But Don said he preferred to go by himself, thank you. No, he had not told anyone he had a sister; they had asked about family of course, but he had not wanted a lot of fuss, so he had said he was on his own. Well, he was sorry if Donna found that hurtful, but that was the way he wanted to play it. Take it or leave it, said his tone, briefly returning to the old defiance. And while they were on the subject, would she please stop watching him all the time, as if she thought he was about to fly for the pills or a cut-throat razor. It was unnerving. He was perfectly all right now, mostly thanks to the doctor he was seeing–he was sorry if she found that hurtful as well, but it happened to be the truth. No, it was not a man who was treating him, it was a woman and she was very nice, very helpful. And now could they forget the matter.
After a while he began to go out again in the evenings, always around the same time, sometimes taking the car with or without Donna’s permission, sometimes walking. He was not especially late in returning home, and he never seemed to be the worse for drink. He did not say where he had been or who he had been with, but Donna knew it was a girl, and bitterness engulfed her all over again because she knew–positively and definitely–they had been about to regain those magical years when they had been growing up. And now some cheap little tart had ruined everything.
She began to follow him when she could–when her hours at Jean Pierre’s could be switched, and when Don did not take the car. This was not prying, it was just making sure he was all right. Because if he really had swallowed sleeping pills and vodka, he had not been just playing with the idea of a romantic death at all; he had been serious.
She was discreet and careful and she was sure he did not know what she was doing, and by dint of being patient she finally found out where he went. He went to the hospital, and he waited for an unknown female who apparently worked there.
From the safety of her car, Donna saw quite clearly the eager adoration on Don’s face, and she saw, as well, that the woman he stared at so longingly was not some doe-eyed teenager, or some breathless young girl of whom he would quickly tire. A scalding jealousy filled her entire body.
When she was sure Don was not around to see, she followed the woman a few times on her own account. From there, it was easy enough to make a vague inquiry at the busy hospital reception desk. She needed to put a name to this creature. But when she had the name the entire thing turned itself around 360 degrees, because the woman was the doctor who had treated Don on the night of the suicide bid, and whose out-patients’ clinic he had been attending ever since.
Dr Antonia Weston. A qualified pyschiatrist. Successful and clever.
Donna studied Weston as closely as she dared. She was a few years older than Donna herself–perhaps late twenties–and she had unremarkable brown hair, and an ordinary sort of figure. She did not dress very strikingly, and at first Donna could not think what Don could see in her. Don liked people and things to be unusual or rare, or to be beautiful and glossy, and Weston was not even especially good-looking. But then she began to see that the woman had a certain quality–a way of looking at people. Would you call it magnetism? Charisma? Donna did not want to call it either of these things, but she would be fair and admit that there was something indefinable about Antonia that drew you to her.
She made sure Weston did not see her, and she did not stay around to see Weston and Don actually meet or try to find out where they might go, because she could not have borne seeing them together. She supposed they met somewhere discreet–some tucked-away bar or restaurant, because of Don being Dr Weston’s patient. But whatever they did and wherever they met, this doctor, this Antonia Weston, had snatched Don away from Donna.
Bitch. Bitch. It did not matter if she was all the sex goddesses of the world rolled into one or if she looked like the back end of a bus; she would be a far more formidable foe than some adoring little eighteen-year-old.
So did this bitch return Don’s feelings? Or was it the other way around: was she leading him on, secretly amused at the age difference, boasting to her friends that she had a toy boy? Getting a kick out of having an affair with a patient, seeing herself as a femme fatale…
Fatale. It was a good word. Things always sounded more dramatic in French. And it was a fatale situation all right, in fact it might be very bloody fatale indeed for Antonia Weston if she did not take her claws out of Donna’s beautiful boy.
Donna began to consider what to do about Dr Antonia Weston.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO