Miss You

TWENTY-FIVE Gus

In a leafy road just five minutes’ walk from the hospital where I was working, I looked up and down the street before pressing the doorbell, checking that no one could see me, as if my appointment was somehow secret, or shameful.

There was no chaise longue for me to lie on, just two comfortable chairs. Dorothy was more homely and less intellectual than I’d imagined she would be. After going over my history, she asked me to talk her through the accident.

“It’s like a loop of film running in my brain,” I said.

“What’s on the film?”

Ross’s face glancing back at me through the thickly falling snow, his teeth white, his eyes hidden behind mirror ski goggles, flakes settling on his dark, swept-back hair.

“He’s in front of me,” I said. “Skiing at speed, and he glances back to see if I’m there and then there’s this tree and he’s missed the split second he needed to avoid it...”

“But you weren’t there?”

“No, but we’d raced a hundred times. It’s what he did.”

“OK, so let’s say that is what happened, even though you don’t know it is. If you’d been there, behind him, how would that have made a difference?”

I never got beyond the glance, the tree, the smash, the consuming panic.

I didn’t have an answer to her question.

We sat in silence for what seemed like forever.

“The injuries Ross sustained,” she eventually said. “Could you have saved him, if you had been there?”

“No.”

“Even if you’d been an AE doctor?”

I smiled. Was that perhaps why I’d ended up in AE?

“No. The brain damage was catastrophic.”

“And yet you believe, in some way, that you caused his death?”

“I should have been with him!”

“Why? You knew it was dangerous. You tried to stop him.”

I heard myself saying, “Maybe I didn’t try hard enough...”

It was the admission I’d promised myself I would never make. Not to my parents, or to the rescue party, or to the police. I should have tried harder. But I walked away.

My eyes filled with tears. Dorothy let me cry.

“How did it feel walking away from him?” she gently asked.

“It felt good.” I sniffed. “Like I’d given up caring if he liked me any more.”

“So you left him powerless?”

“Yes.” I began to weep again.

“And that’s why it happened?”

It sounded so ridiculous spoken out loud.

“Did you feel relieved when your brother died?” she asked. “Did you think that his bullying would stop?”

“I couldn’t seem to feel anything. It was a kind of deadening, interspersed with moments of panic, not relief at all,” I said.

“Because the bullying didn’t really stop, did it?” she said, gently. “You were so used to being bullied, it carried on without him.”

Strange how one sentence can make sense of sixteen years.

It was Nash who’d persuaded me to talk to someone after I finally explained about what happened to Ross.

“I had a patient with similar indications in series three,” she said. “I’m pretty sure you’re suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.”

I wondered why in all the years of studying medicine that had never occurred to me.

“Because you never told anyone, maybe?” Nash said.

We were drinking in her club, not the one Charlotte and I had been to on that fateful day in 2001, but a similarly exclusive private members’ place on Shaftesbury Avenue.

“I leave my left-wing credentials in the cloakroom,” Nash breezily informed me, pre-empting any sarcastic remark I might think of making when she signed us in.

The club backed onto another of those secret gardens you find behind the most unlikely streets in London. Nash was a defiant smoker. I still pretended I wasn’t, despite occasionally buying a packet of ten, lighting one and taking a couple of drags before stubbing it out with the heel of my shoe. So we were on the terrace, companionably silent, almost as if unwilling to move on to another topic.

Finally, Nash said, “You know I’ve always liked you.”

“And I’ve always liked you,” I said.

“I don’t suppose you’re interested in becoming a casualty of my torrid and disastrous love life?” she asked.

The panic started in my stomach, then ripped up my throat to my brain. Nash had been my rock since the girls left, lending me the money for the few months I needed to complete my training, supporting me through the first exhausting weeks back at work, sympathizing about the difficulty of diagnosing deep vein thrombosis and the horror of dealing with an acid attack from her on-screen experience of emergency admissions. Nash knew all my worst bits and I knew hers, but it just wasn’t there for me, and I knew it would have to be all or nothing with her.

What I wanted to say was, Please don’t stop being my friend!

But she had bravely asked the question and I knew I had to get up the courage to answer it truthfully.

“No,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

I couldn’t do the “I’m not ready” excuse with Nash. And I was sure she’d get annoyed if I started on the “You’re a great person, but...” thing.

There was a long, vacant pause before she drained her glass, and replaced it carefully on the table. I was sure she was going to get up and walk out of my life. Instead, she lit another cigarette.

“Well, that’s cleared the air,” she said, blowing a tempting cloud of smoke across the table.

I was determined to keep the house for the girls to return to if they ever tired of the novelty of living with Charlotte. I don’t think she thought I’d manage to keep up with the mortgage payments, but I did, finding strange solace in my work, as I always had done in the hectic world that is an Accident and Emergency department, because you have to exist entirely in the present. As I’d feared, weekends with the girls grew further and further apart, because I didn’t want to insist on the custody arrangements, forcing them to upset the new lives they were establishing.

I started running again. The quickest way to reach the park was through the busy bottleneck of Notting Hill Gate and straight along the Bayswater Road to the first gate. On summer evenings, the pavement was hot, the air full of noise and reeking with the smell of cheap cooking fat; on winter mornings, when I’d finished a night shift, I sometimes felt like the only person awake in the city, my footsteps pounding the concrete, darkness surreptitiously giving way to cold, grey light.

With no set time of day, I never established passing acquaintance with other runners as I had done in Regent’s Park, where people I recognized by their silhouette or the color of their tracksuit would nod or say “Good morning.” The loneliness of the long-distance runner, I sometimes thought, wondering if my father had been more perceptive about me than I’d given him credit for, and whether he’d appreciate me getting in touch, but never quite finding the impetus to take the idea further than that.

On my days off, I’d shower after my run and walk down the Portobello Road to our favorite cafe, never tiring of the shell of burnt sugar over the creamy deliciousness of their custard tarts. The Portuguese cafe owner and I exchanged words about the weather. I sat on a stool by the window with a newspaper, watching the world go by. Occasionally, I’d spot one of the mothers who used to stand outside the gates of Flora’s school, and we’d wave, but friendship between adults was not what we’d signed up for. All we had in common was our children. Without the girls, I wasn’t a single father, I was just single.

When a senior oncologist appeared in AE to examine a patient presenting with a large lump in his thigh, I recognized him as my chess-playing fellow medical student, Jonathan. Recently married to a theatre producer, he didn’t yet have children and could find the time for a drink more easily than Marcus, who now had a boy and a girl of his own.

In a blatant attempt to matchmake, Jonathan and Miriam invited me to a dinner party with one of her colleagues, Gayle, who regaled us with her adventures in the world of Internet dating. She was much more attractive than I’d assumed the candidates on dating sites would be. As we walked to the Tube together, I tentatively suggested having a drink sometime, but she said I had too much baggage for her, and she’d learned to save a lot of time by being honest upfront.

Out of curiosity more than pressing need, I signed up for a month’s free trial and found Lucy’s sister Pippa looking for love. Weighing embarrassment against the possible pleasure of seeing her again, I decided to send her a message. There followed a flurry of emails in which I learned that Lucy had married Toby and had three kids with a fourth on the way, but that Pippa was now divorced, childless and living in Strawberry Hill. We arranged to meet up one Saturday afternoon outside the Friends’ Room on the fifth floor of the Tate Modern, which has one of the best views in London.

Pippa was as thin and brittle as she had been on her wedding day, when I had worried that giant Canadian would swamp her with his bulk and his bonhomie.

“What was I thinking?” she said, pushing a brownie around her plate with a fork. “He was so decent and nice and normal, for heaven’s sake! Screw-ups are much more fun, don’t you think?”

I could tell she wasn’t interested in seeing the Paul Klee exhibition, though she said she’d be happy to if I was desperate. We wandered eastwards along the riverbank and had too much Rioja in a tapas bar in Borough Market. As we walked back towards the setting sun, Pippa kept bumping into me unsteadily, and we ended up arm in arm, trying to piece together the lyrics of the Kinks song “Waterloo Sunset.”

At the station, my tentative move towards her cheek resulted in a lingering kiss, full of regret and promise. Her body was sinuous and lithe under her flimsy summer dress.

“Are we mad enough?” she whispered, her lips raspberry-red from kissing.

The territory we were entering felt dangerous and sinful and sexy.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

“I’m looking for my forever person.”

I thought of Nicky’s face. Oh, Gus, really?

“I don’t think I can be that,” I said.

“No. I don’t suppose you can.”

“We’ll keep in touch?”

“Of course!”

We kissed chastely on both cheeks and I waved her down the platform, knowing that I’d never see her again.

“I still think you should train to be a chef,” Nash said one day in July, just before the girls arrived for their summer holiday.

We’d seen a film at the Gate and she’d come back for supper. She was on the Dukan diet to lose weight for a big audition, so I made us a hot Thai-style salad of tofu on top of radishes, cucumber and spring onions.

“It’s about as realistic as daydreaming about what I’d do if I won the lottery,” I said, shaking up a citrusy dressing of lime juice, finely sliced ginger and chili peppers in a jam jar.

“Do you buy lottery tickets?” Nash asked.

“No! That’s my point.”

She took a forkful of her salad.

“Actually, you don’t have to have a lot of money, these days—you just get people to come to your home. You call it a supper club, you get a reputation on social media, it becomes the coolest thing, and you charge what you like!”

“But you have to know people,” I said.

“Honestly, Gus, you are A FUCKING NIGHTMARE!” Nash suddenly screeched. “No wonder Charlotte bolted! You’ve got an excuse for everything. Why can’t you ever just launch in?”

“I’m not making excuses!” I protested. “I don’t know many people!”

“But I do, don’t I?” said Nash. “I’ve got fifty thousand followers on Twitter. You’ve got a bijou house in the coolest part of town, with a great big kitchen table which is ideal for supper parties, and you’re a great cook!”

“And I’ve got a full-time job, and a very small repertoire of dishes.”

“OK,” said Nash, pushing back her chair. “I give up. I actually give up, and I won’t mention it again in case I end up killing you.”

“Are you going?” I asked.

“Yes. I’m fed up with you, Gus.”

“But you will come and see the girls?”

I was suddenly nervous that they’d be bored. Nash always took them to Primark, which seemed to be one of the biggest attractions of London now.

“I’ll see how I feel,” Nash said. “At the moment, I just want to strangle you.”

Charlotte was getting jittery about the London property boom.

“I keep seeing articles calling it a bubble,” she said when she delivered the girls from the airport. “And bubbles pop!”

London was in the midst of a heatwave, so I’d set up the paddling pool in our garden. In the past, Flora would have stripped off and thrown herself straight in, but at nine she was more self-conscious. In the three months since I’d seen her, her face had lengthened in the process of changing from the pretty child she had been to the beautiful woman she was going to be. Bella had also shot up, but she was still a freckly imp with cascades of ginger curls. I gave them hugs and they went upstairs to see if they could find their old bathing suits. I was surprised that Charlotte had accepted my invitation to stay for a coffee, which I’d issued only as a formality. Perched on the edge of the sofa, she sipped iced water, while I put on the espresso machine.

Apparently, she and Robert were prepared to offer me a deal. If I sold the house, after the mortgage loan was repaid, they would offer me half the equity, which at current prices was probably just over half a million pounds and considerably more than the share I’d put in.

The look on her face told me that she expected gratitude for this generous offer.

“I’d probably be entitled to that anyway,” I told her coolly. “Given the length of time we were married and my contribution to the girls’ upbringing.”

One of Charlotte’s eyebrows arched in surprise.

“Anyway, I’m not selling,” I said.

Now Charlotte’s eyebrows flattened and the bridge of her nose puckered into a frown.

“Don’t you think three years as wronged husband is long enough?” she asked wearily.

“Haven’t you imposed enough disruption on their lives?” I countered.

I should have known that I would pay for the buzz I got from that little exchange. It would have been far smarter to tell her that I’d think about it and wait until the last day of the holiday to give her my decision.

What I hadn’t anticipated was her willingness to manipulate the girls, although I had no proof that she had put words into their mouths.

“It’s such a big house just for you, Daddy,” sighed Flora, almost the moment we’d waved Mummy off down the street.

“Aren’t you lonely here all by yourself?” asked Bell.

In the past, they had played in their old bedroom with shrieks of delighted rediscovery; now their reaction was muted.

“At home, we have our own rooms,” Flora informed me.

“I’ve got Hello Kitty wallpaper,” said Bell.

They were growing up, and I was happy that they were happy in their new lives. There’s a saying, isn’t there, that you’re as happy as your unhappiest child?

I handed them both glasses of pink lemonade I’d made.

“Sarp!” said Bell.

I liked the fact she still used the family word we’d all adopted for something we didn’t quite like the taste of.

“If you want, we can redecorate your room while you’re here?” I suggested. “You can choose the colors and the curtains and everything.”

When that didn’t elicit a reaction, I upped the offer.

“You could have a room each? We’ll turn Mummy’s old bedroom into a room for Bell...”

“Is there much point when we’re only here for a week?” Flora asked.

“A week?”

“I’m sure I mentioned it,” Charlotte said, when I called her mobile to protest. “The girls were so keen to go to summer camp with their friends. I didn’t think for a minute that you’d want to stop them.”

I wondered whether I’d have got my three weeks if I’d agreed to Charlotte’s deal, but it was too late now to clarify the rules.

At least there was no danger of us getting bored with each other, although my daughters weren’t as easy to communicate with as they used to be. We Skyped regularly, but it was hard to remember the names and nationalities of best friends I would never meet, especially since at that age they changed so frequently.

Flora was now more interested in looking at the tattoo designs in the window of a shop next door to the cafe than she was in the custard tarts.

“You’re much too young for a tattoo!” I said.

“But these ones wash off, Daddy!”

The thought of Charlotte’s horror when she caught sight of her daughters inked was irresistible.

Flora had a dolphin transferred onto her shoulder and Bella a star on her tiny wrist.

“We’ve been all the way down to Greenwich on a boat, we’ve been on the cable car over the river, we’ve been to Christ Church College, Oxford, to see where Harry Potter was filmed,” I told Nash, when I spoke to her on the phone. “But mostly they just want to WhatsApp their friends.”

“Stop treating them like tourists,” Nash advised. “They probably just want to spend some normal time with you. It’s lovely weather. Take them to Brighton for the day and get them to leave their phones at home. Tell them phones and sand don’t mix!”

“Brighton beach is pebbles, isn’t it?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, somewhere else then!”

I knew a place where the sand was soft and golden. As I no longer had a car, we took the train to Lymington, changing at Brockenhurst in the New Forest.

“Where are we going?” Flora asked.

“Across the sea!”

In Yarmouth, we ate sandwiches in a pub garden looking out over the Solent, where the little yachts and giant cruise liners were like mismatched children’s toys in a bath of perfectly blue water.

Maybe it’s because it’s an island that the Isle of Wight feels like a bit of a time warp. The shops still sell buckets and shovels and little paper flags to stick in your sandcastle, and coconut ice and boxes of fudge with scenic views on, and ice cream cones with chocolate flakes that always taste just slightly stale. It had hardly changed since my own childhood.

As I hadn’t thought to bring towels and the good beaches were a bus ride away, we bought lines and a packet of streaky bacon and spent the afternoon crouched on the little jetty near the pub, pulling unsuspecting crabs out of the water until our bucket was half full.

“What do we do with them now?” Flora asked.

“We let them race back to the sea,” I said.

“How do you know which one is yours?”

“You keep your eyes on your own crab! No cheating allowed!”

Unless you’re a parent. Every time Flora got ahead, I made sure that my winning crab somehow became Bell’s. The final score was Flora and Bell on six each and Daddy on three.

“Who did you race with when you were little, Daddy?” Bella asked.

She was a thoughtful child. I sometimes wondered if her early troubles had made her a more empathetic soul than her sister.

“With my big brother, Ross.”

“Uncle Ross who died?” Flora asked.

“Who told you about Uncle Ross?” I tried to keep my tone light and neutral.

“Granny did. He was supposed to marry Mummy, but he died, so Mummy had to marry you instead, so really we’re like his daughters as well,” Flora said.

I felt the habitual rise of bile in my stomach.

It’s a beautiful day and you’re with your children, I thought. Let it go.

“How old was Uncle Ross when he died?” asked Bella.

“He was twenty-two,” I said.

Her little face puckered.

“How old are people usually when they die?” she asked.

“Ross was very young. People die at all different ages, but mostly when they are very old.”

“How old are you, Daddy?”

“I’m thirty-four.”

“That’s not very old for a grown-up, is it?”

“No, my darling, it’s not very old for a grown-up,” I reassured her.

“I’m sad about Uncle Ross,” said Bell.

“You can’t spend your life being sad,” said Flora. I could hear Charlotte’s brisk voice.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it makes other people around you sad.”

“When are you sad?” I asked her, gently.

“Sometimes after I talk to you on Skype,” Flora admitted.

“I’m usually a bit sad then too,” I said.

“It’s OK to be sad,” Flora said. “As long as you’re happy most of the time.”

“Quite right,” I said.

The angle of the sun made the surface of the water pearly white; the air was gentle.

“I like the Island of Wight,” said Bell. “Can we come back here every holiday?”

We managed to get a table on the train home, and for a while the girls amused themselves with the puzzle magazines we’d bought at the station while I read a newspaper that someone had left. When it went quiet, I looked across the table to see that Bell had fallen asleep against Flora, who was still reading, her arm protectively around her sister’s shoulder. She put her finger to her lips when she saw me looking, taking her older-sister duties very seriously.

I texted Nash. On train back from seaside. Brilliant suggestion. Are you on for shopping tomorrow?

A message pinged back immediately. OK, but early. Major date with hairdresser 2pm. Final audition in LA!

Congrats!I texted back.

Not holding breath.

The part she was auditioning for was Princess Margaret in a film about the romance with Group Captain Peter Townsend, called The Choice. It was perfect for her. Not only did she possess the slightly blowsy sexiness of the princess, but she also had a real talent for conveying the vulnerable side of arrogant or difficult people. It was the kind of role—royal, biopic, period costumes—that often wins an Oscar. I didn’t say that, though. With Nash, you always have to tread a careful line between complimenting and tempting fate.

“When are you leaving?” I asked, when we met up the next morning outside Primark at Marble Arch.

“Tonight. I have to miss the Stones,” she said.

“Still, how exciting!” I tried to put more enthusiasm into my voice than I felt.

I’d taken three weeks off work. Now, after just one, my girls were leaving and my friend wasn’t going to be there to hang out with.

We emerged from the store with big brown-paper carrier bags stuffed with so many dresses, tops, leggings, bags, pots of glittery stuff and hair ornaments, I was grimly optimistic that Charlotte would have to fork out for excess baggage on the return flight. The pavement was heaving with shoppers and Nash was already late for her appointment, so we didn’t have time for a proper farewell. I gave her a hug and wished her luck, and she set off running, then suddenly, remembering something, delved about in her bag, and raced back with an envelope for me.

“Enjoy!” she said, and then she was off again.

“Is Nash your girlfriend, Daddy?” Bell asked.

“Not my girlfriend. She’s a good friend.”

“Is she your best friend?” asked Flora.

“Yes, I suppose she is,” I said, looking fondly at the disappearing figure.

“I’m hungry!” said Bell.

Looking around for inspiration, I found myself staring at the familiar columns of Selfridges.

“I know just the place for lunch,” I said.

The Brass Rail had barely changed since my father used to take us there for salt-beef sandwiches when we came up to see the Christmas lights, but it was far too sweltering a day for fatty slabs of brisket sandwiched between thick slices of rye bread. Instead, we sat on high stools in YO! Sushi, picking dishes we liked the look of as they passed on the conveyor belt. Afterwards, I let the girls choose a cupcake each for dessert, and, since they insisted (and I knew there was almost nothing Charlotte would like less), a particularly garish rose-and-violet one with a towering swirl of pink-and-purple icing to take back for Mummy.

In the cool, air-conditioned perfumery department, I encouraged the girls to test different colors of nail polish on their fingernails, and to spray themselves liberally with scents, delivering them back to their mother on a sugar high in a cloud of Katy Perry’s Purr.

Charlotte had arranged tickets for Matilda, not including me because she didn’t think I’d want to come with my mother. Flora and Bella were to spend the final night at the hotel there because they were on an early flight and Charlotte wouldn’t tolerate the stress of me bringing them to the airport. On their last visit, through no fault of my own, we’d encountered delays on the Piccadilly line and I’d only just got them to Terminal 2 in time, where Charlotte was spitting fire because mobiles don’t work underground and she hadn’t been able to contact me.

When the girls realized that I wouldn’t be spending the evening with them, they kicked up a gratifying fuss.

I bent down to give each of them a hug.

“Thank you for all the clothes,” said Flora.

“I don’t want you to go, Daddy.” Bell started sniffing.

I hugged her delicate little frame to my chest, her sad face damp against my cheek.

“I’ll see you tomorrow at the airport,” I promised.

“If the Tube’s working,” said Charlotte.

“Why do you have to be such a bitch?” I whispered in her ear, as we exchanged steely air kisses for the benefit of the children.

Her expression went from furious to fair-enough in an instant. The thing about Charlotte is that she can give it out but she can take it too. I don’t know why I always forgot that and tried to get what I wanted by being nice instead of nasty.

Hyde Park was submerged under a swarm of Rolling Stones fans. Straining to recognize the song, as I headed back home, I decided it must still be the warm-up band playing. There were big fences around the ticketed area but the crowds were packed ten deep against the narrow gaps to steal a free show. The sun had been shining all day and the meltingly hot air seemed to quiver with expectation.

“I’ve never been a big Stones fan,” I’d told Nash when she’d floated the idea of getting tickets earlier in the year. “My father is. Won’t it be full of sixty-somethings doing their Mick Jagger?”

“It’s a bucket-list thing, isn’t it, seeing a Stones concert?” she’d said.

“Bucket list?”

“Oh, do keep up, Gus! Things to do before you die.”

It had said in the paper that the gigs sold out in less than three minutes.

Now the atmosphere was so charged, I almost regretted my reluctance.

I took a side street, and was alone within a couple of hundred meters. I love the way London changes from frantic to peaceful. It’s something I’ve never experienced in other big cities. In London, even a densely populated street can be as sleepily silent as the countryside.

Back at the house, I decided to freshen up with a shower.

Nash’s envelope fell from a pocket as I stepped out of my shorts.

The first ticket was for the Stones concert, which she’d bought for herself after I’d been so unenthusiastic.

The second was for a holiday, booked in my name that morning, for a two-week cooking course in Tuscany, starting in two days’ time.

The note she had scrawled on the printout of the booking read: Even you can manage to check in online?

I called her immediately, but her mobile was switched off, so I guessed she must already be in the air. In a way I was glad, because it’s hard to find the right words when you’re overwhelmed, and I didn’t want to sound like a prat again.

By the time I arrived at the gig, the sun was beginning to go down and the Stones had started their set. The stage was a long way off, but there was a catwalk for Mick Jagger to strut along, giving the impression that he was surfing the crowd. Huge screens showed video art moving with the music, interspersed with live close-ups of the band’s deeply etched faces.

Halfway through “Honky Tonk Women,” I realized I was singing, my mouth forming the words as automatically as nursery rhymes. The communality of the experience was liberating, like being part of something much bigger than just you. I’d never been to Glastonbury, or any other festival, but on a hot summer’s evening, in a crowd of a hundred and fifty thousand, I suddenly understood what people loved about it. For the length of a song you could forget everything that had gone before and everything that might come, and live in the gloriously sunny present. When each song ended, everyone cheered and shouted and smiled at each other, strangers united in the moment.

Darkness fell without me really noticing, and as the band started playing “MissYou,” giant white butterflies appeared on the shimmering LED screens, giving the illusion of fluttering over the crowds, briefly lighting up individual faces.

About six people in front of me, I noticed a tall woman tracking the ephemeral silvery-white image as it floated over her head, her expression as innocently delighted as a child gazing up at a circus trapeze artist, her lips syncing with the words of the song. Almost as if she had sensed me watching her, our eyes met, her mouth stopped moving and time stood still. Then the butterfly flew away and her face merged back into the darkness.

The sensation of déjà vu was so strong, the moment of recognition so tantalizingly brief, I couldn’t tell if she was someone I’d met or someone famous. Blinded by bursts of pyrotechnics whooshing up from the stage, my eyes scoured the crowd for her in vain.

The encore of “Satisfaction” went on so long, it was beginning to feel as if we were in a perpetual cycle of the chorus and then, quite suddenly, it was over. The applause peaked, continued optimistically, then died with the realization that the band had already been whisked out of the park. People started moving towards the exits, exhausted and subdued, like children after a birthday party.

The flow of the crowd was fairly orderly until someone collapsed a few yards in front of me and security guards had to step in to stem the tide of moving bodies.

Amid feverish whispers, a cry went out that I’d only ever heard in movies.

“Is there a doctor here?”

“I’m a doctor!”

The crowd parted to let me through.

Several people were kneeling around an unconscious woman, debating the correct first-aid procedure.

“Shouldn’t you get her head between her knees?”

“Put her in the recovery position?”

One security guard was trying to keep the crowd back, another was fanning the patient with his hat. Their walkie-talkies occasionally hissed and spluttered incomprehensible messages through the hum of anxiety.

There was no obvious head wound visible; she did not appear to be having a fit; she had not swallowed her tongue. She was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, cut-off jeans and flip-flops, so there was no clothing to loosen. Kneeling down beside her, I asked a security guard to sit with his back to her, then draped her long legs over his shoulders to get the blood supply moving towards her brain. She was breathing, but she had a fairly slow and uneven pulse.

Around me, I could hear the murmur of amateur diagnoses.

“She’s had a bit too much to drink, I reckon.”

“It’s probably just the heat.”

“You’ve called an ambulance, right?” I checked with the security guard.

As if in answer to my question, a distant siren began to wail.

“Is she going to be OK, Doc?” he asked.

Her face was deathly pale.

“Come on, wake up,” I heard myself urging. “Wake up now!”

Suddenly, she opened both eyes and looked straight at me.

The butterfly woman!

“Do I know you?” she asked.

“I’m Gus,” I said.

I could hear the paramedics pushing through the crowd. “Step aside. Give her some room, folks!”

The woman was sitting up now. The crowd began to move again with a slight air of disappointment that the drama was over.

“We’re just going to take you to AE, love,” the paramedic said.

“I’m OK, honestly,” she was saying. “I’ll be fine.”

“What’s your name, love?”

“Tess. Look, you really don’t need to—”

“We just want to get you checked out, Tess,” the paramedic continued. “Do you want us to stretcher you, or do you think you can walk?”

“I can walk!” she said, scrambling to her feet, then swaying slightly.

I stepped forward to catch her, but a paramedic got there first.

“Let’s get you into the van, love,” he said.

The bright face suddenly saddened. As our eyes met again, she made a silent plea for help, then, as if accepting defeat, sat obediently on the stretcher.

As the doors to the ambulance closed, she gave me a little wave.

The driver went around to the front. I chased him. “Can I go with her?”

“Are you her partner?”

“No!”

“Relation?”

“No,” I admitted. “But I am a doctor.”

He gave me the kind of dismissive look I hadn’t seen since I was a callow medical student, then slammed the driver’s side door, his big hairy arm resting on the edge of the open window.

The ambulance started moving. I stood frozen with indecision, then, as it began to pick up speed, my legs suddenly started running.

“Where are you taking her?” I shouted.

If the lights hadn’t turned red, I wouldn’t have caught up. The driver stared at me defiantly, then, as they changed to green, took pity.

“St.Thomas’s, mate.”

He turned on his siren and stepped on the accelerator. I had to jump backwards to avoid the rear wheels running over my feet.

The main body of the crowd was heading along Piccadilly. I cut down the road that runs past the walls of Buckingham Palace, then along the south side of St.James’s Park to Westminster. Parliament Square was virtually deserted; the floodlights on Westminster Abbey made it look strangely two-dimensional, like a giant piece of stage scenery. Halfway across the bridge, with St.Thomas’s Hospital a couple of hundred yards in front of me, I slowed to a standstill, sweat trickling down my back.

An intriguing woman called Tess had fainted in front of me. Now she was in good hands. My tiny role in the story of her life was over, my compulsion to see her again irrational. It would just be weird to turn up at the hospital.

Leaning on the bridge, I looked down. The lights on the water made it look thick and black, like oil.

I heard Nash’s voice. Why can’t you ever just launch in?

I set off again, running as fast as I could.

AE on Saturday night in the middle of a heatwave was packed with bright pink people suffering from sunstroke. There was no sign of a very thin woman with a gamine haircut and a scintillating smile.

“I’m looking for a woman who came in, maybe half an hour ago, by ambulance,” I told the receptionist.

“Name?” she asked.

“Tess. She fainted after the Stones concert. I just wanted to check she was OK. I’m actually a doctor.”

“Surname?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“If you’re a doctor, you’ll know that I can’t give out any information about patients.”

“Of course. Sorry!”

I turned to go, then stopped.

“Could I just ask if she’s here?”

“I can’t give you any information.”

“If I left a note, could you give it to her?”

The woman hesitated.

“I honestly am a doctor...”

“You’re not like any doctor I’ve ever come across,” she said.

“Please...”

Not a word doctors often use with junior staff.

“If you leave a note, I’ll try to pass it on,” she finally agreed.

“You haven’t got a piece of paper I could borrow?”

She shook her head in disbelief, then passed a notepad advertising a brand of antidepressant.

“I expect you need something to write with as well?” She rolled a pen across the desk.

“Actually, no. It’s fine,” I said.

It was a crazy idea. Maybe I was the one who’d had too much sun.

The receptionist now looked almost disappointed. She sighed and took back her pen.

“Sorry,” I said, lowering my eyes in the belated hope that she wouldn’t recognize me if I ever found myself working at the hospital.

The air was still stiflingly hot outside, and my mouth was parched. Remembering there were food outlets open late in Waterloo station, I headed across the road. I bought a bottle of cold mineral water, and stood in a line for the till, gazing at the buckets of fresh flowers by the exit.

Why can’t you ever just launch in?

It was crazy, wasn’t it, to think of giving flowers to a stranger?

“Please go to cashier nine,” a disembodied voice instructed.

I sensed the person behind me in the queue huff-puffing as I hesitated. “Sorry. Do you mind if I just get one more thing?”

There was a different receptionist at AE when I walked up to the desk carrying a bouquet of purple stocks and pink roses.

“Are those for me?” she asked, with a bit of a twinkle. “Don’t they smell gorgeous?”

She was friendlier than the first receptionist, less of a fire-breathing dragon at the gate of the castle where the princess was imprisoned.

“I was wondering if I could leave them for a patient?”

“Name?”

“Tess.”

“Hang on. Are you the one who...?”

I nodded.

“So romantic!” She smiled at me.

“Can I wait?” I looked around for a spare seat in the crowded waiting room.

“I think they’re keeping her in overnight for observation.”

“I’ll come back first thing in the morning, shall I?”

“I can’t promise anything!”

I remembered I was seeing the girls off on the eight o’clock flight.

“Actually, I can’t,” I said. “I’ve got to see my kids.”

The friendly look disappeared. I wanted to say, It’s not what you’re thinking. It was all getting too complicated.

“Would you just do me a favor and give her the flowers, OK?” I thrust the bouquet at her.

“And you’re Dr....?”

“Gus. Just Gus,” I said, and fled.

I was at the Stones concert, except it wasn’t the Stones concert, it was Pippa’s wedding but the organist was playing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” I’d run all the way to the church and the sweat was sticking my shirt to my back... In the front pew, there was a tall woman with short curly hair, and I knew I had to get to her, so I started tiptoeing up the aisle hoping nobody would notice me, but when she turned, it was Lucy’s mother, Nicky... I was dancing in the marquee and the disco ball was flashing spots of light around the tent, lighting up faces for a second, then moving on and I wanted it to stop, so I could see the faces properly, but they kept eluding me. I ran out into the garden and lay down on the swing seat and the marquee opened, throwing a triangle of light across the lawn and a tall, thin woman stepped out and the triangle closed again. In the darkness, I wasn’t even sure I could see her shadowy outline and...

I woke up with a jolt, more exhausted than when I’d fallen asleep. I just made it to the airport, only to find that the flight was delayed. Airports are such soulless places, it didn’t feel like proper time with my girls, just a frustrating, endless limbo. There were only so many retail outlets where Charlotte could skulk, pretending not to watch us eating white-chocolate-and-raspberry muffins in Starbucks. By the time they had to head for the departures hall, we’d run out of things to say. Flora was WhatsApping and Bell was playing Fruit Ninja.

Neither of them looked back as I stood on tiptoe on my side of the gate to get a last glimpse of them going through security. As I turned and walked away, my eyes filled, but it was nothing like the ferocious flood that used to cause me to divert to the observation deck and wave at random airplanes taking off before wandering gloomily back to the Tube.

We were all becoming used to separation. I couldn’t decide whether that was a good thing or a bad one.

Instead of getting off the Piccadilly line at South Kensington and walking home through the park, I stayed on and changed to the Jubilee line at Green Park.

There was a different receptionist at St.Thomas’s AE. I was about to speak when I noticed, through the open door of the admin office behind her, the bouquet of purple stocks and pink roses, still in their cellophane and tissue, standing in a hospital water jug on the desk.

“Can I help you?”

“The flowers.” I pointed. “I left them here for someone yesterday evening.”

“You’re the one?” she asked.

I was the subject of the current gossip, probably an object of ridicule.

“We did try to give them to her, but she said they’d probably be better staying here to cheer people up.”

“She wasn’t admitted, then?”

“The doctors wanted to keep her in, but your friend was having none of it.”

I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere by asking if she had left a forwarding address.

“Very nice of you, though,” said the woman, in a kind, motherly voice, as if trying to make things better. “The scent’s a lovely change from, well, you’ll know, won’t you—someone said you were a doctor?”

“Did she ask who left them?”

“We did tell her Gus.”

From the receptionist’s tone, I could see that Tess hadn’t responded.

Do I know you?

I’m Gus.

She had just been coming around from a faint.

My name had meant nothing to her. The receptionist and I both knew it. We looked at each other.

And then I turned and walked away.