‘Yes.’ There was no getting out of that one because she knew it was true. One of his former mentors was now head of surgery at a prestigious hospital there and had reached out to him only a few months after the accident. Noah had refused then. Just as he was refusing now.
‘Then the correct answer isn’t that you can’t,’ she’d repeated his reply. ‘It’s that you won’t. You won’t choose me.’
‘It’s not that simple, Ches. I just can’t leave Tress and Buddy,’ he’d said. ‘We’re a family. I can’t just walk away.’
‘Don’t you think Tress would want you to be happy, though? She would never stop you being with the person you loved.’
‘I know that…’ he’d replied, truthfully, then stopped, unwilling to take that thought to the obvious conclusion.
‘But you don’t love me enough to leave them,’ Cheska had cut in, too perceptive and too straightforward as always.
He hadn’t said anything. There were no words he could have uttered that would fix this.
‘You know, the sad thing is that if you said you would come with me, that you would leave them, I would probably think less of you, because that’s who you are. You’re the guy that takes care of people. Who doesn’t let them down.’
There had been no malice in her words at all, just sadness. He knew that Cheska loved Tress and Buddy too, had seen what they’d been through for the last twelve months, and she was truly a good person so she wouldn’t want to pile on any more pain. A good person in a bad situation. One who had got to her feet then to leave.
‘Be happy, Noah Clark. You deserve it.’
With that, she’d walked out of the restaurant, and she hadn’t so much as glanced back.
Now Noah was nursing a coffee, a sore head and a whole heap of questions. And his ex-wife would be here in an hour. Today just kept getting better and better.
Carlo returned with the card machine and Noah settled up. ‘Can you keep this table for me for later? I just need to go get some fresh air, but I’m meeting someone here at five.’
‘Ah! You’re taking my suggestion about pasta,’ Carlo teased him.
Noah didn’t want to burst his bubble by letting him know that there would be no long, hearty dinner with his next guest. Whatever Anya had to say to him, he hoped it was short, sharp and didn’t add in any way to the shit show that was already playing out this afternoon.
‘I am, Carlo,’ he laughed, rising from the table. ‘You’ll have to roll me out of here tonight.’
Outside, it was already getting dark, and the cold was biting. A typical February afternoon in Glasgow. Today, he was glad of it as he began walking, unsure at first of where he was going. He’d thought he might nip back to the hospital, but he wasn’t in the mood for putting on a happy demeanour and chatting to his colleagues or – the thought made him groan – for any questions from anyone who’d heard that Cheska had resigned. She was right to tell him as soon as she’d done it because nothing stayed secret in that place. He loved where he worked, but, like all big hospitals, it ran on gossip and speculation.
He decided to bypass the human element and just go straight to the car park, get his car, and bring it back to the restaurant car park. That way, after the meeting with Anya was over, he could just jump in his Jeep and head off to his mum’s house. Yep, good plan. He crossed the road and kept walking in that direction.
At one point, he took his phone out of his pocket to call Tress but stopped himself. She was at work. He’d already dropped in on her and she was doing just fine. Better than fine, actually.
Tress and Rex. Everything about that had taken him by surprise. Something had been sitting in the periphery of his mind since he’d seen them together this afternoon, and it suddenly came to him what it was. Rex reminded him of Max. The same swagger. The same presence. The same aura of unquenchable confidence. Not that he knew him well. In fact, they had never even had a conversation. But Tress had taken him along to a big party at the studio for the show’s fortieth anniversary a few months before and they’d been briefly introduced. In fact, they’d taken his mum and Keli along with them too, because his mum was a huge fan of the show, and Rex had done the whole kissing his mum’s hand and being way too smooth. At the time, Noah had put it down to being just part of the guy’s job, but now, it was grating with him. The last thing Tress needed was another bloke who’d be careless with her heart.
He’d been so deep in thought he hadn’t realised that he’d reached his Jeep. He climbed in and, thanks to the inevitable traffic jam leaving the hospital, it took almost as long to drive back to Carlo’s restaurant as it had taken to walk from there.
It was five minutes to five when Noah sat back down at the table, and he’d barely had time to slide his jacket off when he glanced up and saw Anya being guided to the table. If Carlo was curious as to why he was meeting with two beautiful women in one day, he was way too discreet to ask. Instead, he provided a welcome distraction from the discomfort by taking their orders. Another coffee for Noah. A white wine for Anya.
‘Thanks for meeting me,’ she said, as soon as Carlo left them.
‘Anya, I wouldn’t ignore you or refuse to speak to you. Come on. You know that.’ She did. In the couple of months after the accident, despite the fury, the rage, the pain that day had ingrained on his soul, he’d let Anya stay at the house and he’d taken care of her while her injuries were healing. For asplit second, he’d wondered if they could repair the damage, somehow make it work again, but they had both quickly realised that their marriage had died in that car accident too. Flatlined. No hope of resuscitation.
‘I know,’ she said, almost apologetically. ‘Listen, before we start, I just want to tell you that I met Tress earlier.’
Noah didn’t understand. ‘You met Tress? Where? When? I spoke to her earlier and she didn’t say she was going to see you.’
‘Not even an hour ago. And it wasn’t planned. Please don’t be freaked out, but I went over to our house.’ It was no longer ‘our house’. He’d bought her out of the mortgage when they’d divorced. It was his house. Just like it was his life. No longer a shared existence. ‘I just wanted to see it again. Nostalgia, I guess. I’m trying to work through a lot of the stuff that’s happened, work out how I messed up so badly.’
Again, he resisted the urge to say, ‘Because you had sex with my mate for years.’ No point. Nothing to be gained.
‘Anyway,’ she went on. ‘Tress came by – I think she was putting a case of beer in the house for you…’ That made him smile. It was the kind of thing she would do today. She was thoughtful like that. ‘And she saw me, so we spoke.’
He nodded thoughtfully. ‘How did that go?’
