‘I feel sick,’ Gavin announced as they bumped up and down in the go-kart en route to the village.
‘Please don’t criticise Miltos’s driving again,’ Lucie begged. ‘If you make him mad, it’s only going to get worse.’ And it wasn’t really Miltos’s crazy steering that was the worst thing about this ride. It was Gavin’s body pressure, taking up his seat and hers. It almost felt like she was wearing his deodorant… She attempted to sit a little forward to speak to their pilot.
‘Where is she?’ Lucie yelled against the rushing humid air as the kart whipped around another hairpin bend on two of its wheels. ‘Maria… and the babies.’
‘And, more importantly, why isn’t there an ambulance coming?!’ Gavin screamed.
‘You think an ambulance could get into the village when my fruit van cannot?’ Miltos shouted back over the roar of the engine.
‘Well, you could bring her down the mountain to the health centre. I saw one in Roda the other day,’ Gavin suggested. ‘They must do more than treat sunburn.’ He touched one of his red shoulders.
Miltos threw the steering wheel around to the left. ‘You want to put a pregnant woman in the back of this thing?!’
‘We’re in the back of this thing!’ Lucie reminded as Gavin’s elbow hit her kidney.
‘And that wasn’t how you pitched this vehicle when you hired it to me!’ added Gavin. ‘You specifically sold the safety features!’
‘What are you so scared of?’ Miltos wanted to know. ‘You tell me you are a nurse, Loosely and Gaveen, he is a doctor.’
‘Yes,’ Lucie called back, foliage coming through the open ‘window’ and scraping her arm. ‘I mean, no. Gavin’s not a doctor, remember?’
‘Only when you’re needing to lie to your gran and auntie for sexist reasons,’ Gavin grumbled.
‘What?’ Miltos shouted, apparently not hearing. He did that quite a lot when he didn’t want to listen.
Lucie shifted slightly in her seat and drew her phone out of the pocket of her shorts. Michalis hadn’t replied to any of her texts yet today. But that wasn’t unusual. When he was helping at the butcher’s he didn’t seem to check his phone, nor when he was seeing patients at the studio surgery. He was conscientious to a fault. But she had also now called him several times. You would think, unless his mobile was on silent, that the noise might have alerted someone near his phone – Nyx or one of his patients. She pressed on his number and tried again. This time it went straight to voicemail.
‘Where did people look for Michalis?’ Lucie asked Miltos, as she re-pocketed her phone.
‘The butcher’s. The surgery. His apartment. We also sent Little Spiros on his tricycle to see if he was at the bench where you ate picnic food,’ Miltos answered.
What? Everyone knew they had had a picnic at Anapaftiria? It was a good job they had kept their clothes on in that case… Now Lucie was concerned that she and Gavin were really going to have to deliver these babies.
‘Have you delivered a baby before?’ Lucie asked him.
‘Oh yes!’ Gavin exclaimed. ‘Many times!’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Just like I perform open heart surgery and tonsillectomies… OK, the last one I may have thought I’d performed previously with a couple of boyfriends, but never under anaesthesia.’
‘Gavin, this is serious!’
‘I am well aware but, Luce, we’ve been through everything at work together. When have you seen me with my fingers anywhere near the business end of a woman? And do not mention Madame Viceroy, because that “lady” was forced to go private after the episode with the hydrocortisone cream.’
Lucie took a deep breath. She knew she would know if Gavin had delivered a baby at work but she thought perhaps he may have aided a labouring shopper in an Aldi car park… but then again, if Gavin had done something like that, it would have been headline news and he would have presented himself with an honorary lanyard.
‘Please tell me you’ve delivered one,’ Gavin said, seeming now to bump up and down with nerves as well as the rough ride. ‘Because if I haven’t then you must have. You and half a dozen taxi drivers, right?’
‘I haven’t,’ Lucie breathed. ‘The closest I’ve got to birth is a guinea pig I looked after once.’ She sighed heavily. ‘And she ate one of them.’
‘Oh, Jesus!’ Gavin exclaimed. ‘Right, that’s it!’ He drew his phone from his pocket and began tapping as the go-kart neared the boulders still part-blocking their way into the village.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m googling how to deliver babies. I mean, there is a YouTube video on everything, remember? Like my make-up tutorials. There’s guitar lessons and… unpacking the box of every laptop ever made and… BTS’s best eating moments… so there must be something about this!’
‘And what if that’s not enough?’ Lucie breathed.
‘I’m going to call Sharon. Surely, if neither of us have delivered before, you can guarantee she will have. Failing that, she’s bound to have the mobile number of a midwife or… wasn’t she almost married to Mr Tuck the gynae guy?’
‘Don’t forget it’s twins,’ Lucie breathed. ‘I think everything is different for twins.’