Millie was being led down the hallway when she heard Pav’s voice around the corner. Something niggling at the back of her mind told her to stop, and she came to an abrupt halt.
‘Without my help she wouldn’t even have attended the bloody conference,’ Millie heard him say. ‘So don’t –’
‘Yes, yes, we’re grateful to you for convincing her, but –’ the deep voice of an older man started to say.
‘It was a lot more than just convincing, Duncan. It was a good few months ofpainstakingcoaxing. You’ve no idea the effort my friends and I have put into this. She was totally pathological before we got involved and loosened her up.’
‘Well, I guess she did at least present something,’ the deep voice said. ‘But that doesn’t mean you automatically get twenty minutes to talk. Cut the presentation down. Allow some time for questions.’
‘Look,’ Pav’s voice held all the frustration and anger of earlier. ‘You may have only let me into the presentations because I agreed to get Dr Morrison here, but you have to admit my findings have real merit. I need at least fifteen minutes.’
Millie slowly turned to look at Kira and it was the first time she’d ever seen the other woman anything less than totally at ease. In fact Kira’s face was frozen in horror. Millie tried to take a step back but Kira grabbed both her hands.
‘Listen to me, Millie,’ she said, her voice almost frantic. ‘It wasn’t like that. I mean, okay, at the start Pav wanted us to try to get to know you partly because of the conference, but mostly because he was worried about you. We were all worried about you.’
‘Pathological,’ Millie whispered, looking up to see Pav’s normally tanned face now ashen and staring at her from down the corridor. He must have heard Kira’s voice and come around the corner. Everything made sense to Millie now.Of coursethese people didn’t really want to be her friends.Of coursethere was an ulterior motive. How could she have been so stupid?
‘But now,’ Kira moved into Millie’s space, blocking her view of Pav. ‘Now Professor X, you’re our friend. None of that is about this stupid bloody conference. Since when did I give a badger’s arse about Pav’s surgical career.’
‘What’s going on here?’ Libby walked up behind Millie and touched her lightly on the shoulder, but Millie flinched away and took a few steps back.
‘I’m going to go,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t … I’ve got to …’
As she backed away Pav seemed to snap out of his shock and started moving towards her.
‘No,’ he said, his voice hoarse. ‘No, don’t leave. Please, baby, you know that this was never about the bloody conference. You know that, right?’
Millie kept backing away but gave a quick shake of her head. She felt numb again. The pain would come, but now she was numb.
‘Okay, I’ll admit,’ Pav went on, his voice frantic, ‘I wanted you to agree to come here. I wanted to be given that slot. But that has nothing to do with you and me.’ He moved to her and cupped her face in both his hands, leaning his forehead against hers. ‘Are you listening, Millie? That has nothing to do with us.’
Millie stiffened, then put both her hands on his chest and pushed him away, jerking her face away from his hands. She took another few steps back and wrapped her arms around her middle to try and control the shaking.
‘Leave me alone,’ she managed to get out in a hoarse whisper. ‘Just …’ she backed away further ‘… just leave me be.’
As she turned and walked away, Millie realised why she’d lived within her limits before, despite the crippling loneliness. After her childhood, she’d assumed that she’d become used to rejection, become hardened to feelings of loss. But, as she was discovering now, the pain was just as bad as an adult, and if she’d lived within her limits she would never have exposed herself to it.
Chapter 31
Boundaries, schmoundaries
Pav drained the last of his beer and stared down at the empty bottle hanging loosely in his hand. He tried to concentrate on his next move, on being constructive, but, as seemed to happen continuously over the last month, other thoughts crowded his mind: Millie’s pale face and her horrified voice whispering ‘Pathological . . .’; the accusation in Don’s eyes after she’d come back to work a shell of the person she’d started to be; even worse, the fact that that accusation transformed into worry and even fear, as Millie withdrew completely into herself, working such long hours and with such ferocity that she’d cleared the entire reporting backlog for the department; then the way she looked through Pav when he tried to approach, and the obvious stress etched on her features that those approaches caused.
It was an impossible situation. Millie was determined not to engage with either him or any of his friends, even though they wereherbloody friends too now, dammit! And she’d know that, if she’d justlisten. Nothing they tried worked. She blanked all communication: she wouldn’t answer his calls, she wouldn’t answer the door to him, wouldn’t let him into her office, and was polite but ice-cold when she saw him or the others in the hospital. So Pav was stuck. He felt like his chest had been ripped open and his heart removed. In fact he felt like his heart was working away in the radiology department, losing weight and becoming more depressed every day, and there was not one bastard thing he could do about it. Frustration washed over him and in a sudden movement he drew the hand holding the bottle back and threw it across the room to smash in the fireplace.
‘Jesus,’ he heard muttered from the doorway, and spun around to face Jamie with a scowl.
‘I didn’t give you that key so you could prowl about my house like some sort of stalk …’ Pav trailed off as a small figure stepped out from behind Jamie. Eleanor was staring between Pav and the shattered glass nervously.
‘Don’t worry, El,’ Jamie told her, rolling his eyes. ‘He’s always been a drama queen; it’s all that Mediterranean blood – rather undermines any attempts he makes at a British stiff upper lip.’
Pav ignored Jamie the Dick and focused on El instead.
Of course.
Why hadn’t he thought of that sooner? Of course El would be the best way to get to Millie. There was no reason for Millie to cut El out of her life.
‘How is she?’ he asked, moving around the sofa towards them.
