Chapter 20
Doctor Alice had other ideas.
‘You’re not going anywhere for the next twenty-four hours. That inflammation hasn’t gone down and you’d be at risk of swelling and circulation problems, even DVT. If you have a flight booked, you’ll have to postpone it.’
‘I don’t have a booking yet,’ Florrie told her, curled under her duvet on the repair shop café sofa. ‘But I have to get out of here. I’ve done my job and I’ve outstayed my welcome.’
Alice had arrived at twenty to eight, calling in before opening up the surgery. Florrie had been out cold when McIntyre let the doctor inside the shed and slipped away again.
‘Just as well I came to check you over then,’ Alice said. ‘Can’t have a runner on our hands.’
Florrie tried to object, her mind racing with all that she had to do.
Pack her case, call a cab, decide where in the world she was actually headed.
Aspen and her father? Oslo and her mum? Or should she just get straight on to the agency and choose a posting with an immediate start literally anywhere above the snowline?
How would she do that while bandaged up like this?
‘I’m not a runner,’ said Florrie weakly, knowing she’d been running for a decade at least.
Her phone was lighting up on the floor at Alice’s feet. Alice must have read her intentions because she held out the phone so Florrie could unlock it and open her messages. One from her mum asking if she’d slept and offering again to come and get her, and then, to her surprise, one from Maxim.
Your mother tells me you fell while skiing and are in casts? Are you OK? Or is she catastrophising like always? Let me know what you need. I can send a plane. I can fly out and bring you home myself. X
Even with the dig at her mother, there was concern in his message. He knew how to be kind when he needed to. He even called his place in Aspen her home.
Though his follow-up message made her heart drop.
If the fall was due to their negligence I can have our lawyers draft a writ for damages. Say the word.
She didn’t know quite the right way to respond but she knew she didn’t want any more fuss.
I’m fine, honestly. Just a few bumps and bandages. X
The doctor, who had evidently seen her not entirely honest reply, was arching her brow and frowning, but in a way that told her she’d seen it all before and nothing could surprise her.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I called in to see Roz on my way in. She’s running you a hot bath. Let’s get you washed and dressed for your day of leisure.’
Hunched and wrapped in a duvet, clutching her toothbrush, and feeling very much like a mountain troll from her homeland, glad no one was around to witness this, she let Alice guide her out of the shed, stopping only to look at the spot where the glass shattered last night, surprised to see no sign of the accident remained.
A cunning little part of her brain told her it had been a dream and nothing was broken, but then Florrie felt the ache in her wrist beneath the cast and she remembered how she’d spurned Hamish for his own good, making him leave so she didn’t harm him any more than she already had.
The impulse to run away came flooding back strongly, especially when the morning cold and dark greeted her.
She grumbled all the way inside the bright, warm Mill House (where there was Christmas music playing and a good smell of coffee and a huge unboxed panettone on the oak kitchen table where McIntyre was setting out Florrie’s breakfast), and she complained all the way up the stairs about how she wasn’t really a leisure kind of person (she rarely had time for it), and she was really very busy (not true in the slightest), and people needed her (probably, somewhere in the world a new family of strangers would be advertising for staff), and really, how could she be expected to stay in town now that her booking at the Mezzanine Bunk was expiring and…
Her protests ended when Roz opened the bathroom door to reveal a neck-deep bubble bath, steaming sweetly scented and candlelit. Also waiting for Florrie were a pile of bouncy towels, a cup of iced cranberry juice with a bendy straw, and the December issue of British Vogue.
‘Oh wow, you guys!’ she said, remembering how it felt to be small and cherished by her omma and her mother.
Alice carefully wrapped her cast in plastic and helped her undress and slip into the water. She helped her wash and even combed a pumpkin-spiced conditioner through her hair.
‘You know,’ the doctor said as she tidied the bottles away behind the shower curtain, ‘I never liked asking anyone for help either. I had the kind of parents who couldn’t quite be relied on, so I relied on myself.’
Florrie only listened, knowing for sure Alice was thinking of that message she’d seen her send to her father.
‘That feeling lasts for years, if you let it. Pretending you’re fine helps no one.’
Florrie didn’t know what to say. She’d allowed the doctor to help her, hadn’t she?
So she thanked her now, and with more reassurance that she was at the surgery if she needed anything, Alice left, leaving Roz stationed outside the bathroom door, promising she would stay right where she was, and in half an hour she’d help rinse the conditioner from her hair and plait it.
Roz also informed her through the door that, while the doctor had been helping her into the bath, she had nipped over to the shed and ransacked Florrie’s suitcase for a change of clothes, and she’d taken the liberty of putting everything from Florrie’s laundry bag into the washing machine downstairs.
‘And you needn’t worry about the bunk booking. You can stay as long as you need to.’
The way these women had rallied round her was a little overwhelming, and she couldn’t help feeling the intrusion too.
Who even was she to have so many people attending to her needs like this, when she’d struck out on her own years ago, proving she was nothing if not self-sufficient?
A memory of Hamish helping her into her clothes last night made her skin shiver and she tried not to think about that.
Florrie, in the comfort of candlelight and hot bubbly water, gave her body permission to sink and her muscles to soften, and she submitted to her fate of another twenty-four hours convalescing in Cairn Dhu, where surely nothing else could befall her now.