As he sits there, quiet and serious and considering, I am momentarily floored by uncertainty: what if he doesn’t want me to stay? What if this isn’t his ideal outcome? What if he’s compiled a spreadsheet about me as well, and I end up in the wrong column? What if he’s about to tell me it’s over?
It is an awful feeling, one that fills me with dread – and it is a feeling I recognise as my default setting before I arrived here. That toxic combination of anxiety and alarm, the mental tensing of muscles to prepare for the next blow.
I take a deep breath, remind myself that I am more than this now – I am stronger, I am more resilient. That I will be able to cope with whatever life throws at me.
Jake finishes his drink, and puts his arm casually around my shoulder in a daring move of public affection.
“That,” he finally says, gently pulling me closer to him, “is what I hoped you say. I didn’t want to put any pressure on you, but the thought of you leaving… Well, it didn’t fill me with joy. I like having you here. I like what we have together. I like you being in my life. Now, unless you have any objections, I think we should retire to my chambers and celebrate.”
ChapterTwenty-Nine
Jake’s ‘chambers’, as he calls them, are actually a suite of self-contained rooms at the back of the inn. They don’t have the best of views – out onto the car park – but once the curtains are closed it is gloriously private.
I am woken up in his bed, way before I want to move, by Larry yapping and licking my face. I calm him down, and yawn as I look at Jake beside me. He is fast asleep, and I feel a rush of tenderness as I take in the shadowed outline of his features: the cheekbones, the lips, the dusting of dark stubble on his jaw. I realise that I could stare at him for hours and not get bored of the view, and I fear I am coming perilously close to the third L. The scariest one of all.
Larry is still agitated, and I glance at my phone, wondering if it’s later than it feels. No, I see, it is just after 4am, and still completely dark outside. I notice that I have two missed calls, both from Connie, and sit up, suddenly alert.
I quietly throw on my clothes, and follow Larry out of the bedroom and into the lounge. He runs to the coffee table, woofing and circling as we near it, and I am groggy and confused and not at all sure what has unsettled him so much.
I spot my abandoned bag, and am gripped with a sense of unease. The bag contains my walkie, and I left it in another room all night. I am not on call, there is no obligation for me to be available 24 hours a day, but still…what if I missed something? What if Connie needs me? What if Larry is squawking because someone was looking for Dr Zhivago?
I grab my bag, rummage around for the walkie – but unlike the phone, there is no way to know if I’ve missed anyone. Connie had called just after two, and again half an hour later. There is no message, but that could be because the signal dropped out. It could have been a pocket dial. She could have been drunk and looking for a partner in crime – but it could be something else.
I make a decision, shove my feet into my trainers, grab a fleece and leave the inn. Larry stays at my side as I jog across the green, calling at the attic to retrieve my medical bag, then heading straight for Connie’s house. If the lights are off and all looks well, I will have lost nothing; I will simply go back to bed and sleep for a few more hours.
As I arrive outside her home, I see that the living room light is on, as well as one of the upstairs bedrooms. I knock on the door, and within seconds she answers. Her hair is wild, her cheeks are red, and she looks flustered.
“Oh! Ella! I’m so glad you’re here,” she says, ushering me inside. “I tried the phone, but it’s crap, and I tried the walkie, and I sent Sophie round to get you, but…”
She is wittering, hands flapping in the air, looking small and bewildered in her pink flannelette pyjamas.
“I’m here now,” I say, sounding a lot more calm than I feel. “What’s wrong? Is it Dan?”
She nods, and her words spill out in a rush: “Yes! He was okay when I checked on him before I went to bed, just a bit hot and bothered, but enough himself to tell me to eff off and stop hovering…but, well, I’m his mum, and it’s kind of my job to hover, isn’t it? I tried going to sleep but I couldn’t, I kept sneaking in to check on him. And the last time I did, he was even more hot, and he wasn’t making much sense, just blabbering…and I’m probably totally over-reacting, but I’m worried this might not just be a cold!”
I ask her a few more questions, and she tells me he hasn’t got out of bed other than to use the loo since the day before. She hasn’t taken his temperature, but tells me he’s feverish to the touch, and that when she switched the lights on, he hid his face under the duvet.
We always tell parents to trust their instincts about their children, and even though Dan is hardly an infant, he is still Connie’s baby – and she is not the kind of person to be so easily rattled. I hide my own fears as we make our way upstairs. I notice Sophie’s door is open, and she waves at me from her perch on the side of her bed, face pale and tired.
By the time I kneel by Dan’s side, I know there is something very wrong. He is still, his skin is clammy, and when I take his temperature it is registering at 39.5. I try to talk to him, but he is delirious, pushing my hands away as I examine him, recoiling from every touch.
“Has he been vomiting?” I ask Connie. “Headache?”
“No to the first, yes to the second…is he okay, Ella? I shouldn’t have waited should I?”
She sounds distraught, and I send her downstairs to get a glass of water just to give her something to do. While she is gone, I extract one of Dan’s legs from beneath his tangled sheets, push up the jogging bottoms he is wearing. I use my phone torch to check over his skin, and blink away the panic when I see a small patch of red and purple blotches.
I hear Connie running up the stairs, and when she passes me the glass of water, I gulp it down – I don’t need a drink, but I do need the glass. I press it against the rash on his calf, and the spots do not fade. I lean back on my knees, and take one long breath. I want to cry. I want to yell. I want to bang my head against the wall – but I don’t have time for any of that.
“Connie,” I say quietly, “we need to get Dan to hospital.”
“I knew it!” she wails. “I shouldn’t have waited! I just kept thinking he’d be all right in the morning…”
“You called me,” I reply firmly, clamping down on my own guilt at not answering her, “and now we have to act. Would it be quicker to take him there ourselves, or call for an ambulance – you know better than I do.”
I see her mind kick into action, and eventually she replies: “Quicker if we take him. But how? How will we get him there? I don’t think he can walk down the stairs!”
She is right. He is too sick, and he is also too big for us to carry. I run through the possibilities – I don’t want to ask George for help, because despite all of his claims to eternal youth, he is in his late 80s. Archie has the girls to look after, and as yet I don’t know exactly what we’re dealing with here – I don’t want to expose him or them to anything contagious.
