Jake held his gaze for a second, and then looked away.
‘So was it on medical grounds?’ Dean pressed him.
Jake sighed heavily. ‘Dean, I can’t help you. You need to speak to Zoe.’
Dean spun around. ‘I intend to. And she’d better damn well have answers.’
Christ, what was he going to do? ‘Dean,wait.’ He followed the man as he charged out of the office, but Dean wasn’t about to stop. ‘Dean! You need to calm down,’ Jake yelled after him.
Dean kept going, striding through reception and straight out of the main door.
‘Shit!’ Jake cursed, causing patients’ gazes to swivel in his direction.
He needed to call Zoe. He shouldn’t, but he couldn’t just leave it. The man was consumed with rage. Ignoring the heated hushed whispers around him, he turned back to his office and straight into Tom, who presumably had been tied up with a patient while all this was going on.
‘I gather there’s a problem?’ Tom asked, his brow knitted curiously.
‘You might say that, yes,’ Jake answered curtly, making to move past him, desperate to alert Zoe. He also wanted to try to establish whether she’d confided in anyone. Because if she hadn’t, then his fears about the information coming from the practice would be proved right, and that could have dire consequences.
‘Not quite appropriate behaviour, though, is it?’ Tom commented, stopping him.
‘What?’ Jake wondered if he was hearing him right.
His father swept a disapproving gaze over him. ‘Yelling across reception. Not very seemly, might I suggest?’
Jake looked him over in disdainful disbelief.No you may bloody not.Anger rising inside him, he counselled himself to stay calm. ‘I have a call to make,’ he said.
Fourteen
Emily
Seeing Tom knock perfunctorily on Jake’s door a minute later and then walk straight in, Emily couldn’t help thinking he might be treading on dangerous ground. Jake had been upset when he’d come after Dean into reception, for his patient rather than himself. Judging by the tight set of his jaw, he’d been quietly fuming when his father had pulled him up in front of the medical team, including Sally, who’d stepped out of the treatment room wondering what all the noise was about. To say little of the waiting patients, who’d witnessed it all.
Passing behind two women as she came back across reception from the loo, Emily’s step faltered. ‘They say he’s been having an affair,’ said Barbara, who ran the village store, leaning conspiratorially towards the woman sitting next to her.
‘Who? Dean?’ The other woman looked at her wide-eyed, her expression a mixture of shock and anticipation.
‘No. Lord, keep up, Wendy. Dr Merriden,’ Barbara said impatiently. ‘There’s talk of letters being sent. All sorts of personal information being leaked. That Natasha Jameson’s husband had one apparently, telling himshewas having an affair.’
‘What, with …?’ Wendy’s eyes flicked towards Jake’s office.
‘Well, this is all second-hand, of course, but …’ Barbara broke off, leaving Wendy to draw her own conclusions. ‘One thing’s for sure, though. With all these personal details coming out, it makes you wonder who might be next, doesn’t it? I hope you haven’t been keeping secrets from your hubs, Wend, or you might be next.’
‘Ahem.’ Emily coughed loudly, drawing attention to the fact that she was there. Barbara looked abashed, she noticed. Wendy, however, had paled to the point of grey.
‘I’ve just remembered I promised to pick my Sam up from sixth-form college,’ the woman said, grabbing her bag and practically running for the door.
Clearly shewaskeeping secrets. Emily’s stomach roiled with a mixture of seething anger and sick trepidation. Was there a list? Someone systematically targeting people, as Sally had said, out of some sense of spite?
‘It was definitely out of order.’ She realised Nicky was talking to her as she approached the desk.
‘Sorry?’ Thinking she was talking about one of the toilets, Emily glanced distractedly over as Nicky sat back at her PC – the screen of which she hadn’t blanked when she’d left her desk, she noted with despair.
‘What Tom said,’ Nicky clarified, emitting a huff on Jake’s behalf. ‘Given the mood Dean Miller was in, I thought Jake handled things pretty well. There was no need for Tom to show him up like that. I don’t know what he was thinking. He’s normally so charming as well.’
Emily glanced at her askance, a prickle of agitation running through her as she noted Nicky’s pensive expression and realised that Tom had clearly won the girl over. Obviously he was still a silver fox. Emily had no doubt he would have charmed the birds from the trees in his heyday. She’d accused Jake of being just like him. She hadn’t thought he was, up until now. Her heart sank icily in her chest as she recalled the argument they’d had, the anger in his voice.Wasthere a side to him she didn’t know? Was it possible he was the sort of man who would be cruel enough to try to convince his wife she was going out of her mind rather than confess to an extramarital relationship? It was incomprehensible. Yes, he had seen another woman, and might even have been more involved with that woman than he’d admitted, but that was years ago. He and Emily only been together a matter of months, and at the time shehadbeen distancing herself from him, trying to recover psychologically and physically from the damage inflicted on her by another man. If she examined her conscience, wasn’t that the reason she was so determined to doubt him? Because in her heart she couldn’t trust any man?
She needed to talk to him. Calmly. For the sake of Ben and Millie, who’d both reluctantly agreed to go out for a meal this evening, she had to establish whether they still had a future together. She wasn’t looking forward to the meal, nervous about what to say to the children. She was particularly worried about Ben, who was becoming moodier and more withdrawn, leaving her to imagine what might be going on in his mind. What would she say if they asked outright if she and Jake were splitting up? Cold foreboding clenched her tummy. Perhaps ignorance was bliss after all. If she’d never said anything to Jake, waited it out instead, it might just have gone away.
