietly.

“
Please.” she
said with yet another strained smile. Reluctantly Chris stepped
aside and watched her go, she was struggling to navigate her chair,
and after a quiet exchange with Mike, the computer technician
started pushing her.

Chris felt sick and he
walked out to his car in silence. The subtle smell of her perfume
still hung in the air. And he sat for a moment remembering the way
she had tasted when he kissed her and the way she had kissed him
back. His unreturned feelings for Nicola had allowed his precise
medical mind to chart out his lonely journey all the way into one
sided love and back out the other side. But this, he realised, was
far more intense and he fought the urge to drive round to her house
and demand to finish their conversation, and the wonderful
kiss.

He heard tapping on the
window of his car, and for a wonderful wild moment he hoped to see
her face. Mr Patel opened the car door and sat down beside him.
“Are you okay?” the older man asked finally.

Chris shook his head and
looked at the older man. “I upset her.”

“
She looked
pretty upset to begin with.”

Chris nodded, “I guess
you’re right.” He said finally.

“
Where is she
now?”

“
With that
man from the IT department, the one who follows her around like a
puppy.”

“
Why is
that?”

“
I told
everyone that she’d fallen, well I sort of implied it, I didn’t
realise she’d react the way she did.”

Mr Patel looked at him
for a long time, then said thoughtfully, “Have you noticed how
everyone looks at her legs?”

“
It’s her
face that I can’t stop thinking about.”

“
That’s not
the issue, her legs are going to be this unimaginable sore point,
show some tact man.”

Chris nodded, then said
in a voice that sounded petulant even to him. “And every time she
even slows down, she’s surrounded by men.”

“
Then start
behaving like the kind of man she’s going to notice.” The older
doctor told him, and opened the door of the car. Chris nodded and
closed his eyes, he tried to focus on the rugby match he had been
looking forward to, but all he could think about was
her.

Harry pushed all thoughts
of him to the back of her mind. She relaxed into Mike's gentle
company and slid out of the car under his protective gaze. “I know
it’s only six, but would you like a glass of wine?” she asked with
a smile.

He grinned slightly
self-consciously, “I was hoping you'd say that.” He produced an
expensive bottle of red that the man in the shop had assured him
was irresistible and followed her into her elegant hallway. “Shall
I open it?” he asked, knowing that she would want a moment of
privacy while she transferred onto the sofa. She nodded gratefully
and he stood for a moment in the kitchen with work surfaces of
different heights and waited for her to get comfortable. He made
her laugh by telling her about his latest evening class, he filled
up her wine glass and he ordered pizza. He wondered why he was
torturing himself, why he didn't go home and wait for his heart to
start healing, and finally he asked, as casually as he could, “So
do you like him?”

She was silent for a
moment and he sat very still watching her face. He knew how private
she was and he wondered if he had overstepped her careful
boundaries. “Unfortunately yes.” she said quietly, “although I'm
not sure why.”

Mike remembered the way
he looked and decided he could hazard a guess. “I’m pretty sure he
likes you.” he told her honestly, knowing that all the men in their
little department were a tiny bit in love with her.

“
I wish I
could be sure. He was so weird the first time he saw my chair and
today when he brought me back to the office.” she closed her eyes
remembering the words that were too painful to say.

“
I don’t
think people understand how much the not walking stuff bothers
you.” Mike said carefully.

“
You can't be
serious.” She replied, her dark eyes holding his.

“
No I am.
You're cool and funny and very beautiful. People think you're okay
with it.”

“
Not being
able to walk is never something you're okay with.”

“
I'm sorry, I
guess I know that about you, but he hasn't known you as long as I
have.”

“
You knew
that from the start honey.” she said affectionately and added
awkwardly “Not walking is the least of my worries actually. It's
the practicalities of the intimate stuff that I’m really worrying
about.” Mike took a deep mouthful of wine and thought about what he
wanted to say. That any man lucky enough to kiss her, lucky enough
to help her out of her clothes, lucky enough to chart her erogenous
zones and hear the sounds that she would make, would be wanting to
look after her and would make sure they both had fun. In the end he
said it and she thanked him and smiled at Julia with a combination
of relief and curiosity when she burst quite dramatically into the
front room.

“
What
happened?” Julia asked breathing hard from her short burst of
exercise.

“
What on
earth do you mean?” Harry asked her.

“
You're on
the news, mostly the local, but a bit in the national as
well.”

Harry felt the flush
starting in her throat and took another mouthful of wine. “Am I
standing or is Chris carrying me?”

“
You're
standing by your mother looking miserable and beautiful.” Julia
paused for a moment and added carefully, “Why was he carrying you
honey?”

“
Because I
lost my balance.” Harry said, almost too quietly to hear, and felt
the tears starting to slide down her cheeks. Julia sat down beside
her and she buried her face in her shoulder, and muffled her sobs
in her friend’s gentle arms.

“
Choose us a
box set.” Julia told Mike and he nodded gratefully. He listened
while Harry told the story and watched the moment when Julia made
her laugh. The moment when Julia navigated her away from the
stinging fact that one of her biggest fears had been realised in
such a public setting.

“
Do you think
mother destroyed all the pictures?” Harry asked, finally finishing
the piece of pizza she had been looking at for much of the
evening.

“
And all the
photographers.” Julia said cheerfully. “Now why don't you get
comfortable? You look exhausted.” She helped Harry slide back into
the support of the deep cushions then added carefully, “Where is
Chris now?”

“
I don't
know.” Harry said, and Julia looked at her with the patience borne
of long years of experience.

“
He told
everyone in IT that I had fallen.” Harry said finally, feeling the
tears sliding down her face again. Julia poured some more wine into
her glass. She knew that this was too raw to discuss. She touched
Harry's hand and they turned their attention to the comfortably
predictable plot lines until Harry fell asleep.

“
Will she be
ok?” Mike asked softly, and Julia smiled at him.

“
She's always
ok. It's one of the things I love about her; she gets hurt, but she
always picks herself up again.” She tore the last piece of pizza in
half and handed him the portion with more topping. “I'm supposed to
be on diet.” she said awkwardly.

“
Why? I think
you look great.” She found herself telling him about the
insensitive paramedic, and the fact that her parents had enrolled
her in a local gym as a birthday present, and he told her about his
mother suggesting karate. Harry woke up briefly but kept her eyes
shut, she was starting to feel hopeful until Mike told Julia how he
felt about her lovely friend and the evening ended on a slightly
awkward note with Julia poking her rather violently in the ribs and
Mike saying his wistful good-byes to them both.

“
I heard you
wake up.” Julia said conversationally, “You were trying to breathe
so regularly you sounded as though you had asthma.”

“
Sorry I
didn't want to ruin the moment.”

“
No thank you
for that, I never get tired of hearing interesting men telling me
that they find you attractive.”

“
I’m sorry.”
Harry looked so very unhappy that Julia relented instantly and
handed her a chocolate.

“
It’s not
your fault honey, and I know you’ve had a rotten day.”

“
Men are
rubbish.” Harry said unhappily, rubbing the tension in the back of
her neck.

“
Do you want
to talk about it?”

“
No it still
hurts too much.” Harry pressed the play button and smiled
gratefully at her friend when she opened another bottle of
wine.

Chris ran so far that he
felt sick, afterwards he showered until some of the aching and
tension had dissipated, then restlessly he switched on the
television and saw the woman he couldn’t stop thinking about. There
was a particularly appealing picture of her standing next to their
chief executive, and another next to her family. He was relieved,
but also slightly disappointed to see that he was not in any of the
pictures. It made him feel as though their intimate and intense car
journey had never happened, and he kept watching, wondering how he
could miss someone he barely knew.

He learned that her
mother had been a rebellious young woman, she had grown up with a
dislike of her enormous estate and the trappings of her inheritance
and birth right. There had been a family understanding that she
would marry a wealthy neighbour, but in her early twenties she had
travelled to a community in India. Harry had been born in this
community, and her mother had appeared on a lot of talk shows and
documentaries, talking about her rejection of property and wealth,
and the way children didn’t need formal education or supervision
from their parents.

Harry had been playing in
a street with a group of older children when the accident happened.
She had been jumping over a skipping rope, her nimble feet dancing
through a complex pattern. The documentary relentlessly showed
images of the distraught Lady Caroline. At first she had been
photographed alone, and then clinging to the man from England who
still loved her. The man who had married her, and quickly adopted
her desperately ill little girl. Harry had been flown back to a
hospital in London, and Chris felt sick when the film makers
superimposed the last images of the little girl running through the
plantations in India, and the fragile figure who was carried out of
the wet institution for sick children by the man who loved her like
a father.

He thought of the careful
way she had constructed her life, surrounding herself with people
who wouldn’t know or perhaps care about her painful and public
past, and slowly he started to understand why she had reacted the
way she had. He switched off the television and thought about going
for another run. Nicola unlocked the door and he took a deep breath
and wondered what to say to the woman who suddenly felt like a
stranger. “Are you okay?” she asked, and he sat back down on the
scruffy patterned sofa and shook his head. “Shall we talk about
it?” she asked tentatively.

“
We haven’t
been very good at that recently.” He said quietly, feeling the bone
aching loneliness that he remembered from his adolescence. The
distraction of medical school, professional exams and the long
sleepless nights as a junior doctor had allowed him to escape his
sense of loss, but now that he was a consultant he had time to
think, and it made him ache to settle down and try to rebuild all
the things that had been torn from him.

Nicola sat down beside
him and looked at him. “You’re right Chris, I’ve been rather
stupid, and selfish. I just got used to having you all to
myself.”

“
But you
don’t want me, not really.”

“
I know,
stupid and selfish.”

“
I missed
you.” he said simply, and she touched his hand.

“
What
happened honey?”

“
I upset her
again. I don’t want you to think that she’s oddly sensitive,
because she’s not. It’s just that I like her so much that I keep
saying really stupid things.”

“
Why don’t
you invite her round for dinner and I can help you.” He looked at
her, tact warring with honesty. “You’re thinking about the party
aren’t you?” she added finally. He nodded, normally Nicola made
social situations much better, but drunkenly interrogating Harry
seemed unlikely to improve things. “I’ll make you proud.” She said,
and because he trusted her he smiled at her and agreed. He liked
Julia, and he had enjoyed his brief meeting with Libby, he wanted
Harry to know that he had good friends too.