Her headache took a proper hold at the sight of Scott’s jagged writing on the Post-it notes, and she reached for the super-strength ibuprofen tablets in her desk drawer.
Katie was willing to put money on the fact that Eddie Harding had deliberately allocated her the bolshiest possible trainee this year, as part of his on-going campaign to prove he was no slave to the PC brigade. Eddie’s own speciality was office jargonese, but with an unpleasantly bloke-ish twist. He liked to slap desks, and bark things like, ‘It’s a balls/walls situation’ and, ‘It’s your cock on the block, Kate – if you had one’. Scott might have had sloping shoulders, but he still managed to balance a chip on each one, and he had a new-wave sexist attitude to women bosses.
She blinked, and her mind slipped to the Relate session lined up for that evening. Just thinking about it made her insides crawl: they had to discuss how they met, in front of Peter’s gently sympathetic gaze. Katie could remember exactly how they met, how exciting and dream-like it had felt to have a man like Ross want her, just as much as she wanted him, and the prospect of sitting there describing it as if it had happened to someone else felt like a betrayal.
That was the problem: she didn’t hate him, he just wasn’t the man she married.
I don’t think I’ve got the energy to put this right, she thought. I can’t fix my marriage, and support the family, and keep up with work, and do everything else . . .
She put her elbows on the desk and rested her tired eyes against her palms. Do it for Hannah and Jack, she told herself. You don’t want them to grow up thinking rows and silences and tension is normal, do you?
It occurred to Katie that although she’d never actually seen her parents rowing, she’d never seen them cuddling either. Or ballroom dancing. Occasionally, her dad used to tell her mum that she looked nice if she’d just had her hair cut, but since Mum wrote that on the kitchen calendar, he didn’t even have to notice of his own accord.
Katie stared out of the window, towards the ugly clock tower, and wondered if her parents had had a really happy marriage, if they’d ever gone to counselling. They certainly fit the template – Mum at home until she went to school, Dad in a suit supporting the family, church at Easter and Christmas, holidays in France, no money worries – but it wasn’t as though there’d been the same snuggling in bed that Hannah and Jack enjoyed on a Sunday morning with her and Ross. Treats when she got school prizes, yes. Snuggling, no. But then these days she felt so brain-dead after a long day at work that sometimes she could forgive her dad for not being more communicative. They’d taken themselves off to Spain without so much as a backward glance once she was safely out of the nest, so maybe that was it; maybe it was having her around that put the kybosh on any parental romance. Maybe they were having their second honeymoon now, in Majorca.
They meant well, she conceded, thinking of the trusts that her dad had set up for Hannah and Jack. But they just weren’t natural parents.
At least Hannah and Jack knew she and Ross loved them, she told herself, feeling very emotional all of a sudden.
Katie did something she rarely allowed herself to do during working hours: she picked up the phone and dialled her home number.
As it rang, she let her gaze drift round the empty office, over the stacks of paperwork, and silent computers, the fake plants and dusty blinds, and her mind’s eye pictured the scene at home.
Hannah would be stomping around now, she thought, fussing over the right shoes for school. And Jack would probably be staggering about, clamouring to get into his car seat. He loved going in the car. Her arms ached to cuddle them both.
‘Hello?’ Ross answered. He sounded flustered, and as soon as she heard his voice, Katie felt the spell break.
‘Hi, it’s me,’ she said.
‘Is something wrong?’
‘No . . . No, I just . . .’ Katie swallowed. ‘I just wanted to check everything was OK.’
‘Everything’s fine,’ said Ross, and there was a twinge of irritation in his voice. ‘Except I’m right in the middle of getting the kids ready to take Hannah to school, and Jack’s . . . Hannah! Hannah, put that down now! Yes, now! What was it you wanted, then? What have I forgotten now?’
Oh no, she thought, her heart sinking. He thinks I’m checking up on him.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to say . . .’
How grateful I am that you’re showing our kids how loved they are? How much I wish I could be there with you? How sorry I am for being such a cow?
A movement at the corner of her eye made Katie swivel in her chair. Someone was walking along the corridor to her office, slowing down as they passed.
Eddie Harding’s fat face appeared round the door and he winked at her with his bulgy eye. His expression clearly said, ‘Personal call?’
As soon as she made eye contact, a gear shifted in Katie’s head, and she moved into Kate work mode. It was something she’d learned to do, to shut off thoughts of home, focus on the task in hand, get the job done.
‘You wanted to say what?’ demanded Ross, distractedly. ‘Hannah, come right away from the kettle! I’ve told you before about . . .’
‘Listen, sorry, it’s a bad time, I’ll call you later,’ said Katie and hung up. ‘Morning, Eddie,’ she said, to get in first.
‘And a very good morning to you, Kate,’ said Eddie. He tried to look sympathetic, but Katie wasn’t fooled. ‘Baby trouble?’
‘No, just getting an early message in to the legal team,’ she said, shuffling her papers. ‘I think there may be a leasehold issue with some of the land we’re looking at for the retail area of the development. And then with the council houses . . .’
‘I wouldn’t worry too much about that,’ said Eddie, confidently. ‘I’ve got my Compulsory Purchase Order muscles nicely warmed up, believe you me. And we’re not talking peanuts with the financial backing.’ He tapped his nose, which was already shiny.
Katie felt queasy, and not just on account of her too-strong coffee.
Do this project well, she promised herself, and you can get promoted right out of Eddie Harding’s slimy pond.
Round the corner from Katie’s offices, Lauren was preparing the files for the morning’s appointments, and trying not to worry about the fact that Mrs Carlyle was back again with her foot, first appointment, despite having just seen Dr Carthy last Friday. She made a mental note to check the front door at ten to, in case she was waiting. You didn’t want to hang around in a cold wind with a bad foot.
Lauren had been working on reception at Longhampton Park Surgery for just over a year, and in that time, she’d turned it into an altogether more cheerful place to be ill.
Before lunch on her first day, she’d taken over computer duties from poor Dr Carthy, whose idea of IT skills was to turn the machine on and off when it didn’t do what he wanted, and, consequently, the surgery’s plague of phantom appointments vanished overnight. To the amazement of the other two part-time receptionists, Diane and Sue, Lauren’s refusal to take offence had won over fearsome Kathleen, who dispensed prescriptions and also tart personal advice, usually loud enough for the rest of the surgery to hear.
She tackled the waiting room, where patients had only a dog-eared pile of Dr Bashir’s steam train journals and some family planning leaflets to distract themselves from their ailments: Lauren brought in stacks of her own wedding and fashion magazines, as well as Frank’s gardening monthlies and Chris’s old Top Gears and put flowers from their garden on the front desk. She started a book sale table in aid of the playgroup, and when mums came in with children, Lauren gave them crayons to draw pictures while they waited, then stuck them up on the wall in a special gallery.
She was, as Dr Bashir said each morning when she brought him his coffee, ‘not just a little ray of sunshine – a great lanky streak of one’.
Lauren liked her job. She enjoyed the satisfying, uncomplicated arranging it involved, and she loved meeting new people – especially those sporting embarrassing injuries tha
t proved she wasn’t the clumsiest person in town. Longhampton was big enough to have an underwhelming abbey and five supermarkets, but it was small enough for her to get on chatty terms with the old folk and the nervous new mums who came in clutching their babies – Lauren was good at names and always had something nice to say about a pug-ugly toddler.
The only thing she found a strain was the whole confidentiality business. Dr Carthy had spent fifteen minutes in her interview impressing on her how essential it was to keep everyone’s details absolutely, totally confidential, and she had nodded seriously and insisted that she was brilliant at keeping things quiet, and that she’d never told anyone half the things she could have done, what with her mum being a teacher and knowing half the town since they were five. As she’d told Bridget later, he’d totally softened up at that, because his grandson Jackson had been in Mrs Armstrong’s class last year and why hadn’t she said, yadda, yadda, yadda. Then his printer had jammed again, and she’d put the paper tray in properly for him, and the job was hers.
Anyway, it wasn’t that Lauren relished gossip, not like the way Kathleen loved telling them which local councillor was back on the antibiotics and thrush cream, wink wink. It was more the strange private view it gave her, once she knew little details about patients. It was like watching a soap opera, but with real people, and she couldn’t help the way her imagination grabbed the scraps of their inner lives and ran away with them. For instance, Kerry Michaels had a repeat prescription for the pill, and yet she and her husband had had two appointments with the fertility counsellor. What was that about? And Mrs Herbert, who kept making appointments with Dr McKay, the new locum – several times a week, to the point where Dr McKay had to ask her to pretend he was on call. Was she ill? Did Dr McKay not know what was wrong with her? Or did she have a crush?
As she picked out the patient notes for the day’s appointments, Lauren reminded herself not to be nosy – her morning mantra – but she couldn’t help noticing that Mr Wrightson was in to see Dr Bashir for the third time in a fortnight.
Ooh dear, she thought, grimacing at Dr Bashir’s inability to break bad news gently. I hope it’s nothing serious. Poor Mr Wrightson.
Her eye scanned down the printed-out list, checking it against the files she had in the basket, until her attention was snagged by a familiar name.
Angelica Andrews.
Angelica – from class! Her file was third down; she was due in to see Dr Carthy at ten. For a ten-minute appointment.
Lauren’s fingers twitched to open the file, and a stern voice in her head – which sounded a lot like her mother – nagged about patient confidentiality. There was also the small matter of Too Much Information, a problem she’d encountered when she discovered her old driving teacher had Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
It’s not like I’m going to tell anyone, she argued back. She’s a new patient. I’ll just check to see everything’s here.
It said Angelica Andrews on the outside, but when she opened it up, the official record belonged to Miss Angela Marie Andrews.
So not Angelica after all? Lauren wasn’t sure that she didn’t feel a little disappointed by that.
Address, 34 Sydney Street, Longhampton.
Ooh, down by the river. They weren’t big houses but they had pretty gardens, and they’d gone dead expensive in the last few years . . .
Date of birth, 31 May, 1950.
‘Wow!’ she said aloud, causing Sue to stop piling up her new consignment of used thrillers on the books table.
‘Everything OK, Lauren?’ she asked, a John Grisham poised in her hand.
‘Oh, er, fine, yes.’
Fifty-seven! Lauren didn’t think Angelica looked anything like as old as that. She was only three years younger than her own mother, and much as Lauren loved her mum, she definitely didn’t look anywhere near as polished and youthful as Angelica.
Angela.
No, Angelica, Lauren decided. She wasn’t an Angela.
It wasn’t that she meant to carry on nosing, but there was something about Angelica’s rather dramatic manner in class that made her more curious than usual to peek beneath. Hadn’t her mum said she was famous, or something? Lauren’s eyes travelled through the check-ups and antibiotics, deciphering the doctors’ scrawl easily now after so much practice, looking for . . . well, she wasn’t sure what she was looking for.
‘Oh dear,’ said Lauren aloud, seeing a repeat prescription for the strongest painkillers and some note about knee cartilage problems.
It seemed that Angelica had moved to Sydney Street a few months ago, and her records had been transferred from a posh private surgery in Islington. That made sense, she thought, picturing Angelica swishing along a smart London street, big sunglasses on, takeaway coffee in hand. But before that, she had a couple of addresses right there in Longhampton, and her place of birth was down as the local hospital, when it was still St Mary’s!
Well, thought Lauren, sitting with a thump on the nearest chair. Mum was right. She is local. I wonder why she came back?
Lauren’s own version of the Angelica Andrews story began to unfold in glorious daytime-TV-scope as she stared out of the window and watched the 8.50 bus drop a load of pensioners off at the flat-roofed library opposite. A lost love, maybe. A boy she’d pined for while she was at school, and lost touch with when her dancing career whisked her away to the bright lights of a big city. She probably had to choose between them, Lauren decided: career or the love of her life. And now she was back, older and wiser, no longer Angie, but Angelica, arranging classes in the hope that he might walk in and sweep her off her feet . . .
The intercom buzzed from the nurses’ rooms, and Nurse Jones’s Brummie voice sliced through the soft background strings of her imagination. ‘Lauren? Any sign of that tea?’
Lauren put the files back into Dr Carthy’s basket. ‘On my way,’ she said, as Sue mimed a sarcastic Hitler moustache under her nose and opened the front door for the first pre-work walk-ins.
Angelica arrived for her appointment at ten to ten. Lauren watched through the big glass window as she walked along the street, her toes neatly pointed, back straight, but her head was bowed and she seemed preoccupied. So much that when Mr Watters, leaving after his blood-pressure check, opened the door so she could walk in first, Angelica almost forgot to thank him.
Lauren’s curiosity turned a few degrees towards concern at the sight of Angelica’s tired expression.
‘Hello, Angelica,’ she said, with a sunny smile.
It was a bit odd, seeing her in the surgery, out of her usual memorial-hall setting, a bit like seeing someone from a soap opera in the supermarket. She seemed more coloured-in than everyone else around her: her black hair was just as glossy and slicked back as it was for class, and though she wasn’t wearing her full-on dancing ensemble, her clothes were chic and sort of French-looking – a creamy cashmere jumper under her red swing coat, and a neat wool skirt.
The sort of thing you’d wear for a posh lunch in London, imagined Lauren, then mentally slapped herself.
Angelica blinked in surprise to see Lauren there. But she quickly recovered, and returned Lauren’s smile.
‘Hello!’ she said. ‘How’s that foxtrot coming along?’
‘Oh, not bad.’
‘Are you practising?’
‘Er . . .’ Lauren was very bad at lying.
Angelica wagged a finger. ‘It only comes with practice. You just need to know the steps so you don’t have to think about them. Like driving!’
‘That’s what my dad says,’ said Lauren, glumly. ‘But he’s had forty years to learn. He and my mum can even do that complicated foxtrot. They were showing me the other night.’
‘Oh, really?’ said Angelica. ‘We must get them to demonstrate.’
Kathleen sailed past behind them and snorted out loud. ‘Lauren? Foxtrot? I don’t think so. Cowtrot, more like. Eh? Eh? Sue? Our Big Bird, dancing?’
Sue said something Lauren didn’t catch, but it ended in ‘
. . . bless her heart’, and sent Kathleen into cackles.
‘Actually, Lauren’s one of the best in the class,’ said Angelica, as Lauren winced.
But Kathleen was cackling her way back to the dispensary.
‘You’re coming along very well,’ said Angelica, holding Lauren’s gaze with her own bright blue eyes, until Lauren felt an odd sense of belief that she was. ‘You’ve got a lovely line. Comes with being tall. We’ll have you swirling around that reception like Cinderella, just you wait.’
‘Sleeping Beauty,’ said Lauren, automatically, but now transfixed by a vision of herself and Chris, waltzing around in stardust.
‘Whatever you want,’ beamed Angelica, and Lauren wondered if this was what it felt like at those evangelical prayer meeting things, where they convinced you that you didn’t need your wheelchair. ‘When that music starts, you’re going to look like any princess you name.’
Lauren sighed happily, then had a more realistic thought of Chris and his two left feet, and sighed again less happily.
She shook herself. Angelica wasn’t there to talk about her dancing. In fact, what was she there for? There were no notes on the computer about what she’d made the appointment for.
Lauren, she told herself, in her mother’s stern voice, don’t be such a nose.
She adopted the friendly but professional expression they were all meant to show to patients, and waved a hand towards the chairs. ‘Do you want to take a seat? Dr Carthy’s running a little late.’
‘Thank you,’ said Angelica.
It was a busy morning, with two patients over-running their appointments with ‘oh, while I’m here’ queries, which meant everyone else was made late, and Lauren had her work cut out keeping the waiting room from boiling over into full-on mutiny. She was helping one of the regular old dears choose a new thriller off the book stall when Angelica swept out in a mist of perfume, and for the rest of the morning, Lauren was too rushed off her feet to wonder any more about why she’d been in.