we can, OK?’ Helen said impatiently, and Mark sighed.
‘Well, all I can say is things are very different in Australia.’
Helen muttered something which sounded suspiciously like, ‘So how come you didn’t stay there?’ and Tom shot her a puzzled glance.
He was the one who usually got angry and frustrated, dealing with the limitations of the service they could offer, but Helen hadn’t sounded simply angry, she’d sounded positively antagonistic.
Awkwardly he cleared his throat. ‘I don’t know what happens in Australia, but under the NHS there’s a nine-month to a year waiting list for non-urgent surgery, and a cornual anastomosis is considered non-urgent. I know,’ he said as Mark’s eyebrows shot up, ‘but that’s how it is.’
‘Then why the hell do you put up with it?’ Mark demanded. ‘Dammit, Tom, you’re a first-rate surgeon. If you went to Oz, or to the States, you could be head of your own department, and not have to put up with this sort of crap.’
‘Perhaps,’ Tom said, ‘but Helen and I like the Belfield. It’s where we met, and we’ve a fondness for the old place.’
‘Which doesn’t mean we’re always going to stay here,’ Helen said swiftly. ‘I mean, who’s to say what’s round the corner for any of us—what changes we might make?’
Mark glanced from her to Tom thoughtfully. ‘So it’s only old Tom who’s reluctant to move, is it? You always did play it too safe, mate.’
‘Whether I do or whether I don’t is immaterial,’ Tom replied, wondering what on earth had made Helen say what she had, and not liking the reference to himself as ‘old’ either. ‘Mrs Scott is certainly not going to have to wait nine months when we’ve got someone with your experience on the team. I’ll have a word with Gideon, insist we get her in while you’re here to help me.’
‘In that case, I’d better take a closer look at these X-rays,’ Mark said. ‘If we’re going to be operating on this lady, I want as much information as I can get.’
Tom nodded but he couldn’t help but notice that when Mark moved closer to the screen, Helen instantly stepped back.
‘If you don’t need me any longer I have a mass of paperwork to catch up on,’ she said. ‘Not to mention my antenatal clinic in an hour.’
She was already heading for the door, and Tom quickly followed her. ‘Thanks for holding the fort for me, love. I really appreciate it.’
She smiled up at him, but she didn’t even so much as glance in Mark’s direction as she left, and Mark’s eyebrows rose.
‘Whoa, but did it suddenly get distinctly chilly in here, or what?’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Tom observed tightly. ‘Criticising our department and its equipment wasn’t exactly the smartest thing in the world to do.’
‘Just telling it like it is,’ Mark replied. ‘It’s not my fault if Helen is hypersensitive to criticism. In fact…’ He came to a halt as he encountered a look in Tom’s eyes. A look he’d never seen before. A look that held neither warmth nor amusement, and he held up his hands defensively. ‘Hey, no offence meant, mate. Look, I’ll apologise to her, OK?’
‘Do that,’ Tom declared, his grey eyes hard, cold. ‘I don’t like my wife upset, and I won’t have her upset. Not by you, not by anyone.’
Mark stared at him for a second. ‘Tom the protector. Tom the defender. You’ve changed since our med days, haven’t you?’
‘If you mean I’ve grown up—realised what and who is important in my life—then, yes, I’ve changed,’ Tom replied. ‘Helen is more important to me than my job, this hospital and our friendship, and you’d be well advised never to forget that.’
Mark grinned. ‘Whoops, but I’ve suddenly got that chilly feeling again. Look, I’ve said I’ll apologise,’ he continued as Tom’s eyebrows snapped together. ‘I’ll even grovel if I have to. Satisfied now?’
Tom nodded. ‘Mark, listen—’
‘Helen doesn’t seem to like me very much, does she?’
Helen didn’t appear to, but there was no way Tom was going to agree. ‘Helen likes everyone,’ he said evasively.
‘OK, let’s just say I’m not feeling the love,’ Mark observed, and Tom couldn’t help but laugh.
‘The trouble with you, my friend, is that far too many women have been bowled over by your charm over the years, and it’s a blow to your ego when one isn’t.’
‘You reckon?’
‘I reckon,’ Tom confirmed. ‘In fact, I think it’s high time you settled down.’
‘And deny all the lovely women out there the pleasure of my company? No way.’
‘Maybe that kind of attitude is OK when you’re in your twenties,’ Tom said, horribly aware that he suddenly felt very old, ‘but you’re thirty-four—’
‘So I should be looking for a woman to settle down with,’ Mark completed for him in a mock-sonorous tone. ‘Perhaps I would if all the best ones weren’t already taken.’ One corner of his mouth turned up. ‘Women like your Helen. Now, if I’d met her before I went to Oz—’
‘You wouldn’t have stood a chance.’ Tom laughed. ‘It was love at first sight for Helen and me.’
It had been, and the love was still there, he thought as he began labelling the X-rays and putting them into Rhona Scott’s file. Even now she could still make his pulses race simply by smiling at him. Even now he felt a tightness round his heart when he saw her coming out of the shower, her hair all tousled, her skin pink and glowing.
He glanced thoughtfully across at Mark. When they’d been students he’d always envied Mark his good looks and easy charm, but he didn’t envy him now. Flitting from woman to woman, moving on when he got bored or if some other female caught his eye. It was an empty sort of a life, rootless and ultimately unsatisfying.
No, he didn’t envy Mark. He had a wife who loved him, two wonderful children, whereas Mark…Mark had absolutely nothing that he wanted any more.
‘He’s gorgeous, isn’t he?’ Liz Baker said dreamily as she switched on the staffroom kettle. ‘His thick black hair, his tan, those eyes…’
‘Looks aren’t everything,’ Helen interrupted tersely. ‘In fact, give me an honest, ordinary-looking man any day of the week.’
‘Hear! hear!’ Annie agreed.
‘Mark Lorimer,’ Liz continued, as though neither of them had spoken. ‘Even his name sounds romantic, don’t you think? Like something out of a story book.’
‘Grimm’s Fairy Tales, perhaps?’ Helen suggested, and Liz looked momentarily startled, then laughed.
‘Oh, come on, Helen, you’re not telling me you don’t think he’s seriously attractive?’
He was, but that didn’t give him the right to waltz into the Belfield and criticise the way they worked, Helen thought, unwrapping her sandwiches with more vigour than was strictly necessary. Neither did it give him the right to imply that she and Tom were a pair of old stick-in-the-muds with no ambition because they’d never worked anywhere else. They had children, for heaven’s sake—obligations. Something that Mark Lorimer clearly knew nothing about.
‘Madge in Paediatrics thinks he’s handsome,’ Liz continued. ‘So does Phyllis in Radiography—’
‘Madge and Phyllis should stop behaving like a pair of silly moon-struck schoolgirls,’ Helen retorted, then bit her lip when Liz’s mouth fell open.
Oh, Lord, but that had been an incredibly bitchy thing to say. Even Annie clearly thought it