‘Ready.’
Felix came thundering down the stairs. Grey shorts. Grey blazer with the sky-blue piping that denoted a cathedral choirboy. No cap. Caps had been dispensed with at the beginning of Sam’s time at the school.
‘Oboe?’
He gave Kieron Bright, his stepfather, a long-suffering look. If he forgot everything else, he would never forget his oboe, the instrument he had taken to so readily that it seemed to have become an extension of his body within a few months.
‘And go!’
Kieron’s route into the police HQ at Bevham did not take him past the cathedral, but from the first days of his marriage to Cat, he had offered to drive Felix into his early choir practice.
‘It’s perfectly simple,’ he had said. ‘It means I have Felix to myself every morning. It gets me into work first thing. It means you don’t have to do it, and if it’s a bit out of my way, it’s a lot out of yours to the surgery. Sorted.’
It made sense, but for her the best reason was not the obvious and practical one. Her husband wanted to bond with her younger son and Felix seemed quite happy with the arrangement – though Felix was happy with most things. He was a contented, settled child who took life as it came, enjoyed what it offered and had barely given her a moment’s anxiety.
Hannah, away at her performing arts school, had grown from a troubled child into a talented young girl, who shared Felix’s easy-going cheerfulness. Sam, her eldest, was the difficult one.
She watched the car turn out of the drive, her son turned towards Kieron, chatting eagerly, then swore mildly that she had forgotten to remind them that it was her night for St Michael’s Singers rehearsal, the first of the new season. Would Kieron remember that he and Felix were home alone for supper?
Kieron would. Her reminder to him would have been redundant. He was Mr Organised, Mr Tidy, Mr Efficient.
He was also the husband she had never looked for or expected to have, after Chris’s death. They had certain traits in common, as she had always recognised, but organised was not one of them. Only in his GP’s surgery had Chris been that. But his dedication and commitment to the job had been the same, and Cat respected it, along with the fact that often those jobs took first, second and third place, before her. She would not have had it otherwise. Besides, she thought now, going upstairs to put on her make-up ready to face the day, she had often put her own career first and it had not always made for an easy family life. When she had been a GP, before the new regime which had taken away their obligation to do nights and weekends on call, she had been stretched between her patients and her children, and only the fact that Chris had been a doctor too had made it acceptable. When she had been medical director at Imogen House, the Lafferton hospice, she had also been in the middle of conflicting pulls of loyalty and duties.
Now, she was a part-time GP again, no longer a partner. Had it all been the wrong way round? With two of her children away from home for much of the time, and a husband to share her life and the domestic round, she should have been giving more hours to her work, not fewer.
But writing a book on palliative care in general practice was filling the hours she had saved and she planned to write more. Both her parents had been hospital doctors, and had lectured, researched and written. She was following in the family footsteps.
Unlike Si, she thought, pulling the mascara wand out of its container. She must email him later.
And then there was Sam to contact, Sam up in Newcastle, ostensibly to help a friend settle into the university, but more, she suspected, to get away from home and the need to make decisions about his own future – and possibly away from his stepfather, though about that she was undecided. Kieron had said everything was fine between them, but that it would all take a while to shake down. Sam had said nothing.
At their wedding he had been quiet but cheerful enough. There had been only the families and a handful of close friends, and it had been held in the small Lady chapel of the cathedral. She and Kieron had decided from the beginning that she would not be given away by anyone, but that they would present themselves together, as equals. Also from the beginning, her father had said that he would not attend. Simon had not recovered from being at death’s door following the attack, losing his left arm and spending several weeks in hospital. He had seemed pleased, but reserved and still slightly shell-shocked. It had been a good day, Cat had had no doubts about marrying again, but was glad when it was over and they could settle down into everyday life, after the few days in New York with which Kieron had surprised her.
She finished her make-up, flicked a brush through her hair again, and left for the surgery, very conscious that she had none of her old enthusiasm for the job. It was not the same. The crisis in general practice had cut deep into everyone’s sense of dedication and passion for looking after patients, who, in their turn, had become disillusioned with doctors and the service they received, and, as a result, more demanding and more liable to complain.
She found a piece of paper on her driving seat.
Chin up. It’ll be a good day. Love you. K.
He left notes like this, not every day, when she might come to take them for granted, just at random, a Post-it note stuck on her mirror or the pillow, a sheet torn from a notebook, as today, in the car. She slipped it into her bag, smiling as she drove off.
As she walked into the surgery, she saw a familiar figure at the front desk. Mrs Coates, eighty-nine and frail, a long-term sufferer from arthritis and polymyalgia, more recently recovered from pneumonia, and with failing sight. She lived alone, had been indomitable, but, Cat thought, had had enough of struggling with life by herself.
‘I do understand,’ she was saying now to Angella, one of the receptionists, ‘I do know how busy you all are. I do know that.’
‘So, I’ve got an appointment with Dr Sanders on Monday week at two thirty. Will you have that?’
Cat did not want to interfere and undermine Angella, but as she slipped past, Mrs Coates turned round.
‘Oh, Dr Deerbon, I do understand how it is, but I’ve been trying to get to see you and you’re always so busy, there’s never anything available. And it’s so difficult seeing a different doctor every time and having to start all over again explaining, although I know they’re all very good.’
‘I was trying to tell Mrs Coates that you all have her notes in front of you, it really doesn’t matter who she sees.’
‘I know. May I have a look?’
A quick glance at the appointments screen showed her what she already knew, that she was full at every surgery for the next two weeks, which was as far ahead as patients were allowed to book. Like Mrs Coates, she understood. The new system meant that patients took whatever appointment was available with whichever doctor of the seven. That was fine for the person with a strep throat or a child with a rash – any doctor would serve. But for older patients, or those with a long history about which one doctor knew a great deal, or for the people who felt uncomfortable talking to someone strange, there ought to be the facility for them to choose the GP they preferred.
‘Is it about something new, Mrs Coates? You don’t have to go into it all here, but just say if you want to talk about something recent or something ongoing?’
Angella was looking furious.
‘It’s not new, Doctor, it’s …’
‘Can you come back in at ten past one? I’ll slip you in then.’
Surgery ended at twelve thirty, but generally overran by twenty or thirty minutes.
‘I’m sorry to ask you to come back but I really am packed out this morning.’
‘That’s very good of you, Doctor, very good. No trouble to come back then. Thank you. I do understand how difficult it is, I do understand.’
‘I know you do. I’ll see you later.’
The reception area was filling up, the phones were ringing. Angella gave Cat a filthy look. I understand, too, Cat thought. Only too well. But rules have to be bent. She was not going to be bullied into apologising.
She logged on as the first footsteps came down the corridor to her surgery. There were still plenty like Mrs Coates, who needed gentle handling. How many times had she said in practice meetings that the system ought to be a servant but they were in permanent danger of allowing it to be their master?