adult.
‘I will. And thank you.’
With that, Annabelle peeled off her gloves, threw them in the rubbish bin, and went out of the door.
* * *
‘You go to the party, honey.’
Annabelle clenched her phone just a little tighter. ‘Are you sure, Mum? I can spend the night there with you instead.’
‘Don’t do that. Nate is fine. He’s resting comfortably right now.’
‘And Jessie and Walter?’ Her sister had to be frantic with worry. With a husband who travelled five days a week, it couldn’t be easy to deal with a child’s health crisis while his father worked to make a decent living.
‘Walter is staying home this week. They’re setting up timetables with their team of doctors. It looks like Nate’s prognosis is better than it could have been. The tumour is not malignant, and they’re hopeful they can get all of it with surgery.’
Even though it wasn’t malignant, meaning it wouldn’t spread wildly through Nate’s body, it could still regrow, if they didn’t get absolutely every piece of it when they operated. But resecting a tumour and differentiating between tumour cells and healthy tissue was one of the hardest jobs a surgeon had. At least with Baby Hope’s surgery, once the transplant was done, there was no growth of foreign tissue to contend with. There were other problems that could arise, yes, like her a-fib, but cells of the old heart wouldn’t hang around and cause trouble later. Once it was out of the body, it was gone for good.
She hadn’t told her mum yet that Max was working at her hospital or that he was the one she was going to the party with. Somehow she needed to break the news to her. But she wasn’t sure if she should do it now, with the worry of Nate hanging over her head. The last thing her mother needed was to lose sleep over another of her children. Her family had been shocked—and horrified—when they’d heard that she and Max had separated. So she had no idea how her mum would react. She’d probably be thrilled...and hopeful. Something else Annabelle didn’t want her family being. She and Max were not getting back together.
‘Who are you going with? Ella?’
Oh, great. Here it came.
‘No. Not Ella.’ She’d better just get it over with. ‘I’m actually going with Max.’
There was a pause. A long one. Annabelle could practically hear the air between their two phones vibrating.
‘Mum? Are you there?’
‘I’m here.’ Another hesitation. ‘I didn’t know he was back in England.’
‘He came back a week ago.’ She bit her lip. This was turning out to be harder than she’d expected.
‘Okay, then. I didn’t know you’d been in contact with him.’
Oh, yes. Much harder.
‘By coincidence, he’s come to work at the same hospital as I am, here in Cheltenham.’ Before her mother could jump to conclusions, she hurried to finish. ‘He wound up here quite by accident. He’s taking another surgeon’s place while she goes on maternity leave.’
‘You’re positive he didn’t know you were there?’
And there was that note of hopefulness she’d been hoping to avoid.
‘Yes, I’m absolutely positive.’
‘I wonder...’ Her mother let whatever she was going to say trail off into nothing. Then she came back. ‘Why don’t you and Max come to London a little earlier? We’re just getting ready to put up the tree and decorate it. You didn’t help us put on the ornaments last year, and you know everyone would love to have you there. And Max, of course. Nate... Well, he would love it.’
Oh, Lord, how was she going to get out of this? She’d had no idea her mother would suggest she come over and help decorate the tree. Especially not with her ex in tow.
‘I’m not sure Max will want to—’
‘It certainly can’t hurt to ask. And if he doesn’t want to join us, he can just pick you up at the house later and off you’ll go to the party.’ Another pause, quicker this time. ‘What kind of party did you say it was?’
‘A Doctors Without Borders fundraiser.’
‘Isn’t that who Max left—I mean worked with?’
Her mum was right. Annabelle might have been the one to ask him to leave, but Doctors Without Borders had been Max’s escape route. They had used to talk about going and working together. But in the end, Max had gone alone.
‘Yes.’
‘Is he going back with them once he’s finished his contract at the hospital?’
Something in Annabelle’s stomach twisted until it hurt. No, that had been her, clenching her abs until they shook. She’d asked him that same question at the pub. ‘I don’t know what his plans are after that, Mum.’
‘So this might be our last chance to see him for a while?’ Her mum called something to her father, but she couldn’t hear what it was. Great. She could only hope that she wasn’t telling him that Max was back and that it would be good to have the family together again.
Her mum knew that Max had left, but she’d never told her that she’d served him with divorce papers soon afterwards. It had been a painful time in her life and she’d kept most of it to herself. And then as time had gone on and Max hadn’t sent his portion of the paperwork back, it was as if Annabelle had put it to the back of her mind like a bad dream that had happened once and was then forgotten.
This probably wasn’t a good time to bring up the fact that a reconciliation was highly unlikely. Max had given no indication that he wanted to get back together with her. In fact, even when he’d towed her from the restaurant and kissed her in the park, he’d referred to what was going on between them as ‘the spark’. Physical attraction. People could be attracted to each other without it going any deeper than that.
‘I’ll ask him. But don’t be disappointed if he’d rather not come, Mum.’
‘I won’t. But you’ll come, even if he chooses not to, won’t you?’
There was no way she was going to be able to get out of it. And actually she didn’t want to. This was a family tradition that she’d participated in every year except for the last one, when she’d just been getting situated at Teddy’s and had been too busy with all the changes to be able to take a train home to London. With Nate’s diagnosis, though, she had to go. ‘I’ll be there, Mum, but I probably won’t be able to stay for dinner.’
‘Of course not. Tell Max I’m looking forward to seeing him.’
Okay. Hadn’t she just explained that he might not want to come?
She would invite him. And then let him decide what he wanted to do. And if he agreed to go? Well, she’d have to decide how to tell him that her family wasn’t privy to one small detail of their relationship: that not only had she asked him to leave, but she’d
