Kate was pleased to see that her room was in the end hut, with a view over rolling hills dotted with meadow flowers. As soon as Geoffrey had gone she flung open the window, fanning her hot face with the folder of useful information that had been left on the desk for her. The air smelled of grass and warm earth. Two white butterflies flitted across her line of vision, and swallows were swooping high above her. She sighed with pleasure. OK, so maybe it would mar her enjoyment if she did catch a cold – but it was worth the risk. All her meals cooked for her, long solitary walks, and lots of sleep, unhindered by all-night, Pro-Plus-fuelled study binges? She was going to feel like a new woman by the end of the two weeks.
She turned back and surveyed the room: basic, whitewashed walls, twin beds, two desks, a small TV, transistor radio, bedside cabinets, and a door leading to a tiny bathroom. She hoped her room-mate would be nice. Someone awful would definitely put a damper on things, even more so than a streaming cold. Maybe she’d be lucky and get the room to herself. She unzipped her suitcase, pulled out a fresh t-shirt, removed her washbag and retrieved Buster, her childhood teddy.
Propping Buster up on the pillow of the bed nearest the window, she stripped off her sweaty shirt and flung it into a corner. Then she went into the bathroom, filled the basin with tepid water, and washed her face, neck and armpits with a flannel. She towelled herself off, and was just walking back into the bedroom in her bra when, to her shock, the door opened and an extremely tall and attractive man in a white coat walked in, carrying a medical case and a clipboard.
Kate squealed and covered her breasts with her arms. He didn’t look much older than her, which made it even more embarrassing. ‘Don’t you people knock? Is this what I’ve got to expect – no privacy at all for the next two weeks?’
‘I’m really sorry,’ said the man, blushing to the roots of his hair in a very un-doctorly manner. ‘I did knock, actually. You mustn’t have heard me.’
‘Excuse me a moment,’ she said, trying to sound dignified as she grabbed her clean t-shirt and retreated back into the bathroom.
When she re-emerged, the man had put his bag on one of the desks. He’d obviously regained his composure too, because he was now grinning at her, in a distinctly cheeky way.
‘Let’s start again, shall we? I’m Dr Wilson. I just need to take a few details from you, and a blood sample, if that’s OK.’
‘Kate Carling – although I’m guessing you know that already,’ said Kate, unable to prevent herself grinning back at him. He just had one of those faces which made her want to smile: a lovely curved mouth, great big brown eyes, and the sort of floppy hair which she had adored in Robbie Williams in her teenage years. She became aware that they were staring at each other, holding the gaze for longer than was strictly necessary.
Dr Wilson cleared his throat, and took a ballpoint pen out of the breast pocket of his lab coat. Kate was pleased to notice that he didn’t have a whole row of pens, like most of her fellow biochemists at Oxford had. She glanced down at his feet, and was even more relieved to see trendy Adidas trainers, rather than the green towelling socks and open-toed sandals which she was beginning to fear might be the actual uniform for the profession.
‘Now, if we could just go through this basic health questionnaire . . . Do sit down.’ He pointed towards the edge of the bed, as he turned the chair at the desk around to face her. ‘Have you ever had any of the following: Mumps? Measles? Influenza? Chicken pox? Pneumonia?’
‘No, no, yes, yes, no,’ said Kate obediently, looking at Dr Wilson’s slim hands as he ticked boxes. The list went on and on, until Kate found herself tuning out and answering automatically, whilst unable to take her eyes off him.
‘Any other illnesses so far not mentioned?’
Kate tuned back in. ‘Oh. Yes. When I was twelve, I had the Watoto Virus.’
Dr Wilson sat up. ‘Really? Good grief. That’s rare. I’ve never met anybody else who’s had that. You were lucky to survive.’
‘I know. Apparently it was touch and go for a while. We were living in Africa at the time. My parents both died from it. My sister was the only one who didn’t contract it.’
‘It’s an extremely nasty one, isn’t it?’
Kate managed not to allow her voice to betray the pain she felt whenever she talked about the virus. ‘Yes – the name comes from the Swahili word for children because the first victims were at a school near the River Nile in Kenya.
‘We were in Tanzania. There had been a few outbreaks close to the Nile over the last fifty years: Tanzania, Uganda, Egypt, and Rwanda, I think. My parents had taken me and my sister out of school for a year while they were working in a village for an international aid organisation. We just happened to be there when an epidemic broke out. It killed dozens of people in the village. It was really bad timing.’
Stephen had stopped writing notes. He jiggled his biro between his teeth and regarded her with sympathy and something akin to awe.
‘I’ve read about it. It’s like Ebola, only with airborne transmission?’
Kate shuddered, recalling the symptoms she’d watched her parents suffer, writhing on their camp beds in the hut, right up to the point of haemorrhage.
‘Flu-like to start with, fever, coughing, sneezing – then the bloody vomiting and diarrhoea. Luckily for me, the aid agency airlifted my sister and me across the border to a hospital in Nairobi. Miranda was quarantined and never contracted it, and I managed to survive after a good few weeks on a drip. It’s got an eighty per cent fatality rate, so we were both incredibly lucky.’
Stephen exhaled loudly. ‘You’re an optimist, aren’t you? I would say that you were incredibly unlucky to have got it in the first place.’
‘Wrong time, wrong place, I suppose. Lucky that I didn’t actually watch them die . . .’ Her voice cracked and tailed off, and she looked away, embarrassed.
‘I’m really sorry about your parents,’ he said.
‘Thanks, Doctor,’ she replied awkwardly.
‘Please, call me Stephen.’
‘Really?’ Kate was genuinely surprised. That seemed very informal. Perhaps . . . Oh no, don’t be silly, she told herself. He couldn’t possibly fancy her this immediately, could he? She didn’t believe in love at first sight . . . but he was definitely having a very strange effect on her.
Dr Wilson – Stephen, thought Kate, trying out his name in her head and liking the way it felt – cleared his throat. ‘Well – yes – Stephen’s fine . . . although perhaps not when there are other people around . . . One more question, by the way, I forgot to ask earlier: marital status?’
He met her eyes again, slowly, and Kate’s heart started hammering so hard that she was glad she was already sitting on the edge of the bed. She couldn’t help glancing behind her at its crisp white pillowcase and hospital waffle-weave blanket, and then blushed, in case he realised she was imagining them rolling around on it.
‘Single,’ she said firmly. ‘Definitely . . . single.’
They chatted a little more about Kate’s illness, and Stephen visibly relaxed, becoming more animated and lively. He was gorgeous, Kate thought. Did he talk to all the young, attractive-ish women like this, or was it just her?
Somehow she knew it was just her.
‘Right, let’s get your blood sample, so we can analyse it this afternoon.’
He tied a length of black rubber tubing above her left elbow, gently holding her forearm and peering at the veins that sprang up thick and red. At his touch Kate’s skin broke out in goosepimples.
‘Now, this’ll just be a little prick – uh, I mean, a small scratch.’ Kate swallowed hard and looked over his shoulder, in order to stop a smirk escaping. His hands were shaking very slightly, but nonetheless Kate