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  Tess shrugged, thinking of the empty ice cream carton and biscuit wrappers in the bin. “Just the usual,” she said and then realised that Farida was genuinely interested.

  “It was a bit of a quiet one, to be honest.” She slipped into the neighbouring chair. “Some friends have recently got engaged so they had a dinner party on Friday but it was pretty sedate, you know, one of the girls was pregnant and not drinking, others had work the next day…”

  She trailed off but Farida was still listening, her head tilted to the side, eyebrows raised in eager expectation. Having only known her for a few weeks, she was already aware that Farida was happily married and therefore desperate to hear details about a single life to which she no longer had access. Tess tried her best to oblige, despite the fact that her single life was currently as exciting as a trip to the dental hygienist. She assumed that Farida was after comedy stories, ones that she could repeat to her husband later that evening as they sat down to supper and thanked their lucky stars that they were out of the dating meat-market. She hadn’t yet shared with any of her colleagues the details of her last relationship. It wasn’t really something one bragged about, the fact that your previous boyfriend had run off with a bloke, and although she liked Farida she wasn’t ready to hang out that particular piece of dirty laundry just yet. She decided to aim for ‘mildly amusing’ rather than ‘tabloid shocker’.

  “So, they’d invited another friend, Ryan, to even the numbers up…”

  Farida nodded.

  “And as soon as he finds out I’m a doctor he asks me about his intractable verruca problem.”

  “No! At a dinner party?”

  “Yep. The classic conversational opener, made marginally worse by him asking whether I thought these verrucas were exacerbating his athlete’s foot. ‘It’s funny because I’m not much of an athlete,’ he said. Which, to be honest, was fairly obvious from his general demeanour. Anyway, verruca-laden Ryan works in a council office by day but by night… he’s a gamer. And I’m not talking about the odd bit of Grand Theft Auto or whatever it is people usually play. I mean he is a serious gamer, goes to conventions, you know.”

  “Oh.”

  “Well, yes, that was sort of my response. I mean, I’ve got nothing against guys who spend their time on computers, but it just feels a bit like you’re having a chat with a little boy. He’s talking about which level he’s completed like he expects me to be impressed, and I’m just nodding and trying not to think about his foot problem.”

  Tess settled back further into the armchair, keeping an eye on the door for the night team.

  “He told me this story and it was like his only anecdote the entire night, about how he had played a trick on a colleague by making some minor change to his screen saver so he couldn’t access his documents.”

  “God, how annoying.”

  “I know, right? He must be a dream to work with.”

  Farida sipped her tea. “So, basically, he’s a socially awkward gamer who plays hilarious tricks on his colleagues and has a chronic verruca problem.” She paused. “He’s certainly ticking a lot of boxes, what are you waiting for? Did you get his number?”

  Tess grinned. “Well, look, at least it’s not as bad as the guy I was attempting to flirt with at a party who got a Tinder alert and left halfway through our conversation, or the one who had that weird thing for Mary Berry. But yeah, not the best.”

  Farida giggled and moved her attention to the patient list in front of her as the night team filed in. Tess felt a twinge of guilt for mocking Ryan’s social inadequacies, but then the chance of him meeting Farida was slim, and so what if she’d made him into a bit of a caricature? She had been responding to the pressure of delivering an anecdote, after all. Farida would have been an attentive audience regardless, but Tess suspected that her ideal scenario would have been to hear her colleague unveil a story of blossoming romance, or failing that, a steamy account of a night’s passion and intrigue. There was bugger all to report along either of these lines, and an itemised list of the number of bars of Dairy Milk she’d consumed last night would probably not meet the criteria either.

  She turned her attention to Rob, who’d been on call. His face had a grey shadow of stubble and his scrubs were crumpled. He thumped into the chair beside her, brushing against her arm.

  “Rough night?” she asked.

  He jolted at the contact and, seeming embarrassed, rubbed a hand over his eyes.

  “Do I look that bad?”

  “No, not at all! That’s not what I meant.”

  But he had already pulled away shyly, as if fearing he might accidentally touch her again.

  Rob fished a scrunched-up piece of paper out of his pocket and smoothed it out on his lap, his voice husky with lack of sleep as he recounted the details of various inpatients and their individual management plans. Reaching the end of his list, he looked over at Tess and his cheeks flushed.

  “There’s a new lady coming in… Mrs Russell. Sixty-four. Ovarian cancer with bone mets. Transferring from the General. Ambulance is on its way so she’ll be here”—Rob looked at his watch—“pretty soon. Are you happy to clerk her in?”

  Once the handover meeting had finished, Tess made her way to the nurses’ station set back from the main reception area. She scrolled through the pathology lab results that had come through from the hospital since Friday, and was halfway through the patient list when the sliding doors from the lobby opened and a burly paramedic arrived at the desk with a large file of notes, dropping them onto the counter with a thud.

  “Mrs Russell,” he announced. “Where d’you want her?”

  He bent closer to Tess and said in an undertone, “She’s a lovely ol’ gal. Proper lady. Son’s a right pain in the arse though.” He straightened up quickly as the doors slid open again and Tess could see a wheelchair edging through the gap.

  The occupant of the wheelchair was a smartly dressed woman in her sixties who wore a weary expression as she turned her head up towards the tall man walking beside her chair. They paused in the doorway. The man, who still had his back to Tess, seemed to be immersed in a conversation that he didn’t want interrupted.

  “If you’d just let us contact Dr Hamilton-Jones again? Hmm? Mother? I’ve got his secretary’s number. I know he’d be happy to see you, talk through the options…?”

  His voice sounded vaguely familiar to Tess as he turned with an exasperated huff, but her attention was focussed on the wheelchair now approaching the nurses’ station. She leant over the lower part of the desk, extending her arm out to shake hands with the lady sitting in it, who on closer inspection was looking exhausted.

  “Hi,” she said as the woman clasped her warm hand. “Mrs Russell? I’m Tess. I’m one of the doctors who’ll be looking after you while you’re here at St Martin’s.”

  Mrs Russell gave a weak smile. “Thank you. Everyone’s been very kind.”

  Tess returned to her chair and glanced through the summary notes.

  “Good,” she said. “Now Mrs Russell, if you just give me a moment I can let you know where—”

  She was interrupted by another irritated snort of disbelief from the man standing next to the wheelchair and she looked up in surprise, her gaze travelling over a well-tailored suit into a pair of deep-blue eyes.

  She felt a thud in her chest. Those eyes, that face… She knew there had been something about his voice. It took her back to that night, years ago now, before Scott, before the humiliation, before any of this. Her mouth started to form the shape of his name but she realised, in the few fractured moments before blurting it out, that the recognition was not mutual. Or at least, if it was, the warm feelings associated with the memory were certainly not reciprocated. He was glaring at her, the animosity radiating off him.

  “Nearly embarrassed yourself there, Tess!” the television host hollered in her ear and she winced, her cheeks flushing crimson, but she continued to stare up at him, willing him to show some sign, a flicker of response. However,
the owner of the blue eyes had no time for fond memories. He had other things on his mind and was evidently struggling to contain his frustration. His mouth was set into a thin line and he raked a hand through his hair as he looked from Tess to the paramedics and back.

  “My mother shouldn’t be here,” he said. “She’s not terminal or whatever it is that you people call it. She shouldn’t be in a hospice.” He hissed the word with obvious distaste and turned to face the wheelchair. “Mother! Won’t you let me speak to the oncologist? Please?”

  Mrs Russell moved her head a fraction, her face set in a determined expression despite her obvious exhaustion.

  “Edward. Leave it. Please. Just for now.” She looked up at her son. “I would like a bit of rest, darling. Let them do what they need to do.” She took a long breath in and her eyes fluttered shut for a few seconds.

  Tess was still trying to gather herself. The blood continued to pound in her cheeks and time seemed to have slowed to treacle. A barrage of images and fragments of memory were clattering around in her head, vying for attention with the television host and Miss Austen, both of whom appeared to be as bemused as the other by this inner turmoil.

  Tess motioned to the paramedics. “Bill, can you take her to room two?” she asked. And then, regulating her breathing, she turned her attention back to her patient. “Mrs Russell, I can see you’re in some discomfort. We’ll get your pain relief sorted out first of all and I’ll be in to see you once you’re settled, okay?”

  She scanned the bundle of notes, keeping her attention on the desk while Bill pushed the wheelchair away. The son remained, leaning his elbow on the raised counter of the nurses’ station, cracking the knuckles of his left hand and radiating a tense energy. Tess risked another surreptitious look. Yes, it was definitely him. Edward. Eddie he’d been then. A younger, more carefree version of this angry, awkward man she saw now. She was on the verge of trying again – perhaps if she called him Eddie he’d respond… But no. That was ridiculous. One didn’t go around using diminutive names for patients or their relatives, even if you knew them really well. It wasn’t appropriate.

  But how about if she said, It’s Edward isn’t it? You look familiar. I think we’ve met, or something like that? Something casual and low-key. It might put him at ease, even if he didn’t remember her. It might establish a connection? She rolled the sentence around her mouth, wanting it to emerge naturally, but as she processed the words she knew they would be as weighty as a boot to the head, and that he would pick up on it immediately, and it would be awkward – hideously so. And, God, why didn’t he just go? Follow his mother into her room and leave Tess to her thoughts?

  But then what if he did leave, and this was the last chance she ever got to see him? The prospect caused her to glance up again, commit the lines of his face to memory once more. Add them to that warm, little bundle she had buried deep. Surely, he couldn’t have forgotten her?

  “I think he ha-as,” the television host sang softly in her ear.

  Edward’s expression was inscrutable as he stared at the door behind which his mother had disappeared. He was tense from his neck through his shoulder and forearm to the fingers now drumming upon the raised countertop. Tess’s eyes were drawn from his face towards the tips of his fingers and their restless rhythm, close enough to see the whorls and grooves that would make up his own individual prints. She had held that hand, once, a long time ago it seemed now. She was struck by an urge to place her own hand across his once more and cease the movement altogether, to trap those agitated digits and feel them straining against her palm. To say, It’s me. Remember? That night? Remember?

  But she didn’t do this. She wasn’t a complete idiot. Instead, she shook herself out of her ridiculous daydream, focussed on the job at hand and pulled out Mrs Russell’s drug chart with a professional flourish that was slightly spoiled by her dropping it on the floor.

  “Aha! She’s due some Oramorph,” she said as she bent to retrieve it. “That’ll make her feel a bit better.”

  Edward scowled down at her, his eyes sharp. There was nothing there. Not even the hint of an expression that Tess would later be able to cling to and analyse, to turn over in her mind for hidden significance. He was looking straight through her. She could have been anyone; merely a worker in an institution that he wanted no part of.

  “The morphine might make her feel better,” he said, “for a few hours. It might drug her up. Won’t bloody cure her though, will it.”

  And he turned on his heel, disappearing out into the lobby, leaving only the faintest waft of clean linen and a memory of tense, static charge in his wake.

  Chapter Three

  It was early afternoon by the time Tess managed to get in to see Mary Russell, who’d been dozing in her room since the morphine took effect. Over lunch of half an egg sandwich and a packet of stale crisps, she’d had a stern word with herself and with the television host and even Jane Austen, whose advice regarding matters of the heart and unrequited passions was beginning to grate on her nerves. It’s nothing, she told herself. It never was anything. Just a transient meeting between two people, just a ‘ships that pass in the night’ thing; they were ports in the storm, feathers in the wind (was that even a phrase?)… She ran out of rubbish allegorical references, finished her lunch, and with a decisive scrunch of her sandwich wrapper she’d banished both her narrators (although to be fair, the television host had already informed her that he had more important things to be getting on with, including a date with a C-list actress who’d fallen upon hard times).

  Tess took a deep breath before going into Mrs Russell’s room and repeated the words I am a confident professional to herself a couple of times as she straightened her skirt and knocked on the door. She found her patient propped up in bed, peering at a tray of hospital food. Tess wrinkled up her nose.

  “What’s today’s lunchtime delight then?” she asked, pointing to the gelatinous mass in Mrs Russell’s bowl. “Looks suspiciously like frogspawn.”

  Mrs Russell smiled, “Tapioca, I think?” She looked doubtful, “Maybe not? Maybe rice pudding?” She poked at it with her spoon. “It’s not bad actually, I’ve just got no appetite. All these years I’ve been watching what I eat and now I can have whatever I like, I just don’t fancy it. It’s not fair, is it?”

  Tess was struck by how attractive her face was, in spite of what she’d been through. There were strong sculptured cheekbones underneath the steroidal puffiness, and the tired lines crinkling at the corners didn’t diminish the dazzling blue of her eyes.

  “No, Mrs Russell. You’re right. It’s not fair.” She pulled up a chair beside the bed and opened the notes out on her lap.

  “It makes for pretty grim reading, doesn’t it?” Mrs Russell said, inclining her head towards the heavy manila file. “I wouldn’t want to have to wade through all the gruesome details. It can’t be easy for you, having to deal with people like me all the time.”

  Tess was surprised by this. It was unusual for someone in Mrs Russell’s position to be concerned for the feelings of their attendant healthcare professional. Most of the time – not unreasonably – patients with significant medical conditions were absorbed by their own diagnoses and didn’t necessarily consider the lives of those working around them. She tried to reassure her.

  “Actually, I love it,” she said. “It’s really rewarding, and I like getting to know my patients properly. We don’t get the chance to do that anymore in most medical specialties – it’s all such a rush.”

  She flicked through Mrs Russell’s notes, scanning for information. “I’ve only been working at the hospice for a few weeks so it’s all still quite new…” She glanced back up, noting her patient’s look of alarm.

  “Oh, gosh, no, please don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not like a total novice. I do know what I’m doing. It’s just that General Practice training is all a bit chaotic. There’s so much to learn and you basically lurch from one specialty to another overnight. I was doing paediatr
ics before this, over Christmas actually, which was fun but also a bit, you know, frantic.”

  Mrs Russell now looked more amused than alarmed. “I can imagine,” she said.

  “It’s a slower pace here. We have more time to chat, which I like, obviously, and it means we get to find out what our patients want and how they feel about everything, not just the medical stuff. Speaking of which, I’m rattling away about how lovely it is to listen to people whilst not letting you get a word in edgeways. We need to talk a bit more about you. I can get most of the clinical details from your notes, but I think it’s maybe better to hear your take on things, if you’re feeling up to it?”

  Mrs Russell nodded, sank a little further into her pillows, and began to tell Tess about the events that had led her to this point: the grumbling lower abdominal pain that she had attributed to irritable bowel syndrome for too long, the look on her doctor’s face when she mentioned that she’d lost a stone in weight, the scan results showing something suspicious on her right ovary, the further scans that revealed the extent of the spread. “And now here we are. I’m riddled with cancer and all my son wants is for me to go through more tests and treatments. And there’s no point to any of it. I’m tired.” She looked across the room to the window and her voice quietened. “I’m dying, for goodness’ sake. The only thing I have any power over is how I choose to do that, and Edward just wants me to give it up, hand control over to the medics like everything else. Sorry…”

  “It’s okay. You take your time.” Tess handed Mrs Russell a tissue.

  “It’s my fault… That’s the thing. I’m so cross with myself because I could have made it easier if I’d let them know a little sooner, but I didn’t, and as a result they’re panicking. I didn’t want to worry either of them. It’s only a couple of years since their dad died. Maddie’s over in the States – has been for years – so it’s difficult for her. Edward is so busy with work – he’s a lawyer. He’s very successful, very focussed, you know. I didn’t want to trouble him…” She poked her spoon back into the bowl of pudding.