‘Sure is,’ Bess beamed. ‘We missed her.’
‘And how is Conrad?’ Frank ventured. He knew the deal with him, the times Maya had tried to leave and never had, how much happier she was since the divorce was final, but the concern about her son and his father was never far from her mind.
‘He’s on the mend, discharged today so I’m sure it won’t be long before he’s back at work.’
‘He was lucky.’ Frank was here often enough to hear some of the horror stories. Sometimes the team came back in good spirits having safely got to a patient in time to not only save them but give them the best outcome. But other times, when the stories were grim, the outcomes not hopeful, Frank could see it on their faces, heard the hopelessness and regret in their voices. ‘Well, send Conrad my regards for a speedy recovery.’
‘Will do.’ Maya knew what that meant too. It meant she should remember Frank to Conrad and that would serve as a reminder to him that Maya had plenty of people looking out for her should she need it. Over the years, Frank had been more ofa father figure than her own could be. He was easy to talk to… he came here and did more hours than necessary and she knew why. He was lonely. His wife had passed away a decade ago and he’d drunk himself into oblivion until Bess, close to him also, had guided him to some counselling. Nowadays he rarely drank at all, he seemed content in his life and his work. Sometimes it made Maya sad, though, that perhaps he needed a little something more in his life other than work. Didn’t they all?
There was a light shower as Maya drove to the hospital but by the time she arrived, it had finished and the puddles in the car park and on the pavements were already beginning to disappear.
When she reached the ward, the doctor was finishing up with Conrad and Conrad looked relieved to see her. Perhaps despite the hold he had over her, he had, even for a short moment, doubted she’d turn up. ‘Here she is, Doc.’
‘Hello, Maya. Good to see you again. He’s all yours,’ the doctor said before he went off to continue on with his rounds.
Conrad was already dressed and a bag of his belongings sat packed up on the chair beside the bed. ‘I’m good to go.’
‘That’s great.’ As she’d said to Bess, the sooner he got home and started proper recovery, the sooner Maya could begin to fade into the background as much as she could.
‘Thanks again for doing this, Maya.’
Did she really have a choice? ‘No worries.’
He lowered his voice. ‘If you hadn’t stepped up and said you’d help me, they’d have kept me in for longer. And I’ll go insane if I have to spend another moment in here.’
Maya also knew that if he stayed much longer, he’d really piss someone off. Already he kept snapping at doctors andnurses, he’d moaned at the lack of privacy more times than she cared to remember, he’d abused the visiting rules and had too many rowdy people at his bedside. Some of the nurses were uncomfortable with his behaviour, although most were brilliant and took none of his shit, something Maya had quietly thanked them for whenever she left the ward after visiting.
‘I need to get home for my sanity,’ he grumbled. ‘And you won’t need to watch me like a baby; this is all so they let me out. Once I’m at home, I’ll be fine.’
‘I’ll keep an eye on you, Conrad.’ She knew he’d only said it to test whether she would hang around, to know whether he needed to deploy those threats he liked to issue whenever he felt she was pulling away that little bit too much.
‘Why? I’m not going to be leaving the house for a while – not like I can go out on my bike, given it’s a write-off.’
‘I’ll do it because the medical team advise it.’ And because if she didn’t, she’d soon know about it from him, despite the pretence otherwise, the claims that he hated being an imposition.
‘I’ll take the help today but perhaps I can have a word with one of the guys at work, see if they know someone who can come by every day for a while. I don’t want my incapacity to fall to you; it’s not your responsibility.’
He really was digging into his acting skills now. But she wasn’t stupid. This was all part of his master plan, she knew; he was clever that way, pushing enough but not too much.
She might be kidding herself but her theory was that sooner or later, he would accept their marriage really was over and he’d grow tired of playing games. And if he didn’t? Well, that meant that at some point she’d have to deal with him in another way.
She couldn’t be frightened of him forever, worried about what he might say.
But right now, she didn’t see a way out.
10
When it came to searching for Eva’s biological father, Noah didn’t have much to go on at all apart from the guy’s name on Eva’s birth certificate. But it was a start.
In the kitchen at the airbase, on a much-needed break after three jobs in quick succession, he made coffees for himself, Maya, Bess and Nadia and took his over to the table. He couldn’t resist a bit more searching while he had a moment because over the last week, he’d come up with a big, fat nothing.
Paul Griffiths had been in Cassie’s life so briefly that he and Noah had never met. Cassie and Paul had dated for only a couple of months before Eva was conceived and then during her pregnancy, the guy was offshore on an oil rig a lot, taking as much overtime as he could to supposedly put him in a good position to support his family. Noah, meanwhile, had a busy job of his own and saw his sister on snatched occasions. By the time Noah could take a few days off and meet Eva properly rather than the mad dash he’d made to the hospital to meet his niece for the first time, Paul had supposedly gone offshore to the rigs again for another stint as a mechanic.
Noah had known the first day he saw Eva in Cassie’s arms that her daughter was his sister’s whole world. She’d turned thirty-nine when she was pregnant and she’d told Noah that this was probably her one and only chance to have a baby.
Paul never did come back from offshore. There was no accident, no sudden tragedy. He simply disappeared from Cassie’s life. There were tears from Cassie at first but not for long. Cassie had pragmatically carried on and Noah wasn’t sure but he had wondered whether perhaps his sister was in fact glad at the turn of events. It frustrated him no end that now, he’d never be able to ask her why.
The only other information Noah had to go on about this guy Paul Griffiths was that he’d lived in the same town as Cassie, where they’d met at her local pub. He started a search on social media, thinking there had to be something there, but other than a few guys with the same name and getting his hopes up at the picture of an ocean next to one profile (which he thought might have implied the person worked out at sea, even on the rigs), he found nothing.
