‘Look, it’s not that I don’t want Nicole living with me,’ he declared, raking his hands through his blond hair in desperation. Like hell it wasn’t. ‘But I don’t know anything about raising a child.’
‘Nobody does initially,’ the solicitor said bracingly.
Which was all very well for him to say, Elliot thought when he left the solicitor’s office some time later, but where did that leave him?
He hadn’t even got used to being special registrar at St Stephen’s yet, far less the two new members of staff who’d replaced Robert Cunningham and Hannah Blake when they’d got married and left to work for Médecins Sans Frontières. The last thing he needed was a child on top of all his other responsibilities.
Oh, cut the flannel, Elliot, his mind whispered as he strode down the busy London street, heedless of the falling sleet and biting March wind. You wouldn’t want this child no matter what the circumstances. You wouldn’t want any child who reminded you of your marriage to Donna.
‘Hey, watch where you’re going, mate!’ a plump, middle-aged man protested as Elliot collided with him on his way to the entrance to the St Stephen’s Accident and Emergency unit.
Watch where he was going? A couple of hours ago Elliot Mathieson had known exactly where he was going, but now…
Now he had a daughter arriving from France tomorrow. Now he was being forced to remember a time in his life he’d tried for the last five years to forget, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all.
‘I thought Elliot was only going to be away an hour?’ Floella Lazear protested, her round face looking distinctly harassed as she crossed the treatment room. ‘What on earth can be keeping him?’
Jane Halden tucked a wayward strand of thick black hair back under her sister’s cap and wished she knew. Elliot had told them of his ex-wife’s death in a car crash in France, and her London solicitors’ urgent request to see him, and she’d assumed—they all had—that he must be a beneficiary in Donna’s will, but two hours was an awfully long time for the solicitor to tell him so.
‘Maybe his ex-wife’s left him a fortune,’ Charlie Gordon observed, joining them at the whiteboard. ‘She was a successful fashion designer, wasn’t she? Maybe she’s left him so much money he’s handing in his resignation even as we speak.’
‘I wish somebody would leave me a fortune,’ Floella sighed. ‘I’d be off to the travel agent’s before you could say enema.’
Charlie laughed. ‘What would you do if somebody left you a lot of money, Jane?’
Check into a health farm and lose twelve kilos, she thought. Treat myself to every beautifying facial known to womankind, then throw out all my chain-store clothes and buy designer labels.
‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ she replied.
‘Got everything you want, huh?’ The SHO grinned.
‘Something like that.’ She nodded. And she did. Well, almost everything. She had a job as senior sister in A and E, which she loved, a flat that might be a shoebox but at least it was hers, and if there was no man in her life, well, two out of three wasn’t bad. ‘How about you, Charlie?’ she asked. ‘What would you do with a windfall?’
‘Send a bottle of champagne and a huge box of chocolates to my girlfriend in Shrewsbury every day to make sure she doesn’t forget me.’
‘And in six months she’d be a twenty-stone alcoholic, you idiot!’ Floella laughed.
A deep blush of embarrassed colour spread across the SHO’s face and Jane quickly came to his rescue. ‘I think it’s a lovely idea, Charlie, and your girlfriend’s a very lucky girl.’
And she was, too, Jane thought as the SHO hurried away, the colour on his cheeks even darker. They were lucky to have him. Big, bluff, and hearty, Charlie had settled in well into Elliot’s old SHO job. It was just a pity the same couldn’t be said for their new junior doctor, she thought with a groan as she noticed the man in question bearing down on her. Richard Connery might be bright and enthusiastic, but he was also abrasive and far too self-confident for his own good.
‘My patient in 6 has a fractured right arm, Sister Halden,’ he declared without preamble. ‘Please, arrange for him to go to X-Ray.’
Like he couldn’t arrange it himself? she thought as he strode away again before she could reply. No, of course he couldn’t. It was obviously too far beneath his dignity to speak to anyone as lowly as a porter so he expected her to drop everything and do it for him.
‘And what—pray tell—did his last servant die of?’ Floella exclaimed angrily. ‘Honestly, Jane—’
‘I know, I know,’ she interrupted, ‘but just leave it right now, Flo, OK?’
‘But he has no right to talk to you like that,’ the staff nurse protested. ‘You’re the senior sister in A and E. You’ve at least six years more medical experience than he has—’
‘And if you say I’m old enough to be his mother I’ll hit you!’ Jane declared, her grey eyes dancing, and a reluctant smile curved Floella’s lips.
‘Yeah, right. Like you’re old Ma Moses. But you know what I mean. It’s just not on.’
It wasn’t, but working in A and E was difficult enough at the moment, what with Elliot still finding his feet as special registrar and Charlie Gordon learning the ropes as SHO, and the last thing they needed was a full-scale row.
‘Try to be patient with him, Flo. I know he can be difficult,’ she continued as the staff nurse shook her head, ‘but he’s only been with us a month, and I’m sure a lot of his abrasiveness is due to him finding the work a lot harder than he imagined.’
‘Rubbish!’ Floella retorted. ‘He just enjoys treating nurses like dirt!’
She didn’t need this, not right now, Jane thought as the staff nurse stalked off. Teamwork was important in every department in the hospital, but in A and E it was vital. Without teamwork they couldn’t function, but it was going to take time to create a new team, and time, as Floella had just so forcefully revealed, was the one thing they didn’t have.
With a sigh she went into cubicle 6 where Richard’s patient was still waiting.
‘My arm is definitely broken, then?’ the elderly man queried, wincing slightly as she helped him into a wheelchair. ‘The young lad who saw me earlier said he thought it was, but I wasn’t sure whether he was fully qualified to make the diagnosis or not.’
Jane hid a smile. ‘Dr Connery’s pretty sure your arm’s fractured, but to make one hundred per cent sure we’re going to send you along to X-Ray. Hey, look on the bright side,’ she added encouragingly as his face fell, ‘you’ll get lots of sympathy from your female admirers.’
‘I hope not or my wife will break my other arm,’ he observed, his faded brown eyes twinkling. ‘Oh, well, I suppose it could have been worse, and at least it’s given me the opportunity to meet a very pretty and charming young lady.’
Jane chuckled. She knew very well that she wasn’t pretty, and she supposed that at twenty-eight she wasn’t exactly young any more, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t nice to hear a compliment.
Right now, she could have done with hearing a lot more. It might have cheered her up. In fact, ever since Hannah had married Robert—and it had been a lovely wedding despite the bride’s leg being in plaster—she’d been feeling oddly down.
Probably because it’s the fourth wedding you’ve been to in as many months, her mind pointed out, whereas you…
No, she wasn’t going to think about her love life. Actually, her completely non-existent love life.
And whose fault is that? Her little voice asked. OK, so Frank was a rat, and