chapter Three
Chloe heard it through the open kitchen window, the awful harsh grinding of metal on tarmac. She’d just finished doing the breakfast dishes and was going to spend an hour reading to Jake before catching up with her emails and settling down to work.
It was Saturday morning, five days after she and Jake had arrived in the town and three days since she’d sent her article to the Pemberham Gazette. The editor-in-chief had replied the next day, the tone of his email brimming with enthusiasm. He’d loved the piece, thought she struck just the right balance between self-deprecating wit and shrewd observations of the differences in country versus city outlooks, and wanted to run the article in next Monday’s edition. Best of all, if it was received well by the paper’s readers, he’d give serious consideration to commissioning a regular series of columns from her.
Her own column! Chloe couldn’t help smiling in delight at the thought of it. Granted, it was a small-town weekly, not one of the big national papers. But it would be quite a feather in her cap, considering she’d been in town less than a week. And it would be a stepping stone to greater things. Already she was soaking in the details around her as she and Jake went about their daily lives in their new home, noting with a forensic eye the minutiae of Pemberham’s architecture, its rhythms, even the subtle quirks of its residents’ accents. All were potential raw material for her writing.
The noise grated through her thoughts again. She craned to look out the window but the sound seemed to be coming from somewhere round the front of the cottage.
Chloe swept Jake up from the floor and went to the front door. On the lane outside, a car Chloe recognised as Margaret McFarland’s, a somewhat clapped-out Volkswagen Beetle, was parked half-protruding from her neighbour’s driveway. Mrs McFarland stood beside it, staring down at it and muttering.
Chloe joined her. The Beetle’s front passenger tyre was flat. More than that, the rim had eaten through the rubber and was naked against the tarmac. It explained the noise Chloe had heard.
‘Och,’ growled the older woman. ‘All I need. I was just reversing out to go and do the shopping when it happened. No warning.’
Chloe thought the tyre must have been in a pretty threadbare state to begin with for the wheel to have broken through, but she didn’t say so. She asked, ‘Have you got a spare?’
‘No idea, pet,’ said Mrs McFarland without embarrassment.
Chloe passed Jake to the other woman – he’d got used to her over the last few days, as she’d popped round on a daily basis – and popped the bonnet. She found the spare wheel in its well, and was thankful to note that the tyre was in pristine condition. Chloe located the jack and wrench and hefted everything out on to the road.
‘What are you doing, dear?’ asked Mrs McFarland, bouncing Jake on her arm.
‘Changing your wheel.’
Mrs McFarland looked astonished. ‘Don’t we need to call someone for that?’
‘Why?’ Chloe found a rock to jam behind the rear wheel. ‘I’ve done it before.’
The hardest part, as always, was loosening the wheel nuts, and Chloe had to brace her foot against the wrench and piston her leg to get some movement. It was a warm day for spring, and by the time she was winding the jack she felt her shirt clinging to her back. Beside her Mrs McFarland watched in fascinated silence.
At the end, Chloe stood up, wiping the sweat from her face with the back of her arm, her hands and jeans grimed with grease. ‘All done,’ she said. ‘But you’ll need to get all the tyres replaced soon, I’m afraid. They’re on their last legs by the look of them.’
‘You’re quite the resourceful girl, aren’t you?’ Mrs McFarland was gazing at her in frank admiration.
Chloe hesitated. Mrs McFarland really shouldn’t be driving the car in a condition like that. ‘Come on. I’ll take you shopping.’
‘No, pet. It’s very kind of you to offer. But you’re busy. I don’t want to be a sponger. It’s a nice day, I can easily walk.’
‘Really, it’s no bother –’ But she could see the other woman meant what she said.
‘Come in for a cuppa, though? You look like you could do with one after all your hard work.’
Chloe accepted gratefully. She left Jake in the other woman’s charge while she washed her hands and face in the bathroom of Margaret’s cottage. Afterwards she helped with the tea things and they sat in Mrs McFarland’s kitchen.
‘Settling in?’ asked Mrs McFarland.
‘Yes, I think I am, rather,’ said Chloe. She told her neighbour about the article she’d had accepted by the Gazette, though she refrained from mentioning the possibility of a regular column. Mrs McFarland would probably start a campaign to have every single person in town write to say how much they enjoyed her initial article just so that the editor would be impressed enough to commission the column, and it could all get embarrassing. As it was, the older woman was effusive in her praise.
‘To think! A famous writer, living next door to me!’
‘Well, I wouldn’t go as far as that,’ smiled Chloe.
‘Oh, don’t put yourself down, dear,’ said Mrs McFarland. ‘The people who lived here before you were so dull, they were practically fossilised.’
She went on to describe several of her circles of friends and told Chloe how excited they were at the prospect of meeting her. Chloe’s heart sank a little. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to cope with a whole bevy of ladies like Margaret McFarland.
As the teapot emptied and the plate of biscuits became increasingly depleted, Chloe began to make moves to leave. She sensed that the other woman wanted to ask her something but was holding back. Figuring that if it was really important Mrs McFarland would come out with it at some point, Chloe thanked her for the tea and gathered up Jake.
Mrs McFarland blurted: ‘He’s nice, that Dr Carlyle, isn’t he?’
Chloe tried not to gape at her. Whatever she’d been expecting the older woman to say, it wasn’t that.
‘I’m not sure what you mean.’
‘Well... you know.’ For the first time there was an awkwardness about Mrs McFarland that was at odds with her usual chatty obstinacy. ‘He’s a nice man. Charming, friendly. Decent. And very good-looking.’
Sighing heavily, Choe sat down again. ‘Margaret. Just what exactly are you implying?’
‘Implying? Nothing, nothing. Oh, my dear, I didn’t want to cause offence. It’s just...’
Chloe didn’t help her, just sat gazing at her, waiting for her to find her voice. Mrs McFarland drew herself up as though about to take a plunge off a diving board.
‘It’s just that Connie Simkins saw the two of you, Dr Carlyle and yourself, chatting in the supermarket the other day. And you looked like you were getting on well, with your two wee bairns, and Connie thought what a nice-looking pair you made.’ She closed her mouth with a snap as though preventing the words from unsaying themselves.
Chloe broke eye contact with the other woman, shook her head slowly in disbelief. ‘People have actually been saying things like that?’
‘Not people, dear,’ Mrs McFarland said hastily. ‘Just... Connie. And a couple of others of us.’ Chloe knew her feelings must be starting to show in her expression because Mrs McFarland’s eyes widened. ‘Look, it was bound to happen. It’s a small town. Dr Carlyle’s an eligible, unattached young man. You arrive, pretty, also young and... well, and on your own. Naturally people are going to start wondering.’
Chloe pressed her palms together and touched her fingertips to her lips. She hardly knew where to start. At last she looked Mrs McFarland directly in the eye.
‘Margaret,’ she said. ‘I’d really rather you and your friends didn’t talk about me, speculate like this, behind my back.’
‘I didn’t mean any –’
‘I know you didn’t. You’ve been very welcoming, and a good friend to me. But I’m not looking for any relationship. Jake is my life now, and there isn’t room for anybody else. I certainly didn’t move to Pemberham looking for romance, or even a quick fling.’ Chloe felt her anger rising and fought it down. ‘Jake left a toy in Dr Carlyle’s consulting room, and the doctor found and returned it. That’s all we were talking about in the supermarket.’ Why was she justifying herself? What did it matter if a group of gossipy ladies invented stories about the new arrival in town? But Chloe realised it did matter. She was a professional person, hoping to develop a reputation as a journalist in Pemberham, and she didn’t need pigeonholing as the latest love interest of the handsome local doctor.
Mrs McFarland looked appalled. She batted her palms against her forehead. ‘Oh, my word. I’ve been so foolish.’ The look of distress in her eyes made Chloe soften. ‘Please, please forgive me. I’m just an interfering old busybody. I should have kept my mouth shut. “Keep your mouth shut, and your mind open.” Isn’t that what they say? You’re absolutely right. It’s none of my business what you do.’
Chloe sighed again, exasperated. ‘Margaret, no harm done. Don’t beat yourself up.’ She tried a smile on for size, found it easier than she’d thought. Mrs McFarland managed to return it.
They changed the subject, and chatted for a few more minutes before Chloe gathered up Jake and took her leave, only a trace of awkwardness lingering in the air. It was only when she got back to her cottage that she fully realised what Margaret had said. It’s none of my business what you do. Did that mean the older woman still suspected her of being drawn to Dr Carlyle?
Chloe decided against trying to work and settled instead for a vigorous spring clean of the cottage. As she threw herself into the tasks, she reflected that small-town life was going to be more complicated than she’d bargained for.
***
With hindsight, and in the grip of a guilt so intense it felt suffocating, Chloe knew she should have consulted Dr Carlyle sooner.
Nearly three weeks had passed since she and Jake had arrived, and their new life was shaping up nicely. The cottage was starting to feel like home, Jake had made friends with another little boy who lived a few streets away and whose mother Chloe had got to know in the local playground, and Chloe’s own work with the Pemberham Gazette was taking off. Her first article had proved enormously popular with the paper’s readers, and the editor, Mike Sellers, had just that week offered Chloe her own fortnightly column. Thus it was that Off The Beaten Track was born. She had the first draft already bashed out and was in the process of editing it.
Jake had been subdued for the last few days. Listless and off his food, he’d been more clingy than usual, wanting to sit on Chloe’s lap when she was at her computer and proving reluctant to let her leave his room at night. She thought he might be missing some of his old friends from London, rudimentary though friendships were at his age.
When he started digging in one ear she had a look down there as best she could, then at his throat. It looked reddened. She gave him children’s paracetamol and it seemed to perk him up for a few hours, but his fractiousness returned.
On a Friday afternoon Chloe sat working while Jake had a nap in his room. She was jolted out of her musings by his wailing cry, and she raced through to find him sitting up in the dimness, clutching his neck. Drool soaked his arm and, she saw, the pillow on which he’d been resting his head.
‘Jake!’ she gasped, trying not to scare him with the terror that crept into her voice. She sat beside him, put her palm against his forehead. He was burning up. Through his tears he was trying to tell Chloe something but his voice was muffled, as though he had something in his mouth. His breath smelled bad, something she’d noticed earlier that day but had reacted to by brushing his teeth more diligently, and his breathing was laboured.
Hoisting the little boy up onto her arm, and fighting down waves of panic, Chloe dashed through to the living room and snatched up her phone from where it was lying beside her laptop.
The receptionist, whom Chloe recognised as the girl who’d been there the day she’d registered at the surgery, took down a few details, then asked Chloe to hold. Long seconds passed, dragging into a minute, two minutes. Jake slumped against Chloe’s shoulder, his eyes open but dull.
When the receptionist came back on and said, ‘Mrs Edwards?’, Chloe had to swallow back her own tears before replying.
‘Yes.’
‘Dr Carlyle says to bring Jake down to the surgery at once. Is that possible? Do you have a car?’
‘Yes.’ Chloe rang off, already snatching up her handbag and keys.
The trip took her fifteen minutes. She parked on a double-yellow line, not caring about the consequences, and tumbled Jake out of the child seat and through the door of the surgery. The waiting room was packed, as doctors’ rooms tended to be on a Friday afternoon before the weekend, but the receptionist nodded to her immediately and picked up the phone.
‘You can go straight through, Mrs Edwards,’ she said.
Chloe passed another woman coming out of Dr Carlyle’s door but barely acknowledged her. Inside, Tom Carlyle looked as he had that first day, casually professional, his sleeves rolled part of the way up his forearms. But his face this time was knitted in concern.
‘Jake,’ he said. ‘What’s up, buddy?’
He reached out to take the boy. For a moment Chloe clung to him, reluctant to let him go. But she relented, even when her son whimpered and stretched back for her.
Gently but insistently, Dr Carlyle laid Jake on the examination couch, tilting the head at an angle so that the boy was half sitting. The doctor smoothed a hand across Jake’s crimson, wet forehead.
‘Have you given him anything?’ He glanced at Chloe.
She had to try twice before her mouth would come unstuck. ‘Paracetamol, this morning,’ she managed.
Chloe watched, transfixed, as Dr Carlyle’s hands moved across her son’s throat, his face, his soft murmuring voice all the while reassuring the boy. He produced a flat orange stick with a cartoon of some sort on it and coaxed Jake into opening his mouth. Depressing the boy’s tongue and wielding a pencil torch deftly, the doctor peered down the boy’s throat.
‘Okay,’ he nodded, straightening. He patted Jake on the shoulder and winked at him. ‘Up you get.’ He looked Chloe straight in the eye.
‘We need to get him to hospital.’
‘What?’ Chloe was disorientated. This couldn’t be happening. Half an hour earlier they’d been at home together in the peace of the spring afternoon. Now… her boy needed hospitalising?
Dr Carlyle was already reaching for his phone. ‘Jake has something called a quinsy. A peritonsillar abscess, to give it its full name. He needs an ear, nose and throat specialist to have a look at it, but it’ll almost certainly need draining.’
‘Surgery?’ She clutched Jake close.
‘Yes, but it’s straightforward. Very quick. It can be done with local anaesthetic, but as he’s just a little guy they’ll probably put him under for a few minutes.’
‘Will he… is it…’ The room seemed to Chloe to be spinning. Dr Carlyle had punched in numbers and was waiting. He raised his eyebrows.
‘It’s curable. He’ll be fine. Good thing you brought him in when you did, though. We’ve caught it just in time.’
‘Oh God. What would have happened if…’
The doctor gave a slight shake of his head. ‘Don’t think about that now. You did the right thing. The main thing now is to get him to the ENTs. Hello?’ he said into the phone, suddenly, as someone came on the line. ‘Chris, it’s Tom Carlyle here. Got a very brave little boy who needs your help.’
The next hours passed for Chloe in a fog of bewilderment, terror and, gradually, dawning relief. Dr Carlyle administered some more paracetamol to Jake while Chloe stripped him out of his clammy clothes. All at once the ambulance was there and she was bundling him into it and watching Dr Carlyle’s receding figure through the rear windows as the vehicle pulled away. The hospital was several miles out of town, a large district general facility with an elaborate façade. Jake began to cry as he was wheeled through the doors into the clinical-smelling corridor, and Chloe kept pace with the trolley, squeezing his hand.
The ear, nose and throat surgeon was kindness itself and put Jake at his ease quickly. Chloe watched the procedure through the viewing panel in one side of the operating theatre. She felt her own throat choke at how small her son was, draped in green on the table, and winced as she saw the length of the mounted needle the surgeon introduced into his open, unconscious mouth.
And at last it was over, Jake snoring in his bed in the children’s ward with Chloe sitting at his side, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest and the slow drip of the infusion set that snaked to his arm. He’d be on intravenous antibiotics for a few days, they’d said. Chloe had no intention of budging until he was ready to go home.
She kept up her vigil for three days, dozing in the armchair next to his bed, feeding off meals brought round for the young patients themselves. Mrs McFarland came round with clean clothes, sweets, fruit, picture books and balloons, but was careful not to outstay her welcome, Chloe was grateful to note. After initial howls of pain from his sore throat, Jake gradually regained some of his usual cheerfulness, and by the end of the second day he was exploring the rest of the ward and shyly interacting with his fellow patients.
At the end of the third day, Jake was awaiting his final dose of intravenous antibiotics before being discharged home. The doctors had pronounced themselves satisfied with his progress; the abscess had been drained, and it hadn’t recurred. Jake was having a nap, and Chloe, drained by fatigue, leaned back in her now-familiar armchair and closed her own eyes, relishing the peace and quiet of the late afternoon.
After the initial shock and panic, she’d had time to find out about the condition Jake was suffering from. He’d most likely had a low-grade tonsillitis for several days which she’d thought was a simple sore throat. The abscess had developed and grown rapidly, and according to what she’d read and been told, it might have progressed to cause obstruction to Jake’s breathing.
She might have lost her son.
For the first time the realisation of what might have happened hit her, and it was like a physical blow driving her back into her chair.
First Mark, and now Jake. She couldn’t have borne it.
Chloe thought about Dr Carlyle’s words to her in the surgery: you did the right thing. He was right, and yet he was wrong. The right thing would have been to bring Jake in earlier, when he first started feeling ill. Instead, not wanting to be a neurotic mother, especially aware that she was at risk of becoming one after what had happened to her husband, she’d dismissed her son’s symptoms as those of a minor illness.
The ENT surgeon had said something similar to her after the operation. You saved your son’s life, Mrs Edwards. But she hadn’t. In truth, Tom Carlyle was the one who’d saved Jake. He could have refused to see the boy, recommending instead that Chloe continue to dose him with paracetamol and call back if there was no improvement. Or, Dr Carlyle might have misdiagnosed the abscess, labelling it as tonsillitis and prescribing a course of oral antibiotics which wouldn’t have done the trick. Instead, he’d seen Jake’s condition for what it was, and his prompt action had worked.
Tom Carlyle had dropped in earlier that day, after his morning surgery. Chloe was gratified, and perversely not a little jealous, when Jake’s eyes lit up at the sight of the doctor. Dr Carlyle chatted with them both, took a quick glance at the charts at the foot of Jake’s bed, had a word with the ward sister.
As he was making to leave, Chloe half rose from her chair. ‘Dr Carlyle.’
He turned enquiringly.
‘I…’ She faltered, emotion surging within her, the accumulation of sleep deprivation and delayed stress almost pushing her back down into her seat. ‘Just – thank you. For what you did.’
He grinned, eyebrows raised. ‘My job. But it’s a pleasure.’
He gripped her hand, and was gone.
Now, as Chloe relived the memory, she felt the pressure of his hand on hers again, and was surprised at how calloused his palm had felt, not at all how she’d expect a doctor’s hands to feel. Did he perhaps do carpentry or DIY work as a hobby? She knew nothing about him, other than that he had a nice manner, and a nice smile, and had saved her son’s life.
Mentally she shook herself. He was still, when all was said and done, one of them. One of the breed who’d killed her husband. His diagnosis of Jake’s illness hadn’t been in any way miraculous. He had, as he’d acknowledged, been doing his job. Anything less would have been a failing on his part. She couldn’t forget that.
Aware, through the fog of bitterness that had engulfed her once again, that she was being grossly unfair, but unable to care about it, Chloe began to pack up her son’s few items in preparation for his return home.
***
The first Tom was aware of them was when Jake collided with the backs of his legs.
Tom turned, surprised, and saw the little boy clinging to his trousers, his upturned face laughing and impish. Tom reached down and ruffled his hair. Beside him, Kelly rolled her eyes in disdain. She was four and unimpressed by the antics of a two-year-old boy.
Chloe came hurrying over, her eyes and smile flashing an apology. She really did have an attractive smile, Tom thought, though she revealed it less often than she might. He’d seen her around town over the last six weeks, here and there, though she and Jake hadn’t attended the surgery since that day four weeks earlier when he’d presented with the quinsy. Tom had exchanged perhaps ten words with her since then.
He hadn’t seen Chloe and her son in this playground before. It was somewhere he brought Kelly every Sunday before lunch, an activity that had become part of their weekly routine since they’d moved to Pemberham back in the autumn.
Kelly muttered a hello, then raced off towards the climbing frame she loved. Chloe prised Jake off Tom’s legs and hoisted him, but he squirmed so much she had to put him down again. He toddled to a nearby miniature plastic slide and began laboriously to climb it.
Tom stood beside Chloe, watching the two children in their separate locales.
She broke the silence. ‘It’s the first time we’ve been to this playground. I thought we’d try something different.’
‘A bit off the beaten track.’
He saw her smile at the reference to the title of her newspaper column. ‘You’ve read it?’
‘Everybody’s read it.’ And he was only slightly exaggerating. There’d been three columns from her so far, and already her style – a combination of whimsy, self-deprecating wit, and the mildest hint of an appealing loopiness – had won letters of admiration. Tom had always found the Pemberham Gazette rather a dull paper, parochial and bland, but he’d bought the last few editions with Chloe’s column.
She said, ‘I’m surprised the Gazette hasn’t roped you in to write a medical column or something.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m not a writer.’
‘No publications in the medical literature?’
He shrugged. ‘A couple of papers in low-impact journals, that’s all. It’s hard to be taken seriously as an author with the name Thomas Carlyle. People think it’s a pseudonym.’
‘I did wonder about that,’ she laughed. ‘Were your parents Calvinist clergy at all?’
Tom pretended to consider. ‘They were probably the most irreligious people on the face of the earth.’
Around them the playground bustled with parents trying to maintain a semblance of control over children running riot in the May sunshine. Tom hoped Kelly or Jake wouldn’t need attention, not for a few minutes more. He was enjoying the closeness to Chloe, the companionability, and wanted to prolong the moment.
He said, ‘Believe it or not, I used to come to this very playground when I was a boy.’
Chloe turned her face to him, giving him an excuse to look at her. He resisted the urge to run his gaze across the contours of her face, the cheekbones, the curved lips. Her eyes held plenty of attraction themselves.
‘I thought you’d only been in Pemberham six months.’
‘I have. Working here, I mean. But I was born here. I’m a local boy. Went off to medical school in London and joined my first practice in the inner city. I decided to move back here once… well, once I became a single dad. I thought it was a better environment to bring Kelly up in.’ Immediately Tom regretted mentioning the “single dad” detail. She might think he was dropping heavy hints. Then again, hadn’t she already worked out that he was bringing Kelly up alone? Whenever Chloe encountered them out and about, it was always just the two of them.
But he’d created an opening into the conversation for her. ‘Whereabouts in London did you train?’ Chloe asked.
‘St Matthew’s. Tough, but a terrific experience.’
She nodded in recognition. Everybody had heard of St Matthew’s, one of the great teaching hospitals on the Thames, along with Guy’s and St Thomas’s.
Tom said, ‘Yourself? Are you a Londoner?’
‘North London, born and bred.’
And that was it. No further details from her. Once again Tom sensed Chloe retreating into herself, as if she’d emerged to taste the day and decided she’d had her fill. She wasn’t cold, wasn’t rude. Just self-contained.
He’d noticed, glancing over her registration form on the day she’d joined the practice, that in the section marked marital status she had ticked single. Not divorced or widowed. Yet she titled herself Mrs Chloe Edwards. Tom was intrigued.
But you shouldn’t be, he told himself yet again. She’s a patient at the surgery. Nothing more. Don’t be so nosey.
His phone went in his pocket and he grimaced. ‘Sorry.’ He fished it out and glanced at the caller ID.
Damn. Not now.
Tom stepped away a few paces, keeping his eye on Kelly at the climbing frame. At the same time Chloe moved closer to her son who was still engrossed in the toddlers’ slide.
‘Hello, Rebecca,’ said Tom.
‘Tom. Have you got a minute?’
Which meant, he knew, that it was going to take considerably longer than that.
‘I’m in the playground with Kelly,’ he said. ‘Can I ring you back later?’
‘I’ll be out then,’ she said curtly. ‘This won’t take long.’
Tom listened. At first what she was saying didn’t register, and he found himself mesmerised by the pendulum rhythm of a child on a swing, back and forth, back and forth. Then Rebecca asked if he’d understood, and when he didn’t reply, she repeated herself.
This time he did take it in.
Despite the warmth of the spring morning, Tom felt a chill creeping through his limbs, his bones.