in the summer dawn, then set off for the hospital once more.
* * *
Josh was discharged on Sunday morning, and as he swung himself along the garden path on a small pair of crutches Selina was just glad to have him home again.
‘One of the paramedics came in to see me last night after you’d gone, Mum,’ he’d said earlier when she’d arrived on the ward.
‘Really! Which one?’
‘The new one…Kane.’
‘That’s strange!’ she exclaimed. ‘He would have been off duty by then.’
‘Mmm, he was. He brought me some comics and sweets…and told me to look where I was going in future. He asked where you were and I said you’d gone home to have a rest.’
‘I see.’
She didn’t really. It had been a kind thought, but was it because he was sorry for them both?
Jill, Gavin and their three-year-old twin daughters called round in the afternoon, and after the tension of the last few days it was nice to have the house filled with noise and laughter.
‘So what about next week?’ Jill asked as they were leaving. ‘When are you going back to work?’
‘Not until I’m happy to leave Josh,’ she told her. ‘You’ve got your hands full with the twins and I don’t want to make life difficult for you.’
‘You won’t be,’ Jill told her serenely. ‘We’re used to having him around and the twins are fascinated by the crutches.’
‘Then in that case I might go in on Tuesday. I should have been on nights today and tomorrow, but the station officer has arranged for one of the other trainees to fill in for me. Which means that I’ll be going back to day shifts.’ She paused and then added meaningfully, ‘With my new partner.’
‘And who might that be?’ Gavin asked.
‘The paramedic who came out to Josh.’
‘So you’ve already met?’
‘Yes, we’ve already met,’ she said glumly.
He laughed.
‘And what did he think of your trendy outfit?’
What had he thought? she wondered. Especially when he’d seen what had been under the raincoat.
‘Cheer up, sis,’ he said reassuringly. ‘Wait till he sees you in action. You’ll knock him cold.’
‘I hope not,’ she said with gloom still upon her. ‘He’s not exactly the warmest person I’ve ever met.’
CHAPTER TWO
AS HE’D let himself into a soulless flat in a high-rise block in the city centre on the Friday night, Kane’s mind had been on his meeting with Selina Sanderson earlier in the day.
First there’d been the ride in the ambulance when, mother of the victim or not, he’d wanted to throttle her for trying to take over.
At that time he hadn’t known who she was, and he’d been thinking ever since what a bizarre way it had been of getting to know each other.
Then there’d been the brief visit to her home and the glimpse of what she hadn’t been wearing beneath the raincoat. She was quite something in an understated way, he thought as he filled the kettle at a well-used stainless-steel sink.
It was sad that she’d lost her husband so young. Even more sad had been the youngster crying for the dad he wasn’t ever going to see again.
As he soaped himself under the shower it occurred to him that it was the first time in days he’d thought about anyone but himself.
It had taken the frantic young mother and the injured child to make him take a good look at himself, and he wasn’t too chuffed at what he was seeing.
You need to snap out of it, he told himself. It’s over and done with. You came out of it with your reputation untarnished, so what’s the problem?
It didn’t make him feel any less angry, though, and future working partners of the opposite sex would be kept at a wary arm’s length…even if they were leggy, blonde and appealing.
He’d never had trouble with women before. They were attracted to him for some reason and he’d had some pretty interesting relationships.
Yet they’d never lasted. There’d never been anyone that he’d wanted to make a commitment to. Of all things, he didn’t like to be pursued and that was how it had been with Eve Richards.
It still made his skin crawl when he thought about what she’d done, even though it had come to light that there’d been extenuating circumstances.
He’d decided to move as far away as he could get from her, and when she’d found out Eve had complained that she’d been sexually harassed by him.
If he hadn’t been so devastated it might have been amusing, as she had been the one guilty of that. From the moment she’d been assigned to him as an ambulance technician she had been like an infatuated limpet. Touching him whenever the opportunity arose. Buying him gifts. Inviting him out to lunch. And in the end blatantly asking him to sleep with her.
If she’d been the last woman on earth he wouldn’t have wanted to do that. She was reasonably attractive in a sloppy sort of way, but definitely not his type, and in the end he had asked for her to be partnered with another woman.
The station officer had been sympathetic, but new rotas and staff shortages had meant that the move had been a long time coming and in the end Kane had decided that the only thing to do had been to remove himself from her orbit.
There was a hysterical scene when she knew he was going and the next thing was the complaint against him. It was his word against hers and he knew with a sinking feeling that a woman was often believed in that sort of situation.
But where the station officer had been slow in the first instance, he moved quickly when the complaint was made and had the authorities delve into Eve Richards’s records.
They discovered that she’d been treated for a severe mental disorder in the past and it had been overlooked when she’d applied to join the ambulance service.
It made him feel less angry with Eve but furious with those responsible for him having to endure such harassment, even more so because their patients could have been put at risk by her unstable behaviour.
For weeks he didn’t know whether he was coming or going. Whether he would be suspended. Whether the position in the north that he’d accepted would be lost if he couldn’t take it up on the date specified.
A date for a disciplinary hearing was set and it was very near to the time when he was due to move to Cheshire to start the new job. He was summoned to attend and did so, angry at the kind of limbo he found himself in.
However, the medical evidence regarding Eve’s state of mind was so conclusive that before he knew it he was cleared of the charge.
The relief was exquisite, and though those in authority tried to persuade him to stay he was adamant that he was leaving.
And now here he was. In a dingy flat which was all he could find at such short notice.
He wondered if he would have been so aware of its shortcomings if he hadn’t been to Selina’s cottage in the delightful Pennine village. Maybe he ought to move in that direction when he started house-hunting…just as long as no one was going to get any wrong ideas.
With mother and child still on the edge of his consciousness, he popped in to see the boy on Saturday night when his shift was over.
It was done on impulse. He’d gone to buy an evening paper and had ended up buying comics and sweets at the same time, and as the