Questions Of Trust: A Medical Romance (7 page)

Despite the dullness and faint menace of the environment, Chloe felt a thrill of excitement. She was on her first assignment as an investigative reporter. Her whimsical column had proved so popular over the last two months that her editor, Mike Sellers, had invited her along to the
Pemberham Gazette
’s small office suite in the town centre the previous week for a chat.

‘Your column’s great, and I hope you’ll continue to provide it for a long time,’ Mike told her. ‘But you’re too good a writer to be confined to a fortnightly it of amusement. I’d like you to do some real journalism, if you’re interested.’

The story was a relatively minor one, certainly by London standards, but it was significant for a town like Pemberham. Residents of the Stratwell estate on the south side of town were becoming increasingly vocal about the hooliganism plaguing their area. Night after night brought a fresh crop of graffiti on the walls, drunken noise well into the early hours, smashed car and flat windows. The residents had notified the police who’d investigated, but had advised that the town council were ultimately best placed to tackle the problem. The chairman of the residents’ association had written to the council and made numerous telephone calls, with little response. Finally, in desperation, the residents had taken their concerns to the
Pemberham Gazette
.

Mike Sellers gave the story to Chloe, lock, stock and barrel. She was to interview the residents, then attempt to gain an audience with a senior member of the town council to find out what was being done about the problem on the estate. The
Gazette
wasn’t party political, but regarded holding the town’s elected representatives to account as part of its civic duty.

Chloe parked in an unmarked bay just inside the estate and glanced around after locking the doors, a little nervous about leaving her car. Jake was with Mrs McFarland for the afternoon. Working from home was all very well, but Chloe knew that if she began to do more field work like this, she’d need to look for a regular paid sitter for her son.

She found the flat with difficulty, peering through the rain at the numbers on the doors before coming across the right one. Inside were six members of the residents’ association, including their chairman, a burly man with a friendly air. They greeted her with enthusiasm, as though she’d arrived as a saviour. Chloe was touched to see the spread they’d laid out for her: tea, sandwiches, home-baked cakes and biscuits.

For a full two hours she perched on the edge of an armchair and took notes, recording statements from time to time, asking the occasional question for clarification but generally just listening. Gradually a heartbreaking picture was built up of a community in terror, at the mercy of a small number of out-of-control youths who themselves sounded as if they had limited options for advancement. The residents admitted they had given up on asking the council for assistance, and had taken to painting over the graffiti each morning themselves, trying to set up with limited success more youth activities on the estate, and generally making do themselves.

‘But there’s a limit, Miz Edwards,’ said one woman. ‘We’re not rich people here. We go out to work ourselves. The council get paid to sort places like this out, so why are they leaving us to do their job for them? It’s not right.’

When she’d gleaned all she could from the residents – and when she realised she’d better be getting back to relieve Mrs McFarland, Chloe stood and thanked them.

‘I’ll do what I can,’ she said. ‘At the very least, your story will be on the front page of the
Gazette
.’

She was aware of the atmosphere of hope, even triumph, she left behind her, and she felt the burden of their expectations as she returned to her car. Chloe hoped fervently she wouldn’t let them down.

Her Astra was intact and unmarked, she noted thankfully. She set off for home. The return journey was easier, not least because the rain had eased off. Deciding to take a shortcut and avoid the centre of town, Chloe turned towards the moderately well-to-do streets of the western district.

The main road took her past Dr Carlisle’s house. She knew where it was because she’d once been giving Mrs McFarland a lift and her friend had pointed it out to her. Expecting Mrs McFarland to pass another comment, oblique or otherwise, suggesting that Chloe get closer to the doctor, Chloe hadn’t said anything but had driven on, quickly diverting the conversation in another direction. She’d noticed the house, however: a modest, attractive two-storey structure with a thatched roof and a generous front garden.

She glanced in the direction of the house now as she approached. Tom Carlisle’s car was in the driveway, she noted; it must be one of his split days at work. Another car was parked behind his, a Mercedes, flashier and pricier than his Ford. As Chloe drew abreast, a woman stepped out of the driver’s seat of the Mercedes and, swinging the door shut, began to stride briskly towards the front door.

In the glimpse Chloe got before she passed, she noticed that the woman was beautiful. Around thirty, Chloe’s age, she was elegantly decked out in an expensive-looking green sheath dress that clung to her slender figure. Her long blonde hair was carefully, discreetly highlighted and swung free, and her face had the high-cheekboned features of a makeup model. In her rearview mirror Chloe watched the woman reach up to the doorbell, and a few seconds later she saw the front door open and Tom appear. Then they were lost to view as Chloe turned the Astra off the main road.

His girlfriend
, she thought.

And why not? He was a single, highly attractive man, with great looks, a winning personality and a good, well-respected job. A catch if ever there was one. It stood to reason he’d have no difficulty finding somebody, and no disinclination to do so. In any case, why was she even thinking about the subject? She ought to be concentrating on the piece she was going to write about the problems on the estate, shaping the prose in her head.

It was only when she caught her breath that Chloe realised she’d been forgetting to breathe for a few seconds. Gripping the steering wheel, she reproached herself.
You’re turning into a nosey parker like Margaret McFarland.

She forced herself to think of her forthcoming article, of the supper she was going to make Jake and herself that evening, of the service her Astra was going to need in a few weeks. By the time she drew up outside her cottage, she was hardly thinking of Tom or the mystery woman at all.

***

‘Cup of tea?’

‘No thanks.’ As she’d done the other few times she’d visited his and Kelly’s home, Rebecca was casting a less-than-discreet eye over the décor, the furnishings. Her expression suggested she found them wanting.

Tom studied Rebecca. His ex-wife was perched primly on the edge of the sofa as though to sit back more comfortably would be to indulge in a friendliness she didn’t feel. She looked good, he had to admit. No, more than that: she looked absolutely stunning. Her clothes, her teeth and hair, were perfect. The tan looked natural, achieved on the beaches of the French Riviera rather than on a sunbed. And her body… it was dynamite, as supple and curvy as it had been when he’d first met her eleven years earlier. He’d been a medical student of twenty-two, she a nineteen-year-old studying fashion design. Little more than a decade ago, yet another era, it seemed.

The day was warm in spite of the earlier rain. Rebecca’s lustrous golden skin, the headiness of her perfume, all contributed to the atmosphere of mellow heat. But Tom felt cold as a man in rags on a winter’s night.

‘Where’s Kelly?’ asked Rebecca.

‘At nursery.’ Although Tom was at home, it wasn’t his usual split day. He’d asked his colleague Ben Okoro to cover him at the surgery for a couple of hours so he could meet Rebecca. Tom glanced pointedly at her handbag.

‘Are they in there?’

She arched a perfect eyebrow. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The papers.’

‘Which papers are those?’

‘The legal papers. The summons, or whatever it is.’

She sighed, making even that sound elegant, practised. ‘It hasn’t come to that. There are no legal proceedings. I asked to meet you because I wanted to discuss this face to face.’

‘There’s nothing to discuss, Rebecca.’

‘Tom –’

‘Nothing we haven’t spoken about on the phone. You’ve wasted a trip here.’

She rested her pretty chin on her folded hands, looking away from him and blinking as though marshalling her thoughts. 

‘I could take it further. Down the legal route.’

‘You could,’ he said. ‘And you’ll have to, frankly, if you want to pursue it.’

‘She’s my daughter.’

‘And mine.’

‘I’m her mother.’

‘In a sense.’ She stared at him as though stung, and he immediately regretted his words. He held his hands up in apology. ‘Sorry. That was a bit harsh. Of course you’re her mother, and she adores you. I’ve never tried to poison Kelly’s love for you, Rebecca. I never would, never will. I’ll never say a bad word about you in front of her. But you agreed to my having sole custody. Agreed even when your lawyer, and mine, both pressed you on whether you were absolutely certain that was what you wanted.’

‘I know,’ she said. She lifted her chin defiantly. ‘But I’ve changed my mind.’

Even though she’d said them before, the words gripped his heart.

‘Why?’

‘Because I’ve had time to consider. Having Kelly with us in Paris the other weekend was wonderful. It made me realise I need her to grow up with me.’

‘
You
need her. What about what she needs?’

‘A child needs a mother.’

‘A father too.’

‘She’d have a father –’

‘Don’t you dare.’ Tom fought the urge to rise from his chair and jab a finger in her direction. ‘Don’t you dare suggest
he
could be her father.’

‘Andrew’s a loving, capable man.’

‘Yes, I know that. He certainly proved capable of loving you away from me, didn’t he?’ Tom let the bitterness soak through. ‘So what about the lifestyle you’d have to sacrifice with a child to weigh you down? No more jetting off to the Caribbean on a whim, no more guarantees of cosy, romantic nights when there are fevers to be attended to, bad dreams to be soothed away. Have you actually thought of any of that?’

He’d raised his voice at the end, unable to help himself. Rebecca didn’t flinch. She smoothed her exquisitely manicured hands down her thighs and said, ‘Andrew and I have considered this at great length. And we’ve come to the conclusion it’s what we want.’

‘Just like one of his business deals, is it? Cost-benefit ratios weighed up, risk analyses carried out…’

‘Now you’re just being childish, Tom.’

He slumped back in his chair, staring at her, at a loss for words.
This is how it begins
, he thought.
The vicious back-and-forth sniping that damages a child for ever.
The divorce eighteen months earlier had been terrible, more painful than Tom had ever imagined, but at least they’d avoided the nightmare of a custody battle. Rebecca, dazzled by the glamorous world her new man Andrew was whirling her into, had quite readily conceded that Kelly would live with Tom. Everything had been legally settled, and since then, whenever Rebecca had expressed a wish to have Kelly visit or even come away for a weekend, Tom had quite willingly agreed, thankful for the privilege of having his daughter live with him and more than magnanimous in granting visiting rights to her mother.

Then the phone call had come, several weeks earlier when he’d been in the playground talking to Chloe, and Rebecca had announced that she wanted sole custody, wanted Kelly to live with her and the new guy. Tom had hung up on her. She’d phoned again, and eventually they’d held a conversation of sorts, in which he made his position as clear as he could:
over my dead body
. Rebecca had texted him a few days ago, asking for a meeting, and he’d agreed, assuming as he’d told her earlier that she was going to bring out the legal papers.

‘You could visit,’ Rebecca said. ‘Often.’

He pictured it. The Sunday trips by car to London, the day of frenetic “fun” activities while his heart broke again and again every time he looked at his daughter. The agony of separation at the end, and the dreary slog back home, alone.

‘Forget it,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s not going to happen.’

Rebecca drew a long breath. The last time Tom remembered her doing that was just before she announced to him she was having an affair with Andrew.

‘There’s something else,’ she said.

Tom waited.

She looked him full in the face. ‘Andrew and I are moving to France,’ she said. ‘We want Kelly to come with us.’

He was silent. The news might have floored him, but instead Tom felt numbed.

‘Then that’s clinched it,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to discuss this any further.’

‘Tom, you’d –’

‘You had your chance, Rebecca, and you passed it up. I’ve been more than reasonable in letting Kelly visit you over the last year and a half, both when we lived in London and since we moved. You can’t deny that. And I’m happy for that to continue. But for her to come and live with you, for her to move abroad… no.’