Staff Nurse Higgs had miraculously appeared by his side, like the genie from the lamp, and was staring up at him like an eager puppy. There was none of her delayed hearing problem in evidence today—the one which habitually had Kelly repeating her requests—and she sped off immediately to do the surgeon’s bidding.
Kelly continued to clean the wound, her heart racing. She was professional enough not to let him know how much his closeness bothered her, woman enough to be unable to deny the potency of his attraction.
‘Right,’ he murmured. ‘Let’s have some local anaesthetic drawn up, shall we, Staff?’
The voice was the same. Centuries of breeding, the finest schools, the big, country houses, privilege from the word go had guaranteed that Randall would speak with that confident, beautifully modulated English accent, as precise as cut glass. But it differed from the popular conception of the aristocratic voice, because it was deeper, sardonic, mocking—worlds away from the popular idea of the upper-class twit. It was an exquisite voice—smooth as syrup and dark as chocolate, the kind of voice which sent shivers down the spine of every woman from sixteen to ninety.
The wound was almost completely clean, and he had gloved up and was ready to start suturing.
‘Thanks,’ he said softly.
Their eyes met for a fraction of a second, and the impact of it was enough to make Kelly feel as though she had been winded and bruised by an unexpected blow.
‘I’d better go and talk to the mother,’ she said quickly, but he didn’t seem to hear her. He was too busy pushing a fine syringe into the damaged area of the child’s face with delicate precision even to notice Kelly’s departure.
Heart hammering, Kelly picked up the casualty card, rang through to the reception desk, and asked for the mother of Gemma Jenkins to be sent along to the doctor’s office.
She sat down, noticing dispassionately that her hands were actually trembling. She had never thought that she would see Randall ever again, she really hadn’t—or perhaps that had been wishful thinking. But even given the notoriously closely knit world of British medicine, she certainly hadn’t considered that just the merest glimpse of him, just the sound of that seductive mellifluous voice would be enough to shatter her composure and make her feel like the insecure seventeen-year-old she had been when she’d first met him.
She sighed. Nine long years ago. Where had they gone? Nine years of study, study, study and work, work, work.
And she had imagined that she had acquired a little sophistication on the way, had thought that she had become a little more worldly-wise. Was she going to let just the sight of Randall rip away all the complex layers of emotional maturity she had carefully constructed over the years?
Like hell she was!
There was a soft rap on the door, and Kelly instinctively sat upright in her chair, pulling her narrow shoulders back and arranging her features into a neutral expression.
‘Come in!’ she called.
Gemma’s mother had, predictably, brought the boyfriend in, clinging possessively on to his arm, as though he were the first prize in a raffle. He had lurid tattoos over every available inch of flesh and he stank of booze. Kelly swallowed down the feeling of revulsion, determined to remain impartial. She had been taught, over and over again, that emotionally involved doctors who made value judgements were simply not doing their jobs properly.
The mother could have been little more than twenty-two—a woman who looked little more than a girl herself. She’s younger than me, thought Kelly, with a jolt of surprise. And yet there was a grimy greyness to her complexion which told of a life lived inside, in high-rise blocks far away from the fresh air and the sunshine. She wore cheap, ill-fitting clothes. Her legs were pale and bare and she had squeezed her feet into tight, patent shoes, obviously new, though they were spattered with mud. On her heels she wore plasters where the shoes had obviously cut into her flesh. Her blonde hair was full of gel with little bits spiking upwards like a porcupine’s, and already the dark roots were an inch long. Stooping, sad and pathetic, she stared back at Kelly with blank, disillusioned eyes and Kelly cursed a society which could allow the cycle of deprivation which had made this woman into one of life’s losers. And would now probably do the same for her daughter.
She schooled her face into its listening expression. ‘Mrs Jenkins?’ she asked politely.
‘It’s Miss!’ interrupted the man. ‘That bastard didn’t bother marrying her when she had his kid.’
‘And your name is ...?’ prompted Kelly.
‘Alan,’ he swaggered. ‘Alan Landers.’
‘How’s ... how is Gemma?’ the woman asked, her voice a plaintive whine.
At last. ‘The doctor is suturing her face now,’ said Kelly briskly. ‘Given his skill, and the fact that your daughter is young enough to heal, well—we’re hoping for the best, but I have to warn you that she will have a scar, though the surgeon is doing his best to ensure that it will be as small and as neat as possible.’
She took a deep breath. The police would investigate, but the A & E department themselves would need details of what had happened. ‘Just for the record, would you mind telling me how it happened?’
Mr Landers screwed his face up into an ugly and menacing scowl. ‘Stupid kid was winding the dog up. That dog wouldn’t hurt no one.’
Refraining from pointing out the obvious flaw in his logic, Kelly thought that if she had been a man and not a doctor nothing would have given her greater pleasure than to punch this ignorant lout on the nose, but even if she had done, that wouldn’t have been the answer. He had probably grown up fighting violence with violence, and as soon as he was old enough had gone out and bought an aggressive dog as a kind of ferocious status symbol, supposed to demonstrate just how much of a man he was.
Kelly looked directly at the man. ‘Did you witness the attack?’
‘Nah.’
‘But it was your dog?’ persisted Kelly, her fountain-pen flying as she wrote on the casualty card.
‘That’s right.’
‘And you weren’t there when it attacked?’
‘That’s right,’ he said again.
Kelly had to bite back the incredulous question of how someone could leave a big, violent dog alone with a small child. ‘So where were you when the attack took place on Gemma?’
This provoked a raucous belly laugh. ‘In the bedroom,’ he leered, and his eyebrows lifted suggestively as his gaze dropped to Kelly’s breasts. ‘Want me to tell you what we was up to?’
‘That won’t be necessary, Mr Landers,’ said Kelly crisply. She turned to the woman and her totally vacant expression.
‘You do know, Miss Jenkins, that I’m going to have to call in Social Services?’
‘Do what?’ The grey-faced woman was on her feet at once. ‘And get some nosy-parker social worker sticking their oar in?’
Kelly looked at them both sadly. Didn’t they realise that if the child was deemed to be at serious risk she could be taken away from them? God forgive her, but in a way she wished that Gemma would be free of them, if she hadn’t also known that often children in care suffered from a different kind of neglect. ‘I am also going to have to report the injury to the police—’
‘What for?’ the man demanded belligerently.
Kelly put her pen down. ‘Because this category dog is supposed to be muzzled, Mr Landers—as I’m sure you know. It certainly shouldn’t have been left alone in a room with a toddler ...’ Kelly paused, recognising that, despite all her pep-talking to herself, she had done the unforgivable—she had sounded judgemental. But doctors were human too, and she wondered seriously