Along with an even deeper longing for Tilly’s company. He wanted to hear her voice and that adorable accent. He wanted to hold her. To kiss her until they both surrendered to the sheer joy of physical touch that could make whatever was happening in the rest of the world totally irrelevant. He wanted it so much that he knew he had to shut it away. Lock it in and throw away the key to make sure it couldn’t distract him again. He had a job to do and it had just become a hell of a lot harder.
The next days were one escalation after another. It wasn’t just the family of the man who’d died demanding answers, it was the families of other volunteers who were showing symptoms. Who was going to be next? Headlines multiplied. Television reports brought in experts to discuss how drug trials worked and what this particular drug, Serovex, did that made it different to other antidepressants. Theories were being offeredthat changing the way brain cells communicated might disrupt normal cell function and lead to swelling that could be the cause of seizures and death.
And then it got worse. Radical groups latched on to the fact that Serovex had been tested on rats and dogs before humans, and protest groups began to gather outside the hospital to hold up placards and chant.
‘Animal testing! Your cure, their pain!’
‘Humans shouldn’t be guinea pigs.’
Politicians became involved and there were calls for a formal regulatory investigation.
‘Patient safety is our top priority. We will be cooperating fully with any investigations.’
Safety.
The central concept that had shaped Angus McLeod’s life. This was what he understood above all else. What he was so good at achieving. For his clients.
For himself.
And he was working his magic. As the days ticked past, nobody else died and the furore began to die down. It began to look like Novaryn and future trials of promising drugs, although possibly not this one, would be safe.
Gradually, the dust really began to settle and Angus could make plans to leave London.
He sat in the hotel room that he’d been in for nearly two weeks and opened his laptop to book a flight but, as he did so, an alert popped up and he clicked on the headline.
Family speaks on heartbreak of Drug Trial death.
Angus clicked on the link. A man of about his own age was speaking.
‘He was my dad,’ he said. ‘My hero. He’d had his struggles. We all knew about how hard depression can be.’
The man was sitting on what looked like a kitchen chair. He had a dog – a brown and white spaniel – sitting beside him and he had his hand on the dog’s head, fondling its ears as he spoke. Angus could remember so well the kind of comfort that dogs’ ears could impart and he felt his heart crack open a little.
‘He wanted to help others,’ the man was saying. ‘He was that kind of man and that’s why he volunteered to be part of this trial. He wanted a cure to be found. So did we. There’s nothing worse than seeing someone you love suffering like that…’ He broke off as he struggled to hold back tears. ‘Sorry… I need a minute…’
The lump that suddenly formed in Angus’s throat had edges that were sharp enough to make something behind his eyes prickle.
He’d seen his own father suffering. How terrifying had it been to see his father cry for the first time ever? It had felt like the end of the world to a thirteen-year-old boy. A glimpse into a future he wasn’t at all surehewanted to face.
But it was the way the dog looked up at the sound of distress in the man’s voice that made this unbearable. Angus hadn’t felt a pang of grief for Robbie like this in too many years to count.
The hole in his life was yawning deeply enough to fall into. He knew what was missing – a wife, a child, a dog. A family and a future. But he felt as far away from achieving it as he’d ever been.
What he needed was…
No… He wasn’t at all sure what he needed.
Without the focus of dealing with other people’s issues, there was no escaping the need to sort out his own but Angus was, for the first time in his adult life, feeling… lost.
Those safety barriers had failed and he was standing in a space he had no idea how to navigate safely. Perhaps if he wentback to the familiar world hehadfelt safe in, he would be able to think? To decide what to do next?
The intense focus he’d given the Novaryn crisis had made Provence and everything that had happened there take on the slightly fuzzy edges of a dream it was getting harder to recall. An image in a rear-view mirror.
Did he want to go back?
Or was the real question whether Tilly would want him to go back?
Why would she? The last thing he could remember was what he’d seen in Tilly’s eyes when he’d sabotaged the vision of a new creative direction for her business that she’d been so excited about.
