days before that Marina really hadn’t paid much attention to what was going on at work. She just did her shift, visited her sister before and after every shift and helped her brother-in-law Neil to look after Phoebe, Rosie and his two-year-old daughter.
‘I didn’t realise you were here, either,’ Max added. ‘You weren’t here when I had a tour of the department.’
‘I was probably off duty.’ Not that he needed to know what she’d been doing. He hadn’t kept in touch with her family at all; as far as she was concerned, he wasn’t part of her family any longer, and she didn’t owe him any explanations.
‘How long have you been working here?’
‘Nearly a year.’ She glanced at him, and was gratified to see a slight flicker in his eyes. Good: so he did remember what had happened a year ago. He’d taken long enough to sign the divorce papers. Her solicitor had had to send them to him three times because he hadn’t bothered replying; the ending of their marriage had clearly been as low a priority in his life as their marriage itself.
But at last she was free. She’d gone back to using her maiden name. At the London Victoria, they’d only ever known her as Marina Petrelli—and that was the way she wanted it to stay.
‘It’s a good place to work,’ she said.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Is it going to be a problem, my working here?’
Trust Max to cut to the chase.
Yes, it was a problem. She’d much rather they didn’t have to work together. But she couldn’t change the situation, only make the best of it. ‘I think,’ she said carefully, ‘We’re both professional enough to put our patients first.’
‘Good.’
There was a long, long pause. Marina couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
Actually, that wasn’t true. There was a lot she wanted to say. Answers she wanted to demand. But the emergency-department kitchen wasn’t the right place to say any of it.
If anyone had said to her five years ago that she’d find it difficult to talk to Max, she would’ve laughed in disbelief. They’d never stopped talking, right from the start. And Max had fitted right in to her noisy, talkative family. The Petrellis had adored him as much as she had.
Until their marriage had gone so badly wrong. Then she and Max had stopped talking completely.
Marry in haste, repent at leisure: how horribly true that saying had turned out to be.
‘Well, I’d better get back,’ she said, rinsing out her mug and trying to avoid eye contact.
‘Me, too.’
Oh, no. Please don’t let him suggest walking back to the department together She wasn’t ready for this. But, to her relief, Max was still finishing his coffee, which meant she could escape.
‘Bye, then,’ she said brightly, and left the room.
How on earth had they come to this point? Max wondered. They were awkward, embarrassed strangers who could barely make small talk in a staff kitchen.
Though he knew exactly how they’d got here: through pain and hurt that they’d both been too young to deal with at the time. Marina had walked out and gone home to her parents for the comfort he hadn’t been able to give her. And he’d responded by going off to work for Doctors Without Borders, where he’d known he’d be too busy to think about the wreck of their marriage.
And now they had to work together. He’d seen on her face that, yes, it was a problem for her. It was a problem for him, too. But they’d better deal with it—and fast—because he sure as hell didn’t want to be the subject of the hospital grapevine. He’d been there before and he wasn’t in any hurry to repeat the experience: people whispering and stopping conversations dead as soon as they saw him walk in, the pitying glances.
If he’d known that she worked here, he wouldn’t have taken the job.
Then again, this had been too good an opportunity to turn down: a position as senior registrar in a busy London emergency-department. Added to his experience abroad, it would stand him in good stead for future promotion, for the consultant’s post that was the focus of his life right now.
Luckily the rest of his afternoon was too rushed to let Max think about Marina. There were several victims of road-traffic accidents who needed checking over—including one with broken ribs and a pneumothorax that needed very careful attention. Even so, he was aware that Marina left the department a good half-hour before he did.
Then, as he walked out through the double doors, he heard a voice he recognised, saying cheerfully, ‘Right, Miss Beautiful. Let’s go and meet Daddy.’
Daddy?
Max couldn’t help looking, and immediately wished he hadn’t. Because at the far end of the corridor Marina was carrying a toddler: a little girl who had the same dark hair, dark eyes and sweet smile as Marina herself.
Marina had a daughter.
For a moment, Max couldn’t breathe; it felt as if someone had just sucker-punched him in the stomach and all the air had been driven out of his lungs. The little girl looked as if she was around two years old—which meant that Marina hadn’t even waited for their divorce to be finalised before she’d moved on to another relationship and had a baby with her new partner.
Yet she still used her maiden name in the department. Maybe she hadn’t yet remarried. Or maybe she’d decided to keep her maiden name for work.
Whatever.
It was none of his business any more.
All the same, it shook him. Especially when a man came walking down the corridor towards them, kissed Marina lightly on the mouth and scooped the child from her arms.
‘Daddy!’ the little girl said, beaming as the man kissed her and lifted her onto his shoulders.
Marina tucked her arm through his and they walked off together, chatting easily. Looking exactly like the close, loving family they obviously were.
Exactly like the close, loving family he and Marina had planned to have.
Max swallowed the bile that had risen in his throat. Now he understood why Marina had left her shift dead on time. She’d had to pick up her daughter from the hospital nursery before meeting her partner.
What made the whole thing so much worse was that, if circumstances had been very slightly different, Max would’ve been the one meeting Marina with a bright, lively pre-school child, and maybe a baby with chubby hands and a wide, wide smile. He would’ve been the one they smiled at, the one they greeted with a kiss.
He swore under his breath. He’d promised himself that he was over it, that he could cope with working in England again. But seeing that little tableau made it feel as if someone had cracked his heart wide open and stomped on it.
Marina had a child. With someone else.
He’d thought that he’d reached the depths of pain. Now he knew there was more—and it felt
