‘Can you lie?’ she asked Ginger.
Ginger thought of all the years she’d pretended to be two people – sassy Ginger at work and normal Ginger at home. She nodded.
‘But I’ve been crying—’
‘Somebody’s bound to have a make-up bag,’ said Sam in a businesslike manner. ‘We’ll fix you up. But here’s the plan.’
Plan explained, Sam raced back to the room where Rona sat and quickly filled her in.
‘We need to lie,’ she said.
‘But lying—’
‘Is sometimes necessary for the greater good,’ Sam pointed out. ‘Get me a white coat.’
Johnny had gotten bored and had taken some outside shots and when Sam emerged ten minutes later, he was back in the hallway, waiting.
Sam had put on a white coat and stuck a pen in the top pocket. She’d borrowed somebody’s spectacles so she’d look a little different. She didn’t want to be implicated as a charity boss lying to a newspaper but, and it was a very important but, neither would she sit by and let the woman she’d seen caring for the very ill be hounded. Nobody who had read the story of Jason Reynolds and his abandoning of his wife and child could imagine that they were tied up in it. Callie Reynolds had certainly suffered enough.
Ginger, poor thing, was being filled up with sweet tea to help her recover. Anything less like a cut-throat reporter was hard to imagine.
Rona accompanied her to the lobby.
‘Your reporter found me,’ Sam said to Johnny in a pleasant, nothing-to-see-here voice, ‘and we did have a relative of that woman’s here but he was transferred into hospital. Very sad.’
Rona nodded.
‘All our visitors are logged in and the only person who visited the relative was his wife and, naturally, we cannot give you her details. Now, we do have a problem: your reporter tripped and hurt herself in the music room – snooping, I might add – and she’s very upset. She’s lying down, but I think we’ll need to wait until the doctor comes to look at her leg. Painful bruise, I think she might need a crutch.’
Johnny looked aghast – and relieved that Ginger had not travelled down here with him, as she had guessed.
‘Do you want to see her?’
‘Er, sure.’
Ginger was laid out on a couch in the music room with one of the home’s carers with her. Callie was nowhere to be seen.
‘I’m sorry, Johnny,’ she sobbed. ‘Piano stool. My leg – but they never saw Mrs Reynolds here. Damn it. A wasted trip and I have to hang on till a doctor comes.’
‘I think it’s only a sprain,’ Sam said, sounding as medically minded as she could.
‘Do you want me to stay?’ asked Johnny without eagerness.
Ginger shook her head.
‘No, you go.’
Gratefully, Johnny patted her shoulder, said he’d tell the boss, and was out the door.
‘Some men do hate illness,’ said Sam cheerfully.
Ginger’s phone pinged.
That was a waste of a day, and get well soon, texted Johnny.
This was too good not to share, so she showed it to Sam, who grinned.
‘I think we need strong coffee and nice chocolate biscuits to get us over this. Let’s get Callie too.’
