A Life-Saving Reunion Read online

  ‘We’ve got three television crews coming,’ the secretary added. ‘We’re going international, apparently.’ She fanned her face. ‘This is all getting so much bigger than we ever thought it would.’

  ‘Okay.’ Janice’s deep breath was audible. ‘Let’s get on with everything on the agenda. We’ve got a lot to get through. Has the bouncy castle been booked?’

  ‘Yes. It’s huge. And it’s got turrets and everything. I’ve got a picture here...’

  ‘Oh, it’s perfect,’ someone said. ‘And how appropriate, given that Paddington’s nickname is “the Castle”?’

  An old redbrick Victorian building, Paddington Children’s Hospital did indeed have its own turrets—the largest of which was a distinctive slate-roofed dome that loomed above the reception area of the main entrance.

  ‘What’s more important is to decide where it’s going to go. I’m not sure the layout worked as well as it could last year and we’ve got so many extra things this time. The zoo has offered to organise and run pony rides.’ Janice looked around the table. ‘I know the London Zoo is one of our biggest sponsors and that’s why we go over the road to Primrose Hill but is it going to be big enough? Do we need to consider a shift to part of Regent’s Park?’

  ‘I’m going to go there this evening,’ Rebecca told them. ‘I’ll take the draft plan for the layout with me and walk it out but I think it’ll be fine. We had tons of extra space last year and it was lovely to be on top of the hill and see everything that was going on. Some of the photos were fabulous, weren’t they?’

  She caught her lip between her teeth, her thoughts wandering again as the other committee members reminisced about last year’s success. Should she have told Thomas the reason she was planning that walk in the park after work today?

  No. If he’d known it had anything to do with the children and families of both donors and recipients of transplanted organs, he would have run a mile.

  They really needed to talk if they were going to be able to work together and he didn’t need to know the real reason she was there, did he? It was summer and the evenings were long. She could always stay later than him and sit on the top of the hill with the plan in her hands and make any notes she needed for changes.

  It was important that they spent this time together. Before things got any more difficult between them.

  And she was looking forward to it. Kind of. In a purely professional sense, of course. She’d feel better when she’d had the chance to apologise for that verbal attack. Thomas hadn’t deserved that. She knew he was doing his best in the only way he knew how. That he had probably been doing that all along. It was just so sad that he couldn’t see that he’d chosen such a wrong path.

  That he, above everybody else, was suffering more because of it.

  In retrospect, however, there was another reason why inviting Thomas to share this walk might have been a bad idea. It hadn’t occurred to her at the time that a walk up Primrose Hill was an echo of their very first date.

  Maybe he wouldn’t remember. It wouldn’t matter if he did. Just breathing the same air as Thomas was an echo of so very many things and, somehow, they had to find a way to deal with that.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE WARMTH OF the summer’s evening did not seem to be doing much to thaw the chill that surrounded Thomas and Rebecca like an air-conditioned bubble.

  The virtual silence for the brisk walk to Regent’s Park had been largely disguised by the sounds of the busy city streets but it became increasingly obvious as they followed a path into the vast stretch of green space.

  ‘Thanks for agreeing to come,’ Rebecca offered, finally.

  ‘As you said, we need to find a way we can work together. Without letting our personal baggage interfere in any way with patient care.’

  It sounded as though Thomas had rehearsed that little speech. Maybe it had been something he’d said to himself more than once today. Because he’d been arguing with himself about whether or not he could bear to spend any time with her?

  Rebecca took a deep breath and did her best not to let it out as a sigh. He was here, walking beside her, so that was a good start. Maybe it was too soon to open the can of worms that was their ‘personal baggage.’ If Thomas could actually relax a fraction, it could make this a whole lot easier. And who wouldn’t relax on a walk like this?

  The boat lake beside them was a popular place to be on such a warm, sunny evening. It was crowded with boats—classic wooden rowing boats and the bright blue and yellow paddle boats. The grassy banks were dotted with the rugs and folding chairs of groups of families and friends who were preparing for a picnic meal. There were dogs chasing balls and children playing games on the shore of the lake.

  And there were ducks.

  Of course there were ducks. How many times had she and Thomas come here with Gwen on those precious days when she wasn’t with her caregiver or at nursery school? They’d started bringing her here to feed the ducks way before she was old enough to walk or throw a crust of bread.

  Not that she was about to remind Thomas of those times. Or admit that she still automatically put crusts of bread into a bag in the freezer until it was so full it would remind her that she never had the time or motivation to feed ducks any more. No one seeing them would ever guess at the kind of shared history they had. They would see the tall man with his briefcase in his hand and his companion with the strap of her laptop case over her shoulder and assume that they were work colleagues who happened to be sharing a walk home at the end of their day.

  Exactly the space they were in, thanks to the boundaries that had been put firmly in place from the moment Thomas had set foot in Paddington’s again.

  Except that Thomas was smiling. Almost. He had his hand up to shield his eyes as he took in the scene of the boating activity on the lake and his lips were definitely not in a straight line.

  His breath came out in an audible huff that could have been suppressed laughter.

  ‘Nobody’s swimming today,’ he murmured.

  It wasn’t a lake that anybody swam in. Unless they were unfortunate enough to fall out of a boat, of course.

  Like she had that day...

  Good grief. She had deliberately avoided opening that can of worms labelled ‘shared memories’ but Thomas hadn’t even hesitated.

  Okay, it was funny in retrospect but it hadn’t been at the time. Thomas had been inspired by the romantic image of a date that involved rowing his girlfriend around a pretty lake and Rebecca had been dressed for the occasion in a floaty summer dress and a wide-brimmed straw sunhat.

  It had been a gloriously sunny day but there’d been a decent breeze. Enough to catch her hat and send it sailing away to float on the water. Thomas had done his best to row close enough for her to lean out of the boat and retrieve the hat but he hadn’t been quite close enough. And she’d leaned just a little too far.

  The water had been shallow enough to stand up in but she’d been completely soaked and the filmy dress had been clinging to her body and transparent enough to make her underwear obvious. The shock of the dunking had given way to helpless laughter and then to something very different when she’d seen the look in Thomas’s eyes. Getting out of those wet clothes and into a hot bath hadn’t been the real reason they couldn’t get home fast enough.

  And now, with Thomas pulling that memory out to share, Rebecca had the sensation that shutters had been lifted. There was a glint in his eyes that made her feel as if she’d stepped back in time.

  As if everything they’d had together was still there—just waiting to have life breathed into it again.

  It was the last thing Rebecca had expected to feel. It was too much. It wasn’t what she wanted. She didn’t want to go anywhere near that kind of space in her head or her heart and that made it...what...terrifying?

  She had to break that eye contact. To push that memory back where it belonged—firmly in the past.

  ‘Nobody sensible would,’ she heard herself saying. ‘But we all make mistakes, don’t we?’

  She hadn’t looked away fast enough to miss the way that glint in his eyes got extinguished and her words hung in the air as they walked on, taking on a whole new meaning. That the mistake that had been made encompassed their whole relationship?

  The soft evening air began to feel increasingly thick with the growing tension. This was her fault, Rebecca realised. She’d had the opportunity to break the ice and make things far more comfortable between them and she’d ruined it because she’d backed off so decisively. Maybe it was up to her to find another way to defuse the tension. At least she was no stranger to tackling difficult subjects with her patients and their families.

  She had learned it was best to start in a safe place and not to jump in the deep end as Thomas had—perhaps—inadvertently done.

  ‘I did that consult you requested on your new patient this afternoon. Tegan Mitchell? The thirteen-year-old with aortic stenosis?’

  ‘Ah...good.’ There was a note of relief in his voice as he responded to stepping onto safe, professional ground. ‘What did you think?’

  ‘Classic presentation. Even my junior house surgeon could hear the ejection click after the first heart sound and the ejection murmur. It was the first time she’d come across an example of how the murmur increases with squatting and decreases with standing. She’s got some impressive oedema in her legs and feet, too.’ Rebecca’s lips curled into a small smile as she glanced up at Thomas. ‘Tegan, that is, not my house surgeon—her legs are fine.’

  Thomas didn’t smile at her tongue-in-cheek clarification. ‘I’ve g
ot Tegan booked for an echo tomorrow morning. We’ve started medication to get her heart failure under control but I think she’s a good candidate for valve replacement surgery, yes?’

  That tension hadn’t been defused enough to allow for a joke, obviously. Rebecca nodded. ‘Absolutely.’

  He didn’t see her nod because he had turned his head as the path forked.

  ‘Do you want to go through Queen Mary’s Garden?’

  ‘Why not? It’ll be gorgeous with the roses in full bloom.’

  Thomas took the lead through the ornate gates and chose a path between gardens with immaculately trimmed hedges surrounding waves of colour. Rebecca inhaled the heady scent of old-fashioned roses but Thomas didn’t seem at all distracted by the beauty around them.

  ‘How’s your theatre list looking for later this week?’

  ‘Not too bad but it can always go pear-shaped at a moment’s notice if a transplant organ becomes available—especially if I have to fly somewhere for the retrieval. I’ve got two cystic fibrosis kids on the ward now who are desperate for new lungs and I can get called in for other cases, too. I started my transplant training with kidneys and livers, way back. I still love helping with those surgeries when I’m needed.’

  ‘Way back? Five years isn’t so long ago.’

  ‘Mmm.’ The sound was neutral. Five years could seem like for ever, couldn’t it?

  As if to push her thoughts where they probably shouldn’t really go, a young couple passed them on the wide path. The woman was pushing an empty stroller. The man had a safe grip on the legs of the small child on his shoulders who was happily keeping his balance with fistfuls of his father’s hair.

  Five years ago she and Thomas would have looked more like this couple than a pair of colleagues. They had been happily married with an adorable three-year-old daughter. They were both juggling careers and parenthood and thriving on their lifestyle even though it frequently bordered on chaotic.

  They hadn’t intended to have a child so soon, of course, but the surprise of her pregnancy when Rebecca was studying for her finals in medical school had quickly morphed into joy. It had been meant to happen—just like they’d been meant to meet and fall in love so completely. They’d announced the pregnancy to the gathering of friends and family who’d come together to celebrate their low-key wedding and brushed off any concerns about how they would manage those busy early years of hospital training with a baby in their lives.

  ‘We’ll cope,’ they had both repeated with absolute confidence. ‘We’ve got each other.’

  And they had coped. They had known exactly what specialties they had set their hearts on and Rebecca was chasing her dream of being a cardiothoracic surgeon with as much passion as Thomas put into his postgraduate studies in paediatric cardiology. The firsthand experience of being parents only confirmed what they also already knew—that they were destined to always work with children.

  So yes, right now, five years was a lifetime ago. And it had been a long time since Thomas had turned his back on the specialty he’d worked so hard to get into.

  ‘How are you finding being back at Paddington’s?’ she heard herself asking.

  The look she received was almost bewildered.

  ‘I mean, working with children again,’ she added hurriedly. ‘It must be very different to what you were doing up north...’ Oh, help! This wasn’t exactly staying on safe ground to get a conversation going, was it?

  ‘It was...a big change...’ It sounded as though Thomas was treading carefully—unsure of how much he wanted to say. ‘I knew it wasn’t going to be easy...’

  Wow.

  The step he’d voluntarily taken onto personal ground was as unexpected as him referring, however obliquely, to that date when she’d fallen out of the boat. Rebecca had no idea what to say in response. Should she offer sympathy which might immediately lead the conversation into the reasons why it hadn’t been easy? To tell him how hard it had been for her, too—to be around children in those grief-stricken months after losing Gwen?

  Even now, it could stir the threat of tears that had always been barely below the surface of her existence back then. How often did she have to fight for control? Whenever she heard the cry of a child and the soothing sound of a mother offering comfort. Or she saw the smile of a toddler or heard the delicious sound of a baby giggling. And the hardest thing of all was when she was holding one of her tiny patients herself. Or when a small child held their arms up, expecting the cuddle she would never refuse.

  No. She wasn’t ready to talk about that. And it would be the last thing Thomas would want to hear about. He had only agreed to this time together in order to clear the air enough for them to be able to work together. Perhaps what was really needed was a way to put more effective boundaries around the past so that they could both move on with their lives.

  ‘No,’ she finally said quietly. ‘But everybody’s delighted that you’ve come back.’

  There was a moment’s silence. Was he wondering if she was including herself in that ‘everybody’?

  ‘And you’re here at such an important time for Paddington’s,’ Rebecca added quickly. ‘You arrived right at the point where we all thought it was the end and then, thanks to the huge drama of that fire at Westbourne Grove Primary School, the media got on board and things started to turn around.’

  ‘Yeah... I did think I might be accepting a permanent job at a hospital that wasn’t going to be around much longer. Seemed a bit crazy at the time.’

  ‘But now it looks like it’s going to be all right. I know it’s not really official yet but it sounds like it’s going to be signed and sealed any day now. Are you going to the party at the Frog and Peach on Friday?’

  Thomas shrugged. ‘I’ll have to see how the day goes.’

  ‘Me, too. I often seem to be pretty late getting away once I’ve caught up on paperwork and things.’

  ‘Same.’

  Did they both work such long hours because there was nothing to make them rush home? Rebecca hadn’t heard the slightest whisper of gossip that there might be someone else in Thomas’s life now. She didn’t even know where he was living, in fact.

  ‘I hope this isn’t taking you too far out of your way,’ she said politely. ‘Or keeping you from something you’d rather be doing on a nice summer’s evening.’

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ Thomas said. ‘And it’s not far to get home. I’ve got an apartment in South Hampstead.’ He cleared his throat. ‘And you? You still in Primrose Hill?’

  ‘Mmm.’ It was another tricky subject. Buying the basement flat in such a good area had been a huge step in their lives together and they couldn’t have done it without the windfall of the legacy from Rebecca’s grandfather. Thomas had refused to accept any of that money in the divorce settlement so he’d walked away with almost nothing.

  ‘Keep it,’ he’d said. ‘Keep everything. I don’t want any reminders.’

  Which reminders had been on the top of that list?

  The night they’d taken possession and had a picnic on the bare floor of the living area with fish and chips and a bottle of champagne? Had either of them even noticed the discomfort of the wooden boards when they’d made love as the final celebration of getting the keys to their first home?

  They’d decided later that that had been the night Gwen had been conceived and that had been as perfect as everything else in their charmed existence.

  A sideways glance gave her a moment of eye contact with Thomas and she saw the flash of surprise in his face. Oh, help! Had he seen what she’d been thinking about just then? The way she’d known he’d been remembering how she’d looked with that dress plastered so revealingly to her body after her dunking in the lake?

  It was too easy to read too much into those glances. There were too many memories. And yes, some of them were the best moments of her life but they had been buried under far more overwhelming ones.

  Maybe the biggest reminders of sharing that house were the ones that included Gwen after her birth? Walking round and round that small space, trying to persuade their tiny human to go to sleep. A floor that was an obstacle course because it was covered with toys. The sound of a little girl’s laughter that echoed between the polished floorboards and the high ceilings...