‘Are you okay?’ he asked, and Victoria was about to nod and say she was fine but changed her mind and gave a small shrug.
‘I’m just a bit flat.’
She offered no more than that.
‘Has a patient upset you?’
She frowned at the very suggestion and turned to look at him.
‘Penny?’ he checked, because he had found out this evening that the little girl had wormed her way into a lot of the staff’s hearts here at Paddington’s. But Victoria shook her head.
‘I don’t get upset over patients and certainly not over a routine transfer. If I did, then I’d really be in the wrong job!’
‘And I doubt it was me that upset you,’ he said, and she gave a little laugh.
‘No, you I can handle.’
And then Victoria was glad that it was dark because she had started to blush at her own innuendo, even though she hadn’t meant it in that way. And so, to swiftly move on from that, she offered more information as to her mood. ‘If you must know it’s this place that I’m upset about. I can’t believe it might be knocked down or turned into apartments. I was practically raised here.’
‘You were sick as a child?’
‘No! My father worked here in A&E and he used to bring me in with him. Sometimes I’d sneak up here.’ She didn’t add just how often it had happened. How her childhood had been spent being half-watched by whatever nurse, domestic, secretary, receptionist or whoever was available.
And she certainly didn’t mention her mother.
Victoria did all she could never to think, let alone discuss, the woman who had simply upped and walked away.
‘My father now works at Riverside—Professor Christie.’
She turned and saw the raise of his eyes.
It wasn’t an impressed raise.
Dominic had spoken to him on occasion and knew that Professor Christie wasn’t the most pleasant of people.
‘He’s crabby too,’ Victoria said.
And Dominic decided to make one thing very clear. ‘At the risk of causing offence, I might be crabby, Victoria, but I’m not cold to the bone.’
Dominic did not cause offence. It was, in fact, rather a relief to hear it voiced as, given her father’s status, people tended to praise him rather than criticise, and that had been terribly confusing to a younger Victoria.
It still confused her even now.
She had stood at the award ceremony yesterday hearing all the marvellous things being said about him. Afterwards, at the reception, more praise had been heaped.
The emperor had really had on no clothes, though there was not a person brave enough to voice it.
Until now.
‘Well,’ Victoria said, ‘I saw him yesterday and he seems to think the merge is going to go ahead.’
Dominic nodded; he had heard the same. ‘It’s a shame.’
‘It’s more than a shame,’ Victoria said, and for the first time he heard the sound of her voice when upset—even when they had argued she had remained calm. ‘This place is more than just a facility,’ Victoria insisted. ‘Families feel safe when they know their children are here. It can’t just close.’
‘Do something about it, then.’
‘Me?’
She looked down at the protestors and wondered if she should join them. But in her heart, Victoria knew it wasn’t enough and that more needed to be done.
‘If you care so much,’ Dominic said, ‘then fight for what matters to you.’
It did matter to her, Victoria thought.
Paddington’s really mattered.
And it was nice to be up here and not alone with her thoughts, but rather to be sharing them with him.
‘How did you find this room?’ Victoria asked again.
He still hadn’t told her, and now when he did it came as a surprise.
‘I saw you sneak behind the shelves a couple of months ago and I wondered where you’d gone. When I got a chance I went and had a look for myself.’
‘You can’t have seen me.’ Victoria shook her head at the impossibility of his explanation. ‘I always make sure that no one does. Anyway, I’d have known if you were around...’ And she halted, because that was admitting that any time she was at this hospital she was aware of where he was.
‘I was in the waiting room talking to a parent,’ he said. ‘I saw you through the glass...’
‘I guess I stand out in those green overalls.’
‘I don’t think it’s the green overalls, Victoria.’
She gave a soft laugh.
She was dressed in black now after all.
Yet he was confirming that he noticed her too.
‘Did you see me come up tonight?’ Victoria asked.
‘No. I just wanted some space. I thought you were finished for the night.’
‘I am. I was supposed to be going out,’ Victoria said, explaining the reason for heels and things. ‘But I cancelled.’
And now he thought he knew the real reason she was sad.
‘Have you just broken up with someone?’
‘I don’t think you can really call it a break-up if you cancel a second date.’
No, she wasn’t sad about that; Dominic could tell from her dismissive shrug. It would seem it really was just the building.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’m sure he’s very disappointed.’
And then he went to retract that because it came out wrong, as if he was alluding to how stunning she looked.
‘What I meant was that—’
He stopped; whatever way he said it would sound like flirting, and he was avoiding all that.
‘I think I’ve done us both a favour,’ Victoria said. ‘He didn’t seem to understand the concept of shift work. So,’ she asked, ‘if it wasn’t me, then what brought you up here?’ She wanted to know more about those difficult days he had alluded to.
‘I’m in the middle of something right now...’ Dominic said. ‘Well, not in the middle—I’ve taken myself out of the equation. I’m staying back from getting involved with anyone.’
‘Good,’ Victoria said, ‘because I don’t like to get involved with anyone at work.’
Yet here they were and the tension that had been in the annexe wrapped and slivered around them.
‘Are you married?’ she asked.
It was a very specific question and the answer was important to Victoria, because the cold air had turned warm.
‘No.’
‘Seeing someone?’
‘Of course not,’ Dominic said, or he would not be doing this—and his hand moved to her cheek. ‘You got your earring back.’
‘They were a gift from my father.’
‘That’s nice,’ Dominic said.
‘Not really, it was just a duty gift when I turned eighteen. Had he bothered to get to know me, then he’d have known that I don’t like diamonds.’
‘Why