Chapter 2
2
Amy’s alarm was going off and she couldn’t open her eyes; she knew she had to, but they just wouldn’t comply. It was the last shift in a block of nights, and her body had refused to adjust this time and buy into the falsehood that sleeping in the daytime was an easy transition.
‘I can’t face the thought of getting up and you’re not helping.’ Finally peeling her eyes open, Amy gave Monty, her little Jack Russell, a gentle nudge. She’d inherited him, when his elderly owner, a lady called Joan who’d been a patient at the hospital, had died. She’d first been admitted to A&E after a fall, and her main concern had been getting home to her little dog. Thankfully, they’d soon been reunited, but six months later Joan’s heart had begun to fail, and she’d been re-admitted to A&E on a number of occasions, each time Monty had remained her major concern. Amy had been her nurse on three of those occasions, before Joan had finally been admitted to the cardiac unit, and every time Amy had agreed to make sure Monty was taken care of until Joan got home. The first couple of times, she’d arranged for the little dog to be fostered by Caroline, whose daughter, Esther, worked with Amy at the hospital.
It would have been impractical for Amy to care for him, despite how gorgeous Monty was, with the jet-black patch over his eye a marked contrast to his otherwise snow-white body. But on the third and final occasion, Caroline had been on holiday, and Amy had been about to start a week’s leave. Given that she was only planning to potter around at home, there’d been no reason why she couldn’t care for the dog. What she hadn’t known was that Joan would never go home again. After she’d died, none of her family had been interested in taking on the dog. Monty had already been pining for Joan and the only way he could sleep was when he was curled up on Amy’s lap or pressed into the small of her back. So when Joan’s son said she was welcome to keep him, she found she couldn’t let him go. It meant spending a small fortune on doggy day care and dog walking services when she was on long shifts, but he was worth every penny, and she loved him to bits.
Having Monty had its drawbacks, though. It was even harder to get out of bed, after a grand total of four hours’ sleep, when she was so cosy underneath her duvet, with Monty perched on top. It was probably a bit tragic for a just-past-thirty-year-old to admit her bed was her happy place, but with a job like Amy’s, it probably wasn’t surprising. To say that being a nurse in A&E was full-on was an understatement, but just lately it seemed even busier. One of the clinical leads was on maternity leave, Amy’s best friend and fellow nurse, Isla, was currently on a career break, touring Australia and New Zealand, and another close friend, Aidan, would be going on parental leave soon too. All of that, along with some other recent staffing changes, meant Amy seemed to be working with agency nurses a lot more often lately and it just wasn’t the same. Working in A&E often bound staff together like family, because they were so reliant on one another, and they could anticipate each other’s needs and actions in a way that wasn’t possible with temporary staff. She just hoped Isla would be back before Aidan left. There would be nowhere near as many laughs if they were both off at the same time, and Aidan would be away from work for at least six months.
‘Monty, come on, we can’t lie here all night, I’ve got to go to work.’ Amy gave the dog a gentle shove and he opened his eyes indignantly, as if he’d been rudely awoken from a rare snippet of sleep, when the truth was he slept about twenty hours a day when she was on nights. She had a nanny cam on her phone when she was at work, and could watch him coming in and out of the dog flap she’d had installed in the door to the garden, but he slept almost all the time when she wasn’t there, except when Dolly, the dog walker, came over to take him out. It was quite impressive, and tonight she was more than a little jealous that Monty would be going back to bed while she was starting her night shift. Although he still wasn’t making any effort to move.
‘How about some breakfast? Or dinner? Or whatever the hell we’re supposed to call what we eat before I start my night shift.’ At the mention of the word dinner, Monty’s ears pricked up and he immediately started nudging her hand, suddenly wide awake.
‘Come on then sweetheart, let’s get you fed.’ Finally hauling herself out of bed, Amy sighed as she caught sight of herself in the mirror. She looked every bit as tired as she felt, and she felt exhausted. Thank God for coffee, because she was going to need a hell of a lot of it.
* * *
An hour later, Amy was ready to leave for work, and the sight that greeted her in the hallway mirror was a lot less scary than her reflection in the bedroom had been. She didn’t wear a lot of make-up these days and she could look at herself in the mirror and recognise her good points, but it had taken a long time to get there. She’d been foolish enough to let some of the men in her life affect the way she saw herself, but not any more.
‘You’re like the ugly duckling in reverse.’ It was an insult her brother had levelled at her regularly in the past and it was something that had impacted her far more than she’d realised at the time. ‘You started out as a really cute kid and ended up like…’
He never finished the sentence, but he didn’t have to, the implication was loud and clear, and she knew what she was. If not ugly, at least nothing special. Since splitting up with her first ever boyfriend, who for some reason had genuinely seemed to think she was beautiful, she could probably count on the fingers of one hand the amount of times she’d been told she was. When it happened, it was usually a drunk guy in a club, taking his last chance at pulling by trotting out a line he didn’t mean. Her ex, Zach, who’d been on again and off again for much of the past five years had never once said it to her. Occasionally he’d grudgingly said she looked ‘nice’, if she’d pushed him for a verdict on her appearance, but he hadn’t been effusive to say the least, and his wandering eye – not to mention other wandering parts of his anatomy – had told her all she needed to know about how much she’d mattered to him in the end.
Zach had been far freer with advice about what she could do to improve the way she looked. She couldn’t believe how willing she’d been to try some of his suggestions, or how long she’d put up with his behaviour, but men like Zach were very good at spotting vulnerability and that was something she’d had bucket loads of when they’d met. She had still been nursing a broken heart from the end of her first ever serious relationship, even though it had been over for years. She’d been the one to end things, because she’d never felt good enough. And she’d rather finish it on her own terms, when it was eventually going to happen anyway. She hated feeling that way about herself, so when Zach had started to suggest ‘little changes’, it was the desire to improve her self-esteem that had persuaded her to give those things a go, until in the end the girl looking back at her in the mirror didn’t even feel like Amy any more. Suddenly she had long, sleek hair that fell down past her shoulder blades, the result of scarily expensive extensions, and that was just the start. Zach had bought her a makeover treatment at a local salon one Christmas, which had involved permanent make-up and Russian eyelash extensions, amongst other things. Amy had to admit the result was transformative, but she felt uncomfortable in this strange new skin and, even if she’d wanted to maintain it, she just didn’t have the time. Long fake nails hadn’t been practical for work either, and bit by bit she’d realised that rather than building her confidence, feeling as if she had to look completely different had eroded her self-esteem even further instead.
Zach hadn’t been impressed when she’d ditched his suggestions and gone back to looking like the girl he’d first met, but the most surprising part was that Amy wasn’t that girl any more. She’d changed in ways she’d never imagined, ways that lasted far longer than any beauty treatment ever could. She finally knew who she was and what it was she wanted. It didn’t mean she didn’t make any effort with her appearance, but the choices she made now were for her and what made her feel good.
The relationship with Zach been a huge learning curve, it had taught her she was worth so much more than he had to offer. Amy had built a life for herself she could be proud of, and that realisation had finally given her the confidence she’d been searching for in all the wrong places. She loved her job and, in her most recent performance review, Esther had said she had what it took to go ‘all the way’ with her nursing career. Even better than that, she had a great group of friends who didn’t want to change anything about her. Amy’s parents told her all the time how proud they were, and even if her brother was difficult, every family had someone like that, didn’t they?
Finally breaking up with Zach for good had been the biggest confidence booster of all, and she was determined never to settle again. She might still believe in love, but if someone came into her life, there’d only be space for them if their presence made it better than it already was. She was never going to let a relationship take things away from her again. Amy would much rather it was just her and Monty forever, because life was pretty damn good as it was, even if the night shifts sometimes felt a tiny bit like torture.
‘Be a good boy, Monty. I’ll put some music on, so you don’t get lonely.’ Amy switched on the radio, as she always did when she had to leave the dog on his own.
She smiled for a moment as the strains of ‘I’m Your Man’ by Wham! suddenly filled the air, instantly transporting her back to another time and place. She could picture Lijah as if he was standing next to her, the first boy she’d ever loved, the one she’d pushed away despite desperately wanting him to stay. But nostalgia was every bit as dangerous as pretending to be someone she wasn’t, and Amy didn’t have time for either of those things any more.
‘Right sweetheart, I’ve really got to go to work.’ Amy bent down and stroked the little dog’s head one last time.
Her life might be a million miles away from the one Lijah led now, but that was fine with her. Who needed a rock-star lifestyle when you had an amazing job, a great group of friends and the cutest dog in Port Kara to come home to? That was more than enough for Amy and the past was exactly where it needed to be, firmly behind her.