From Single Mum to Lady Read online

  Patrick and Jandy looked at her in mystification. ‘What is it?’ asked Jandy.

  Charles struggled to sit up, then explained with a little smile, ‘I’ll be brief! For many years Gwen and I have been great friends as well as colleagues. Over time I began to realise that what I felt for Gwen was more than friendship—in fact, to tell you the truth, I knew that I loved her very much.’

  Patrick’s and Jandy’s eyes met briefly in a look of astonishment at Mr Westhrop’s revelations. Then he took Gwen’s hand again and drew her nearer to him.

  ‘It…it never seemed the right moment to tell her, although I’ve always been longing for an opportunity,’ he said softly. ‘But suddenly I’ve just had an epiphany and realised that I’m not immortal and that we may not have much more time to enjoy ourselves. The thing is…’ He looked shyly at the elderly lady. ‘The thing is, I thought that it was now or never. I’ve just told Gwen it’s about time we got married!’

  There was a stunned silence in the room then Jandy broke the silence, clasping her hands in delight and exclaiming, ‘What a lovely idea! And how wonderful that you chose to tell us about it!’

  ‘Congratulations, sir—and to you, Ms Pendle,’ said Patrick with a grin. ‘Who says hospitals aren’t romantic places?’

  Jandy looked at Gwen. Suddenly she didn’t seem like a rather plain elderly lady any more—she looked quite beautiful, lit by an aura of pure happiness. That was what love did to you, Jandy thought wistfully, it made you glad to be alive. It had been a long time since she had felt that bubbling excitement—until the last few days that was…She flicked a quick look at Patrick under her lashes. Hadn’t he woken a few emotions that she’d thought had vanished for ever? She bit her lip, and forced herself back to reality and Mr Westhrop’s deep vein thrombosis.

  ‘And now I’m going to have to bring you down to earth, I’m afraid,’ Patrick was saying. ‘We’re going to run a barrage of blood tests on you, Mr Westhrop, so perhaps, Ms Pendle, you can go and drink a toast to you and your fiancé with the finest tea our canteen has to offer while we attack him!’

  Charles smiled. ‘You can do what you like, young man—I may feel awful physically, but I can tell you I’ve never been happier in my life! You see, I never thought I’d find love at my time of life—and there it was, waiting round the corner. I’ve spent many years wishing I’d had the courage to ask Gwen to marry me. What a fool I’ve been! And if it hadn’t been for this damn leg I might never have plucked up the courage!’ His eyes twinkled at them. ‘Let it be a lesson to you young ones never to put off tomorrow what you can do today!’

  For a brief second Patrick’s gaze swept over Jandy, then he smiled at Charles. ‘I’ll try and remember what you said, sir,’ he murmured.

  Max appeared at the door, his kindly face beaming. ‘I’ve come for Mr Westhrop—they’re ready to give him his scan now.’

  The patient was wheeled away to the X-ray department and Patrick murmured, ‘No one can say A and E is dull, that’s for sure.’ There was a certain awkwardness in his manner, as if he was aware that things weren’t easy between them.

  ‘Nice to have a happy ending,’ Jandy said coolly, not wanting to be drawn into a discussion with him. ‘They’re a lovely couple.’

  A short silence, then Patrick said abruptly, ‘Mr Westhrop’s right, of course.’

  Jandy looked at him questioningly. ‘In what way?’

  ‘Never put off till tomorrow something you can do today…’

  Jandy walked back into the cubicle and pulled off the paper sheet to replace it with a fresh one for the next patient. She didn’t say anything.

  ‘I’m afraid I owe you an apology, Jandy,’ he said softly, following her into the cubicle.

  Jandy smoothed out the sheet, her face impassive, belying the surprise she felt. ‘How do you mean?’

  Patrick sighed. ‘Last week…I was damned rude to you. I left without as much as a goodbye—you must have thought it was rather odd, rushing away like that. But I’ve had time to think about it and—’

  Jandy turned round to face him and said candidly, ‘I did wonder what I’d done wrong. You suddenly seemed to backtrack on me taking the house…’ She held his gaze with hers. ‘I got the feeling you didn’t really want me to take it—am I right?’

  He shook his head and put his hands on her shoulders, his expression contrite. ‘I was nervous about you taking on the cottage for various reasons,’ he admitted. ‘You’d done nothing wrong…it was me, being far too cautious.’

  Jandy stood stock still, trying to ignore the electric touch of his hands and just how close he was to her—close enough to pull her towards him and hold her against his chest. ‘I can imagine what your reasons are,’ she said glacially.

  He looked down at her, surprised. ‘You can? And what do you imagine?’

  She gave a humourless laugh. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? You don’t want to get involved socially with me. And you think that if I take the house—which I now realise is on your father’s land—we’ll start to move in the same circles.’

  Patrick looked dumbfounded. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said slowly, ‘I don’t have a clue what you mean…’

  ‘Well, it wouldn’t do at all, would it? To get too friendly with someone outside your elevated circle—someone like me—would be a total waste of time!’

  ‘You what?’ His blue eyes looked down at her in complete bafflement. ‘You think I don’t want to see you because of some sort of outdated class distinction? I don’t believe this…’

  ‘But it’s true, isn’t it?’ Jandy’s beautiful tawny flecked eyes gazed up at him challengingly. ‘I saw your father on television the other night and it seemed to me he has some pretty feudal ideas, which I imagine have rubbed off on you as well, archaic as they are!’

  He nodded as if understanding what she was getting at. ‘Ah, so that’s it! You saw the programme and you’re reading things into it…’

  ‘Am I? We seemed to be getting on pretty well before you heard about my background…an impoverished single parent, and her mother living with a man young enough to be her son. Not very good connections, you might say!’

  ‘Jandy, stop it!’ He put a finger over her mouth. ‘If I had any reservations about getting “involved socially” with you, I can assure you it was the other way round. I thought the baggage I bring with me isn’t something I should involve you in—that was one of the reasons.’

  ‘Easy enough to say. I wish you’d been honest with me. Frankly, I happen to think you’re right—we shouldn’t be in each other’s pockets, and getting involved would be foolish. You live in a different world from me and we wouldn’t do for each other at all!’

  ‘That is complete nonsense,’ he said angrily, then his face softened. ‘Actually, I don’t normally tell people now about my background—I find it can get in the way a bit.’

  ‘How?’ demanded Jandy tersely.

  ‘Sometimes people want to date me because of who I am, not what I am,’ he said drily.

  Jandy’s eyes sparked across at him, two pink spots of anger on her cheeks. ‘Thank you very much—you think I’m as shallow as that do you? I honestly couldn’t care less where you come from.’

  He groaned, and, putting his hand up to her cheek, turned her face towards him then gently brushed a tendril of hair from her forehead. ‘No, I don’t think you’re shallow, Jandy—but some people are. I’m so sorry—sorry you saw that silly programme and jumped to the wrong conclusions, sorry I’ve been an idiot. Believe me, there are reasons why I can’t involve anyone in my life at the moment.’

  She jerked her head away from his hand, and said coldly, ‘Apology accepted.’ Then she turned to go back down the corridor, wondering exactly where all this had left her. But, of course, she still fancied him like mad, didn’t she? Part of her longed to make up with him and to get to know him properly—what made him tick, and what exactly the reasons were that held him back from making any commitment.

  Bob stepped out of
a cubicle and called after her. ‘Fancy a cup of coffee, Jandy?’

  Deep in thought, she absently shook her head and walked on, while Bob shrugged and went off by himself to the canteen.

  Patrick cursed himself for being such a fool, hurting someone he liked a lot by his clumsy manner. He closed his eyes for a second as the searing guilt of his last words to Rachel came back to him, as they often did when he’d been churlish—a terrible reminder of his tendency to let his temper rule his head. Would he never learn?

  Surely he could have kept things between Jandy and himself at a friendly level without offending her, and without allowing them to get too close? As it was, she regarded him as nothing short of a snobbish throwback. He had to try and explain to her, without being specific, why he’d acted as he had—try and convince her that it was to protect her and not him. He wasn’t sure she’d believe him, but he hated the thought of being on bad terms with her. In his imagination a pair of eyes the colour of soft amber looked at him reproachfully—and he couldn’t stop thinking about them.

  CHAPTER SIX

  FOR the rest of the weekend there was the usual continuous queue of patients and by Monday morning everyone on the team was exhausted.

  ‘All I want to do is go home and sleep for two days,’ sighed Tilly, yawning, slumped with her elbows on the desk.

  ‘Wait till you’ve done a week of nights,’ remarked Jandy, easing her feet out of her shoes surreptitiously. ‘I’m going to treat myself to a pedicure soon—my feet don’t seem to belong to my body at the moment.’

  ‘Only another hour to go and then home…and then four days off!’ Bob stretched and sighed, pinching the skin between his eyes wearily.

  And perhaps I can catch up on everything I should have done days ago, thought Jandy. She flicked a look across at Patrick, writing up a patient’s report. She had felt acutely conscious of him for the whole weekend, wondering if his apology was just flannel. She’d learned the hard way to be circumspect when it came to believing men. Sometimes, she thought bitterly, it was better to call a halt to your feelings for your own peace of mind. She had clung to the hope for many months that Terry would come back to her, even after she’d had Abigail, unable to break free of the hold he’d had on her. Patrick’s attitude to her was a warning for her not to get entangled again with another man who she’d found so instantly attractive. Keep him at arm’s length, Jandy, she told herself firmly.

  Tim came up to the desk, his face still slightly swollen from the effects of a tooth abscess.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ asked Bob.

  ‘I’ll be better when the antibiotics have kicked in,’ he said, feeling his jaw gingerly. ‘I’ll be even better when I’ve had a whisky at home…’

  ‘Not advisable with the antibiotics,’ warned Bob.

  Tim grinned ruefully, ‘Don’t take away my only pleasure.’ He looked round as he heard the noise of an ambulance drawing up outside the entrance. ‘This had better be a minor injury,’ he remarked without much hope.

  Karen shook her head. ‘Just had word that we’re to expect two men involved in a fight—one quite serious.’

  ‘If only they could have waited another hour before hitting the daylights out of each other then the next shift could have taken them,’ he sighed.

  And a few seconds later two stretcher cases were brought in and transferred to casualty trolleys. Tim went over to the first trolley and lifted the blanket from the patient, a burly man with a shaven head and liberally tattooed chest who was emitting deep groans.

  Tim took a deep breath and stared at the multiple temporary dressings on the man’s arms and legs and a small abrasion on his head.

  ‘This is going to be a long job,’ he muttered to Patrick. ‘Can you and Staff Nurse get to grips with it while I see to the other patient?’

  ‘That tooth still giving you gyp?’ asked Patrick sympathetically.

  ‘Enough to make me a bit woozy on painkillers,’ Tim admitted.

  Jandy sighed as she pulled on some latex gloves. She would have liked to put a bit of space between herself and Patrick—let the air settle a bit around his apology—but there was no help for it and soon they were standing opposite each other and starting to peel the dressings from their patient. Patrick glanced at her as if about to say something then looked down at the patient, concentrating on the matter in hand.

  ‘What’s he called?’ Jandy asked the paramedic, as she dropped blood-soaked pads into a bucket.

  ‘Lenny Smith apparently. Got into some sort of fight with a relative,’ the man informed them. ‘I’ll leave you to make him beautiful again—see you!’

  ‘My God,’ muttered Patrick, as more of the patient’s injuries were revealed. ‘What did the other man use to give him these sorts of wounds? Look at all the skin and muscle gouged out of this arm…He’s going to need prolonged surgical care after we’ve contained these injuries.’

  ‘They say heavy spanners are the latest effective weapons,’ said Jandy drily. ‘Apparently they give a nice variety of wounds…’

  ‘Charming,’ remarked Patrick as he and Jandy started to work steadily on the man, swabbing the cuts and gashes, cleaning wounds with badly torn edges on the shins, calves and thighs, and for a short while forgetting about the tension between them as they concentrated. Patrick was painstaking and thorough, closely inspecting the different types of injuries that had been inflicted on the patient. All the wounds were leaking blood profusely.

  ‘It doesn’t help that Mr Smith’s probably been at the bottle quite hard,’ he remarked.

  ‘Is that why he’s bleeding so much?’ asked Jandy.

  Patrick nodded grimly. ‘Alcohol certainly makes wounds bleed more freely. Get a sample of blood for cross-matching and set up the clean theatre so that we can do some patching up before he goes to Surgical. He’ll need dextran to tide him over until he gets whole blood.’

  Jandy went to the theatre used for small operations to lay out the local anaesthetic, dressings and sutures to temporarily deal with the man’s injuries and Patrick put on a mask before he started to work closely on the patient. Karen came in to help them.

  ‘I hear this patient’s got a few nasty wounds,’ she said coming into the clean theatre where small operations were performed.

  ‘I don’t know what the other man’s like, but Mr Smith’s in a shocking state. What were they fighting about?’ murmured Patrick to Karen as he started to close the wounds with the soluble sutures that Jandy handed to him.

  Karen sighed, her voice tired after twelve hours of demanding work. ‘Oh, the usual,’ she replied quietly. ‘Mr Smith was apparently having it off with his cousin’s wife—it doesn’t make for happy families, I’m afraid. The other man’s got a superficial facial wound, but he’s OK.’

  Patrick looked up and said sympathetically, ‘It’s been a long haul, hasn’t it? Not long to go now and you can tuck yourselves up for a good sleep in your warm beds!’

  ‘I can’t wait,’ said Karen as she left the room.

  Patrick bent his head over the patient with his back to Jandy, and she looked at his dark hair, slightly too long and overlapping his collar. From her angle he looked quite boyish and vulnerable—someone who wouldn’t hurt you intentionally. Perhaps she shouldn’t have rejected his apology. After all, he had admitted how rude he’d been.

  ‘Another small threaded needle, please, Nurse,’ Patrick said briskly, his voice cutting into her thoughts.

  She gave a start and handed him the needle, jerked out of her daydream from contemplating the nape of Patrick’s neck and back to reality. She watched him finish suturing the patient, meticulous as he closed the wound with fine silk. After a while he stood back, stretching and putting his hands on his back, trying to knead the muscles he’d strained bending over the man for nearly an hour. Then he peeled off his latex gloves, flung them into the bin and pulled down his mask.

  ‘The wound will probably have to be reopened later to get a better finish—make it cosmetically more ac
ceptable,’ he remarked. ‘Anyway, I think we’ve done all we can for Mr Smith now. Tell Max he’s ready to go to Surgical.’

  She started to leave the room and Patrick touched her arm, his eyes holding hers for a moment. ‘Look,’ he said urgently. ‘Let me make amends for my rudeness—can’t we have lunch together in the next few days while we’re off? After all,’ he coaxed, ‘I need to get on with my new neighbour…please?’

  Jandy teetered on the brink of agreeing to meet him, as a shiver of attraction ran through her at Patrick’s touch. He was the man who had everything, she reflected, good looks, brains and a regard for others, but he came from a background of incredible privilege—an alien world from hers. And however much he protested that class didn’t come into it, she had a feeling his father wouldn’t approve of his son forming an alliance with someone like her.

  She looked up into his eyes, and felt herself beginning to melt. Still, Patrick was a big boy now, well able to stand up to his father. Was she ready to start up their fledgling relationship again, something that had never really got off the ground—or was that old demon stopping her, the demon that had always anticipated that something might go wrong ever since Terry had left her?

  With a great effort she said briskly, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got to use these free days to do up the little cottage. I’m going to be taking stuff over and doing a bit of cleaning. Perhaps in a week or two…’

  She allowed herself a bright little smile at him before she went to tell Max to collect the patient. Dammit, thought Patrick as he stared after her. He wasn’t going to let it go. At the very least he had to mend bridges between them. It was sod’s law that he should find Jandy even more desirable now, he pondered wryly.

  * * *

  It was an Indian summer’s day, the warm sun filling the little front room of the cottage with light. Jandy ran up the stairs and went into the main bedroom armed with sweeping brushes, buckets and cloths, determined to clean the rooms up a bit before starting on the decorating. It all smelled a little musty so she opened a window, letting in the clean fresh air from outside, and swept dead flies and dust from the window sill before gazing out at the view beyond the pretty little garden.