Being angry about the past and annoyed that it had found her in her safe place was easy to do when she was hiding behind terse text messages. It was much harder to do now they were less than a metre apart. Watching him, she could see the toll all of this was having on the man who had once been her friend. His usually handsome features held a sadness, a fear, and Nadia couldn’t help it; her heart went out to him.
‘No, I haven’t heard anything,’ she said. ‘I assure you I will text or call if that changes.’
‘Right.’
‘Does Giles still not know?’
‘No. But now he knows who you are, it’s distracted him from thinking more deeply about where his mum might be. He thinks that we’re here to spend time with you too. He’s really excited about that, Nadia.’
What was he doing to her? Trying to make her holding them at arm’s length impossible?
Disappointed, Giles came back over. ‘I can’t see the helicopter. Is it out the back?’
‘It is,’ she told him. ‘It’s on the helipad.’
‘Have you been in it?’
‘I rarely get to go out with The Skylarks; my job is here at the base.’ Her smile faltered when she looked Archie’s way again.
Vik had come into reception and Giles was onto it straight away and ran over to ask whether he was the pilot.
‘Giles…’ Archie’s voice warned. ‘I’m sorry,’ he called over to Vik.
‘No worries.’ And then to Nadia, Vik said, ‘Does this little guy belong to you? Because if he does, I’m happy to take him out to look around the helicopter if you need a minute.’
Her team knew nothing of who this man was, knew nothing about her history and yet they were intuitive.
‘Would you mind?’ she said. She would rather tell Archie to leave her alone when Giles wasn’t here. He didn’t deserve to pay the price for his mother’s or his father’s past mistakes. And she didn’t have it in her to be so cruel.
Once Giles happily followed Vik to see the air ambulance for himself, Nadia turned back to Archie. ‘I haven’t heard a thing about Monica or from Monica. You don’t need to come here. In fact, I’d really rather you didn’t.’
‘Like I said, I don’t know what else to do. I’m sorry if that makes things awkward.’
‘Are you? Because you’re still here.’ Arms folded, she stood her ground, although she wasn’t sure she was even convincing herself.
‘I’m here because I really think she’ll turn up looking for you.’
‘If she even knows this is where I work. Which, unless she’s seen the television appeal, she won’t. And the chances are slim of that, I’d say.’
‘Are you kidding? I saw it online three times after I saw it on television. She could easily have seen it. She’s been here a while, longer than me. And I still think about the baby, whether she’s mine.’
Nadia realised that what came through in his voice the most was desperation, a need for answers. It was the way some of the patients’ families she’d come across in her career sounded: the need to know what was going on, good or bad.
‘I told you her head was in a bad place,’ he went on. ‘She had depression on and off over the years; it was why we put off starting a family: she wasn’t sure whether she could handle it. And then she had postnatal depression after Giles. She wasn’t sure she could go through it all again with a second pregnancy. Now I’m wondering whether she’d been right to worry about that and something really did snap.’
So the depression had found her sister again, more than once. It was almost too much to think about. But her caring nature meant she couldn’t help but feel sympathetic because watching Archie reminded her very much of the members of families who’d given up hope, the families who knew bad news was on its way, it was just a matter of time.
Nadia uncrossed her arms and took a seat next to him. ‘Even for Monica, leaving a baby seems way too far-fetched. I really don’t think?—’
‘But it’s not impossible. Don’t you see?’ Head in his hands, he was falling apart. ‘When you first left Switzerland, she thought you might come back, but as time went on and reality hit that you weren’t, that was when it really got to her. I don’t think she ever fully moved on from what happened. She’s softened over the years, Nadia; she’s changed. You don’t know her any more. You made sure of that.’
She got up. ‘I can’t do this. I’m at work; you’ll have to go.’ And she started to walk away.
He stayed where he was but his voice, firmer than before, followed her. ‘She’s your sister. Your family. How can you turn your back when she might be out there, her head all over the place, so messed up that she left her baby?’
‘You don’t know that,’ she muttered, stopping by the reception desk before the corridor which passed through to the rear of the airbase and the hangar.
She leaned her back against the wall, closed her eyes. And she felt the tears well. The same tears she’d had when they were younger, at the frustration of her sister’s messy life impacting everyone else.
