All The Care In The World

A moment’s peace and quiet seemed equally elusive, thought Nancy with a touch of amusement.

‘Coping OK so far?’ he asked her, as they buckled themselves back into the car.

‘So far,’ she grinned, wondering what had caused his grumpiness earlier but then dismissing the thought because when he was being sunny and helpful like this she could have stuck to his side like glue all day.

CHAPTER THREE

THE house was in darkness, and it was seven forty-five before Nancy finally fumbled around in her briefcase for her house keys. She pushed open the front door of the modern glass and steel townhouse she called home and listened for the sound of her husband.

Silence.

She felt a moment’s disloyalty for the rush of relief she experienced as she closed the door behind her and switched on the light.

‘Steve?’ she called, more out of habit than anything else, as a soft light illuminated the spacious hall.

She checked the answerphone but there were no messages so she went upstairs and changed out of the rather formal navy suit, which Steve had bought for her, into jeans and a big, floppy sweater. Then she came back down, made some tea and sat at the kitchen table, drinking it, while she decided whether it was worth cooking supper.

Steve was so unpredictable, that was the trouble. Sometimes—usually when she had pulled all the stops out with an exotic new recipe and bought candles and flowers—he would moan that he had eaten an enormous business lunch and that he simply wasn’t hungry.

At other times—and this always seemed to coincide with Nancy being too dog-tired from working to even think about food—he would complain that she never seemed able to provide the same creature comforts as the wives of his partners. Women who, from Steve’s glowing descriptions, seemed to embody all the qualities which made up the ideal wife. They cooked, they cleaned, they sewed and they gardened, and—apparently—achieved a blissful state of contentment from all these activities.

In other words, thought Nancy, trying to subdue a trace of bitterness as she slipped at her tea, wives without children who did no work outside the home.

She yawned as she thought back over her first afternoon in practice. It had been hard work. Non-stop, in fact. After visits and a baby clinic, which had run over time, they’d had what had seemed like an endless evening surgery, composed mostly of patients complaining of sore throats.

Then the medical registrar from St Saviour’s had rung to say that a chest X-ray on Mrs Anderson had confirmed Nancy’s and Callum’s diagnosis of a chest infection, and that they were going to start her on a regime of intravenous antibiotics.

It was after one of the receptionists had rung through to ask if Callum could squeeze an extra patient onto the end of his already long evening surgery that Nancy had turned on him and said, half in amusement and half in exasperation, ‘Is it always like this?’

He’d looked up from scrubbing his hands, which the last patient—a baby—had been sick over. ‘Like what?’

‘Busy!’

‘Busy?’ He’d pulled an expressive face as he’d dried his hands on a paper towel and thought back to how it had been just before Christmas. ‘This is a doddle, Nancy. Just you wait until a flu bug sweeps the community and then you’ll understand the meaning of busy!’

‘I can’t wait,’ Nancy had said faintly, but his remark had brought home to her that, contrary to what their hospital colleagues might have imagined, general practice was certainly not a relaxed way to idle away the day!

Nancy leaned her elbows dreamily on the table as her mind drifted over everything they had accomplished during that busy afternoon. Because, despite the unaccustomedly frantic pace, it had also been one of the most interesting days of her medical career so far.

Or was that simply because Callum Hughes was such an astute and sympathetic teacher... ?

She opened up the textbook which Callum had loaned her and began to read about red eye in general practice, becoming so engrossed in the subject that she didn’t hear the front door open and close—didn’t hear anything, in fact, until a slight movement arrested her attention and she looked up to find Steve standing in the doorway, watching her.

‘Hello,’ said Nancy, her eyes sweeping over his face in an attempt to try and gauge what kind of mood he was in.

His eyes were glittering hectically as he stared at the book she was reading and then let his gaze move slowly around the kitchen. ‘And what’s for supper?’ he asked carefully, in an oddly controlled voice which immediately told Nancy that he had been drinking, even if she hadn’t been able to smell it on his breath from the other side of the kitchen.

Seeing from the wall clock that it was now gone nine, she closed the textbook and smiled brightly, ‘To be honest, I hadn’t really given it a thought—’

‘I can see that!’ he sneered, opening the fridge door and taking out a bottle of white wine. ‘Too busy with your precious textbooks again.’

‘But, Steve, you weren’t even at home,’ she said, putting on her most reasonable voice, ‘so what was the point of preparing something when I wasn’t even sure you’d want it?’

‘I called you earlier,’ he responded icily, as he began to twist the corkscrew into the bottle, ‘and you were out.’

‘But there were no messages on the answerphone!’ Nancy pointed out in confusion. ‘I looked!’

Steve’s eyes glittered dangerously. ‘So you’ve been checking up on me, have you?’

‘No,’ answered Nancy steadily. ‘Why should I want to do that?’

He shrugged. ‘You tell me,’ came the slightly threatening reply.

His handsome face looked ugly—bloated and red with drink—and Nancy was aware that she was handling this all wrong and that by sounding so defensive it was giving him the opportunity to attack her.

‘Are you hungry?’ she asked calmly.

‘Not for food,’ came the unsteady reply, and his eyes focussed blearily on her breasts. ‘Why d’you have to wear that horrible sloppy jumper?’ he grumbled, as he eased the cork out of the bottle with a resounding pop. ‘Hides all your assets.’

Nancy felt ill, torn between telling Steve that he had already drunk quite enough and keeping quiet about it. She knew that if he continued to drink at the same rate at least he wouldn’t start pawing at her.

As a doctor she knew what her advice should be, and as a wife she knew that she wasn’t going to give it.

She rose to her feet, keeping her distance. ‘Shall I make you an omelette? Or there’s some frozen curry in the freezer. I could microwave that.’

Steve splashed some wine into a large glass and slugged half of it back. ‘If you want,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m going to watch TV.’

Nancy watched him pick up the bottle and glass and wander towards the sitting room. Guilt, mixed with an overwhelming sense of relief, washed over her until an immense sadness obliterated everything.

Whatever had happened to him?

To her?

To them?

Nancy frowned as she pulled open the freezer door, her mind flitting back to when they had met—when the world had seemed a much less complicated place.

To the worldly Steve, the bookish Nancy had seemed like a creature from another planet. He’d never met a woman who was more interested in studying than in buying clothes or going out.

As an account executive of a successful regional advertising agency, Steve had had all the accoutrements of success achieved at an early age—the fast cars, the designer clothes and the luxurious holidays in far-flung corners of the globe, as well as the slightly spoilt air of cynical detachment, which seemed to fascinate members of the opposite sex. Women had spent their lives flinging themselves at him.

But Nancy didn’t fling herself at him—in fact, she’d scarcely noticed him. It was a new and heady experience for the worldly Steven Greenwood, and he’d pursued her with a flattering and ardent dedication until at last she’d agreed to go out with him.

Steve’s world had been a very different world to the one which Nancy had been used to inhabiting, and their very differences had been what at first had attracted them to each other. It had been exciting to be with a man who hadn’t always had his head in a book—who had done wild, crazy things on impulse, instead of writing essays.

But at the back of her mind Nancy had suspected that the relationship had had no solid footing to bolster up the purely physical appeal which had existed between them. More than once she had tentatively broached the subject of their incompatibility with Steve, but he had kissed her doubts away and eventually taken her to bed.

Nancy’s upbringing had been a conventional one—you saved your virginity for the man you loved and would marry. She had never questioned this point of view and it had seemed to be satisfactorily backed up by her parents’ long and happy marriage. So that when, soon after he had taken her to bed for the first time, Steve had asked to marry her she had turned to him happily and said yes.

So just how could dreams die and hope be eroded after less than two years together? she wondered sadly as she took a couple of plates down from the cupboard.

Fifteen minutes later she carried a steaming tray into the sitting room. On it were two delicious platefuls of chicken bhuna and saffron rice, with accompanying naan and a side-salad. She had even put a glass on the tray. She would join Steve for a drink, and that way he would drink less himself. They would eat a delicious meal in front of the fire and she would let him watch the video of his choice, which usually meant a film with a cast composed entirely of men!

Though, come to think of it, mused Nancy wryly as she padded through from the kitchen, carefully balancing the tray, he usually did watch the video of his choice, anyway!

Nancy came to a halt in the doorway.

On the sofa, sprawled out with all the abandonment of a sleeping toddler, lay her husband. The remote control lay like a prayer-book on his chest, even as the television droned on, ignored, in the corner. The wine bottle was already empty.

Nancy put the tray down and went to wake him.

‘Steve,’ she called softly, and shook him gently by the shoulder.

For answer he simply expelled some sour breath from his mouth and sucked in a huge, shuddering breath.

Nancy was no stranger to this routine.

With a sigh, she made him comfortable and removed his shoes and socks, then covered him up with a spare blanket kept in the cupboard underneath the stairs. Then she carried the tray back to the kitchen and binned its contents.

Only then, after a final check, did she turn off the television, snap off the sitting-room light and leave her husband, snoring, in the darkness.

The first day back after a holiday was always exhausting but today had been especially wearing, and Callum did something he hadn’t done for years.

He went to the pub on the way home from work.

Purbrook had several pubs, but in Callum’s opinion the Crown served the best beer—and was also the closest to his sprawling thatched cottage which overlooked the surrounding fields. At weekends he would occasionally pop in for a pint, and had been known to bring girlfriends in to sample some of the landlady’s famous steak and ale pies.

The pub was low-ceilinged and beamed, with a real fire in the corner. Pewter mugs, belonging to regular customers, hung above the bar and gleamed in a dull, beaten-silver row.

Tom Watts had been the landlord of the Crown for longer than most people could remember, and he beamed with delight as Callum stooped his head to pass underneath the low doorway and went to stand at the bar.

‘Evening, Doctor.’ He smiled proudly. It added a certain cachet if one of the local doctors happened to drink in your establishment! ‘Pint of the usual, is it?’

‘Please.’ Callum nodded. He watched while Tom carefully poured the drink, then took the foaming tankard with a grateful smile.

Several of his patients were dotted around the pub but they paid him no heed, other than to greet him. And that was just the way Callum liked it. As a family doctor working in a semi-rural area privacy was essential, and he appreciated the fact that most of his patients realised that—out of hours—he liked to be left alone!

He’d almost invited Nancy Greenwood to join him for a drink, but something had stopped him from asking her at the last minute. Which was pretty ridiculous, when you thought about it. Women these days—especially career women, in Callum’s experience—demanded that they be treated equally. And rightly so!

If Nancy had been a male colleague he would have suggested a drink, without giving it a second thought. So why hadn’t he? Because she was a woman? Was that the reason for his reluctance? But Callum had been working quite happily with women for years.

Because she was married? Was that closer to the truth, then? Because, against his will, he had found her utterly captivating? Callum rubbed his square jaw and felt the rasping of new beard beneath his fingers. He sincerely hoped that was not going to be the case.

Infatuation was nothing more than an inconvenience, especially if it stood no chance of ever being reciprocated. And Callum was enough of a moralist and a traditionalist to be appalled at the thought of a married woman ever straying.

He drank his pint slowly and refused all offers of a refill. ‘No, thanks, Tom,’ he said, in his deep, resonant voice. ‘You wouldn’t thank me if you came into my surgery tomorrow morning and I was all grouchy and headachy from drinking too much, now would you?’

Tom smiled. He simply couldn’t imagine the scenario of a hungover Dr Hughes! In the seven years since Dr Hughes had come to practice in Purbrook he had looked after Tom’s family brilliantly. It had been Dr Hughes who had noticed that Tom’s and Rowena’s son, Robin, had been failing to thrive—even before his mother did. And it had been Dr Hughes who had rung up a pal at London’s biggest paediatric hospital for an urgent appointment.

Now Robin was doing as well as any other boy his age, and all thanks to the good doctor.

‘Not like you to call in after work, Doctor,’ Tom ventured.

‘Well, you know what they say about a holiday,’ responded Callum, draining the last of his beer. ‘You need another one to recover from it!’

‘Sure I can’t tempt you with some of Rowena’s steak and kidney pud?’

Callum was tempted, but for no more than a moment. Rowena’s meals were legendary but colossal, and he had just spent a fortnight eating food that was far richer than his usual fare. He was also a doctor who firmly adhered to what he taught his patients. Accordingly, he ate and drank moderately most of the time, abhored smoking and took exercise almost daily. But hoped that he wasn’t too sanctimonious about his lifestyle!

‘No, thanks, Tom,’ said Callum, putting his empty tankard on the counter. ‘I’ll grab something at home. I’ve a lot to catch up on—and a new doctor under my wing, who’s learning all about general practice. So, if you make an appointment to see me with a fairly straightforward problem, you might just get the new doctor.’

Tom nodded. ‘Good bloke, is he?’

‘She,’ Callum corrected, thinking of pale skin, clear brown eyes and a tiny frame dressed much too severely in stark designer clothes. ‘The new doctor is a she.’

‘Is she now?’ asked Tom, his eyes lighting up with interest, but Callum elaborated no further and said goodnight.

Tom watched him leave, wondering why—not for the first time—the good doctor had never married.

And most surprisingly, Callum found himself asking the very same question as he let himself into the impractical, draughty and thoroughly beautiful thatched cottage he had bought and renovated when he had first arrived in Purbrook.

Most family doctors of his age had a wife, but Callum often suspected that some of his colleagues’ marriages were precipitated by the desire to have someone answer the phone for them and provide warm meals, rather than because they had found their true soul-mates.

Callum was the product of a successful marriage which had also been a love match and, consequently, he was unwilling to settle for anything less than the best. And a close brush with matrimony in his twenties had made him even more wary of commitment.

Indeed, sometimes he suspected that his expectations were too high to ever be realised, and that he might be consigning himself to a solitary future. But isolation posed less worry to him than failure in a relationship, particularly if that relationship involved children. For Callum had been a doctor for long enough to understand the far-reaching repercussions of divorce on family life.

At home there was a message on his answerphone, asking him to ring Helen. He knitted his dark eyebrows together, and it took a moment for him to remember that she was the rather luscious actress he had met at his younger brother’s Christmas party. Blonde, attractive and sunny in nature, she had been appearing in panto on the south coast and had promised to get in touch once the run had ended.

Callum hesitated as he recalled a pale and fluffy dress which had clung to an outrageously curved body. Yes, he would ring her, he decided—but not tonight!

Tonight he would write down a list of topics which his new GP registrar might wish to discuss with him.

CHAPTER FOUR

NANCY awoke with a splitting headache and the dull ache of hunger gnawing away at the pit of her stomach. She turned to stare at the space beside her on the bed, and again felt relief and guilt in equal measures on discovering that it was empty.

She showered and dressed, before going downstairs. She felt much too vulnerable to face her husband wearing nothing but a pair of cotton-brushed pyjamas which fell in soft folds against her bare skin.

Steve was sleeping just where she had left him, still snoring—his mouth open and moistly slack—sucking in great shuddering breaths of air. She went into the kitchen, made a pot of strong, black coffee and poured him a vast mugful, before attempting to shake him awake.

‘Go away!’ he mumbled, and turned his head into one of the cushions.

‘Steve, I’m not going anywhere,’ she told him patiently, even though the stale smell of alcohol made her want to gag. ‘It’s eight o’clock in the morning, and I have to leave for surgery in five minutes. You, meanwhile, have a client meeting booked for ten-thirty so I suggest you drink this and dive into the shower.’ She bent and loudly crashed the coffee-mug onto the table next to the sofa. ‘Pronto!’

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