than talking, it was obviously Phyllis on the other end. ‘Okay, thanks, Phyllis … No, I’ll work something out … Yeah, thanks, I’ll call you.’ He laid the handset back in its cradle and focused on the stack of patient files on his desk, a muscle twitching at the side of his jaw.
‘Childcare problems?’ It seemed a bit presumptuous to ask, but Matt was clearly torn between his son and his patients.
‘Yeah. I haven’t quite mastered the knack of being in two places at once yet.’
‘If you have patients to see then I can look after Jack. We have a children’s play area in the HTU, and I don’t have any appointments this afternoon. He’ll be quite safe. Marcie and I won’t let him out of our sight.’
It was an obvious solution, but for some reason Matt seemed intent on pursuing his original course of action. ‘Thank you, that’s kind, but I really can’t impose on you like that. Phyllis has offered to take care of him in my office if she can’t reach my mother.’
Jack tugged at his arm. ‘That’s all right, Dad. I’ll go with Beth and you can come and fetch me later. The hearing place is much nicer than your office.’
‘We’ve got paints. And glitter pens. We could make Mrs Green a get-well-soon card.’ Beth winked conspiratorially at Jack, who shot his father a pleading look.
Matt hesitated. It seemed there was one person, at least, who had the power to veto his instructions. ‘You’re going to do exactly as Beth tells you, aren’t you? Leave the messing around for tonight, when you get home.’
Jack’s outraged expression made it plain that messing about had never been further from his thoughts and Matt laughed down at his son. ‘Okay, then. Looks as if the lady with the glitter pens has outbid me.’
CHAPTER TWO
ALL afternoon, the grey eyes, which warmed to a colour he could not quite define when Beth smiled, had been beckoning to Matt and he had doggedly ignored the summons. Bitter experience had already taught him that distractions of this kind led to dangerous places. Anyway, no one had eyes that great, it must have been a trick of the light.
Slipping through the open door of the hearing therapy unit, he found himself in a small reception area, with a wide archway leading through to another room, which seemed to be set up as an informal association area. He could hear Jack’s voice and went to walk towards it when something in the boy’s tone made him stop.
‘My mum was in a road accident like Mrs Green.’ There was a silence and Matt started forward again, freezing again when he heard Jack continue.
‘She wasn’t all right, though. She died.’
There was a rustle, as if someone had moved in their seat, and he heard Beth’s voice, clear and melodic. ‘I would be very sad if that happened to me.’
Jack spoke again. ‘Is that how you say you feel sad? With your hand like that?’
‘Yes.’ There was a pause. ‘That’s right, Jack, you are telling me that you feel sad.’
Matt sagged back against the wall, unprepared for the violence of the emotion that had hit him. Jack was talking about his mother at last. After two years of hardly even referring to her his silence had been broken. His lips twisted at the irony of it. Jack’s silence had not been broken. He had found another way to express his feelings.
‘My dad feels sad, too, but he doesn’t say so.’ Jealousy stabbed at Matt, twisting the knife in his chest. Why was Jack talking to a virtual stranger when his own father had tried so hard to be there for him?
‘Sometimes when you feel sad, you try to hide that from the people you love the best.’ Matt shook his head as the words reached him. She was absolutely right, but it was more complicated than that. But Jack was never to know that. No one was.
‘It’s because I’m just a kid.’ There was a trace of resentment in Jack’s voice.
‘You’re not just anything. And it’s your dad’s job to look after you, Jack.’ Her tone invited no argument.
‘I bet no one had to look after you when you were a kid.’
Beth laughed. ‘Oh, yes, they did. Shall I tell you a secret?’
Perhaps he shouldn’t listen. On the other hand, the kind of secret you told to a child was unlikely to be anything too earth-shattering. Matt found himself leaning forward.
‘I’ve got a big brother called Charlie. When I was little, he could hear much better than I could, and I hated it when he tried to help me. It made me feel stupid, as if I couldn’t do anything right. I used to pretend I could hear things when I couldn’t.’
‘How did you do that?’
‘Oh, there are lots of ways you can tell what people are saying without hearing them. Even if you can’t see their lips properly to read them, the expressions on their faces can tell you what they’re thinking. You just have to look.’
Were his own secrets written on his face? Matt swallowed hard. Of course not, he was just being paranoid. Beth had made a connection with Jack, not him.
There was silence and then Beth spoke again. ‘I’m sure you do miss your mum. But you don’t need to finger-spell all the words. Look, you can say it like this.’
Matt squeezed his eyes shut. He would have given anything to hear Jack say the words that he knew were forming silently on his hands. But this would have to be enough for the moment. Beth had the tone exactly right—just a simple exercise in how to sign, which was allowing Jack to approach topics that he hadn’t spoken about before. Why on earth hadn’t he thought of something like that?
Dared he try to catch a glimpse of them? Standing here was torture, but he knew that it was important to give Jack time to say everything he wanted to.
‘That’s right.’ Jack had obviously got the signs she had taught him correct. ‘Now, I’ll show you something else that you might want to say to your dad.’
‘I know what that is!’ Jack exclaimed excitedly, and there was silence again as he signed back to her.
‘No—look, like this.’
Another pause, and her soft laugh sounded, curling around Matt’s senses like a gentle summer breeze. ‘Well done, you’re very good at this.’
They had obviously concluded their business and Matt reckoned it was about time he got Jack home. He was going to have to wait to find out what it was that Beth had thought Jack might like to say to him, and the urge to see both of them was becoming irresistible. He stepped forward into the wide archway, as if he had just walked in through the door.
She caught sight of him, and for a moment all Matt could think about was that her eyes, still dancing with laughter, were even more compellingly beautiful than he had remembered.
It wasn’t just her eyes either. Every time he looked at her he seemed to find something else that fascinated him.
‘Hello, there.’ Her voice broke the spell, and Jack’s head, just visible above the back of the chair facing her, bobbed as he scrambled round to see his father. ‘We
