Her mother said nothing.
“So, if you want a solicitor for our darling father then you get him one, but I will not be paying for it or anything else, ever again, with cash or any other currency,” she added as Pippa and Dan reappeared.
Lucy helped her out to the ambulance where Gerry joined them. “Tash, can I do anything?”
She shook her head, declining his offer of help but seeing his friendly and loving expression began to cry.
“Please let me come with you to the hospital,” he almost pleaded.
She shook her head again. It would be so easy, too easy to allow Gerry to be at her side, but it wasn’t his job anymore. She’d made it clear to him, they were done. His future was with Kara and their baby meaning she had to do this alone, or at least without Gerry. Also, the truth, that she realised at that very second was she wanted just one person at her side when hurt and vulnerable, Jim, and although he was thousands of miles away she had a feeling he’d come running if she told him. Not that she planned on telling him.
“Lucy, can you follow me to the hospital? I think my arm may need looking at,” she admitted, struggling to move her shoulder without being in agony. “Gerry, have my keys and take Dan and Pippa back to mine and stay with them until Lucy or I get home, please?”
He nodded, resigned to not escorting her in the ambulance. “Do you want me to let your boyfriend know what’s happened?”
Tasha laughed loudly and then winced as pain radiated through her upper body. “No, thank you. He is going to go ape shit as it is without my ex-boyfriend calling him. I will tell him, if I have to, and not a second before.”
Silence fell as her mother appeared with the policeman who took their details. With a single glare aimed at her daughter, Mrs Bailey spoke. “Natasha, you always wind him up and it wasn’t as bad as you think it was and you actually made it a whole lot worse.”
Tasha made no response as the ambulance doors closed with a heavy thud, making her jump before they travelled to the local A&E department together. With her temper building again, Tasha tried to bite her tongue, not wanting to rise to her mother’s words and ignorance, but she kept pushing.
“You know you wind him up and you are always going on at him. He has always tried his best—”
“Shut up. Just shut the fuck up!”
The paramedic jumped at Tasha’s raised voice.
“I don’t want to hear it. You are a fucking disgrace and you and he deserve each other, but Dan, Pippa and I deserve so much more, we always did. I have more and now Pippa and Dan will too. I hate him. I have hated him for years, but I always somehow loved you, or at least made excuses for you, but no more. You are as bad as him and I hate you, too. Now, don’t speak to me again,” she spat and then her phone rang, ‘Viva Las Vegas’. With a sigh, she rejected the call.
“Elvis, eh?” smiled the paramedic.
Tasha offered a very weak smile before she replied. “Elvis singing, but crazy, over protective, control freak boyfriend calling.”
The paramedic laughed at her description, possibly even mistakenly thinking she was exaggerating. “Maybe you should let him know what’s going on. I’m sure he’d want to know.”
She didn’t doubt he’d want to know, expect to be told, but the truth was that once he knew he was going to flip out and his flipping out would only be exacerbated by the fact he was so far away.
“He’s in L.A. so it complicates things slightly. I’ll see him at the end of next week and am hoping to keep him in the dark about it, if I can.”
“I see, but if the press get wind of this, he will find out. I recognise you off the TV, sorry,” he said with a smile, a kind, if a little apologetic smile at potentially embarrassing her further with his knowledge of who and what she was.
“I’ll play it by ear then.”
While the paramedic checked the dressings on her face her phone bleeped causing a loud sigh to leave her mouth once she checked it.
Tasha was unsure just what she should and could say but made her best effort to deflect from the truth whilst calming his suspicious thoughts.
They arrived at A&E and Lucy was already there, waiting. Immediately, she took her free hand, scowling at the phone in her other hand.
“Jim,” explained Tasha. “He couldn’t get me so has text instead.”
“Have you told him?”
Tasha shook her head and explained her reasons for not doing so, including her fears, not for her own safety but of the potential fallout from Jim knowing what had gone on that evening. “He can’t see me like this.”
