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  ‘Oh my gosh!’ Kash leaped up, almost knocking over his chair. Sister Vale opened the door and stood back smartly as he flew past her and down the corridor.

  ‘Have a lovely evening,’ she called after him.

  6

  When he entered the restaurant, Kash wasn’t sure which he was more afraid of: that she wouldn’t be there, having long since decided to cut her losses and go home, or that she would be, quietly fuming and looking forward to giving him a piece of her mind. When he caught sight of her sitting alone at a table near the back, toying with an empty wine glass with a look of icy fury on her face, he decided that this was definitely the worst-case scenario. Part of him wanted to turn tail and return to the hospital, put a white coat over his hastily ironed shirt, rip off his one nice tie and roam the wards looking for medical emergencies. That way he could plausibly pretend he’d been helping with a life and death situation and forgotten the time. But before he had a chance to slink away, she caught his eye and he knew he was going to have to take his medicine. The walk from the entrance to her table felt like the longest of his life.

  ‘Claire . . .’ he began, not knowing where the sentence was going or how it would end.

  She put her glass down on the white tablecloth, her lips a tight line. She raised an eyebrow, inviting him to continue if he dared. She was wearing a light-blue dress with a pattern of yellow flowers. He couldn’t help noticing how well it went with her hair.

  ‘I . . . er . . . I forgot,’ he stammered.

  She cocked her head to one side as if waiting for more. When she spoke, the sing-song lilt he found so charming now seemed suffused with sarcasm.

  ‘And . . . that’s it?’

  He nodded, his mouth dry. He found he couldn’t swallow.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I suppose I should give you some marks for honesty.’

  ‘Claire . . .’

  She held a hand up. ‘Don’t. I’m fairly certain you’ll only make it worse.’

  She really is lovely, Kash found himself thinking. Even with her mascara smudged and looking at him as if he was a particularly toxic piece of medical waste. Is it just the eyes? Or the eyes and the mouth? The combination. With the cheekbones, of course. Ah well. It didn’t matter any more. He just had to get through this awkward moment, however long it lasted, apologize a few more times until she got tired of hearing it, and then they would never speak again; she’d walk straight past when they met in the corridor, perhaps give him a curt ‘Dr Devan’ without making eye contact. Eventually – or perhaps quite soon – she’d take up with someone else and make sure he heard about it, and he’d go back to his books, his paperwork, burying himself as deep as he could in patient files, emerging only to curse himself for being such a fool.

  For being so dull.

  ‘Oh sit down, for God’s sake, will you? Everybody’s watching. And then you can order me another glass of wine. I won’t tell you how many I’ve already had. I started with a small glass of the house red, then the glasses got bigger and the wine more expensive. I think I’m on the fancy cabernet sauvignon if you’re taking notes.’

  As if by magic, a waiter appeared, his exaggeratedly blank expression feeling to Kash like the jab of a scalpel in his ribs.

  ‘Um, a large glass of the cabernet sauvignon for the lady, and, er, I’ll just have water.’

  The waiter nodded gravely. ‘Still or sparkling?’

  ‘Sparkling,’ said Kash.

  ‘A glass? Or perhaps a bottle for the table?’ the waiter persisted. Kash wondered if he was planning to be there all night, feeding off his pain like an emotional vampire. It was probably more rewarding than tips.

  ‘Yes, a bottle. A large one,’ Kash said firmly.

  The waiter nodded and drifted away. Kash sat down, a hollow feeling in his stomach. He recalled the hours of research he put into selecting this restaurant. Not too fancy, as if he was trying too hard to impress her. But not cheap and cheerful either, as if he was hedging his bets. Fun without being noisy. Cosy without being overtly romantic. An interesting menu without being pretentious. Yes, it looked as if he’d got it all absolutely spot-on. But now he wouldn’t be able to eat a mouthful and would never come here again.

  ‘So, you forgot,’ Claire said, bringing him back to the moment. ‘Well, do you know what I forgot?’

  Kash sat down, shaking his head warily.

  ‘I forgot how mortifying it can be, sitting alone in a busy restaurant, while everyone else is smiling and laughing and having a good time. The waiters becoming super-attentive as soon as they realize you’ve been stood up, the way we are with terminally ill patients. Then probably placing bets on how long you’ll sit there before the humiliation becomes too much – or whether you’ll slap the bastard who stood you up when he arrives or just chuck a glass of wine at him.’ Kash flinched involuntarily. ‘Not that it’s happened to me very often. Only once actually. Before this, of course.’

  Kash found himself nodding, leaning slightly forward, like when a patient was telling him their symptoms, trying to look interested when he already knew what the problem was (obstructed bowel from faecal impaction came into his head for some reason) and what to do about it (get the nurse to give them an enema) and just wanted to get on to the next patient, hoping for something more challenging.

  ‘Anyway. I won’t forget again. Not for a long time. I think the whole experience is now indelibly etched in my memory. Indelibly. Is that the right word, doctor?’

  ‘Yes, yes, indelibly,’ Kash nodded furiously, happy to be agreeing about something.

  Claire gave him a long look, then dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. ‘I must look frightful. Like one of those mad old biddies on ward fourteen.’

  ‘No, no,’ Kash started. ‘You look—’

  ‘Don’t,’ she said firmly. She wiped the last of the mascara away and took a quick breath. ‘Right. That’s over, thank God. I do hate scenes like this. It’s like being trapped in a bad play with only dreadful clichéd lines to say.’

  Kash looked astonished. ‘You mean you’re not going to . . .?’

  ‘Chuck a glass of wine over you? I’m not sure. The night is young. You probably ought to be on your guard, just in case. It depends if you’re planning on doing anything else stupid.’ She looked at him earnestly. ‘Are you planning to do anything stupid, Kash?’

  ‘No, no, I’m going to do my very best not to.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Does that mean we’re staying? I mean you’re staying? I mean, we . . .’

  She smiled for the first time that evening. ‘Yes, Kash, we’re going to sit here and have a lovely evening.’

  Kash shook his head in bewilderment. He couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. ‘You’re a very remarkable person, Claire. I really deserve to have a glass of wine poured over me. And the slap as well.’

  Claire made a dismissive sound. ‘You’re a junior doctor. I should probably count myself lucky you turned up on the right night.’

  ‘No,’ said Kash, meaning it. ‘I’m the lucky one.’

  She shrugged. ‘We’ll see. Now, tell me all about yourself. I’m sure you’ve been rehearsing some grand stories for me. Ah, thank God, here comes my wine.’

  *

  Kash hadn’t prepared any stories. The truth was, he didn’t really like to talk about himself. And what was there to tell, anyway? Ever since his parents, back when they lived in a one-bedroom flat in Leicester – the same one they’d rented when they’d first come to the country – had put the idea of being a doctor into his head, that was all he’d really thought about, and the whole of his existence had then become books and exams and interviews until, well, here he was, a doctor. So he told her about his parents – especially his mother, because his father, to be honest, had always been working; that was all he could really remember about him – that he was somewhere else, he never knew quite where, working himself into an early grave. Whereas his mother was a constant presenc
e. The light of his life really, even now, he wasn’t ashamed to say. A woman with no education who’d taught herself to read and then absorbed what seemed like the entirety of English literature so that she was forever quoting Dickens and Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy at him. ‘It’s a very strange feeling, knowing all these books that I’ve never actually read. And music. She had an old gramophone and there was always something playing in the background – Mozart, Beethoven. Classical. Only ever classical.’

  ‘She sounds like a wonderful person. And it sounds like a wonderful childhood.’

  ‘It was,’ Kash agreed. ‘We didn’t have much, but I never felt I was missing out on anything. Not anything important, anyway. But what about you? Tell me about your family.’

  Claire took a deep breath and gave him what was clearly the short version of a story she didn’t particularly like telling: how she’d been adopted shortly after birth, had always known – or at least couldn’t remember ever not knowing – but never found out any more than that; that ‘the family’ as she referred to them, her adopted family, was a big Irish brood of brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts that she loved dearly, even though she’d grown up feeling a little bit like a cuckoo in the nest, an olive-skinned, dark-haired girl in a pack of flame-haired girls and boys with pale skin and freckles. ‘I’ve always felt a part of the family, you know? But at the same time I’ve always known I was different.’

  ‘And you never tried to find out who your birth mother was?’

  ‘When I was sixteen I had a go. But my heart wasn’t in it. I think I thought, well I’m happy enough, maybe finding out will spoil everything. And maybe there was a little bit of feeling bitter. I thought maybe my mother was thinking, one day she’ll come looking for me and then we’ll fall into each other’s arms and everything will be forgiven, and I suppose I didn’t want her to have that satisfaction. Selfish, really, I suppose. Cutting off my nose to spite my face. But there it is. And I didn’t really think about it. But then the clock started ticking, and, well. Things changed.’ She took a gulp of wine and pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Right. Enough of the serious stuff. Tell me something stupid.’

  ‘I think I promised not to do that.’

  ‘No, that was doing something stupid. There’s a difference.’ There was a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. ‘Come on.’

  Kash thought for a moment. ‘You mean like a joke?’

  ‘Uh-uh, no jokes. Especially not medical ones.’

  Kash had a brief reprieve when the waiter appeared to take their order, looking slightly disappointed that their disastrous evening seemed to have taken a turn for the better. Claire ordered quickly, having had, as she put it, ‘ample time to memorize the menu’, and Kash just ordered the first thing he saw, amazed that he could even think about eating once again.

  ‘Um, okay. This was something my mother told me which always stuck in my mind. You know Little Nell, the character from The Old Curiosity Shop? The Dickens novel? The little girl who dies?’

  ‘Well thanks, I was going to read it but I won’t bother now.’

  Kash smiled. ‘Sorry. Anyway, she was this impossibly cute little girl with a heart of gold, and she’s basically dying, wasting away, and Dickens’ readers are all on the edge of their seats, desperate to know whether she survives.’

  ‘Why didn’t they just flip to the end?’

  ‘Ah, that’s because he was publishing it in a magazine, so you had to wait for the next issue to find out what happens next. There was no end – yet.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So my mother told me that when a steamship arrived in New York, sailing from London, as it was coming in to dock there was this big crowd and they were all shouting, “Is Little Nell dead? Is she dead?” Because the ship was carrying the latest issue of the magazine.’

  Claire looked quizzical. ‘And?’

  ‘Well, I mean, a whole crowd of people desperate to know whether she lives or dies, when she doesn’t actually exist. I mean, how stupid is that? I think it only really hit me when I became a doctor and started dealing with the real thing.’

  ‘Do you think that was what your mother was trying to tell you? That caring about non-existent people is silly?’

  ‘No, actually I think she was trying to tell me the opposite: what a wonderful thing literature is, that a writer can make you care so much about someone they just made up in between breakfast and lunch. But I just thought . . . how stupid.’

  Their food came, a mushroom risotto for Claire and some sort of chicken in a creamy sauce for Kash. While they ate, Kash reflected on how little he knew, really, about people, and how they could surprise you. Especially women. Or maybe it was just Claire. She really was something special. The rest of the meal flew by; they both had crème caramel for dessert, and then coffee. The conversation, that had meandered amiably through trivialities, settled back to life and death.

  ‘You know what you were saying, Kash, about doctoring – or nursing – being the real thing? I know what you mean, obviously. I feel the same way. Even if you’ve had the shittiest of all shitty days, you’ve at least been trying to help people. And I’m sure the idea of being a surgeon seems like the most important way you can help people. I mean, what could be more important than saving a life?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he agreed.

  Claire started to twirl a wisp of hair between her fingers. Kash guessed it was something she did when she was thinking seriously. ‘Well, I’m not so sure. My flatmate, Tiff, for instance. She’s a nurse at St Luke’s in Peckham.’ Kash looked puzzled. ‘You won’t have heard of it. It’s not a hospital. It’s a hospice. They don’t save any lives there. At least not in the way we’ve been talking about. Palliative care only. And Tiff, she might look a bit crazy – you’ll see when you meet her – but she could have stuck with being a regular ward nurse, or even retrained to be a doctor, I reckon. She’s smart enough, certainly. But she chose this – maybe just because most of us don’t, I don’t know. She doesn’t talk about it much. But I think it’s harder, what she does, caring for people with no hope of getting better, no hope of ever going home. No . . .’ She checked herself. ‘Sorry, I’m rambling. I’ve had too many glasses of wine – too many large glasses of expensive wine. Would you mind if I got a taxi home? It’s been a lovely evening, Kash. Horrible, then OK, but finally lovely.’

  Kash smiled. ‘No thanks to me. Well, the horrible bit was thanks to me, but the rest is all down to you. Thank you, Claire. There was a point I thought this was going to be the worst evening of my life. I honestly did. Now I think it might turn out to be the best.’

  She frowned. ‘Steady, Kash. I think that’s just the fizzy water talking.’

  Kash called for the bill and insisted on paying. He left a generous tip, and they went outside to wait for a cab. ‘Right, this is me,’ she said briskly as one pulled up. ‘Thank you again, Kash, and see you tomorrow.’

  As the cab eased its way back into the traffic with Claire safely inside, the rain started to fall. Kash was relieved she hadn’t suggested sharing the cab, that the awkwardness of saying goodnight on her doorstep, not knowing whether a peck on the cheek was in order or just a handshake, had been avoided.

  ‘Thank you, Claire,’ he said quietly, pulling the collar of his coat up around his ears. Not that he minded getting wet. He didn’t mind at all.

  7

  Without really thinking where he was going, Kash found himself walking back to the hospital. He was tired, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, so there wasn’t much point in going back to his flat. He considered returning to Trenchard’s office and picking up where he’d left off with the paperwork, but he doubted he’d be able to focus properly. He felt as if he’d been on a rollercoaster ride through the full gamut of human emotions, from abject terror through utter despair to hope, joy, and . . . was it love he was feeling now? Kash didn’t have much experience of such things; not enough to know if it was real or just a reaction to all the a
drenaline coursing through his body and then draining out of him in a rush. But could the effect of her eyes, her mouth, her smile, the way she twirled her hair, be explained by chemistry? He certainly hoped not. This was one phenomenon he would rather leave a mystery.

  The Victory was in its usual state of chaos as he trudged, zombie-like, through the wards, a faint, slightly bemused smile on his face. Suddenly, his pager started to blast at his hip. He wasn’t on call. But someone obviously thought he was. He saw the number flashing and pressed the button to mute the noise. He found a phone in the corridor, and dialled.

  ‘Kash, it’s Ange. Where is he?’

  Kash was momentarily thrown. ‘Where’s who?’

  ‘Trenchard. Weren’t you with him?’

  With him? Why would he be with him? Did she mean was he in Trenchard’s office?

  ‘Kash?’

  ‘No, no Ange,’ he stammered. ‘Mr Trenchard wasn’t—’

  ‘You’d better get to the ED, Kash. I’ll meet you there.’

  ‘Me? I’m not on call.’

  She paused. ‘Are you sober?’

  Well, that might not be the best word to describe how he was feeling right now, but technically, yes.

  ‘As it happens.’

  ‘Then I need your help. We had a locum booked for the evening – Sam is sick, as you know – and he hasn’t turned up.’

  Kash sighed. He was exhausted. But then, Ange would know that. And she wouldn’t ask unless she had no other choice. He dropped into the ward and grabbed his white coat, before jogging towards the emergency department.