‘So am I allowed to ask how you got on?’
Me coming with Ross all the way to the hospital in Truro without him giving me a full job description was the kind of mistake it was hard to put right once I’d agreed to it. Ross clearly didn’t want me to go into the consultant’s office, because he asked Diesel along too and it’s too hot to leave him in the car. And then Ross suggesting I check through the proofs of the village cookery book while I waited confirmed that.
So while Ross disappears into the building, Diesel and I find a piece of grass next to the car park. As we sit in the flickering shade of a group of silver birch trees, I marvel at how fast Sophie’s team have turned the document I sent her into finished page layouts. Ross has offered to give them a final proofread after me and then they’ll be off to the printers.
Ross is spot on with his estimate of fifty minutes, so we’re back in the car and on the return leg, speeding towards St Aidan inside the hour. But he’s not exactly rushing to tell me how it went.
He taps his fingers on the steering wheel and glances at my knee. ‘Is that another new dress?’
On balance, I’d rather talk about his tests, but he’s right all the same. ‘It’s one more accidental freebie. I’ve emailed to tell them they’ve got the wrong person, so it should be the last.’
‘And how is the book layout looking?’ He’s got his avoidance tactics off to a fine art here.
‘They’ve done a great job. Still the same fab design we were talking about on the way here.’ I’m sure he didn’t only bring Diesel and me so we could enjoy the scenery and discuss my wardrobe. At the same time, if the news had been good he’d have shared it by now. So I try another way. ‘How about an ice-cream stop?’
‘I could work with that.’ He turns to the back seat. ‘And I’m sure Diesel could too. Do you want an ocean view or a picturesque village?’
I have to be honest. ‘Ice cream always tastes better when you’re looking out to sea.’ And the distraction of watching the waves roll in to the shoreandeating ice cream might be the dream combination we need. ‘There’s usually an ice-cream van in the car park where the road joins the coast. Let’s try that.’
Twenty minutes later, the three of us are sitting shoulder to shoulder on the grass at Oyster Point, looking out at the sun glinting off the deep blue water, and listening to the sound of the waves crashing onto the rock piles that push out into the sea.
Halfway down his raspberry ripple and dark chocolate ninety-nine Ross stops and sighs. ‘It’s ironic. When I went to the States all those years ago it was to make myself good enough for your family.’
That’s not only a random choice of topic, it’s also a strange observation considering how I remember things. ‘But you were already brilliant. Apart from the size, our family was very ordinary.’
He’s staring hard at his Flake. ‘Ordinary my butt! Before uni I’d never been abroad. I can’t actually ever remember going on holiday. You had a huge house in the home counties and the lifestyle to match.’
I’m squinting into the sun, and saying it like it was. ‘We lived in a semi, and went to France in a tent!’ Our house was small for the neighbourhood, and six kids made it feel smaller still. As for going abroad, camping was all we could afford; we stayed on the basic sites and took our own cornflakes.
He sighs. ‘I was desperate to prove myself to you all, and excelling academically was the only hope of that I had.’
It’s funny how he read us so wrongly. ‘Our family don’t judge people. We adored you as you were, because you cared and made us laugh.’ I hesitate over the adoration, but talking on behalf of all of us makes it okay. ‘I think you did it more for yourself than for us.’
He’s got his elbows resting on his knees, cornet in one hand, but in between sliding spoonfuls from the meaty sundae tub onto Diesel’s tongue he’s opening and closing the fingers of his other hand, flexing them. ‘Whoever it was for, it was wasted effort, given where I am now… That’s where the irony comes in.’
I’m making a wild guess. ‘Do I take it the results weren’t the best today?’ From what I gathered, he was having wires stuck on him so they could measure the electrical impulses passing through his arms and hands, and so tell how well the nerves in his slashed fingers were mending.
He blows out a low whistle. ‘Our ability to heal is remarkable, I see that every day with the animals I treat, but it doesn’t always work out. More fool me for daring to hope.’
I blow out a breath myself to help with the shock. ‘You’re not even theteensiest bitbetter?’
He pulls a face. ‘The lack of improvement was spectacular. Holding an ice-cream cone is pretty much the most advanced movement I can achieve.’ He turns to me. ‘Don’t say it!I knowI should be grateful I can still eat my raspberry ripple. That’s why I brought you; I knew you’d make me focus on everything I can do, not what I can’t.’
‘It still sucks though.’ At least I know why I’m here now, although he seems to be saying my lines, and me his. As for how he’s going to readjust to being a much less spectacularly able human being than he was, my heart goes out to him. I know it’s fatal to touch him, but I can’t not. The most I dare to risk is to reach my hand out across his back and squeeze his shoulder. ‘It may feel like your world is ending now, but it will be okay. You’ve got this, Ross, you’ll find a way through.’
He gives a sniff. ‘It’s actually not the first time my life has come crashing down due to an error that was entirely my own.’ The gaze he turns on me is so intense, I have to swallow hard before I can carry on.
‘You’re pushing forty. Messing up more than once goes with the territory.’ It’s my job to lighten this. Except, the night we argued, Ross said that what happened with us had shaped everything he’d done since.
It was actually days before I screwed up my courage to ring him to break the news about the pregnancy, but I could tell in the first breath how it was going to go.
…It’s your final year, Cress … and I’m on the other side of the world…
As if I didn’t already know both those things. And after that we were on such different pages; him acting like it was an international catastrophe simply didn’t relate to the tiny baby growing inside me. It was a small person I was already in love with, not a diplomatic incident that needed managing. And then he delivered one last spectacular boot in my guts for his parting shot, and I knew I was on my own. But by the next day, I also knew that if I wanted to follow my own path, I was going to have to dodge his calls, in case he tried to change my mind.
Even though he’s already upset, I have to clear this up. ‘You’re talking about the mistake you made with me, aren’t you – having a holiday fling with someone totally wrong.’ The one that taught him to avoid casual sex with women who put wrecking balls through his life because they took their pills late…
His brows furrow. ‘Hang on. There was nothing casual about it—’
