From Christmas to Eternity. Caroline Anderson

was concerned, everything—everybody—else came second. She fed the children, ran the bath and dunked Lottie in it, then left the girls playing in the water while she gave the baby her night-time feed, and still he hadn’t called.

      She wasn’t surprised. Not by that. What surprised her was that even now he still had the power to disappoint her …

      It took an hour to assess and stabilise the driver, and just five seconds to check his phone and realise he was in nearly as much trouble as the young man was.

      He phoned Lucy again, and she answered on the first ring.

      ‘Luce, I’m sorry—’

      ‘Never mind being sorry. Just get home quickly.’

      ‘I can’t. I told you. I’m needed to cover the department.’

      ‘No. Somebody’s needed to cover the department. It doesn’t have to be you.’

      ‘It does if I’m the only senior person available. Just get another babysitter. It can’t be that hard.’

      ‘At this short notice? You’re kidding. Why can’t you get another doctor? It can’t be that hard,’ she parroted back at him.

      He sighed and rammed his hand through his hair again, ready to tear it out. ‘I think a babysitter might be a little easier to find than an ED consultant,’ he said crisply, nodding at the SHO who was waving frantically at him. ‘Sorry, got to go. I’ll see you later.’

      Lucy put the phone down and looked into her baby’s startlingly blue eyes. ‘Oh, Lottie, what are we going to do with him?’ she asked with a slightly shaky sigh.

      The baby giggled and reached up a chubby fist to grab her hair.

      ‘Don’t you laugh at me,’ she said, prising the sticky little fingers off and smiling despite herself. ‘You’re supposed to be asleep, young lady, and your daddy’s supposed to be at home and I’m supposed to be going out to my book club. But that doesn’t matter, does it? It doesn’t matter what I want to do, because I’m at the bottom of the heap, somewhere underneath Stanley.’

      The young black Lab, sitting by her leg doing a passable imitation of a starving rescue case, wagged his tail hopefully when he heard his name.

      No wonder! Guilt washed over her, and she swallowed down the suddenly threatening tears.

      ‘Sorry, boy,’ she crooned, scratching his ears. ‘I’m a rotten mum. Five minutes, I promise.’

      She settled the yawning baby in her cot, fed the poor forgotten dog and then headed upstairs again to herd Emily and Megan out of the bath and into bed. She’d try ringing round a few friends. There must be someone who wasn’t doing anything this evening who owed her a favour.

      Apparently not.

      So she phoned and apologised to Judith, and then changed into her pyjamas and settled down in front of the television with a glass of wine, a bar of chocolate and a book.

      She might not be going out tonight, but she was blowed if she was working. Stuff the ironing. Stuff the washing up. Stuff all of it. As far as she was concerned, she was out, and it would all still be there in the morning.

      Angry, defiant and underneath it all feeling a little sad for everything they’d lost, she rested her head back against the snuggly chenille sofa cushion and let out a long, unsteady sigh.

      They’d had a good marriage once; a really good marriage.

      It seemed like a lifetime ago …

      The house was in darkness.

      Well, of course it was. Even if she’d managed to get a babysitter, she’d have been back long ago. He pressed the remote control and the garage door slid open and slid shut again behind him as he switched off the engine and let himself into the house through the connecting door.

      There was a bottle of wine on the side, a third of it gone, and the remains of a chocolate wrapper. The kitchen was a mess, the dishwasher hanging open, half loaded, the plates licked clean by Stanley.

      The dog ambled out of his bed and came wagging up, smiling his ridiculous smile of greeting, and Andy bent down and rubbed his head.

      ‘Hello, old son. Am I sleeping with you tonight?’ he asked softly, and Stanley thumped his tail against the cupboard doors, as if the idea was a good one.

      Not for the future of their marriage, Andy thought with a sigh, and eyed the bottle of wine.

      It was after midnight. Quite a lot after. And he still had to finish the assignment. God, he was tired. Too tired to do it, too wired to sleep.

      He took a glass out of the cupboard, sloshed some wine into it and headed for the study. There was a relevant paper he’d been reading, but he’d given up on it. He’d just read it through again, see if it was any less impenetrable now than it had been last night.

      Not much, he realised a while later. He was too tired to concentrate, and the grammar was so convoluted it didn’t make sense, no matter how many times he read it.

      He needed to go to bed—but that meant facing Lucy, and the last thing he needed tonight was to have his head ripped off. Even if it was deserved. Dammit, there was a note on his phone, and it was in his diary. How could he have overlooked it?

      And would it have made any difference, in the end? There’d been no one to cover the shift when the locum booked for it had rung in sick, and he’d had to twist his own registrar’s arm to get him to come in at midnight and take over.

      He let out a heavy sigh, gave the dog a biscuit in his bed and headed up the stairs with all the enthusiasm of a French nobleman heading for the guillotine.

      ∗ ∗ ∗

      She’d heard the crunch of gravel under tyres, heard the garage door slide open and closed, heard the murmur of his voice as he talked to the dog. And then silence.

      He’d gone into the study, she realised, peering out of the bedroom window and seeing the spill of light across the drive.

      Why hadn’t he come to bed?

      Guilt?

      Indifference?

      It could have been either, because he surely wasn’t still working. She felt the crushing weight of sadness overwhelm her. She didn’t know him any more. It was like living with a stranger. He hardly spoke, all his utterances monosyllabic, and the dry wit which had been his trademark seemed to have been wiped away since Lottie’s birth.

      And she couldn’t do it any more.

      She heard the stairs creak, and turned on her side away from him. She heard the bathroom door close, water running, the click of the light switch as he came out then felt the mattress dip slightly.

      ‘Luce?’

      His voice came softly to her in the darkness, deep and gruff, the word slightly slurred with tiredness.

      She bit her lip. She wasn’t going to do this, wasn’t going to let him try and win her round. She knew what would happen if she spoke. He’d apologise, nuzzle her neck, kiss her, and then her traitorous body would forgive him everything and the moment would be lost, swept under the carpet as usual.

      Well, not this time. This time they were going to talk about it.

      Tomorrow. Without fail.

      He lay beside her in the silence of the night, listening to the quiet, slightly uneven sound of her breathing.

      She wasn’t asleep. He knew that, but he wasn’t going to push it. He was too tired to be reasonable, and they’d end up having an almighty row and flaying each other to shreds.

      Except they hadn’t even done that recently.

      They hadn’t done anything much together recently, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d made love to her.

      Weeks