Chapter 1
TWO YEARS LATER
Eve woke with a start, all four of her limbs flinching violently, almost as if she’d been electrocuted. She’d been back in that room again; standing by the side of Max’s bed as one of her colleagues delivered the devastating news about his test results.
‘The bleed in Max’s brain has caused irrevocable damage.
It’s going to be life-changing. For both of you.
’ It was a moment she never wanted to relive, but every time she closed her eyes, she knew there was a good chance of that happening.
Even when she didn’t close her eyes, it could happen.
Working in an emergency department, there were far too many triggers and reminders of that terrible night, meaning the possibility of being forced to relive it was always present.
All it took was for another patient to be rushed in whose circumstances or injuries were an echo of Max’s.
Or a relative who was forced to hear the same fateful words and be told that their loved one would never be the same again.
The cases that Eve found especially hard were the ones that came out of nowhere, where the patient and their family had just been getting on with their lives, not expecting anything out of the ordinary to happen and then, bam, out of the blue they’d been hit by a sucker punch that changed everything.
That’s what had happened to Max, in every sense.
A complete idiot, who Max and his friends had walked past, on their night out, had for some unknown reason taken offence to the group of thirty-somethings, laughing and having fun.
Brandon Moorcroft was the name of the man who changed everything with a single punch directed to the back of Max’s head, sending him sprawling forward, making him lose his footing and smack his head against the pavement.
Moorcroft had been half out of his mind on a combination of drugs and alcohol, having got wasted after splitting up with his partner.
He hadn’t been able to justify to the police why he’d attacked Max, except for the fact that he was wearing a T-shirt clearly marking him out as the stag.
Moorcroft claimed that white-hot rage had washed over him because Max was getting married and he’d just been dumped.
The attack was completely unprovoked, and Moorcroft had eventually sobbed in court, saying how desperately he wished he could take it back.
But there was no rewind button. That decision, that single blow to the back of Max’s head had ruined so many lives and Eve wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to shut her eyes and know for certain that she wouldn’t be back in that moment, one she’d have given anything not to have happened.
* * *
Less than half an hour after waking up, Eve was on her way to work.
She ran to St Piran’s whenever the timing of her shifts allowed.
There were staff changing rooms, lockers and a couple of showers available.
It meant she could try and run off some of the tension in her body before she started her day and change into her uniform once she was ready.
The rucksack on her back contained everything else she needed and the meandering route she took to work allowed her to take in some of the scenery that made Cornwall so beautiful.
She lived on the top floor of a converted former grain store, with far-reaching views of the countryside, but too far from the coast to get even a glimpse of the sea.
If she’d run directly to the hospital, via the quickest route, it would have been less than a mile and a half.
As it was, she always took a route of at least three miles, sometimes more than double that, depending on how much time she had to spare.
She loved the rough terrain of the coastal path, not just for the beautiful views of aquamarine water and the dramatic cliffs jutting out of the waves, but because it required concentration, to avoid tripping or falling.
It meant her mind was less busy with all the other things that usually dominated her thoughts; the worries and the fears, and sometimes even the regret.
Not tripping and falling to her death, while running on the coastal path, was a form of mindfulness that Eve was pretty sure she’d invented.
Maybe she should market it to others, because sometimes it felt like the only thing keeping her sane.
‘Did you run here again?’ Meg, one of the other A a young girl who’d taken two entire packets of birth control pills in a misguided and extremely dangerous attempt to end an unwanted pregnancy.
Esther, who was the department’s Lead Nurse, had gone about her duties as diligently as ever, caring for the young girl and staying by her side when her stomach was pumped, monitoring her condition in the hours that followed, while they waited for space on a ward, and even supporting her when she spoke to her parents.
Afterwards though, when the girl had been taken up to the ward, Esther had broken down at the injustice of it all.
She’d been trying for a baby with her husband, Joe, for over a year, she’d said; her own birth control pills having been consigned to the bin and replaced with multi-vitamins, folic acid and even a supplement that claimed to be a birth control detox.
None of them had made any difference so far and she and Joe, a consultant psychiatrist at the hospital, had just been referred for fertility treatment.
‘I’m sorry, my hormones are haywire.’ Esther had taken a shuddering breath, as Eve had passed her a tissue, and Aidan had wrapped his arms around her shoulders, offering the hug she clearly so badly needed.
Eve had been grateful he was there, because as much as she’d wanted to hug Esther, somehow she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
She’d been at the hospital for well over a year now and she was gradually getting to know them all better, but a stretch of personal leave in the middle of that had meant she still felt like the new girl in lots of ways, even though Meg and Eden had both joined after her.
She was probably closest to the two of them, and had been out for drinks with the entire team a couple of times, but none of them knew the full story about why she’d left Leeds and ended up in Cornwall.
In fact, they barely knew anything about her personal life at all.
She kept herself so closed-up these days that she hadn’t wanted to open the floodgates of her own emotions, by letting herself connect too closely with any grief her colleague was feeling.
All those unfulfilled plans, all the hopes and dreams that might never be realised had felt too close to home, even if their circumstances were completely different.
Instead, Eve had offered to make tea. She could cope with that and had lost count of the number of times it had been offered to her in the wake of Max’s accident.
Before the night of his third stag do, she’d believed that Yorkshire Tea, the signature drink of her adopted county, really could work miracles.
But she’d found out the hard way that sometimes the best it could do was to provide a brief distraction, or a reason for someone who had no idea how to offer meaningful comfort to take a break from trying to, just for a little while.
‘I guess we better start this shift then.’ Eve tightened the hair band that was tying back her long, dark brown ponytail.
She’d grown her hair for the wedding, having chosen a half up, half down sort of beachy boho look that had felt perfectly in keeping with the venue, just ten miles from the hospital where she now stood.
The hairdresser had never arrived to style her hair, her dress still hung in a wardrobe at Max’s parents’ house, unworn, and all the plans they’d made for their wedding had come to nothing in the end.
Yet somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to cut her hair, despite the fact that it would be so much more practical.
‘Oh God, sorry to do this to you at handover.’ Isla, one of the other nurses on the team, pushed open the door to the staffroom, cutting off any response that Eve’s colleagues might have been about to make.
‘But we’ve just had a call on the red phone.
A tourist in a hire car lost control coming down the hill into the harbour in Port Agnes and ended up pinning two pedestrians against the wall and hitting another. ETA is ten minutes.’