drew herself up, and looked him in the eye. ‘Playing God—you’ve said so yourself, at least twice. Well, thank you for your help. I’ll take over now. I’m back for good, so I can run the practice——’
‘Over my dead body will you run my practice!’
They glared at each other across the waiting-room, and slowly his words sank in.
‘Your practice? Since when has it been your practice?’
He let out his breath on a long sigh. ‘Since December. Didn’t your grandfather tell you?’
She shook her head. ‘No. No, he always calls you the locum. Well, recently he’s called you Sam, but he never said anything about your taking over the practice.’
Sam gave a snort of derision. ‘I don’t suppose he thought you’d be interested. After all, you were out there in India with your lover——’
‘He wasn’t my lover!’ she protested, almost amused by the preposterous suggestion.
‘No? What’s the matter, wasn’t he taken in by the innocent-little-girl act?’
Lydia thought of Jim Holden, the doctor whom she had gone to India to help, and she could barely suppress a smile. In his late fifties, widowed for ten years, he was a gentle father-figure, and when he had come back from his leave with the lovely, sweet-natured Anne as his wife Lydia had been only too pleased for him—pleased, and relieved, because Anne was a doctor and so Lydia was superfluous and could terminate her contract three months early and come home to Gramps—because, reading between the lines, all was not well and he needed her. But Jim? She let the smile show.
‘On the contrary, he took it very seriously. He was very protective towards me—not to mention unfailingly polite!’
Sam gave a nasty little smile. ‘You’ll forgive me if I’m not so polite, but, you see, I happen to find your sort particularly odious. Still, I suppose I should be thankful for small mercies. At least you didn’t make the mistake of turning up in time for the funeral and feigning distress.’
Lydia all but stamped her foot. ‘How dare you? I’ll have you know that, when my grandfather dies, not only will I be at his funeral, but my “distress” will be totally genuine!’
‘Very touching, but a trifle misplaced. The funeral was last week. I’m afraid you’ve missed your chance to put on this devastating display of genuine emotion, but never mind. At least you’ve got the house. I imagine that’s what you wanted? Oh, and the practice, but I’m afraid you can’t have that. It’s mine, and, furthermore, so are the premises. He willed them to me. You can contest it, of course, but I doubt if it will get you anywhere.’
He had turned away, straightening a stack of magazines on the table in the corner with an angry thump, and so he failed to see the colour drain slowly from her face. As the meaning of his words penetrated through the fog of her tiredness and confusion she felt shock like cold hands race over her skin, and she started to tremble.
‘What?’ she tried to say, but her voice deserted her and all she managed was a croak.
He turned back to her, a savage retort on his lips, but it died a death as he saw her face, pale with shock, and her wide, sightless eyes that tried to focus on him. Oh, my God,’ he murmured, ‘you mean you really didn’t know?’
At his words she gave a little whimper of distress, and with a startled exclamation he crossed to her and caught her against his chest as her legs buckled.
Her eyelids fluttered closed, and he could see her lips moving, forming the word ‘no’, over and over again. Cursing himself fluently, he scooped her up into his arms and carried her up to his flat, putting her down gently on the sofa.
About the only palatable thing left in the house was the brandy, and he poured both of them a stiff measure and pressed a glass into her hand, curling her stiff fingers around the bowl and urging it to her lips.
She coughed and tried to lower the glass, but he made her take another sip, and then took it from her and placed it on the table within reach. Picking up his own, he downed a hearty gulp and then set it down on the table with hers.
Finally he met her eyes, and the pain he saw there made him doubt all his preconceived ideas about her being a cold-hearted, gold-digging little bitch. She looked lost, afraid, and absolutely desolate, and he felt self-loathing rise up like bile to swamp him.
He knew he ought to apologise, but there weren’t any words he could think of that would make things better, so he stayed silent while she watched him.
Ater a moment she struggled upright and walked over to the rain-lashed window, staring out into the chilly night while she nursed her brandy.
‘How?’ she asked after a long while, and he didn’t pretend not to understand.
‘Cancer,’ he said succinctly. ‘He refused a gastrectomy last October. That’s when I took over the practice. But you know all that——’
She shook her head. ‘No. No, he told me nothing. I knew he hadn’t been well—he told me he had ulcers and that you had taken over just until he was better, but he didn’t say anything about giving up, or … or …’
‘Dying?’ Sam said quietly, and watched as a shudder ran through her delicate frame.
When she spoke her voice was a harsh whisper, a mere thread of sound against the beating of the rain on the glass.
‘When?’
Sam ran his hand wearily over his face. ‘Two weeks ago tomorrow—in the early hours of Saturday morning.’
She shifted restlessly for a moment and then was still again, as if she wanted to run away and was holding herself there by a superhuman effort. ‘Did—did he know?’
‘Oh, yes. I think he knew almost from the beginning. At first he might have thought he had ulcers, but I think he must have realised quite quickly that it was more serious. He went into hospital in October for a gastroscopy, which confirmed it, but he knew it was too late. His actual death was caused by pneumonia, but it was only a matter of days.’ Sam paused, then added gently, ‘He was ready to go.’
Lydia nodded. ‘Yes, I can imagine. He hated feeling ill.’ She swallowed. ‘Where was he?’
Sam closed his eyes, remembering. ‘Here, where he wanted to be. He had a private nurse, but I got a locum in to cover when I knew it was getting close, and I stayed with him then till the end.’
Thank you——’
There’s no need to thank me!’ Sam snapped, much too harshly, and then more gently, ‘I did it for him, to give him dignity, and peace. He was a good man, and I thought the world of him.’
Her shoulders stiffened as the pain knifed through her, and she turned back to him, her soft grey eyes like pools of mist in her grief.
‘I think I’d like to go to bed now,’ she said in a voice brittle with control, and headed towards the door at the top of the stairs which led through to the main house.
‘You can’t sleep in there,’ he told her, ‘the power’s off and the place will be damp and freezing. Have my bed. I’ll sleep here on the sofa.’
He thrust open the bedroom door and flicked on the light. The quilt was rumpled where he had sat on it to tie his shoes, and his dressing-gown was flung over the foot of the bed, but it looked soft and inviting. She nodded briefly.
‘I’ll bring your cases up—I put them in the surgery,’ he murmured, and left her to it.
Lydia sat down on the edge of the bed and stared blindly at her feet. She couldn’t believe that Gramps was gone, that she would never again hear his big, hearty laugh or feel the warmth of his arms around her. He had always been there for her, when everything else had failed her, when her father had gone off and left her and her mother alone, when the pain had become