‘Outside with Prim. I nearly fell, except I stopped myself before I realised it was even going to happen. Then it was as though … Well … ’ She broke off, trying to think how to explain it. ‘It somehow already had. Or –’ she bit her lip – ‘was.’
She half expected Clare to dismiss her.
Scoff, like Prim had.
But Clare didn’t dismiss her.
And it wasn’t in her nature to scoff.
‘Maybe it has happened,’ she said, her fingers moving to her neck, lacing through the chain holding Hans’s ring. ‘Maybe it is.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She frowned. ‘Lately though, I keep wondering whether this is all as new for us as we accept it is.’ She ran her thumb around the circle of Hans’s band of gold. ‘I find myself unsurprised by so much.’
‘Because of your powers, you mean?’ said Iris, which might have been a joke.
Except she didn’t feel like joking.
‘They’re not powers,’ Clare said, not joking either. ‘Just a certain sense of … recognition, I suppose. Truth.’ She looked across at Iris, her eyes still puffy from her earlier tears. ‘I rather think we might have all fallen before.’
15 November 2018
CLAUDIA BAXTER DOWN BUT NOT OUT
In breaking news, Claudia Baxter is under medical supervision after a fall on set last night. It’s reported that she lost her balance at the top of RAF Doverley’s reconstructed control tower – pictured here – and plummeted the full height of the external staircase.
‘It was terrifying,’ says our source. ‘She didn’t trip. Her whole face blanked out, and she just… dropped.’
‘It’s possible she had a stress-induced seizure,’ says Odette Harrison, MD, a specialist in functional neurological disorders. ‘That’s entirely feasible, given the trauma of everything she’s been going through, and the long hours she’s said to have been working on set. Unfortunately, this fall won’t have helped, and her doctors will need to undertake scans to rule out the possibility of a brain bleed.’
Nick Turner, pictured here heading into York Central Hospital with Claudia in the early hours of this morning, reportedly hasn’t left her side since she was admitted. Claudia’s mum, Alex Baxter, has also now joined them, but refused to comment on Claudia’s condition when we approached her.
However, in a turnaround from her previous tight-lipped silence on everything Bomber Boys, director Ana Ashley has released a statement, via Twitter, reassuring fans that Claudia is recovering quickly, fully expects to return to work in the near future, and is extremely grateful for the wonderful care she’s receiving from the NHS.
There’s been an outpouring of love for Claudia in response, whilst a recent photograph of Claudia hugging a local woman in the Yorkshire village of Heaton continues to be reposted across social channels, with the accompanying hashtag,#leanonme, trending, and women coming forward to share their own experiences of miscarriage, and offer one another support.
Notoriously private Claudia doesn’t, of course, do socials, so hasn’t joined in.
And, according to our source, she’s become increasingly antisocial with Nick, too. The word is, they aren’t even sleeping in the same room any more.
They’re in the same room now, of course, although we hope Claudia gets out of it soon, and can leave hospital asap with a clean bill of help.
You’ll hear about it here first when she does.
Chapter Seventeen
Claudia
‘Is this true?’ Mum asks me, looking up from her phone.
We’re in a curtained cubicle in A&E, and she’s sitting by my bed. Nick’s not here. He’s out in reception, taking delivery of the clothes a runner’s brought us. All we’ve got are the costumes we came in. Nick’s spent the past ten hours in scrubs.
‘Is what true?’ I ask Mum.
‘That you and Nick are sleeping in different rooms.’
I frown, which hurts my head. ‘What are you reading?’
