‘Amelia, honey, maybe we should talk about this,’ I said.
Ignoring me, she turned to Dr Vaughan. ‘I assume as it’smyheart, I still have the final say?’
Dr Vaughan swallowed noisily and nodded.
‘Then I say no.’
This clearly wasn’t going the way the consultant had planned, and he directed his gaze to Mum.
‘We could possibly defer it for a little while; schedule it for when Amelia has had time to settle back home. But I must stress it would be far better to undergo it as an elective procedure rather than an emergency one further down the line.’
‘I said no.’ There was steel now in her voice, like a sword had been unsheathed. ‘I’ve heard what you said, and I’ve made up my mind. I’m not going to agree to anything until Sam gets back. As my husband, he has a say in what happens to me, so he needs to be involved in the decision-making.’
A helpless message telegraphed from the doctor’s eyes to Mum, who then relayed it on to me.
‘When Sam is back, then we’ll talk again,’ Amelia said firmly. ‘If he agrees, then and only then will I give my consent.’
*
It was Tuesday morning. Day two of a week I already knew I was never going to forget. The cawing seagulls no longer bothered me; my brain had learnt to tune them out as effectively as it did the constant sirens in New York. I pulled apart the bedroom curtains and peered through the breaking dawn at a nondescript sky, hoping yet again the weatherman might have got it wrong. I’d been checking the forecast obsessively on my phone, the radio and the television, moving from one source to the next when I failed to find an answer I liked. I was hoping for sun and praying for rain. But according to the meteorologists, neither was on the cards for the rest of the week.
I swung out of bed and headed straight for the bathroom. Nick would be getting here at noon, and I still hadn’t shopped for our beach picnic. Breakfast was a quick slice of toast that I munched on distractedly as I stood at the kitchen counter, running my eye down my shopping list. Half of my attention was on the TV weather girl, who kept flashing cheeky grins at the camera and telling us it was a thick jumper kind of week but at least we weren’t going to need our umbrellas. I switched her off mid-sentence and reached for my car keys.
My shopping list was probably over the top and extravagant, but I was trying to compensate Nick for asking him to sit on a freezing cold beach in a pair of shorts. I still wasn’t sure that fancy olives, artisan bread and expensive French cheeses were sufficient recompense for pneumonia, but if all else failed we could always wrap ourselves up in the picnic blanket. Except I didn’t have one of those either, I realised, as I quickly added it to the bottom of the list.
The local general store didn’t stock everything I wanted, so I’d need to venture further afield to a larger supermarket in the next town. A quick glance at the kitchen clock confirmed I was cutting it fine for time, so I made a snap decision not to bother with make-up or even to run a comb through my hair. What did it matter if I looked a little scruffy? I wasn’t going to bump into anyone I knew.
Except I did – even before I got to my car, in fact. Tom was slowly climbing up the sandy footpath from the beach. There was a fishing rod over his shoulder and a hook with his morning catch in his hand.
‘Mornin’,’ he said, lifting his free hand to the brim of his cap in greeting.
‘Hi, Tom,’ I said, pointing my keys at the car, which beeped back and obediently unlocked its doors. ‘You’re out early.’
Tom’s reply was a small snort of amusement. ‘Call this early? This is the middle of the afternoon for a fisherman. The fish don’t sleep, you know.’
I eyed the deceased ones on his hook. ‘Well, those certainly won’t be doing so anymore.’
It wasn’t a great joke, but Tom laughed so heartily his eyes began to water. I was about to turn away when a thought suddenly occurred to me.
‘I suppose as a fisherman you have to be good at predicting the weather.’ I glanced up at the sky. ‘Are you able to tell if it’s going to rain this week?’
A few more lines joined the concertina of those already on his face, as Tom looked up and frowned. With a small grunt, he set down his rod and catch. I watched in fascination, expecting him to stoop down and sniff a piece of seaweed, or sprinkle a handful of sand into the wind. Instead, he reached into the pocket of his trousers and withdrew an iPhone, which happened to be the next model up from mine. His gnarled fingers moved quickly to a weather app.
‘Not according to this, it isn’t,’ he said with a grin.
This time, it was my turn to laugh. You’d have thought as an editor I’d know better than to judge a book by its cover, but I kept underestimating Amelia’s neighbour. From the expression on Tom’s face I’d clearly made his day, and all at once I was really glad he was going to be here for Mum and Amelia when I wasn’t.
‘And while you’re asking me for pearls of wisdom,’ Tom continued, ‘then you probably shouldn’t be doing that.’
He was referring to the handful of burnt toast crusts that I was about to scatter outside the cottage for the gulls. ‘That’s summertime tourist nonsense,’ he said disparagingly. ‘City dweller foolishness.’
I dropped the crusts anyway with an impish shrug. ‘But that’s what I am, Tom, remember? I’m just a crazy New Yorker.’
He looked at me speculatively for a long moment before slowly shaking his head.
‘No, you aren’t. You’re a Somerset girl, down to your bones. You’ve just forgotten it for a while, is all.’
*
