Banking down the hurt, Jenna fished for a tactful answer. ‘Dad is working,’ she said, hoping her voice didn’t sound too robotic. ‘He was worried you’d be on your own too much.’ Well, what was she supposed to say? Sorry, Lexi, your dad is selfish and wants to forget he has responsibilities so he can spend his summer having sex with his new girlfriend.
‘I wouldn’t have cared if Dad was working. I could have hung around the house. I get on all right with Suzie. As long as I block out the fact that my Dad is hooked up with someone barely older than me.’
Jenna kept her expression neutral. ‘People have relationships, Lexi. It’s part of life.’ Not part of her life, but she wasn’t going to think about that now. For now her priorities were remembering to breathe in and out, get up in the morning, go to work, earn a living. Settling into her job, giving her daughter roots and security—that was what mattered.
‘When you’re young, yes. But he’s old enough to know better. They should be banned for everyone over twenty-one.’ Lexi shuddered. ‘Thank goodness you have more sense. It’s a relief you’re past all that.’
Jenna blinked. She was thirty-three. Was thirty-three really past it? Perhaps it was. By thirty-three you’d discovered that fairy tales were for children, that men didn’t ride up with swords to rescue you; they were more likely to run you down while looking at the pretty girl standing behind you.
Resolutely she blocked that train of thought. She’d promised herself that she wasn’t going to do that. She wasn’t going to generalise and blame the entire male race for Clive’s shortcomings. She wasn’t going to grow old bitter and twisted, giving Lexi the impression that all men were selfish losers. It wasn’t men who had hurt her; it was Clive. One man—not all men.
It was Clive who had chosen to have a rampant affair with a trainee lawyer barely out of college. It was Clive who had chosen to have sex on his desk without bothering to lock the door. There were moments when Jenna wondered if he’d done it on purpose, in the hope of being caught so he could prove how virile he was.
She frowned. Virile? If she’d been asked for a word to describe Clive, it certainly wouldn’t have been virile. That would have been like describing herself as sexy, and she would never in a million years describe herself as sexy.
When had she ever had wild sex with a man while still wearing all her clothes? No one had ever been that desperate for her, had they? Not even Clive. Certainly not Clive.
When Clive had come home from the office they’d talked about household accounts, mending the leaking tap, whether or not they should have his mother for the weekend. Never had he walked through the door and grabbed her, overwhelmed by lust. And she wouldn’t have wanted him to, Jenna admitted to herself. If he had grabbed her she would have been thinking about all the jobs she still had to do before she could go to bed.
Blissfully unaware that her mother was thinking about sex, Lexi scuffed her trainer on the ground. ‘There would have been loads for me to do in London. Cool stuff, not digging up bits of pot from muddy ground. I could have done my own thing.’
‘There will be lots of things to do here.’
‘On my own. Great.’
‘You’ll make friends, Lex.’
‘What if I don’t? What if everyone hates me?’
Seeing the insecurity in her daughter’s eyes, Jenna hugged her, not confessing that she felt exactly the same way. Still, at least the people here wouldn’t be gossiping about her disastrous marriage. ‘They won’t hate you. You make friends easily, and everyone on this island is friendly.’ Please let them be friendly. ‘That’s why we’re here.’
Lexi leaned on the rail and stared at the island mournfully. ‘Change is the pits.’
‘Change often feels difficult, but it can turn out to be exciting.’ Jenna parroted the words, hoping she sounded more convincing than she felt. ‘Life is full of possibilities.’
‘Not stuck here, it isn’t. Face it, Mum. It’s crap.’
Ryan McKinley stood with his legs braced and his arms folded. His eyes stung from lack of sleep, he’d had no time to shave, and his mind was preoccupied by thoughts of the little girl with asthma he’d seen during the night. He dug his mobile out of his pocket and checked for missed calls and messages but for once there were none—which meant that the child was probably still sleeping peacefully. Which was what he would have been doing, given the choice.
As the ferry approached the quay, he slipped the phone back into his pocket, trying not to think of the extra hour he could have spent in bed.
Why had Evanna insisted that he be the one to meet the new practice nurse? If he hadn’t known that the woman had a teenage daughter, he would have suspected Evanna of matchmaking. He’d even thought of mentioning his suspicions to Logan McNeil, his colleague and the senior partner in the Glenmore Medical Centre. If she was planning something, Logan would probably know, given that Evanna was his wife. Wife, mother, midwife and—Ryan sighed—friend. She was a loyal, caring friend.
In the two years he’d been living on the island she’d done everything she could to end his hermit-like existence. It had been Evanna who had dragged him into island life, and Evanna who had insisted that he help out when the second island doctor had left a year earlier.
He hadn’t been planning to work, but the work had proved a distraction from his thoughts, as she’d guessed it would. And it was different enough from his old job to ensure that there were no difficult memories. Different had proved to be good. The shift in pace and pressure just what he’d needed. But, as grateful as he was to his colleague’s wife for forcing him out of his life of self-imposed isolation, he refused to go along with her need to see him in a relationship.
There were some things that wouldn’t change.
‘Hi, Dr McKinley. You’re up early—’ A pretty girl strolled over to him, her hair swinging over her shoulders, her adoring gaze hopeful. ‘Last night was fun, wasn’t it?’
‘It was a good night, Zoe.’ Confronted with the realities of living as part of a small island community, Ryan chose his words carefully. This was the drawback of living and working in the same place, he mused. He was her doctor. He knew about her depression and the battle she’d had to get herself to this point. ‘You looked as though you were enjoying yourself. It was good to see you out. I’m glad you’re feeling better.’
He’d spent the evening trying to keep the girl at a safe distance without hurting her feelings in front of her friends. Aware that her emotions were fragile, he hadn’t wanted to be the cause of any more damage—but he knew only too well how important it was to keep that distance.
‘I wasn’t drinking alcohol. You told me not to with those tablets.’
‘Probably wise.’
‘I—’ She pushed her thumbs into the pockets of her jeans, slightly awkward. ‘You know—if you ever wanted to go out some time—’ She broke off and her face turned scarlet. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. Millions of girls want to go out with you, I know. Sorry. Why would someone like you pick a screwball like me?’
‘You’re not a screwball.’ Ryan wondered why the most difficult conversations always happened at the most awkward times. The ferry was docking and he was doing a consultation on the quay, within earshot of a hundred disembarking passengers. And, as if that wasn’t enough, she was trying to step over a line he never allowed a patient to cross. ‘You’re suffering from depression, Zoe, and that’s an illness like any other.’
‘Yes, I know. You made me see that.’ Painfully awkward, she rubbed her toe on the hard concrete of the quay. ‘You’ve been great, Dr McKinley. Really great. I feel better about everything, now. More able to cope, you know?