6
As fundraisers went, this one was heavy on the fun, but then as Eve had quickly found out, any event organised by Gwen Jones, who was the volunteer coordinator for the Friends of St Piran’s, was always going to meet that definition. It was taking place in the Old Town Hall in Port Tremellien, but it had been decked out to look more like a bar in the Wild West. There was axe throwing, a bucking bronco ride, a tin can alley and a lasso game. The event had been opened with a line dancing display by Gwen and some of her friends, which the crowd were then invited to join in with. Funds were being raised through the sale of tickets, as well as food and a silent auction. The money collected would be split between the hospital and Domusamare. Eve had been persuaded to come along by Eden, Meg and Isla, the three of whom she’d definitely grown closer to since the night of her meltdown. They still didn’t know the full story about Max yet, although Eve wondered if Eden might have been told by Felix. Even if she had been, she wouldn’t be able to say anything, because it might put her brother’s job at risk if she did.
Moving to Cornwall had been a wrench in so many ways. She’d loved her job at Jimmy’s, the nickname given to St James’sHospital in Leeds, and in lots of ways it had felt like starting again, in terms of her career. Leaving behind her closest friends had been even harder and she’d kept her guard up since starting at St Piran’s, not wanting to get close to anyone. She wanted to keep the situation with Max private, for his sake but also because the last thing she wanted was for anyone to feel sorry for her. Then there was the fact that getting close to anyone raised the potential of getting hurt. It felt as if she’d lost so many people she cared about over the years, and it had begun to feel safer not to allow herself to get close to anyone else. Yet her colleagues at the hospital had found a way of getting under her skin. She liked them all, even the ones she hadn’t expected to find anything in common with. Like Gary, a nurse in his fifties – happily married to Wendy, the head of housekeeping – who had an endless supply of cracker-style dad jokes, which had kept her smiling through many a late shift, despite the fact that they were more likely to make her groan than laugh out loud.
Aidan, another of the male nurses, had a quick wit and relaxed charm that made him easy to be around. Zahir, like Danni, was one of the more senior doctors, and he had a reputation for being ferociously competitive, as he was demonstrating now, pacing out the ideal distance from which to throw his axe. But he was supportive rather than competitive when it came to work, and when he’d been acting Clinical Lead, during Danni’s maternity leave, he’d bent over backwards to accommodate Eve when she’d needed to take extended leave for what she’d told him was a family crisis. He hadn’t pushed for too many more details and she’d been grateful for that. Annie had collapsed, after barely eating or sleeping following Lily’s move to the US, and Eve had stepped in. Nigel was a lovely guy, but he was holding the family together financially with all the money Annie had poured into trying to pursue some kind of justice for Max. Nigel was at the top of his field in cosmetic dentistry and heworked very long hours and travelled internationally to see some of his clients, which put even more pressure on Eve to be there for Annie.
When Meg had been brought in to cover for her, Eve had been worried about her own job, fearful that she might be permanently replaced. What she hadn’t admitted to anyone, even herself, was that a tiny part of her would have been relieved, because it would have given her a reason to go back to Leeds and escape the pressure of being there for Max and Annie. But the team at St Piran’s had welcomed her back, despite Meg being given a permanent contract too. Even then she hadn’t been able to let down her guard and admit why she’d been forced to take so much time off work. Now, as she stood next to Eden, waiting for her turn to throw the axe again and see if this time she could actually get it to hit the target, it really did feel like she was out with friends. They were all laughing as Zahir took a professional-looking swing and promptly sent the axe straight into the wooden floor about three feet shy of the target.
When Vick, her best friend from Leeds, had asked her if there was anyone at St Piran’s she might be ‘interested’ in, Eve had scoffed. Even if it had been an option, she wouldn’t have been ‘interested’ in any of the men from the team in A&E, no matter how nice they were, or how much she liked them as people. That side of her seemed to have frozen when she’d realised that the Max she’d known and loved with all her heart was never coming back to her. So she couldn’t have explained why, as Eden’s brother, Felix approached, she was suddenly smoothing her hair and worrying if the chilli con carne she’d eaten had been too garlicky.
‘You should be good at this.’ He grinned as he drew level with his sister. ‘If the way you used to throw your shoes at my head when I annoyed you is anything to go by.’
‘If you want to encourage me, you could go over and stand by the target, that will give me something to aim for.’ Eden nudged Felix, laughing. ‘Anyway you should be a sure thing for winning a prize at the tin can alley game. You used to line up all my dolls and try to knock them off the wall with your catapult.’
‘Sounds like the work of a trainee serial killer to me.’ Eve raised her eyebrows, but Felix couldn’t have looked less like a serial killer if he’d tried. Especially when he shot her a smile, his blue eyes twinkling with amusement.
‘My sister is prone to exaggeration, I can assure you. I’m much nicer than she’d have you believe.’
‘Actually, he is nice.’ Eden briefly laid her head on his shoulder, before turning back towards Eve. ‘Teddie adores him and my son is the best judge of character I know, even if he is only four. I think his autism gives him superpowers in that respect.’
‘I can also vouch for the fact that Felix is a good guy.’ Gwen, who was doing the rounds trying to drum up more bids for the silent auction, stopped to join in the conversation and locked eyes with Eve. ‘You’re still fairly new to the area and I know Felix hasn’t been back long, but he grew up here, so if you need someone to show you around, he’s your man.’
Gwen was renowned for her attempts to act as a matchmaker, whether or not the people involved had expressed any interest in finding someone to date. So Eve shouldn’t have been surprised, but heat coloured her cheeks all the same. Felix would probably have been mortified at the thought. Especially as he knew she had a fiancé, and she couldn’t even look at him as she spoke.
‘Work doesn’t give me a lot of time for anything else, and I’d like to use any spare time I do have to get involved in something community based. When I looked up Domusamare it sounded like the sort of thing I’m looking for.’ It wasn’t a lie,or even an excuse to get Gwen off her back, she really did want to find out whether she could get involved with the charity’s work. Their website said one of their aims was to help people who were struggling with reintegrating into society after serving prison sentences, and help them deal with the issues at the root of their offending. If she could talk to Annie about the difference that was making to some of Domusamare’s clients, it might be the evidence she needed to persuade her to consider restorative justice, or at least to let go of her obsession with increasing Moorcroft’s sentence. It might also mean she could play a tiny part in helping to prevent the kind of repeat offending that could result in more crimes like the one Max had been the victim of. The thought of that had become her new fixation, and maybe in her own way she was every bit as obsessed as Annie. They both needed to do something that might make a difference of some kind, because they were completely powerless to alter the one thing they really wanted to change, and that was the prognosis for Max’s recovery.
‘I volunteer for Domusamare.’ Felix smiled again. Of course he did. Why wouldn’t he do something like that; something that made him seem even lovelier than he already did. ‘I can introduce you to Henry, who runs the charity if you like, so you can discuss what kinds of things you might like to get involved with? I’m sure he’d love to have you onboard.’
‘And I bet he’s not the only one!’ Before Eve had even been able to respond, Gwen had given Felix a playful nudge and dropped a perfect wink.
‘You’re incorrigible, Gwen!’ Felix laughed and Eve wished she could just laugh it off as easily, but heat had swept over her again and she’d have been more than happy if a giant crater had opened up beneath her and she’d disappeared forever. Instead, she cut in before Gwen could take things any further.
‘Thanks. I’d really appreciate the introduction, because I can’t think of anything I’d rather do with my free time than support the charity.’ Eve’s tone sounded haughty, even to her own ears, as if spending time with Felix was something she’d have to endure in order to achieve her aim of working with the charity. She didn’t want him to think she was some kind of snob, but it was the lesser of two evils, because the idea of him thinking she was interested in him ‘like that’ was far more mortifying. The worst part of it all was that she had a sneaking suspicion shewasinterested in Felix, and that was something she couldn’t even admit to herself let alone anyone else.
7
‘Oh God, I shouldn’t have had those tequila shots. I feel like I’m still paying for it two days later and surely all of the alcohol has to be out of my system by now.’ Esther dropped her head into her hands, as the team sat in the staffroom waiting for Danni to give a briefing about handover from the night shift, during which there’d been a major incident following a fire at a holiday park ten miles down the coast. Esther’s bloodshot eyes made it look as if she’d come straight to work from a bar, but Eve knew there was no way she’d risk being hungover at work, let alone coming in drunk.
‘I told you now that we’re banging on the door of forty, it takes three days to get over a drinking session, not three hours.’ Aidan gave her a wicked grin and Esther shook her head, before grabbing hold of it, as if her head might fall off if she didn’t.
‘I am notnearlyforty, I’m only mid-thirties and you’re hurting my bloody head.’ Esther didn’t look amused, and Eve would have known there was more to her bad mood than a headache even if she hadn’t sworn. Okay, bloody was pretty mild in the scheme of things, but she didn’t think she’d ever heard Esther swear before. ‘It’s all Gwen’s fault for plying me with theshots at the end of the fundraiser, just because I said I might as well get drunk if I’m not pregnant.’
There it was, the real reason she was so unhappy and it had nothing to do with tequila, or being teased about her age. Although the latter might have hit home harder than it would have done otherwise, given that Esther would be all too aware of the tick-tock of the clock that any woman trying for a baby desperately wanted to ignore.
‘Okay, but even so, you know tequila slammers are the territory of the under twenty-fives. Once your frontal lobe is fully developed, they’re far too dangerous.’ Aidan grinned and looked towards where Eve and Eden were standing together. ‘That’s why these two look so fresh-faced and ready for action. They didn’t get into a shot-drinking contest with Gwen, who even in her seventies was always going to drink the rest of us under the table. But she’s the exception that proves the rule.’
‘God, I so want to be Gwen when I grow up,’ Eden said.
‘Me too.’ Eve’s response surprised her, because she realised it was true, but it had nothing to do with the ability Gwen evidently had to drink whatever she wanted and not suffer for it afterwards. It was Gwen’s zest for life she wanted to harness, she was involved in so many different things and found joy in all of them from what Eve could see. Joy had been missing from Eve’s own life for a long time, and it felt as if life was passing her by. She didn’t want to spend another two years like that, let alone another ten, or even worse, the rest of her life. Something had to change.
‘Everyone wants to be Gwen when they grow up, but right now I just want my head to stop feeling like it’s stuffed with cotton wool, at the same time as being crushed in a vice.’
‘You don’t think there’s any chance it’s the supplements you’re taking that are causing the headache, do you?’ Meg gave Esther a questioning look. ‘It’s not normal to still be sufferingtwo days later, even if Gwen is the one pouring the drinks, and a lot of prenatal supplements have high doses of vitamin A, which can cause headaches.’
‘And you know this how?’ Aidan raised his eyebrows. ‘Is there something you’re not telling us, Meg?’
‘I’m a doctor, Aidan and some of us medics know our stuff. Just because you spend all your time scrolling through pictures of Timothée Chalamet!’ She stuck out her tongue and then laughed, her reaction making it clear that he hadn’t hit a nerve with her, and he pulled a face of mock outrage.
