Questions Of Trust: A Medical Romance (19 page)

This time there was no phone call, no ambushing in the car park after work. Kelly was in bed, and Tom was sitting in his favourite armchair in his living room, thinking of everything and nothing in particular, treating himself to a rare glass of whisky – he’d had the kind of day which he considered meant he’d earned a drink – when the hammering on his front door jolted him out of his brooding.

More reporters?
he wondered, hurrying to the door before the pounding woke Kelly. Opening it a crack, he saw Rebecca on the doorstep, glowering at him. She was as always sensationally dressed and coiffed, though her composure was clearly ruffled.

‘I need to talk to you,’ she said without preamble.

He opened the door and stood aside for her. ‘Let’s keep it down, though,’ he said. ‘Kelly’s asleep and she’s had a long day.’
As I have
, he didn’t feel the need to add.

Rebecca stormed past and into the living room, as if it were her own. He followed her. She didn’t sit, but stood in the middle of the room, her arms folded, his back to him.

‘Do you want a drink?’ he offered.

She turned. ‘I’ve had enough, Tom. I’ve put up with more than I’m willing to.’

‘
You
have?’ he stared at her, not believing what he was hearing. ‘Rebecca, do you have any idea what I’ve been through today? And it’s not over. Not by a long shot. It’s just beginning.’

‘Well, then perhaps you shouldn’t go feeling up your patients, should you?’

‘Oh, come on, Rebecca.’ Tom disliked theatrics but couldn’t help rolling his eyes. ‘You may not like me, but you certainly know me. Of course I didn’t do anything like that. It’s all trumped up.’

‘Whatever.’ The dismissive wave of her hand indicated to Tom that she didn’t believe he was guilty either. But then, why would she? She was the one who’d set him up, he reminded himself.

‘So what’s your problem now?’ he asked.

‘Her.’ Rebecca jabbed a finger towards the door, her eyes blazing. ‘Your girlfriend.’

‘Who?’

‘You know perfectly well who I mean.’

‘If you mean Chloe Edwards, she’s not my girlfriend, as I’ve told you before. But what’s your problem with her?’

‘She’s interfering in our business. She’s poking her nose in where it isn’t wanted. You need to rein her in, Tom. I’m not joking.’

‘Rebecca, I have absolutely no idea –’

‘She visited that woman who’s accusing you. Pretended she was there for the newspaper, and tried to get her to admit I put her up to this.’

‘What? How do you know –’

‘It doesn’t matter how I know. Answer me this, though, Tom. Have you been telling people I’m behind this?’

‘No.’

‘But?’

‘But, what?’ He was starting to lose the thread of this conversation.

‘But you think I am, don’t you? You think I’m stirring up rumours about you?’

He watched her for a second, then decided he might as well be truthful. ‘Yes, Rebecca. I believe you are.’

Her eyes wide, she stared at him, and for a few moments he had no idea what she was going to do. Explode in fury, break down in tears, or perhaps something else.

She swallowed, as if fighting down a storm of emotion, and said, quietly: ‘I’m going to destroy you.’

‘Rebecca –’

‘I’m going to humiliate you in court. I’m going to make sure you can never work as a doctor again, or even show your face in public again.’

‘Rebecca, listen to me.’ He raised his voice as loudly as he dared, still conscious of Kelly upstairs, hoping fervently that she wouldn’t wander in. ‘There’s no need for us to go to court. I’m willing to concede custody to you. A prolonged court battle would be devastating to Kelly, and her welfare’s more important in all of this than yours or mine. So let’s calm down, and discuss the details like a couple of adults.’

Rebecca stepped closer, almost within the invisible area around Tom that constituted his personal space. In a wintry voice she said, ‘Oh, it’s too late for that, Tom. Too late for an amicable arrangement. You had that opportunity weeks ago. I gave you plenty of chances. Even this morning, I might have been willing to consider it. But now that I’ve learned you’ve set your girlfriend on the trail, sniffing around like a dog, things have moved on. I’m going to make sure you never, ever have the chance to regain custody of Kelly. I’m going to prove, in court, that you’re unfit.’

He watched her, absorbing the bitterness, the meaning of the words. Carefully he said, ‘What else have you got up your sleeve, then, Rebecca? More cooked-up allegations? Because I tell you this. If you ever,
ever
dare suggest that I’m in some way a risk to Kelly, I will never forgive you.’

Once again her eyes flared, but this time there was more than just fury there. There was triumph, too, as if she’d won a small victory over him. Which he supposed she had. She’d rattled him, almost provoked him into countering with hysterical threats of his own. At the last minute he’d pulled back and ended with the lame-sounding
I will never forgive you
, hardly something that would give her pause.

Rebecca pushed past him and headed for the door. Instinctively he put out a hand to stop her but she swept it aside. The heaviness of the front door was the only thing that prevented her from slamming it.

When Tom had heard the engine of her car start and recede into the distance, he sank into the armchair, his hands in his hair.

So it was going to be even uglier than he’d expected. He’d give Rebecca and her solicitor anything they wanted, but it seemed she still wanted her day in court, so that she could rake up all sorts of other allegations about him and put him through the equivalent of standing in the stocks on the village green. No doubt there’d be more women coming forward alleging harassment, and even though their stories too would be easily discredited, the sheer number of the charges against him would start to weigh heavily in the public mind.

And Kelly… every day she’d watch and listen in growing bewilderment and misery as her parents fought and people whispered and pointed. Then, at the end, she’d be whisked away to live somewhere else, like a toy being fought over by a pair of self-centred toddlers and finally claimed by the stronger of them.

Tom no longer pitied Rebecca. He was furious at her for the way she’d allow this obsession with getting her own way to take over her mind, to blind her to the damage she was going to do to her daughter. He was furious at himself, too, for having misread the situation as he had, for underestimating his former wife’s capacity for vindictiveness, for not having done more, somehow (though if he was onset, he wasn’t quite sure what he might have done better), to protect Kelly from this unpleasantness.

And, Tom realised suddenly, he was furious at Chloe. Just what exactly had she done? Had she been interrogating Sabrina Jones, as Rebecca claimed, and was she spreading word that Rebecca was behind the allegations? Even though it was true, it wasn’t the sort of thing that was going to help the situation. What was Chloe trying to achieve by meddling like this? Now she’d made things worse, and a merely terrible situation had been turned into a catastrophic one.

Tom got up, took the whisky glass into the kitchen and poured what was left into the sink. He needed a clear head, because he had a lot of thinking to do. As a doctor, Tom was used to finding solutions to problems. In the practice of medicine, this was often more straightforward because the problem could be viewed dispassionately. In matters of personal significance, strong emotion had a tendency to cloud one’s judgement.

Tom paced, then sat, then gazed out the window at the balmy night. But try as he might, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that he’d met his match. That here, at last, he’d come face to face with a problem which not only didn’t have a clear solution, but didn’t have a solution at all.

***

Some instinct or other made Chloe rise earlier than usual, at five thirty in the morning. The sun was already bathing the fields outside the window and the day promised to be another brilliant one. Chloe checked on Jake – he was still fast asleep, sucking his thumb, a habit she was going to have to start getting him out of for the sake of his developing teeth, she reflected – and went into the kitchen to set the coffee machine going, before heading to the living room and her laptop.

An email was waiting for her. The time signature was one thirty that morning, when she’d been asleep, and the sender was Dave, her journalist friend from London. Attached was a password-protected file. The message in the email read:
Have texted you the password. I pulled some serious strings to get this, so you owe me big time. Dinner at the Ritz, at the very least
.

Chloe checked her phone and found the text message. She entered the password and waited as the document downloaded.

It was a scanned document, the resolution a little grainy but without affecting its legibility. Chloe read through it. Then reread it.

She sat back, closing her eyes. A smile crept across her face.

This was it. Just what she’d been hoping for, and more.

Her first impulse was to pick up her phone and call Tom. But she held herself in check. It was five thirty in the morning, for heaven’s sake. He probably wouldn’t have got much sleep that night anyway, considering all that had been happening.

Instead she composed a reply to Dave, thanking him profusely for his help and, without going into specifics, mentioning that the information he’d supplied might very well save somebody else’s career. And yes, she’d come through on that dinner, though it probably wouldn’t be the Ritz.

She closed the laptop, too excited to do any more work for the time being, and bustled about the cottage, planning the day. Tom would be her first port of call, and she’d discuss with him the options they had. After all, it would be largely up to him what they did with the information she’d obtained.

By seven she decided it would be a suitable time to call Tom - neither too early nor just as he was about to start work and might be feeling harassed. Keeping one eye on Jake, who was in the high chair at the kitchen table and doing his level best to feed himself his porridge oats without getting them all over his face and clothes, with limited success, Chloe dialled Tom’s number.

It rang twice, three times. He was probably getting Kelly ready for the run to nursery, she thought. When the voicemail kicked in, she said, trying to keep the excitement out of her voice, ‘Tom, it’s me, Chloe. Hope you’re bearing up. Could you give me a ring when you’ve got a moment? I’ve got some very good –’

She was interrupted in mid-sentence by the abrupt intrusion of Tom’s voice: ‘Chloe?’

‘Tom. Hi.’ Momentarily flustered, as you tended to be when the other person picked up while you were in the middle of a voice message, she took a moment to collect herself. ‘Sorry to call so early, and I hope it’s not too inconvenient. I just wanted to –’

‘It
is
a bit of an awkward time, as it happens.’ There was something in his tone she’d never heard before. A testiness. Well, she didn’t blame him. He must dread the phone ringing, considering all that had been happening.

‘Look, I’m really sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘This won’t take long. Listen, I’ve been doing some digging –’

‘Yes, I know you have.’ Again, there was that edge to his voice. It wasn’t irritability, quite, she realised. Nothing as spontaneous as that. Rather, it was a disturbing
coldness
.

‘I... don’t know what you mean,’ she said uncertainly.

There was a pause, and although it lasted only two seconds at most, it had the quality of a gorge opening up between them.

‘I know you’ve been digging, Chloe,’ he said, his voice flat now, betraying no emotion. ‘You’ve rather shaken things up with your excavations. And I’m afraid to say it’s caused a fair amount of damage.’

The shock of his words took a moment to sink in. ‘Tom! I really don’t know what you’re referring to. What I’ve done. Please tell me.’

Was there a hint of doubt in his tone as he replied? ‘You went to interview Sabrina Jones, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said immediately. ‘Tom, that’s what I’m phoning about. She’s –’

‘And you know Rebecca’s put her up to this.’ The steeliness was back in his voice. Chloe was utterly disorientated by the sudden changes.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s exactly –’

‘Rebecca came to see me last night,’ he cut in. ‘She knows you spoke to the Jones woman. That you believe she, Rebecca, is behind these allegations. And she’s furious. It’s tipped her over the edge. She’s determined to drag this through the courts now, this custody fight. Even though I’ve offered her full, uncontested custody. She wants to make it as messy as possible. All to humiliate me.’

‘Tom, that’s
terrible
.’ Chloe was trying to process everything he’d said. ‘But what do you mean, you agreed to give up custody? There’s no need.’

‘She would have backed down,’ Tom continued, as if he hadn’t heard Chloe. ‘She would have let us settle this quietly. But your involvement has provoked her. And Kelly’s going to suffer as a result.’ His voice rose in pitch. ‘Why couldn’t you leave it alone, Chloe? Why did you have to interfere?’