last shot. He wasn’t sure he wanted to; she had snogged someone else after all. But he did love her. And it was only a kiss. He could get past it. Probably. ‘Stay and we can work things out.’
‘I-I can’t.’ Saskia hung her head. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She touched his arm. ‘I have to go.’
‘Go?’
‘Yes.’ Saskia looked around vaguely. ‘I need to leave. I can’t be here. This is … too much. It’s all just too much.’
Ed blinked. Was Saskia actually going to walk out of her own engagement party? Was she effectively … jilting him? Ed felt sick. He suddenly wished he hadn’t eaten so many cocktail sausages.
‘Goodbye, Ed.’
And that was that. The end of a relationship. The end of an engagement. Aghast, Ed watched Saskia walk out of the kitchen. Following her, he watched her walk right out of the pub. Her parents scurried after her, as did a couple of her closest friends.
Ed had no idea what to do. No idea whatsoever. ‘I’m so sorry, everyone,’ he said to the room at large. ‘That was – rather unexpected. I’m afraid the wedding is off.’
There was a collective gasp.
Turning to the bar, Ed rubbed a shaky hand over his face. ‘I’d like a tequila please. A large one.’
‘And I’ll have what he’s having.’ Boyd handed his children over to Helen with a mouthed apology and joined Ed at the bar. ‘Let’s get royally shit-faced.’
Ashen, Ed nodded and necked the first tequila of many. Molly. Where the hell was she? Ed needed Molly.
He made a quick call to Sara, Molly’s best friend. Sara was on her way to the party and seemed flummoxed that Molly was absent.
Ed grimly accepted another tequila. Hurry up, Molly, he thought to himself. Hurry up. I need you.
Molly sat in silence waiting to be called in. She hadn’t been kept long, but sitting in this particular waiting room was one of those occasions where time seemed to move so incredibly slowly, it was like being suspended in another realm.
Of course, there were worse things to be dealing with, Molly reasoned to herself. This wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to her. She knew friends whose children were in and out of that incredible hospital in London – Great Ormond Street, was it? Children with over-sized, inoperable tumours and unusual illnesses that meant regular resuscitation and any number of other complications. Molly also had friends whose parents, both of them, were suffering from cancer or something equally hideous.
So she had no right to be acting as though her world was about to come crashing down around her. Molly realised she was gripping the edges of the chair she was sitting in so tightly that her knuckles had gone white. She let go. Her hands felt fine today, ironically. They had for the past few days, in fact. Molly wasn’t sure what to make of that. Was it a brief respite? Or had whatever was wrong with her retreated for no apparent reason?
She glanced at her watch. She had missed Ed’s engagement party last week. She had sent an apologetic text to Ed to explain of course, but she hadn’t heard back from him. Which might mean that he was furious with her. Molly knew she needed to speak to Ed sooner rather than later, but she just couldn’t face it right now. Not until she knew for sure.
Molly shifted in her chair. She had received an immediate appointment with a consultant which was panicking the hell out of her. That didn’t bode well, did it? That meant they were fairly certain she had something serious. It was usually weeks and weeks until such appointments came up.
‘Mrs Bohle?’ Pronouncing Molly’s surname as ‘Bowl-lay’, a nurse appeared in the waiting room. Molly winced. Sam would go bonkers if he was here. He hated anyone who couldn’t pronounce their surname properly. ‘Mr Ward will see you now.’
Molly stood up, not bothering to correct the nurse. Her legs were like jelly. Was that a symptom? Or was it to be expected in the situation she was in? Frankly, Molly was fed up with all the uncertainty. It was better that she found out what was going on with her once and for all. Wasn’t it?
Anxiously, she walked into the consultant’s room and sat down.
‘Mrs Bohle. Good of you to come in so quickly.’
‘Good of you to see me.’
Mr Ward smiled politely. ‘Now. Obviously you initially went to see your GP about the tremors and stiffness in your hand and it was explained that there were various things this could be attributed to. A neurological movement disorder, perhaps. A few other conditions, but you haven’t presented the predominant symptoms.’
Molly found that her mouth had gone completely dry, as though someone had stuffed it full of cotton wool.
‘Are you feeling depressed at all?’
Molly flexed her hand. ‘Only about not being able to paint properly.’
‘But not in a general sense?’
‘I don’t think so, no.’
‘But you are having trouble sleeping?’
Molly nodded. ‘Not every night. But quite often, I suppose.’
‘Memory loss? Confusion? Balance difficulties?’
‘No.’
Molly felt panicked. She had forgotten what she had gone to the corner shop for the other day. And had suffered momentary confusion until she remembered that they had run out of milk, hence her jaunt to the shop. And she had lost her keys a few times of late. Did those incidents indicate memory loss? Was she confused? Or did most people have moments like this? Sam often went upstairs, laughed and came back down again, claiming not to have a clue what he had gone up there for. No one was saying he was ill – no one was suggesting that Sam might have something scary.
Mr Ward nodded calmly. ‘But you have noticed some painful muscle contractions in your ankles and shoulders?’
‘Y-yes.’
Molly was loath to admit to these symptoms but she knew she had to be brave about this. There was no point in hiding things. She had forgotten about a few things but her GP had jolted her memory the other day. It had been horrible, like pieces of a jigsaw slotting into place.
Mr Ward cleared his throat. ‘A degree of numbness and tingling?’
‘Very slight. But – yes. I have felt those sensations.’
‘I see. And on one side of your body predominantly? The right?’ Mr Ward tidied the papers on his desk. ‘Well. I am going to give you my opinion, Mrs Bohle. And it’s up to you if you get a second opinion, of course. I would, in fact, recommend it in this instance.’
‘You – you would?’
Mr Ward sat back and regarded her. ‘There is no objective test for this condition. I can’t run a blood test, do a brain scan or carry out an ECG. Unfortunately. The great thing about those tests is that they give us definitive answers. What we’re dealing with here is something rather more vague.’
Molly’s
