Cliff didn’t reply.
Edie placed her head on her arms which were folded on the brown Formica table top and shut her eyes for a moment. Feeling the sun warming the back of her neck and relaxing the tension from her shoulders.
What felt like five seconds later, Edie was awoken by a sharp knock at her office door.
“Doctor Fletcher?” a man shouted from the other side. “It’s Estates, we’ve got your furniture.”
Edie bolted upright, wiping the dribble from her chin with the back of her hand.
Oh no,she panicked, wondering if anyone had caught her while she’d been asleep.
It was her first day in the office, and by the look of where the sun was beaming through the window now, she’d spend the best part of the afternoon asleep at her table.
“Thanks a lot,” she hissed at Cliff, retying her hair into a top knot and rubbing her face vigorously to try and wake up.
She opened the office door to a sight for sore eyes. A couple of guys in boiler suits had stacked a pile of furniture outside her door and were eyeing her eagerly, she hoped it was because they wanted to get the furniture in the room, not because she had missed a bit of dribble or had the pattern of the Formica imprinted on her cheek.
“Come in.” She opened the door wide and hid behind it as much as she could without looking weird.
After ten minutes of loud huffing and panting from the guys in Estates, Edie’s office was a mess of desks and chairs and shelves and a filing cabinet. Shutting the door behind the sweaty men, she turned and did a happy squeal. She stood for a while to take stock of her new items, then shuffled them into the spaces she’d pictured in her head. Now, either side of the window, was an easy chair: low to the ground, soft and comfortable, and a great place to conduct her conversations. There was a little coffee table in-between, and Edie knew already that was where Clive was going to live, next to a box of tissues and glasses of water that Edie would refresh with each client who sat with her. Bookshelves lined the wall on the right, and Edie had an idea for all the boxes of books back at her house now. On the left, a desk complete with matching filing cabinet and a proper desk chair that wouldn’t give her back ache and make her backside sweat if she sat in it for too long.
It was perfect. Just as she’d thought it would be when she had arrived earlier with Finn. Her stomach tightened as her mind wandered to the confusing surgeon. He’d looked like he was drowning at the patient gathering earlier, as though the swarms of people around him were dragging him under. His lack of focus, his lack of engagement had puzzled Edie, and now she was wondering if Finn himself needed some psychotherapy to get through the clinical trial.
She picked up Cliff from the old Formica table-top—making a mental note to have the old table and chair removed as soon as possible from her shiny new office—and placed him in his new home on the low table by the window. Cliff’s leaves seemed to shine brighter almost immediately, despite the dropping sun.
As a psychotherapist herself, Edie knew she would have to continue her own supervision in the new role and find herself a therapist to work with too. Clinical guidance dictated that no therapist could work without therapy themselves, and Edie was in agreement with this. Her own therapy had helped her become the person she was today, but she was wondering if broaching the subject with Finn might run a little close to home. The vibe he had given off was guarded, he’d said himself that he’d built a wall, and Edie didn’t want to break his trust and force him to re-build it even higher, by suggesting he sees a therapist before they’d even got to know each other asfriendsfirst.
She sighed and rolled her desk chair under the desk with her fingertips, spotting as she did so a small note taped to the seat of the chair.
Dr. Fletcher, I found your furniture delivered to my office by mistake. Hope it finds you well. See you at 8, Dr. Cooper.
Scrunching the note up and throwing it into the new waste-paper basket, Edie wondered at the formalities of what Finn had written.Doctor Fletcher?Doctor Cooper? She thought they had gotten past that now, or perhaps Finn just wanted to keep it professional for the eyes of others. But why? It’s not like there was anything going on between them, was there?
“Urgh,” Edie chastised herself for caring so much.
She had moved all the way from London to Norfolk to get away from heartache. And now—at the first sign of a man who made her pulse quicken—Edie was already losing her head over semantics. Rubbing her bump with her hand, Edie vowed to stop being so sensitive when it came to Finn. He was her boss; he had said he needed at friend. The twisted feeling of excitement at the thought of spending time with him that evening wasn’t quite so easy to ignore.
Gathering up the files from the trial and putting them in her bag, Edie gave the room a once over before locking it shut behind her and heading out into the hospital. Tomorrow would see the start of the trial for Edie. She had a morning full of pre-operation meetings with the first of the patients to go under Finn’s surgical knife; Georgina. She would be prepped and in the operating room by midday, which meant she had to be in the hospital by seven. Her appointment with Edie was at nine, and Edie knew that by that time, her patient would already be feeling fatigued with fasting hunger and anxiety of risky surgery. Edie smiled as she remembered Georgina and her husband, George. How the old man had clung on to his wife for dear life.
I hope one day I have someone to hold my hand so tightly they never want to let me go,she sighed wistfully and pulled her heavy bag onto her shoulder.
A thought struck Edie as she walked out of the hospital; the little person growing inside her would needherto hold on to them so tightly they would never let them go. She was the George to her baby’s Georgina. She would have someone who was dependent on her, who needed her more than she could ever imagine. And she was going to have to do it on her own. A wave of nervous excitement mingled with the acid of her empty stomach. Edie felt as though she was going to throw up there in the carpark. She placed a hand on the wall, gulping down deep lungfuls of air to settle herself. A group of junior doctors with their smart shirts and stethoscopes passed her, glancing in her direction, she waved a hand at them to dismiss the concern growing on their faces. No-one could find out about the pregnancy. Especially not the hospital. Especially not Finn.
6
Finn lit the candles on the dining table and turned up the stereo system so the Puccini opera could be heard around the whole of the ground floor of the farmhouse. The rich aroma of chicken casserole filled the air and staved off the coolness of the dining room. It was a room that Finn barely ventured into. He had no need; eating in the kitchen at the old worn table in there and slumping into the sofa at the other end of the large room at the end of the day. It was a cliché, but the kitchen really was the heart of his home.
Along with the dining room; the living room and small office also felt a little neglected as Finn had walked around the house with a critical eye. He’d shut their doors closed behind him. Wracking his brains, Finn couldn’t remember the last time anyone else had been in his home, including repair men. All the cobwebs and dust seemed to magically appear now he knew Edie was coming over. Still, there had been no time to hoover or dust after his clinics that afternoon. He’d had just enough time to throw together his favourite meal and kick open the dining room to let it air. And of course, Finn had also showered and shaved. Even if his house wasn’t looking its best, he wanted to make sure he was.
From the long held gazes to the way that Edie’s cheeks flushed a deep shade of pink, Finn was almost one hundred percent sure that she was feeling something towards him. Just like he was almost one hundred percent sure he was feeling something for her. He just didn’t know what that was yet. A flurry of confusion over the way his heart rate increased and his stomach flipped when he saw her. That wasn’t supposed to ever happen again. Not after the heartache he’d been dealt with in his early life. But the wall was definitely being breached, and the signs were good for reciprocation.
The grandfather clock in the hallway chimed a reminder to Finn that Edie’s arrival was imminent. Hastily, he blew the candles out again and flicked the lights back on.
Too much too soon.
The oven timer started beeping from the other side of the double doors. What with the high pitched beeps of the timer, the reverberating gongs of the old clock, and the morose wails of the opera singer, Finn’s nerves felt ripped to shreds. He was starting to regret inviting Edie here.
Finn blew air out of his lungs with purpose as he pushed his way through the double doors in the dining room into the kitchen. Hammering his finger on the button on the range cooker, he managed to quell at least one of the noises making his blood pressure rise. When the grandfather clock had also quietened, Finn felt his shoulders resume their normal position. He picked up the oven gloves and bent down to open the range, a blast of delicious smelling heat singed his eyelashes together.
