‘The wood for the trees,’ Penny said, at the exact moment Johnny did, and Madame Beaufoy drew her into the conversation while they planned the hospital trip.
Harry supposed it was only fair that Penny was giving him the runaround. After all, he’d been giving her the runaround ever since the day they met, one way or another. But seeing her pelting headlong into the chateau in search of her friend had cemented something in his mind. The way she had thrown caution to the wind and had been searching alone, checking behind chairs in case Fran was lying prone behind them had tugged at him.
And when the smoke became thicker, and he’d had a momentary wobble about his own safety, it hadn’t been Sophie who had filled his thoughts – it had been Penny.
It wasn’t that Harry was falling in love with her because she was wayward, or difficult, or acted without thinking first – but all those aspects to Penny’s personality gave Harry a buzz. There was no point denying it. She made him smile, she made him laugh, she drove him nuts and he had no idea where she got all her energy from. She was exhausting, but in all the right ways. More important than any of that – she’d made him question himself more than ever before.
He’d believed he had broken free by taking the decision to travel, to learn as much about his passion for cooking as he could while he backpacked his way across the world. He’d defied his father, made his mother cry, seen the confusion in Sophie’s expression. But had he truly believed this new reality would stick? However much he’d dreamed of becoming a professionalchef, had he truly believed he had the bottle to go through with it, or had he always had a return home, prodigal son-style, in the back of his mind? Why else hadn’t he had the guts to make a clean break from Sophie?
Whatever the situation was between himself and Penny, right now or going forward, Harry was decided on one thing; he wasn’t going home anytime soon. If ever. And this revelation spurred clarity on another aspect of his life.
He needed to speak to Sophie.
Fran was almost certain she didn’t have a concussion, even though she had to admit to the doctor that she’d been knocked unconscious for a few seconds. She’d been concussed years before, when she’d been messing around on the harbour wall in Lyme Regis as a kid, slipped on the wet stones and cracked the back of her head on the granite of the Cobb’s wall.
However hard she tried to explain that she knew what a concussion felt like and that she didn’t feel the same way this time, nobody was paying her any attention. Yes, she did have a headache, but she had none of the dizziness, or the intolerance to light or noise. When she was a kid, all she’d wanted to do was sleep, and her mother had resorted to pinching her to keep her awake – and when she was awake, she’d demanded to have the curtains drawn, to keep the worst of the light out.
Back then it had taken her weeks to be able to concentrate for long enough to read a book, or even watch the television. She should have loved the time she’d had off school but had felt too grotty to enjoy any of it.
By contrast, there was no way she could bear being stuck in this hospital room if she’d had a concussion, because there seemed no end to the noise and the light. Perhaps there was a medical reason to stay, to ensure she didn’t nod off and end up in a coma, but Fran was having a hard time finding answers.
She supposed she should be grateful the cut on her forehead hadn’t needed to be stitched. Instead it had been cleaned up, with butterfly strips applied in quick order to join the wayward portions of skin back together, with a dressing over the top for good measure.
‘You are lucky. No scar,’ the nurse had said to her, with an exaggerated hand movement back and forth across her own forehead, before she’d gathered up the detritus of her work into a kidney-shaped cardboard bowl, snapped off her single-use gloves and headed to her next task.
Fran puffed out her cheeks, resting her head against the pillow as she stared at the ceiling. It didn’t take her long to wish for the next busy pass by a nurse or a doctor, for someone to want to flash a bright pencil beam of light into her eyes, or for someone to report back with the X-rays they’d taken of her wrist and ankle in case anything was broken. Instead, she was left alone with her thoughts for the first time since she’d discovered that Red had disappeared.
Welling up again, Fran did her best to stop her lips from quivering, her whole jaw vibrating with the effort of not crying. It had become impossible to understand who the tears were for – the cat? Her mother? Herself?
It wasn’t that she hadn’t cried when her mum died, it was more that to a large degree she had no time to really process her emotions while dealing with the aftermath. There had been so much to sort out, so many people to tell, so little time between the funeral and the introduction of Bill Wilding into her life. There hadn’t been any spare moment for her to stop, to absorb, to reassess.
She’d felt so excited at the prospect of being a part of her father’s life, of his business. To potentially have the opportunity to pursue her dreams.
And only that very morning, her father had basically offered her everything she’d ever wanted on a silver platter. Maybe the house in Lyme Regis would give her the breathing space she needed to fully grieve her loss. After all, her money worries would basically be a thing of the past – her father had intimated as much.
So why had she drawn back rather than biting his arm off? Why did she need time to think it over?
‘Because you’re far stronger than you realise, far braver than you know, far better than that.’
Her mother’s words, repeated like a mantra when she’d crawled home after Victor had done his best to rip her into tiny pieces. But why were they springing into her mind now?
Chapter 31
Johnny’s palms were sweating by the time they arrived at the hospital, and that wasn’t anything to do with the continuing, persistent heatwave, which seemed to have intensified further as the day progressed. This had far more to do with seeing Fran.
There was an underlying concern about the head injury – however innocuous head trauma might seem, Johnny knew it could turn into something serious, was aware how important it was for her to get it properly checked out. Even more imperative because she’d been unconscious when they found her.
Layered over the top of his concern about her health, Johnny’s palms were sweating because he seemed lost in a maze of confusion within his own mind. His emotions were well and truly shot.
He saw Fran before she caught sight of him. Her head resting on the pillow, eyes softly closed, a neat dressing covering the wound on her forehead. She looked calm, although there remained a puffy quality to the skin around her eyes.
Penny was clearly a woman who was unused to taking prisoners, Johnny thought, as Fran’s friend strode across to her bed.
‘Fran? It’s Penny. And Johnny. We’ve come to make sure you’re not dead.’
The upturn in the corners of Fran’s lips preceded her opening her eyes, and focusing first on Penny, then on him, her gentle smile saturated her gaze without hesitation. She was pleased to see them, a fact which Penny seemed relieved by.
‘Thanks for coming,’ Fran said, her voice croaky and thin.
