Jon nodded. ‘I guess Cornwall’s not so far. If Hannah needs to come back.’
‘Yes.’ Chloe sighed. ‘I hate them being apart but... Hannah seems to need some time at the moment. And some sleep as well.’
‘Yeah. I can identify with that.’ He rubbed one hand across his face, seeming suddenly drawn.
‘Why don’t you go home and get some rest? James and Hannah will be gone by now and I’ll give them a call and tell them not to wake you up when they get back with Amy’s things.’
‘You want anything before I go? Something to eat?’
‘No, I’ve eaten. Go.’
Amy seemed to have run out of energy too, and Chloe felt her snuggle against her, refusing to wake up and wave goodbye to Jon. He grinned, brushing Amy’s cheek with his finger, and Chloe watched his back as he walked away.
He turned for one final wave through the window from the lobby outside. Even distance, even the glass couldn’t dim the bright blue of his tired eyes and Chloe wished that he wasn’t leaving her behind.
It was the first step on a long and slippery slope. A look, a shared smile that would catapult her into neediness and leave her in a tangled heap on the floor when Jon went his own way. However much she liked his smile, it just wasn’t worth it.
Amy started to fret in her arms and Chloe leaned down to comfort her. ‘It’s going to be okay, Amy. Everything’s going to be okay, you’ll see.’
* * *
Jon hadn’t thought that a battered teddy bear and a bar of chocolate could possibly be such controversial items. He’d selected the teddy bear from the bag of toys that James had left in the hall while he’d slept, reckoning that the most worn was probably the most loved. And the chocolate was the same seventy per cent cocoa blend that he’d found stashed away at the back of one of the kitchen cabinets.
But when he’d gone to the children’s ward that evening, Chloe had looked at them both as if they were poisoned. She propped the teddy bear up in Amy’s cot, leaving the chocolate untouched on the locker.
‘Isn’t your shift about to start?’ It was a clear invitation for him to go, even if he’d only just arrived. He probably should go, but something stopped him. Maybe the fact that no one in their right mind refused a visitor when they were in hospital, and that Chloe’s attitude betrayed some other worry.
‘Not for another hour.’ He drew up a chair and sat down. He could probably find somewhere else to be, but sleep had rearranged his muddled thoughts, and on waking the decision had seemed obvious. Chloe needed help, and he was there to give it.
She hesitated. She looked different tonight, softer, dressed in a pair of casual trousers with a top that he reckoned was supposed to slide from one shoulder to reveal the strap of a cotton vest underneath. The warmth in here had touched her cheeks with pink, and her hair curled loosely around her face in what seemed like an invitation to touch.
Clearly that invitation wasn’t extended to him. And even if it had been, Jon had no intention of taking it up. The decision on that point had been clear, too. Help out, but don’t touch.
‘You don’t need to do this.’ She pressed her lips together, and they too became a little pinker. Jon wondered whether they tasted pink, and dismissed the thought with no more than a moment’s regret.
‘Do what?’
‘You know...’ A small, delicious frown indicated that Chloe understood quite well that he was going to make her explain. ‘We all really appreciate what you did yesterday, Jon. But you don’t have to feel responsible for us, just because... You have other things to be getting on with.’
For a moment he couldn’t imagine what those other things might be. Chloe and Amy seemed more important than anything.
‘My house, you mean?’
‘Yes. And your job.’
‘I imagine the builders will be quite pleased to find that I haven’t been interfering with things over the weekend. And my job doesn’t require twenty-four-hour input.’
‘All the same...’ She shrugged. ‘Amy and I are fine, really. We’re not your problem.’
He was beginning to feel that they were—which was a problem in itself. But Jon could handle it.
‘I can help, can’t I? It’s never easy, taking responsibility for a sick child.’
‘No, but I can manage. You don’t need to keep popping in to see if we’re all right.’
Leaning forward, he picked up the chocolate, unwrapping one end and breaking off a piece. ‘Okay. I get it. You’re managing.’
The look on her face, when he started to eat, was a classic. Clearly she had reckoned on saving the chocolate and eating it when he was safely out of the way. He hesitated for a moment before he popped a second piece into his mouth and she broke suddenly.
‘You’re eating my chocolate.’
Jon grinned, as innocently as he could manage. ‘Yeah. Since you’re managing so well, I thought you wouldn’t want it.’
She seemed on the cusp of either smiling or sulking. Chloe went for the smile. ‘That’s different. Don’t you know that some people have a special relationship with chocolate?’
That was exactly what he’d been banking on. Jon handed her the bar and she broke a piece off. ‘So I’m allowed to bring you chocolate, then?’
She twisted her mouth, obviously willing to accept that she was beaten. ‘Yes. You’re allowed to bring me chocolate.’
‘And Amy her bear?’ He glanced over to where Amy was subjecting the bear to her own version of nursing care, shoving it under the blanket of her cot.
‘Yes, that was a kind thought. Papa Bear’s her favourite.’ She smiled at Amy, who ignored her, in favour of banging Papa Bear on the nose, presumably in an attempt to make him go to sleep.
‘She seems much better.’
‘Yes, she is. She’s stopped clinging to me and wanting to be held. They should be letting her go on Monday when the tests come back.’
Chloe turned her gaze back onto Jon. ‘Look, I’m sorry if I seemed ungrateful. When I was ill... You get to understand who you can really rely on at times like that.’
‘Yourself?’ It wasn’t a universal experience. Many—most—people were comforted by the support of those around them when they became gravely ill.
‘Yes, myself. James did the best he could, but he had Carol and the kids and Hannah to worry about.’
‘So you told him that you were fine and that you didn’t need anything.’ Which was exactly what Chloe was telling him now. Jon’s determination to take that with a pinch of salt strengthened.
She shrugged. ‘I might have intimated something of the sort.’
‘And since you’re a doctor, and James probably wouldn’t have heard of Guillain-Barré syndrome, he’d have just taken your word for it.’
‘Well, he looked it up on the internet. But the internet can be wrong sometimes.’ Chloe fixed Jon with a glare. ‘And you’re not telling him any different now.’
‘What you choose to tell anyone about your illness is none of my business.’ James would be horrified if he knew what Jon suspected, that Chloe had been incapacitated and coping alone for a long time after she’d been released from hospital. But there was no point in telling him that now.
‘Thank you.’
It was obvious why Chloe had been reluctant to rely on her brother, but it was rather more of a puzzle why she’d applied the same principle