and the excitement it occasioned in the residents and staff at the care home. I was working that day, and happy to miss it.
Katarina hurries in, wearing a red Santa hat with a white pom-pom that matches the one she put on my head when I arrived. She has on a tinsel bracelet and necklace, too. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Just a water spill. All dry now.’ I hold out the photograph. ‘How thoughtful,’ I say to Katarina. ‘Is this from you?’
She nods. ‘I think Mrs Lawrence likes it.’
‘She does. That was so kind of you.’ I am trying to seem pleased when I am anything but. But the damage is done. However I seem, it will make no difference now.
There is a tagline beneath the photograph. The Princess Royal talks to Oaks resident Beatrice Lawrence, 93.
It is the sight of my grandmother’s name in print that makes my breath catch in a blend of fear and nausea. All the things I have done. All the measures I have taken. Except for this photograph. This is what I missed. What I didn’t foresee. A tiny thing that might make all the difference. The chance is small, but I know better than anybody that I must prepare for the possibility that this will lead him straight to me.
Two years and eight months earlier
Cornwall, April 2016
The three years since I failed to join MI5 passed slowly, with little to show for them. I spent the time taking care of my grandmother, moving her into a nursing home, and working behind the counter of the town pharmacy that Milly’s father owned.
Everything changed when Milly helped me to get a new job as a ward clerk in the hospital where she worked as a nurse. On my first day, when there was a telephone call for Dr Zachary Hunter, I knew exactly where to find him. The click-clack of his shoes let me track him like the crocodile in Peter Pan.
I hovered in the doorway of a side room, watching Dr Hunter examine a patient whose eyes were closed. The woman’s arm fell from the bed and dangled as he manoeuvred her.
‘Dr Hunter?’ Those were the first words I ever said to him. ‘GP on the phone.’
I felt professional. I felt as if I were starring in a television drama set in a hospital. I felt proud that I was being so helpful. I was extra-diligent. I paid attention to absolutely everything and everyone. Already, I was on top of it all.
Dr Hunter’s back was towards me. Otherwise, I might have seen that he was rolling his eyes in irritation. If he hadn’t been pulling the red triangle above the patient’s bed, so that the siren went off and the lights flashed, I might have heard him swearing under his breath at the idiot new girl.
What I saw, though, when he turned his head, was a calm face, filled with energy and intelligence. What I heard, as he gave me clear, succinct instructions, was an authoritative voice. ‘Dial 2222. Say, “Adult cardiac arrest on the cardiac unit”. Go. Now, Holly. And call me Zac.’
What I thought, as he began chest compressions, was how does he know my name? What I noticed, unable to look away, was that the compressions were a kind of violence. The patient’s white belly flopped from side to side each time he plunged down on her.
‘Go,’ he said again. And, at last, I did.
Afterwards, I said, ‘Sorry about earlier. I’m still learning how it all works.’
He looked at me carefully. ‘It can be overwhelming when you’re new. You’ll learn quickly. And thank you for passing on the message from the GP.’
It was only then that I properly registered that he was entirely bald, though from his face I’d guessed he wasn’t more than forty. I blushed, not simply out of embarrassment for my blundering, but because he had already won me over with his life-saving heroics, his composure under pressure, and his courtesy, which I did not think I deserved.
Although I didn’t get to learn the secrets that working for MI5 would have revealed, I soon understood that the hospital had its secrets too, even if they weren’t of national importance.
There was a young woman, a few years younger than me, waiting for a heart transplant. Over coffee, Zac spoke to me about the case in a hushed voice. ‘I shouldn’t tell you, but I trust you.’ Even as my eyes filled with tears to hear that the young woman would almost certainly die, I was imagining how I would write about her in my journal. Zac touched my hand. ‘Don’t be sad,’ he said. There was a tender side to him, despite the swaggering.
When Zac walked through the ward, the eyes of the patients and their families followed him like a flower follows the sun. Zac was a god there, and he knew it. He didn’t bother to hide the fact that he revelled in his power. Zac saw everything. When he saw that my eyes followed him too, he strutted even more.
My grandmother had told me again and again that my long-dead father was a hero, and I did not doubt it. He was a pilot, flying search and rescue for the Royal Air Force, so he saved many lives. It wasn’t rocket science to see why I would be attracted to a charismatic and commanding older man like Zac, who also saved lives. But self-awareness and self-control are not the same thing. The fact that you know you are acting like a cliché doesn’t necessarily stop you from doing it.
I was sitting behind the reception desk. Zac brushed his shoulder against mine as he looked with me at the computer screen. I was working on the notes for an eighteen-year-old male with a heart infection that his mother knew everything about, but a sexually transmitted disease that she knew nothing about. Zac was making sure that both were being taken care of.
‘Have dinner with me tonight. I’ll cook for you.’ He was so full of pent-up energy he seemed ready to vibrate, but he kept himself still, in control. He was like that whatever he said or did, though he displayed an unflappable cool in all of his interactions with patients.
‘Your glasses are steamed up.’ I noticed because I wanted to sneak a glance at his extraordinary eyes. One was violent blue. The other was the real wonder. It was a half circle of cobalt in the top of the iris, and a half circle of brown in the bottom.
He took the glasses off and handed them to me, an intimacy. ‘Is that a yes to dinner?’
‘I think so.’ I fiddled with his glasses. ‘I don’t have anything to clean them with.’
He looked at his jacket pocket. I fumbled my hand inside, meeting those bright eyes of his as I did, and found a square of grey microfibre covered in tiny stethoscopes. I wiped the lenses. When I handed them back, he let his skin touch mine and gave me an electric shock.
‘You’d better watch for Mr Rowntree’s girlfriend. If she turns up during visiting hours while his wife is here, he may arrest again.’ Zac was smart enough to make sure nobody heard him say this – it was the kind of talk that could get even a doctor in trouble. A piece of my hair had slipped out of my ponytail. He slid it between his fingers as he walked off to do his ward rounds.
Milly came over. ‘You’re looking hot.’
‘It’s extra warm in here.’ I tried to tuck my hair into the elastic.
‘Not that kind of hot.’ She eyed Zac, who was disappearing into the doctors’ office. ‘Nothing says, I’m a very important cardiologist doing super-cool interventional things like a scrub top and smart-casual trousers.’
I laughed so hard I almost snorted, which encouraged Milly to keep going.
‘That I’m looking beautiful but heroics were needed so I threw this top on outfit is definitely for you. I wish I could dress for impact.’ Milly frowned at the purple dress the staff nurses had to wear. ‘It’s like The Handmaid’s fucking Tale around here, with all this fucked-up colour coding.’
Milly and I kept an incognito blog. We called it Angel’s and Devil’s Book Reviews. Devil found the