Chapter 27
Bastian had ‘accidentally’ accepted the offer of a glass of Talisker during the toasts and downed it before he realised his mistake, or that’s what he told Alice when they’d eaten the really very delicious food and heard all the toasts and poems and songs, and now it was impossible for him to get behind a wheel safely.
She’d groaned in frustration at his pleading face as he’d said, ‘Let me borrow your sofa?’ and she’d dragged him out before the dancing began, a real shame because she’d wanted to try this Scottish country dancing that everyone talked about.
Gracie had taught her how to do a St Bernard’s Waltz one night after clinics, ‘just in case’, and it hadn’t actually been all that hard. Well, that had been a waste of time.
She gave Bastian the spare blanket from the cupboard and told him he’d better be gone by morning, and she stomped to her own room and wrestled herself out of the dress and into her pyjamas, before throwing herself onto the bed, furious with Bastian, her father, and most of all, furious with herself for being far too bloody nice to him.
Maybe it was the whisky’s fault – she’d taken one too, and then another – but she was fast asleep by eleven, or was it the having someone else there, making her feel, if not safe, exactly, just not alone for the first time in ages?
Whatever it was, sleep claimed her fast, and as she drifted off she dreamed about the steps of the waltz she’d learned, picturing how nice it would have been to move across that ballroom floor once the cranachan desserts were eaten and the lights had been dimmed.
She remembered hearing the local women making wild cries of ‘heee-uch!’ as the music started up, just as she was making her way out into the night, picking up a lovely bunch of heather that someone must have dropped on their way to the party and which Bastian almost trod on.
The posy was by her bedside now and maybe it was the wild mountain scent making her dream about the music and the lights, filling in with her imagination what she hadn’t witnessed with her own eyes, and the whole dream became a vivid cross between a Bridgerton ball scene and the wedding ceilidh in Four Weddings and a Funeral.
In the dream, she wasn’t dancing with Gracie on the Dettolled floors of the surgery’s waiting room after hours, and it wasn’t Bastian in his tuxedo either.
There was a man taking her hands, Cary Anderson, all dressed in lovely old-fashioned clothes, smelling clean and woody, and he was pressing a flat palm to the base of her spine, turning her around and around like a doll in a jewellery box.
Cary fixed her with his lovely darkest brown eyes and it was so easy to gaze back at him, and they turned and they turned, and everyone stepped aside until they were the only ones on the dancefloor, and the big clock in the corner, Cary’s clock, was ticking down to midnight, only they were spinning too fast, and Cary was saying something about it being time to go, he was tired of Highland life, he really should be leaving, and Bastian was there with Mum and Dad and all their friends from her graduation party and they were all pointing at something and shouting, but she couldn’t hear them.
Suddenly Cary, who had always felt somehow ephemeral to her, unreal, and impermanent, probably because men like him couldn’t possibly be true, had danced himself right up into the air, his heels up over his head, and it was all Alice could do to hold onto his hands to stop him flying away entirely.
The clock started striking and its case sprang open and even though she’d held on with all her might, Cary was sucked into it, disappearing with a scream of her name. ‘Alice!’
‘Alice, wake up, you’re having one of your nightmares. Alice.’
She couldn’t open her eyes, didn’t want to face the night, so she stayed still under the covers, flexing her hands, trying to regain the sensation of dream-Cary’s touch.
‘Go back to sleep,’ said Bastian, climbing onto the bed and lying down beside her. ‘It’s OK. I’ve got you.’
* * *
The morning brought a headache the likes of which Alice had never felt before. Whisky, she told herself, was not something she’d acclimatise to, and neither was – she jumped up in the bed – sniffing the air, Bastian’s cologne, and, she sniffed again, cooking smells?
Padding to the kitchen, hand shielding her eyes from even the weak light from the cooker hood, she stopped at the sight.
‘You’re awake!’ he said, smiling brightly.
‘You’re still here.’
‘I didn’t want to leave you. You slept so fitfully. I needed to know you were OK.’
There was a pan sizzling on the hob. Bastian, in his baggy designer sweats over his running gear, was frying… something pink and square.
‘Lorne sausage,’ he told her. ‘And get this, the woman in the Post Office shop called these morning rolls, not baps, not just rolls, but morning rolls. It’s all so wonderfully Scottish.’
‘You went out?’
‘You didn’t have any meat, or anything really, in your fridge. Your freezer’s empty too, did you know that?’
‘Of course I did.’
‘Here.’ He’d made coffee and poured her a cup into steamy, frothed milk.
‘I have a cafetiere?’ Alice opened cupboards, wondering what else was hiding in here that she hadn’t discovered yet.
‘No, I bought it at the hardware counter in the animal feed store.’
‘We have a hardware counter?’
‘It’s right beside the pig pellets.’
Alice took the coffee and drank. It was perfect.
Bastian served up the flat sausage slice onto the soft white, buttered bread roll and presented it to her alongside a bottle of brown sauce held against his arm like a sommelier presenting the vintage champagne. ‘The woman in the shop recommended a bottle of this to accompany our breakfast.’
She shook her head at it, then, thinking again how it might be just the thing to sort her out, took the bottle and splodged a brown blob onto the sausage. The first bite was a sensation. She couldn’t help smiling back up at Bastian who was grinning at her as she chewed.
‘You look famished,’ he said.
‘You’re not eating?’
Bastian hadn’t even tried to sit at the table with her. ‘You said I should go first thing, so…’ He hiked a thumb over his shoulder to the door.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, sit down and have some breakfast. It’s miles to Manchester.’
‘Thanks,’ he said, hopping straight into a seat at the little Formica table and assembling his own sandwich.
He looked so contented Alice almost forgave him for storming into her special party.
‘After this, you could show me your surgery?’ He took a wolfish bite.
‘What? Really?’
‘I’d love to see where you work. Your dad showed me the picture of you with your name plate on your door. You really deserve it, you know? All this. You worked harder than any of us.’ He took another big bite and threw his eyes wide. ‘Woah, what do they put in this stuff?’
Alice had to agree, it was delicious.
For a few moments they ate in silence, like old times.
‘You see Dad a lot, then?’
Bastian’s jaws slowed in their chewing. ‘Umm, I wouldn’t say a lot.’
‘What’s she like? Kimberly?’
Bastian made a face that asked if she was sure she really wanted to know.
‘Tell me.’
‘OK. She’s super-smart, and destined for the very top.’
‘How old is she?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Bastian.’
‘I think she’s thirty-seven.’
It wasn’t exactly a surprise to know she was only nine years older than her, but it still felt like a welt rising on her skin as though she’d been struck. ‘Ouch,’ said Alice.
‘I know. I don’t get it either.’ Bastian topped up her coffee and poured his own, black, no sugar. This all felt comfortingly like things had way back in the beginning.
Alice looked away to where her dress hung in its bag over her bedroom door. Bastian must have picked it up from her bedroom floor while she slept. ‘I need to return my frock before work,’ she said.
‘Do you have to go to work today?’
‘I’m a GP, Bastian.’ It felt amazing to tell him that. ‘But, no, I’ve no clinic today, only paperwork and the nurse practitioner’s weekend lab samples to sort and send away.’
‘I wish we could just hang out all day,’ he said, unfolding the newspaper he’d bought himself. ‘I miss you.’
Instead of replying she drank her coffee.
‘Bastian?’ she said eventually, trying not to look at his dark lashes framing his pretty blue eyes.
‘Yeah?’ he said, absently, as he perused the headlines like he was going to make himself comfortable, like this was his place back home where she’d stay over when she wasn’t on a run of nights.
‘That night, with the thing?’ she went on.
‘Hmm?’
‘You remember the thing that happened?’
He looked squarely at her across the table. ‘I remember.’
‘You didn’t want me to tell anyone about what happened?’
‘Do we have to go over this?’ He put down the last of his sandwich and stood, leaning against the kitchen drawers.
‘I made a terrible mistake that night…’ she began.
‘Alice, forget about it. I fixed it. Nobody knew. End of.’
‘I could have easily filled in a Datix report about it.’
‘No.’ He folded his arms.
‘I could have got in big trouble if anyone found out we covered it up.’
‘I was fine,’ he said, dismissively.
‘No, I said I could have got in trouble.’
He looked at her like he wasn’t understanding. Alice’s brain ticked over, trying to replay how it had all unfolded.
‘Hold on, did you stop me reporting myself because of how it might reflect on you?’
He shrugged. ‘Everyone knows we’re a couple. It’s best to appear squeaky clean, you know that. Besides, your dad would never have forgiven me if I’d let you get yourself into trouble. Finish your coffee. Then you can show me your surgery, yeah?’
Alice tipped her head, thinking she couldn’t have heard that right.
‘Dad would never forgive you? I never forgave myself! I’ve been worrying all this time that I’m a danger to my patients.
I’ve been covering up my own concerns, my fears!
And all you were worried about was staying on Dad’s good side and looking squeaky clean? ’