That damn tree had better not fall any further, he thought, and, craning his neck, he saw Joe shifting logs, making a pile under the trunk so it couldn’t roll any further and couldn’t sag any more.
Or that was the theory, but it was so heavy it could probably shift the logs quite easily.
Then he heard a fire engine lumbering down the track, felt the ground tremble under the weight of it, and the tree shifted again. Just a fraction, but enough to make him swear and eye the pile of logs nervously. Would they hold?
‘We need to clear these branches to get the airbags under it,’ someone said, and he could hear people running, and then the sound of the saw, then the weight shifted again and he groaned as pain shafted up his leg.
‘Stop! It’s moving on him. He needs pain relief—where are the paramedics?’ That was Ben.
‘There’s been a big pile-up. All the ambulances are out. They’re having to send one from Plymouth. It’ll be another twenty minutes, and I don’t think we’re going to be able to use the airbags. There isn’t enough room to get them underneath without cutting off the branches, and they’re supporting it. We need to get heavy-lifting gear and it’ll take a while—it’s at the pile-up too.’
Great. Sweat dribbled down his face and into a graze, stinging it. He turned his cheek against his sleeve to wipe it away and caught Ben’s troubled eyes. He smiled reassuringly but for some reason it didn’t work. Nothing to do with the tons of timber hovering over his body just waiting to crash the rest of the way down and kill him…
‘Right. I’ll get Nick.’
Mike heard Ben key in a number, then heard rapid instructions, and a hand came back on his shoulder. ‘Nick’s going to bring some drugs.’
‘Excellent,’ he mumbled. ‘I love drugs. Drugs are good.’ The tree creaked again, and he bit down on his hand and gave a grunt of pain as the fire crew started to shift whatever they could to prop the broken trunk.
‘Fran, come on in, have a seat,’ Kate said, her smile welcoming, and Fran sat down at the desk, her fingers knotted tightly together in her lap.
‘Are you OK?’
She consciously relaxed her hands and smiled back. ‘Fine. So—tell me about this diet.’
‘I’ve got the details here for you.’ Kate straightened up and reached for a sheet of paper, sliding it across the desk towards her. ‘It’s very simple—suggestions, really, for how to include certain things, trace elements and so on which, although probably present in your diet, might not be there in sufficient quantity.’
‘Things?’
‘Zinc, selenium, folic acid, vitamin C. You need Brazil nuts and shitake mushrooms and oysters—not together, obviously,’ she said with a chuckle, and Fran smiled with relief.
‘I wondered how I was going to work them in!’ she said.
‘Well, oysters are out of season at the moment, you’ll have to wait until the end of October if you want local ones, but the mushrooms and Brazil nuts you can get any time. And fruit smoothies. Fruit and veg smoothies—do you eat a lot of fruit and veg?’
‘I do. Mike’s usually crunching an apple and he eats what I give him but he’s not over-fond of salads so he tends to eat cooked veg. He drinks apple juice sometimes—does that count?’
‘Not really, but it makes an excellent base for the smoothies, so make him smoothies with apple juice instead of giving him coffee—it’s hot now, so you’ve got the perfect excuse. And you should both be avoiding having a high caffeine intake as well. It’s been related to delayed conception, so avoid coffee if you can, and also colas, dark chocolate and black tea—that’s not tea without milk, by the way, but any tea that isn’t green, white, fruit or herbal. Oh, and cut out alcohol. It can reduce a man’s sperm count by half.’
‘Good grief. I don’t mind that but I think he’ll kill me if he can’t have tea or coffee! Apart from the odd glass of wine and the occasional apple juice, that’s all he drinks!’
‘He’ll love the smoothies. You can use the veg ones as chilled soups—lovely in the summer. And they’ll do you good as well—boost your vitamin levels. If they help sperm production, they might have a beneficial effect on your ovaries, too. Just try, Fran. If it does nothing else, it’ll improve your general health and make you feel much better. In fact, it’ll do you a power of good to eat something nutritious. You’ve lost too much weight recently, and being underweight can harm your chances of conception—did you know that?’
She shook her head, wondering why they were having this conversation when Mike clearly didn’t even want to spend one night—one miserable, solitary little night!—alone with her, without the dog or his daughter or the endless bloody paperwork to hide behind.
‘Encourage him to take cool showers and not hot baths—does he have baths?’ Kate went on.
‘Sometimes—if he’s been doing something very strenuous and he’s aching. Usually he showers.’
‘What about underpants? Does he wear loose boxers or tight briefs? Because if they’re too tight, the testicles can overheat and that can affect the sperm count as well. The whole design of the scrotum is to allow the testicles to be at a slightly lower temperature, but because we wear clothes and bundle them up nice and tight, they cook a bit. Of course, going commando is the best answer, but I can imagine he might object if you steal all his underwear.’
Fran chuckled. ‘I’ll just steal the tight stuff and tell him it was worn out. To be honest, as long as there’s something in the drawer I don’t think he’d care what it was. I can tell him I had a crisis with the washing machine or the dog ate it or something.’
Or she could just tell him the truth, but the whole thing was irrelevant at the moment. She was hardly going to get pregnant if they didn’t—
‘You need to eat lots of dairy, too,’ Kate was saying, ‘but be careful with the soft cheese and unpasteurised milk products if there’s the slightest possibility you might be pregnant.’
A humourless little huff of laughter escaped from Fran’s mouth. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing.’
Kate clicked her tongue sympathetically. ‘Did you broach the subject of going away?’ she asked gently.
Fran laughed again, but it was just as bad as the last one and utterly unconvincing. She swallowed hard. ‘He’s—He hasn’t got time.’
‘Is that true?’
‘Probably, but if he wanted to, he’d make time—wouldn’t he?’
Kate smiled. ‘Don’t ask me. Men are a mystery.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Fran murmured.
‘So do something romantic at home. Cook a nice meal, put something pretty on…’
‘He’ll think I’ve run up a credit card,’ she said dryly, and then felt saddened that they’d come so far down the line that they’d come to this, her talking about her marriage to a woman she hardly knew, trying to gain insight into her husband’s behaviour. Not to mention her own…
‘Kate, sorry—Ah. Fran. I’m glad you’re here,’ Nick said, his face troubled. ‘Um, I’ve had a call from Ben. Mike’s got a bit of a problem. He was apparently cutting down a tree—’
‘What?’ The word came out soundlessly from lips suddenly numb. She felt the colour drain from her face, her limbs curiously heavy and her heart lumping with dread. She lifted a hand to her mouth. ‘Not the chainsaw…’
‘No—no,