make an appointment to see the doctor today.’
She studied her mother. She looked frail, and there were lines of tension on her face, giving her a drawn appearance. Her brown hair, which had once been vibrant, was now streaked with grey, and the sheen had gone from it. It feathered her cheeks but it did nothing to disguise the weariness of her features.
‘Aunt Rose said that she would go with you,’ Amber added. ‘It’s been worrying me that you’re having so many bad headaches lately, and you know yourself that you need to get your health sorted out. You can’t go on the way that you have been doing. The other day you were so giddy that you almost fell, and that can’t be right.’
‘You worry too much. I’ll be right as rain. You just get yourself off to work and concentrate on what you have to do.’
Aunt Rose turned away from the sink where she had been refilling the kettle, and came over to the table. She began clearing away the breakfast crockery.
‘You know what your mother is like,’ she said, directing a stern glance towards Amber’s mother. ‘Julie’s as stubborn as a mule when it comes to looking after herself. I’m just glad that she finally agreed to come and live with me, where I can keep an eye on her.’
‘It’s a relief to me, too,’ Amber said.
Her mother gave them both a wry glance. ‘I’ve managed well enough up to now,’ she muttered. ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about.’ She pushed her chair back from the table and stood up slowly. Amber noticed that she steadied herself momentarily with a hand on the table’s edge, but then she straightened up and walked towards the door that led into the hallway. ‘I’m going to tidy my bedroom,’ she said, ‘but I’ll be down to see you off to work, Amber. I think you can trust me to sort myself out.’
Amber watched her go from the room, and then sighed. ‘I just know that she’s going to try to wriggle out of it,’ she said to Aunt Rose. ‘If she doesn’t see the doctor today, I’m going to ring and make an appointment for her myself. She’s been worrying me more and more as the days go by.’
‘I don’t think the story in the newspaper helped very much,’ Rose said. ‘When she heard about the fire at the block of flats, and realised that you were there, she very nearly collapsed from the shock. I think she was terribly afraid that she might have lost you. She’s never got over losing Kyle, and I think it would have definitely been the last straw for her if anything had happened to you.’
‘She hasn’t lost Kyle. He’s still around, somewhere.’ Amber frowned. ‘I thought she was holding onto a last glimmer of hope—when your friend-of-a-friend said she’d heard that he might be down here, she insisted on coming to live in the area. It was perhaps just as well that we were thinking of moving anyway.’ She paused, thinking it through. ‘I suppose there could be some truth in it. After all, he loved this area when he was a child. Perhaps he wants to get back to his roots.’
‘She’s clutching at straws. The rumours could be way off beam, and I’d be surprised if he could remember having a home here at one time. It was a long, long time ago. But at least your mother has left notice of where she’s living now—just in case he ever turns up at the old house. They’re good people, the couple who moved into your old place. They promised that they would keep in touch, didn’t they? And I have every faith in them. Though, if you ask me, it isn’t very likely that he’ll put in an appearance after all this time.’
‘You could be right, but I hope for her sake that we find him. For years now she’s been stressed out, worrying about where he is and what he’s doing. I just hate to see her looking so ill.’
Aunt Rose made a face. ‘You won’t thank me for saying it, but it didn’t do her a lot of good, living with your father. He was a difficult man at the best of times, and he caused her a lot of heartache. To be brutally honest, I wasn’t sorry when the marriage broke up.’
Amber could understand how she felt. Any loyalty that she might have had to her father had disappeared long ago. He had been a strict disciplinarian, a domineering man, and she wasn’t surprised that it had taken her mother so long to break free.
She glanced at her watch. ‘I must go,’ she said. ‘I’ve a busy day ahead of me. Take care, Aunt Rose. Thanks for breakfast.’
Aunt Rose nodded, giving her a quick hug. ‘I wanted to make sure that you had a good meal inside you before you went off on your first day in a new job. You’ll do all right, I’m sure.’
She was a no-nonsense sort of woman, tall and strong, the opposite of her sister, and Amber hugged her in return and felt reassured that she could leave her mother in her care.
She collected her things together, said her goodbyes and then headed towards town and the Castle Hill hospital.
She had been hoping that she might avoid bumping into the consultant as soon as she entered the A and E department, but it wasn’t to be. She wasn’t that lucky.
He was there, by the reception desk, talking to Chloe. He didn’t seem to notice Amber as she walked in, and she kept a low profile, talking quietly to the desk clerk and generally gathering information about the set-up in the unit.
‘I’ll hand you over to Mandy, our triage nurse,’ the desk clerk said. ‘She’ll give you a quick rundown of everything.’
‘Thanks.’
Mandy had been at the party the other night, and Amber recalled that she was a lively girl, with dark hair that shone with good health and warm, brown eyes. She greeted Amber cheerfully. ‘It’s good to see you again. That was a terrible end to the evening, when the fire started, wasn’t it?’ she said. ‘I’m just so relieved that we all managed to escape.’
‘Me, too.’
‘Come on. I’ll show you where we keep everything. We’ll start off round here at the back of the reception desk. That’s where we keep most of the forms that you’ll need.’
Amber followed her, and tried to keep track of where she would find blood-test forms, lab-request slips and relevant charts.
‘I know it can be difficult when you start a new job, getting used to the place, but you’ll soon get the hang of our system, I’m sure,’ Mandy said.
‘I hope so.’ Mandy was friendly and helpful, and Amber did her best to concentrate on what the nurse was saying, but snatches of conversation came to her from the other side of the desk, and she couldn’t help hearing all the ins and outs of Chloe’s problems. She wasn’t making any attempt to keep her voice down.
She was clearly was upset. ‘Did you see this article?’ she was saying. She waved a newspaper in front of Nick’s face. ‘It’s all about the fire the other night, and they have a photograph of me on the front page— I can’t believe they put my picture in the paper.’ Her face crumpled. ‘What am I going to do? If my ex-husband sees this, he’ll know where I am, and he’ll come after me.’
‘That’s not necessarily true,’ Nick said softly. ‘You’re not living there now, are you?’
‘No, but as soon as the repairs are done and I move back in, he’s going to find me, isn’t he?’
Nick gently placed his hands on her shoulders and made her look at him. ‘You must stop upsetting yourself like this. I’ll speak to my father,
