Chapter Fifteen
Okay, so two things didn’t happen after the mayor dropped the bombshell that Joan Sloane had won the Christmas fruit cake competition for the second year in a row.
Thing one: Carol didn’t die. Her slump was theatrical, as were her words in the ambulance, when she kept insisting she may as well just be taken straight to the cemetery and be done with this mortal coil and a whole lot of other melodramatic nonsense that made Jodie reflect (a little shamefully) on the way she herself had been carrying on for months now.
Thing two: Will didn’t come with them. Not to the hospital in the back of the ambulance—which she kinda understood, on account of the fact that he was the publican, and the pub was currently hosting hundreds of people and every table, glass, stool, chair, loo and elbow space at the bar was full.
But he didn’t walk them to the ambulance, either.
He’d looked at her from the garden across a distance of several metres.
He’d looked at Carol. Then he’d said, ‘I can’t—’ as though that made any sense at all.
As Jodie, Carol, fit paramedic number one and fit paramedic number two exited the premises, he’d stayed stock still on the trampled grass.
I can’t—
Jodie spent the drive to the hospital coming up with alternative endings to that uselessly vague remark, but none of them made sense.
Until she remembered something.
‘Carol,’ she said.
‘Yes, pet?’
‘You remember when I first got here and you told me I’d made Will hurt his hamstring and then abandoned him?’
‘Yes, pet.’
‘You said he had a problem with doctors and hospitals. Do you know why?’
Carol’s hand was in hers, and she was the one supposed to be doing the patting and the consoling, but her aunt managed to squeeze her hand and say gently, ‘You need to ask him that question, Jodie. Now for the love of God, would you stop talking? Because I think I’m in need of a little nap.’
Huh.
Jodie would have liked to have found the idea of a medical phobia shortsighted and ridiculous, but she was reminded of all the many shortsighted and ridiculous thoughts she’d been having all year.
Like, life had no meaning. Like, every car journey was a death waiting to happen.
Like, giving up the profession she loved and was good at and which kept food on the table was a totally normal thing to do after losing a friend—a lover—in a tragic accident.
Maybe she and Will had more in common than both of them knew.