Children's Doctor, Meant-To-Be Wife. Meredith Webber

between himself and Beth he’d never understood, no matter how hard or how often, in the past, he’d tried to analyse it. And it was probably, if he was honest, his inability to analyse it—to dissect it, understand it and so rationalise it—that had led to him allowing Beth to push him away when Bobby had died.

      He’d told himself she was like a drug that wasn’t good for him—that was the closest he could come to an explanation. And though he’d craved the drug, he’d gone, separated from her, telling himself it was for the best, pretending to himself he was doing it for Beth because she wanted it that way, losing himself and his grief in work…

      ‘The lecture theatre’s through here,’ he said, touching her arm to guide her through a door at the end of the passage, touching her skin, Beth’s skin…

      Charles beckoned them forward, indicating seats at the front of the hall, taking his place behind a lectern, waiting for latecomers to find somewhere to sit, waiting for silence before telling all those assembled that the island was now in quarantine.