He gave her a grimace. ‘I don’t know who picked up the letter originally, but it might be that it slipped from a pile on the hall table and somehow became wedged between the table and the wall. I caught a glimpse of the corner of the envelope. The postmark is a few days old, so I hope it wasn’t anything important.’
He handed her the envelope and she stared down at the black, handwritten address and winced. The writing style was familiar enough. She would recognise her sister Alison’s neat lettering anywhere, but why would she write and not phone? There was an overseas postmark, and that could only mean that there had been some kind of setback to her plans and she wasn’t able to come back to the UK as planned.
She released a faint sigh. All her plans for a joyful reunion were falling apart. This day was getting worse with every moment that passed, and on top of that her new neighbour must be thinking that she was careless and irresponsible along with everything else.
‘Thanks again,’ she murmured, sending the man a quick glance. ‘I do appreciate the trouble you’ve taken.’
‘You’re very welcome.’ He frowned. ‘Though I take it from your expression that it’s not likely to be good news in there?’
She gave a reluctant smile. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t shoot the messenger. All in all, it’s been a bad day for me, but things can only get better, can’t they?’
‘Let’s hope so.’ He made as though to move away from her, but in that instant a crashing sound erupted from inside the flat, followed by a loud scream.
He turned around to face her once more, his expression rueful. ‘I think perhaps you might have spoken too soon,’ he murmured.
Rebecca felt her heart sink. ‘Oh, dear. I’d better go and see what’s going on in there. Thanks again for passing on the message.’
She turned away from him and pushed open the door to the flat, standing in the doorway and scanning the room briefly. It was clear at a glance what had happened.
The heavy, glass-fronted display cabinet had fallen over, probably aided by some drunken partygoer stumbling about, and she could see that some of the contents, once beautiful glassware and delicate ornaments, were scattered in fragments about the floor.
Far worse than that, though, a man’s arm was sticking out from underneath the cabinet, and a pool of his blood was slowly seeping across the carpet. People were standing about, some in shock, some confused and most the worse for wear through drink.
‘Help me get the cabinet off him,’ she said in an urgent tone, rushing over to where the man lay and directing her words at her friends. ‘Angie, can you grab one end? Connie, will you go around the other side?’
Angie’s new flatmate hurried to position herself at a point where she could assist. ‘It’s too heavy,’ Connie said. ‘We’re not going to be able to do this on our own.’
‘You girls get ready to pull him out from underneath.’ Craig’s voice cut into their conversation, his tone clipped and decisive, and Rebecca stared up at him in shock. He must have followed her into the room. ‘I’ll ease it up from him. Just watch out for falling glass.’
‘Perhaps we should find something that we can wedge in between him and the glass doors when you lift it?’ Angie’s expression was stricken. ‘He’s already badly cut, from the look of things. Wait just a second while I go and grab something from the kitchen.’
She hurried away and came back just a moment or two later, armed with a couple of large trays. ‘I’ll try to slide these over him as you move him out of the way.’
Rebecca nodded, and glanced at Connie. ‘We need to keep his head and neck as steady as possible while we drag him out from underneath.’ She looked around for more volunteers,and a trio of men came forward. One of them went to help with the cabinet.
‘Are you ready?’ Craig asked. ‘Is everyone in position?’
‘We’re ready.’ Rebecca signalled to the others, and in a team effort they pulled the young man clear of the cabinet while Craig and his helper stood it back on its feet.
‘He’s losing an awful lot of blood,’ Angie said. ‘There are cuts to his arm and wrist. He’ll need to go to hospital.’
Rebecca nodded. ‘There’s a puncture wound to a main blood vessel. Ring for an ambulance while I try to stop the bleeding, will you?’
‘I’ve already called emergency services,’ Craig said. ‘Do you have anything you can use as a pressure pad?’
‘Yes, in the first-aid bag.’ She was already applying pressure to the injured area with her fingers, but now she looked up at Connie. ‘The bag’s in the hallway in the cupboard under the stairs. Would you go and fetch it for me?’
Connie nodded and shot off towards the hallway, while Rebecca and Angie did what they could to reassure the young man.
‘Can you hear me, James?’ Rebecca queried gently, recognizing the young medical student. ‘Do you know what happened to you?’
James mumbled a reply and Rebecca guessed that a combination of alcohol and blood loss was causing him difficulty in responding. She said in a soothing voice, ‘I want you to lie still while I try to control the bleeding. I’m going to raise your arm for a while to slow things down a bit, and then I’m going to bind a pressure pad in place on your arm. We need to get you to hospital so that your cuts can be stitched.’
By the time the paramedics arrived, she had things more or less under control. She made James as comfortable as possible and watched over his transfer to the ambulance, and it was only when the vehicle had moved off along the road that she made her way back inside the building.
She expected to find chaos still reigning, but most of the revellers were winding down and making ready to leave. Angie and Connie were making inroads on the clearing-up, and Craig was seeing to it that the remaining guests found safe transport home.
‘I’ll give you a hand in a minute or two,’ she said to the girls. ‘I just need to freshen up first.’
Rebecca went into the bathroom and rinsed her hands under the tap, then pulled a brush through the long swathe of her hair, staring at her reflection in the mirror. She gave a soft sigh. There were faint shadows beneath her eyes and her skin had a pale, translucent gleam. Would this day ever end? Her aunt was ill, her sister was still overseas, and her own carefully made travel plans had fallen apart when her little patient at the hospital had been too poorly to be transferred by ambulance to his original hospital. So far, it had turned out to be a kind of postscript to all that was going wrong in her life. None of her dreams had come to fruition in this place.
Her boyfriend, who had persuaded her to come here in the first instance, had cheated on her, and the work that she had believed would be so fulfilling, using her skills as a doctor to tend to desperately ill young patients on the paediatric ward, had brought her torment and sadness along with its rewards.
All in all, she would be glad to be away from here, to leave the hectic rush of the city behind her.
She started to exit the bathroom, pulling open the door, but before she made her way back to the living room she took a moment to lean back against the tiled wall, closing her eyes and pulling in a deep, calming breath. Was there any way this day could disintegrate any further?
‘Are you all right?’
Craig’s deep voice cut into her thoughts, eddying around her, coaxing a response, and she quickly opened her eyes. ‘I’m fine,’ she said.
His gaze was watchful. ‘I thought you handled everything that happened back there really well.’ There was a faint inflection in his voice as he added, ‘You seemed to know what you were doing, and because of you your friend James