him I’ll be there.’
‘Tell him yourself. Call him—if you really mean it.’
The door opened and a nurse came in with a porter and a big smile. ‘We’re ready for you, David.’
His heart lurched against his ribs and he held up his hand to stop her. ‘I mean it. I’ll come. I promise.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. Give him my love. I have to go, I’ve got a meeting now and I’m going to be out of reach for a little while, but I’ll be in touch as soon as I’m back in range. Just tell him I’m coming.’
And without anything else, without saying goodbye or offering any further explanation, he turned off his phone, threw it into his locker and sucked in a lungful of air before meeting the nurse’s warm, sympathetic eyes with the nearest thing to a smile that he could muster.
‘Right, guys, let’s get this show on the road.’
‘You’re sure? You do understand what’s going to happen, David, and you’re OK with it?’
No, he wasn’t sure, not about anything, and he sure as hell wasn’t OK with it, but he’d put this off for too long as it was. And he knew he didn’t have a choice. Not if he was going to get on with his life.
‘I’m sure,’ he lied and, closing his eyes, he rested his head back on the pillow as she kicked the brakes off the bed and wheeled him down the corridor.
CHAPTER ONE
IT REALLY hadn’t changed at all.
Bits were different. More houses on the outskirts, perhaps, and a new roundabout on the access road, but fundamentally the same. And it still felt like home.
Bizarre, when it hadn’t been home for eleven years, and even more bizarre that, after more than three, he could drive back into the little seaside town and feel a wave of nostalgia that brought a lump to his throat the size of Ayers Rock.
He cruised slowly in on the main road in his little rental car, slowly absorbing the changes to the place where he’d honed his bad-boy skills and broken a hundred hearts.
Including those of his family, he thought with regret.
He hadn’t meant to. He’d only gone to Australia for a gap year after he graduated, but somehow it had stretched on and on, and he’d ended up so entrenched over there with his business interests that coming home for more than a flying visit had become all but impossible.
He sighed. He’d always intended to programme in enough time to come for longer, but the road to hell and back was paved with his good intentions and, in any case, for the last three years the matter had been taken out of his hands. The accident had happened just a couple of days before his father’s heart attack, and when he’d realised how serious his father’s heart condition was he’d been gutted that he couldn’t get home, but there’d been nothing he could do about it. He wasn’t fit to fly, so he’d played down the seriousness of the accident and told them he’d broken his ankle.
Which was true. Sort of. Then he’d missed Georgie’s wedding a couple of months later, as well—he’d been gutted about that, too, and she clearly hadn’t believed that his ankle was still responsible—after all, how bad could a fracture be?—but there was nothing he’d been able to do about that either so he’d just made himself unavailable, deliberately turning his phone off so he couldn’t be reached. After all, no news was supposed to be good news, wasn’t it, and Georgie was used to him not answering her calls.
Better to let them believe he was indifferent than add to their worries. Or so he’d thought. Had he been wrong?
Still, he was here now, and it was time to face the music. He wasn’t ready for this, but he was beginning to realise he’d never be ready, so he might just as well get on with it.
But not yet.
Putting off the evil moment a little longer, he headed towards the sea front, past the newly revamped hotel at the entrance to the town, smothered in flags advertising its imminent opening as the area’s premier health spa and leisure club.
It was impressive. The last time he’d seen it, it had been a tatty, run-down dump of a place, clearly struggling and in need of a massive cash injection. It had obviously had exactly that and, as always, his father had done a good job, he thought with pride.
Swallowing that persistent lump in his throat, he carried on down the main street, expecting the same old shops selling the same old stock. Except many of the shops were new, he noticed in surprise—in fact it was looking lively and vibrant and really rather inviting in a quaint and quintessentially English way.
Sleepy old Yoxburgh was clearly thriving in his absence.
He dropped down the steep little road to the sea front, past pavements clustered with tables spilling out of the front of the pretty Victorian houses now turned into hotels and cafés and trendy sea front flats, and cruised slowly along the prom and up past his sister’s house.
A big Victorian Italianate villa overlooking the sea front, it was part of a redevelopment his father had been involved in the last time he’d been home, and it made a stunning house. Impressive, yet welcoming at the same time. And expensive. Easily seven figures, if his finger was truly on the pulse of the UK property market.
The development had been the biggest thing his father had tackled to that point, but he’d applied the same principles of quality and integrity that he brought to everything and, yet again, he’d done a good job. At least until his heart attack, and then Georgie had taken over.
From what he could see at this distance, she hadn’t let her father down. Unlike him.
He shut off that train of thought and drove up past the side of the property, studying the small cluster of top-end homes grouped around behind it. Nick had ditched the previous architect’s plans and commissioned Georgie to redesign and finish the project, and she’d done a good job, at least on the outside. Again impressive, he thought, and yet homely. Well done, Georgie. He was looking forward to seeing it all in close up, especially the lovely house where she was now living with her husband and children. She’d told him enough about it and sent him photos, but it looked even better in the flesh.
She’d done well, but he’d never doubted she would, and if anyone deserved to be happy, it was Georgie. She’d had some rough times, got herself involved with a real bastard a few years ago, and it was great that she was happy now. But so many kids? Four and a half, at the last count. They must be nuts.
He suppressed a flicker of something that couldn’t possibly be envy and drove round the corner towards his rather more modest childhood home, a solidly respectable, warm and homely three storey half-timbered Edwardian house full of nooks and crannies for a child to hide in. He knew. He’d spent his childhood hiding in them and infuriating his sister because she couldn’t track him down.
He gave a hollow little laugh. Nothing different there, then.
He scanned the house and felt a pang of homesickness that took him by surprise.
It looked good. Freshly painted, the garden carefully tended, and his father, looking as solid and dependable as ever, was standing in the front garden with a slender, grey-haired woman who was smiling up at him with love in her eyes.
Not that he could see her eyes, but he hardly needed to. The body language said everything, but she wasn’t his mother and it seemed—wrong?
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he muttered, and kept right on past them, his heart thumping. Why shouldn’t his father find happiness? Just because his own life had taken a sharp and rather vicious downward turn didn’t mean his father didn’t deserve to be happy.
Without thinking about it, he found himself driving out of town and down the winding lane through the golf course to the little community at the mouth of the river where he’d spent every available moment as a child.
Unlike the main town, the