‘Great.’ Mike grunted. ‘Just make sure it’s not holding up the tree.’
‘It’s not. There’s a good-sized branch wedging it.’
‘Good. Cut this one off, then, because I really can’t breathe. The chainsaw’s about somewhere.’
He got up, and Ben took his place, hands running confidently over Mike’s body. ‘Tell me what hurts.’
‘My leg? My pride?’
‘Idiot. Not your back? Only your legs?’
‘No, my back’s fine—well, in comparison to my legs. The right one, anyway—and, believe me, it’s enough,’ he said, fighting down bile and wondering how the hell Joe was going to get him out. The scream of the saw sounded, and the pressure on his back and ribs eased, but it didn’t take away the other pain.
‘What kind of pain is it?’ Ben was asking. ‘Sharp? Sickening? Dull? Raw? Tender?’
‘No. More—excruciatingly sharp. And sickening, yeah.’
‘Right. Sounds like a fracture.’
‘Feels like it, but I’m not an expert.’
‘Can you feel your foot?’
He gave a choked laugh. ‘All too well.’
‘That’s good.’
Good? Mike snorted and turned his face down, resting his head on the back of his hand and closing his eyes. He felt sick—sick and scared. If he’d died, what would have happened to Fran? Or the farm? Joe couldn’t cope alone, and his father was too old to want to start all over again. He’d just retired, handed over the reins to his sons and put his feet up.
That damn tree had better not fall any further, he thought, and, craning his neck, he saw Joe shifting logs, making a pile under the trunk so it couldn’t roll any further and couldn’t sag any more.
Or that was the theory, but it was so heavy it could probably shift the logs quite easily.
Then he heard a fire engine lumbering down the track, felt the ground tremble under the weight of it, and the tree shifted again. Just a fraction, but enough to make him swear and eye the pile of logs nervously. Would they hold?
‘We need to clear these branches to get the airbags under it,’ someone said, and he could hear people running, and then the sound of the saw, then the weight shifted again and he groaned as pain shafted up his leg.
‘Stop! It’s moving on him. He needs pain relief—where are the paramedics?’ That was Ben.
‘There’s been a big pile-up. All the ambulances are out. They’re having to send one from Plymouth. It’ll be another twenty minutes, and I don’t think we’re going to be able to use the airbags. There isn’t enough room to get them underneath without cutting off the branches, and they’re supporting it. We need to get heavy-lifting gear and it’ll take a while—it’s at the pile-up too.’
Great. Sweat dribbled down his face and into a graze, stinging it. He turned his cheek against his sleeve to wipe it away and caught Ben’s troubled eyes. He smiled reassuringly but for some reason it didn’t work. Nothing to do with the tons of timber hovering over his body just waiting to crash the rest of the way down and kill him …
‘Right. I’ll get Nick.’
Mike heard Ben key in a number, then heard rapid instructions, and a hand came back on his shoulder. ‘Nick’s going to bring some drugs.’
‘Excellent,’ he mumbled. ‘I love drugs. Drugs are good.’ The tree creaked again, and he bit down on his hand and gave a grunt of pain as the fire crew started to shift whatever they could to prop the broken trunk.
‘Fran, come on in, have a seat,’ Kate said, her smile welcoming, and Fran sat down at the desk, her fingers knotted tightly together in her lap.
‘Are you OK?’
She consciously relaxed her hands and smiled back. ‘Fine. So—tell me about this diet.’
‘I’ve got the details here for you.’ Kate straightened up and reached for a sheet of paper, sliding it across the desk towards her. ‘It’s very simple—suggestions, really, for how to include certain things, trace elements and so on which, although probably present in your diet, might not be there in sufficient quantity.’
‘Things?’
‘Zinc, selenium, folic acid, vitamin C. You need Brazil nuts and shitake mushrooms and oysters—not together, obviously,’ she said with a chuckle, and Fran smiled with relief.
‘I wondered how I was going to work them in!’ she said.
‘Well, oysters are out of season at the moment, you’ll have to wait until the end of October if you want local ones, but the mushrooms and Brazil nuts you can get any time. And fruit smoothies. Fruit and veg smoothies—do you eat a lot of fruit and veg?’
‘I do. Mike’s usually crunching an apple and he eats what I give him but he’s not over-fond of salads so he tends to eat cooked veg. He drinks apple juice sometimes—does that count?’
‘Not really, but it makes an excellent base for the smoothies, so make him smoothies with apple juice instead of giving him coffee—it’s hot now, so you’ve got the perfect excuse. And you should both be avoiding having a high caffeine intake as well. It’s been related to delayed conception, so avoid coffee if you can, and also colas, dark chocolate and black tea—that’s not tea without milk, by the way, but any tea that isn’t green, white, fruit or herbal. Oh, and cut out alcohol. It can reduce a man’s sperm count by half.’
‘Good grief. I don’t mind that but I think he’ll kill me if he can’t have tea or coffee! Apart from the odd glass of wine and the occasional apple juice, that’s all he drinks!’
‘He’ll love the smoothies. You can use the veg ones as chilled soups—lovely in the summer. And they’ll do you good as well—boost your vitamin levels. If they help sperm production, they might have a beneficial effect on your ovaries, too. Just try, Fran. If it does nothing else, it’ll improve your general health and make you feel much better. In fact, it’ll do you a power of good to eat something nutritious. You’ve lost too much weight recently, and being underweight can harm your chances of conception—did you know that?’
She shook her head, wondering why they were having this conversation when Mike clearly didn’t even want to spend one night—one miserable, solitary little night!—alone with her, without the dog or his daughter or the endless bloody paperwork to hide behind.
‘Encourage him to take cool showers and not hot baths—does he have baths?’ Kate went on.
‘Sometimes—if he’s been doing something very strenuous and he’s aching. Usually he showers.’
‘What about underpants? Does he wear loose boxers or tight briefs? Because if they’re too tight, the testicles can overheat and that can affect the sperm count as well. The whole design of the scrotum is to allow the testicles to be at a slightly lower temperature, but because we wear clothes and bundle
