they approached the reception area, Leo turned to Gerry. ‘How are you really coping?’
He shrugged. ‘I just feel so guilty. I’ve really enjoyed being able to slouch around and take the kids out for long walks without worrying about her, and I feel a real louse because she’s the one with the problems, really, and I feel I ought to be offering her more support, but I don’t know, I just can’t — not all the time. I feel better now, but — oh, I don’t know; it’s just such hard work trying to be cheerful …’
Leo squeezed his shoulder gently. ‘Don’t feel guilty, Gerry. I’m sure Mary understands, you know — and I think in a way it’s a relief for her to have some time away from you all when she doesn’t have to be brave and cheerful all the time, too.’
‘Really?’ He looked doubtful, but was clearly desperate for reassurance, and Leo gave it to him.
‘Yes, really. This situation’s very emotionally demanding on all of you and you need to recharge your batteries. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be more use to her, and her to you. Don’t feel guilty. She’ll be home to you soon, and you’ll be glad you’ve had a rest.’
Gerry smiled, more relaxed. ‘You’re right — as always.’
Leo tapped on the sister’s door, and they all trooped in and discussed Mary’s progress and decided she should go home at the end of the week unless she had any further set-backs.
As they parted at the door, Gerry turned to Leo and smiled wearily. ‘Thanks for dropping by.’
Leo shook his hand warmly. ‘My pleasure. See you soon. And don’t feel guilty. If you need to talk, you know where to find me.’
Gerry nodded and turned away, walking back to his wife and the crisis in their lives.
‘Do you know them well?’ Abbie asked, remembering the kiss he had given Mary as they left her bedside.
‘No — well, only since Mary’s mastectomy. I’ve spent a lot of time with both of them since. Why?’
She shrugged. ‘Just wondered. You kissed her.’
His mouth quirked. ‘Jealous, Abbie? The offer’s still open.’
So they were back to that, were they? ‘Of course I’m not jealous. It just seemed — odd, that’s all.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t find it odd to greet people with physical contact. I’m a toucher, Abbie …’
His hand was resting lightly on the small of her back as he spoke. She stepped away.
‘I’d noticed,’ she said shortly.
‘Whereas you — you’re a buttoned-up little virgin.’
‘I am not!’ she denied hotly, acutely uncomfortable with the sudden shift in the direction of the conversation, and he laughed, a low, smoky laugh that did incredible things to her system.
‘Well, then, all I can say is that whoever you’ve had affairs with didn’t even get close to the real you.’
Abbie made no attempt to correct him. What was the point? He was so absolutely right.
AS THE days passed, so Abbie’s disordered impressions of life in general practice settled down to a sort of pattern.
Peter Sargent, she realised, was the sort to skate through life with cheerful inefficiency, constantly chivvied by the secretarial staff who were quite unmoved by his ingenuous charm.
She discovered that Ravi Patel was single, thirty-four and after Leo, who did precious little to discourage her despite his protestations to the contrary.
As for Leo himself, he was thirty-two and a constant thorn in her side, rattling through his patients at twice the speed of light so that by the time she finally emerged exhausted but triumphant at the end of her surgeries he was long gone on his visits and she was unable to ask him the inevitable string of questions that the consultations had generated.
‘Well, you shouldn’t dawdle about for so long,’ he would tell her, and then would sit and rip through the seemingly knotty problems, so that she felt a complete fool for not having seen the answers herself.
Not that he ever tried to belittle her medical knowledge. He didn’t have to. Frankly, she was more than aware of the glaring lapses in her understanding of certain conditions.
As for the paperwork, it defeated her utterly, to the point that when the receptionist told her she should fill in her PC4 she asked where she could find it, much to everyone’s amusement.
Leo, not even trying to disguise his mirth, explained cheerfully that a PC4 was a course of four tablets taken as post-coital contraception — hence the name.
Peggy Taylor, the practice manager, took pity on her and told the others off, but it did little to dilute Abbie’s humiliation.
It wasn’t that she minded being teased — lord, she was used to that. She had two brothers who had taken it as their filial duty to torment the life out of her in her childhood, until, in her teens, she’d suddenly changed into the object of their friends’ lascivious attention. Then they’d closed ranks protectively, but even so they still teased her gently to this day.
So it wasn’t being teased that troubled her, rather the glaring gaps in her knowledge that the teasing had exposed.
Leo found her later sitting in her surgery surrounded by a heap of textbooks, and came and hitched a lean hip up on to the corner of her desk.
‘Boning up on methods of contraception, Abbie?’ he teased.
She ignored him huffily.
‘Tut-tut,’ he admonished. ‘Wallowing in self-pity?’
‘Oh, go to hell,’ she muttered, her voice clogged.
He stuck a finger under her chin and tipped her head up, studying her face intently. She turned away, embarrassed that he should see the traces of tears on her cheeks.
‘Leave me alone.’
He stood up, but instead of walking away he came round her desk, pulled her to her feet and wrapped his long arms round her.
At first she was stunned into immobility, but after a few seconds she gave in to the luxury of his undemanding embrace, dropping her head forward into the hollow of his shoulder and sighing shakily.
His hand came up and smoothed her hair.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said softly. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you, and I’m sure Jackie didn’t.’
‘It’s not that,’ she mumbled into his shirt. ‘I just feel so inadequate. I should have known what a PC4 was.’
‘Probably,’ he agreed, ‘but
