so I suppose he was up all night.’
There was no point in disabusing Chelsea of that notion, no reason why she should be caught up in their marital stalemate…
Much better to concentrate on pale green walls.
‘I should be home by twelve-thirty,’ she told Chelsea. ‘If you grab something to eat before then, we’ll go down town and get what you need for decorating your room. Have you done any painting?’
Chelsea beamed at her.
‘Dad taught me. He said girls should be useful around the house, so when I turned ten I got to choose what colour I wanted my room, and he showed me how to paint it.’
Not a totally absent father, then, Ellie thought.
Ellie’s morning passed smoothly, although again, as she listened to some of her elderly male patients, she wondered what could be done to occupy their time.
Chelsea picked up on it when they were in the hardware store, where several older men were poking around, fiddling with bolts and nuts, lifting things and putting them back, looking, more than shopping.
‘Don’t they have anything to do?’ she asked.
‘Not a lot,’ Ellie told her honestly.
‘They need a Men’s Shed,’ Chelsea said, echoing what had only been a nebulous thought in Ellie’s mind.
‘What do you know about Men’s Sheds?’ she asked, and Chelsea smiled.
‘My gramps—Mum’s dad—belongs to one. They get old bicycles and old plastic chairs, sometimes from hotels, and turn them into wheelchairs that they send off to Africa and the Pacific Islands—anywhere people can’t afford fancy wheelchairs.’
‘Does your gramps still do it?’ Ellie asked, excited by the idea.
‘Sure.’
‘And would he send you instructions on how to do it?’
‘I’m sure he would.
‘Well, let’s phone and ask him—you can use our phone.’
‘I’ll write to him,’ Chelsea replied, ‘because I’ll have to explain why I’m here and not at home. He’ll probably assume Mum arranged it before she went away.’
They collected all they needed, Chelsea insisting on paying with her credit card, and headed home, seeing more elderly men sitting on a bench outside the supermarket.
The Men’s Shed idea was growing, but how many old bicycles and plastic chairs could they source in Maytown?
‘Plenty!’ Andy said, when they were discussing the idea over dinner. ‘I bet you’ve never had a good look in our garden shed. I’d say there’d be half a dozen in there. We all had bikes as kids, and when we outgrew the small ones, we got bigger ones, or for the girls just fancier ones. The old ones always ended up in the shed—just in case we might need them later, or could give them to a friend or a cousin.’
‘And I suppose the garden shed might also house any number of old plastic chairs?’ Ellie said, with only a slight edge of sarcasm.
‘Well, if you mean those white ones that stack easily, then yes, there’d be some. We always needed extra chairs when relatives came for Christmas, and Mum and Dad never threw anything away. You never know when it might come in handy, that’s Mum’s favourite saying.’
Ellie could only shake her head, but Chelsea was all for going down to explore the garden shed immediately.
‘Not at night, my girl,’ Andy said firmly. ‘The place hasn’t been opened for months and who knows what snake might have made his home in there. I’ll go down in the morning and open the doors and bang the sides a bit so any nasties lurking in there will have time to get out before we explore.’
‘Oh, well,’ Chelsea said, ‘I have to email Gramps anyway, so I’ll do that now.’
‘Just as soon as we’ve cleaned up after dinner,’ Ellie reminded her, and Chelsea leapt to her feet and began to clear the table, Andy deciding that with two people already cleaning up, he could get on the internet and investigate wheelchairs made from old bicycles. The idea intrigued him, although how they did it, he couldn’t imagine.
He paused in the doorway, looking back at Ellie, who was stacking the dishwasher.
‘This Men’s Shed is a good idea,’ he said. ‘I’ll phone Ray at the pub about old plastic chairs.’
Ellie smiled at him, feeling that this was as close to normal as they’d been for many, many months.
Could working together on a project like this heal the breach between them?
Or was it simply because they had a third person around—someone with her own problems—that the tension between herself and Andy seemed to have eased somewhat?
Andy had barely left the room when his phone rang.
It was Madeleine Courtney, who was feeling faint and dizzy, and wondering if it could be delayed concussion.
‘Are you at the hospital?’ he asked.
‘No, I didn’t like to drive,’ came the weak and plaintive reply.
‘Then I’ll let Ellie know and she’ll come to you,’ Andy said. ‘She’s your GP.’
He could hear Madeleine suggesting he’d be better, but he stopped the conversation, returning to the kitchen where Ellie was on her own, doing the last of the wiping down of the benches.
‘It’s Madeleine Courtney,’ he said, aware that the name had come out as a growl. ‘She thinks she might have delayed concussion.’
‘She’s at home?’ Ellie asked, and he nodded.
‘I’ll go,’ Ellie told him. ‘But if there’s any doubt at all she should be in hospital, shouldn’t she?’
The frown on her face told him more than the words.
‘Is there something wrong with her?’ he asked.
‘Apart from a maybe concussion that had her phoning you rather than me?’ Ellie muttered. ‘I’m beginning to think she feels I’ve failed her. There’s nothing I can find—or have found so far—but you know full well that we do miss things.’
She sighed, then gave a little shrug.
‘I’ll go and see her and if I’m worried I’ll drive her to the hospital myself and ask the staff to do hourly obs. And maybe if she’s in hospital you can run more tests on her to see if I’ve missed something. Her symptoms are so vague, and change from pains in the abdomen to pains in her shoulders, to general tiredness, fuzzy concentration
