‘Have you been crying half the afternoon?’
Chris Deerbon picked up his pile of mail and flipped through it.
‘Yes.’
‘Hormones.’
‘No, my brother.’
‘Hormones.’
‘Oh shut up, you pig, I know, I know. But I didn’t give birth yesterday, they don’t make me burst into tears about nothing. I can’t bear falling out with anyone I love, I can’t bear upsetting Si, and saying horrible things and hearing him sound so nasty.’
Chris threw a lot of torn envelopes and junk mail into the bin and came over to sit beside her.
‘I know. All the same it had to be said. He does behave badly to women, he has hurt this one with no good reason. You don’t like to see that side of him – why would you? Nor do I. He matters to us.’
‘I wish I could get to the bottom of him, you know. But I never, never have.’
‘Someone will, one day, and it’ll give him the shock of his life.’
‘I pity her.’
‘He’ll be feeling better for having one case quickly closed.’
‘Have you heard anything today?’
‘No, only what’s been on the news. I think the child was making a point – “Look at me, I’m still here.”‘
‘Poor kid. She’s the one everyone should be looking out for, you know.’
‘Now, there’s something I want to talk about … important.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Something good. At least I think so. I’ve had a job offer.’
‘What do you mean? You’re not looking for a job.’
‘I didn’t think I was. But … I’ve been approached by a drug company. They’re opening up a big project with their new asthma drug. It’s trialled fantastically well, it’s potentially the biggest thing since salbutamol – it really could cut serious asthma attacks in children by a third … even cut deaths. They want me to head up the team. They need a medic with a special interest in asthma.’
‘You don’t have a special interest in asthma.’ Cat looked at him a long minute, until he had to glance away. ‘I should think you bloody well can’t meet me in the eye. What the hell are you thinking of? Drug company? Is this Chris Deerbon sitting here? You despise doctors who go and push company drugs, you always have. Sold out. How often have I heard you say that? Glorified reps. Putting a respectable face on it… Jeez, Chris, where are you coming from?’
‘I am coming,’ he said quietly, ‘from a state of utter exhaustion. A state of being unable to cope much longer with not having a partner, not being able to get a locum, paying out a small fortune for agency cover. A state of being buried in bloody government paperwork about targets and quotas and anything but attention to sick people. I don’t know where to turn. That’s where I’m coming from.’
‘You mean it, don’t you?’
‘Never more. God, Cat, I don’t want to leave general practice. I love it. I love hands-on medicine, always have. But just now, I’m feeling burnt out.’
‘The answer isn’t for you to go and work for a drug company.’
‘Tell me what the answer is then.’
‘For me to come back to work of course. I’ll get Sally to have Felix, and I’ll come back every morning to do surgeries, and aim to be in harness full time sooner than I’d planned. QED.’ She got up. ‘I’m going to make some soup and toast.’
‘Sounds good. But you can’t come back, the whole point of this year was for you to –’
‘I know what it was, but that was before you were so drained with exhaustion you started talking about drug companies. I’m wasted here, lovely as it is to sit on the sofa cuddling Felix and reading Maeve Binchy. Give me another week and I’ll start back.’
‘I daren’t argue with you when you’ve got that look. If I agree …’
‘You got no choice, buster.’
‘If … will you ring Si?’
‘No.’
‘Oh grow up, Cat … or rather, show him who is grown up. I won’t have my family riven by faction. There are enough wars in the world. By the way, have you spoken to your parents lately?’
‘Mum rang today as a matter of fact. Why?’
‘How was she?’
‘Odd. But she always sounds odd these days. I can’t get through to what it is … she has that bright, charming barrier well up. There’s something and I’m damned if I can tell what.’
Cat shoved bread into the toaster. At times like this she had always found it better not to think. Not to think about David Angus and the possibility that he had died a horrible death, not to think about her mother and father and whether anything had happened between them, not to think about going back to work far sooner than she had planned. Not to think – just get on with it.
‘We endure by enduring’ she had read somewhere. It had struck her as one of the greatest truths she had ever read.
The soup began to bubble.