A Secret Shared.... Marion Lennox

their names unless they’re hiding.’

      ‘So I’m hiding, but my reasons are personal and nothing to do with my professional ability. I ask you to accept that.’

      ‘So if I ring the medical board and enquire …’

      ‘I’d ask you not to do that.’ Her face was pale but resolute. She stood halfway up the steps, holding onto the rail as if she needed it for support. ‘I’ve taken a great deal of trouble to ensure there’s no link between Cathy Heineman and Kate Martin. One phone call could destroy that. One phone call could mean I need to walk away from all I’ve worked for.’

      ‘You mean the medical board—’

      ‘Couldn’t care less,’ she snapped. ‘I have my change of name recorded. Believe it or not, I’m still a registered doctor with no blemish against my name. I still accrue my professional training points and I keep my registration up to date. But the receptionist who receives notes of my continual professional training updates Kate Martin’s file. I did the name change carefully with only a couple of trusted friends helping. I want no link.’

      There were a couple of moments of silence. Intense silence. She was gazing straight up at him, unflinching. Defiant even. Still, she was pale.

       One phone call could mean I need to walk away from all I’ve worked for …

      This was personal, he thought. He shouldn’t ask.

      But this was Harry.

      ‘Cathy … Kate,’ he said at last. ‘Harry’s lost his parents. He has no one to protect him except me and his very bossy aunt. Helen demanded that I bring him here. I did so with reservations because alternative medicine makes me wary, and the first thing I saw was a dead child. That was followed by a doctor using an assumed name. Your defensiveness might be valid from your perspective but for Harry’s sake I need an explanation.’

      ‘You can’t just let Maisie and the dolphins do their own work without probing into my past?’

      ‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘Harry’s too important for that.’

      ‘You were my friend,’ she said. ‘You trusted me.’

      ‘I trusted you not to break a test tube,’ he said. ‘And they were the university’s test tubes. This is Harry.’

      She bit her lip. Her gaze faltered for a moment. She stared down at her bare toes and then she raised her chin again. She met his gaze with that same defiance, but touched with the defiance was a hint of fear.

      ‘I don’t tell people.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Can I trust you?’

      ‘You can trust me not to tell anyone else. You can’t trust me not to pick up Harry and walk away.’

      ‘Fair enough.’ She sighed and then seemed to come to a decision. ‘There’s wine in your refrigerator. I’m off duty. If I don’t charge you mini-bar prices, will you pour me one? You can have a free beer as well.’

      ‘Bribing as well?’ he asked, but he smiled to soften the words and she managed a smile back.

      ‘I’ll do anything I need to stay hidden,’ she said simply. ‘Handing you access to your mini-bar is the least of it.’

      She was settled in the deck chair on Jack’s veranda. Jack had nearly finished his beer and she was halfway through a glass of wine.

      She’d expected him to push, but he didn’t. He seemed content to wait, giving her the time she needed.

      And she needed time. Her story was simple and bleak and it was something that had happened to a woman called Cathy Heineman, not to her. She was Kate Martin and she’d moved on.

      But Jack was still waiting. If he was to trust her, he had a right to know.

      ‘You know I married,’ she said.

      ‘I did know that.’

      ‘Fourth year. I was twenty-one. A kid.’

      ‘We seemed pretty old and wise at the time.’

      ‘We did, didn’t we?’ she said, and tried for a smile. ‘But I was still a baby. Still living at home, the only child of elderly parents. Ruled by a loving despot. My father’s health was precarious and my mother was terrified. Dad had two heart attacks while I was in my teens, and Mum’s mantra was Don’t do anything to upset your father.’

      ‘So?’

      ‘So that was the way it was,’ she said. ‘Simon was the son of Dad’s best friend and business partner. Almost family. I was sixteen when we first dated. Simon was twenty four and the excitement our parents felt was amazing. The assumption from that first date was that we’d marry.’

      ‘But you obviously liked the guy.’

      ‘Oh, yes. But he was just … an extension of my family. He was older than me, good looking, powerful, and he fed my teenage ego no end. And suddenly I was in too far to get out. When I started university I started getting itchy feet, but by then Dad’s health was failing even more. The pressure was on for us to marry before he died. Simon was pressuring me too, saying he was fond of my dad, we should do it. So I did.’

      She said it almost defiantly, as if it was a thing that needed defending.

      He stayed silent. There was more coming; he knew it.

      ‘Only, of course, then I was a wife,’ she said slowly. ‘Before I’d been a girlfriend, almost a casual girlfriend as Simon had let me go my own way—as indeed he went his. He was training to take over our parents’ business. He was an only child too, so we’d both inherit and the business—importing quality wine—was brilliant. Both families were wealthy, but Simon wanted more.’

      ‘Is that why he married you?’ Jack asked.

      Kate stared into her wine glass for a long moment before she answered. Then: ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course it was, only I was too naïve to see it. All I saw was that he was a nice guy, and my father was desperate for the marriage. I think … maybe even then I was thinking if it doesn’t work out, after Dad and Mum go I can divorce. I was only twenty one. I had my medical career to get off the ground. I didn’t intend to have babies for years.’

      ‘But?’ he said gently, and she swirled her wine some more.

      ‘But,’ she said heavily. ‘But.’

      ‘If you don’t want to tell me, I can get the picture.’

      She glanced up at him then and managed a smile. ‘So little, and you’ll trust?’

      ‘I assume you’re running from him?’

      ‘See, in his eyes I’m not Cathy or Kate,’ she told him. ‘Divorce or not, I’m his wife. I’m the other part of Simon’s inheritance, and Simon doesn’t give up possessions lightly.’

      ‘I see.’

      ‘You probably don’t. The fights we had … First he wanted me to give up my medical studies. After we married he couldn’t see the point. I fought him on that, you can’t believe how much I fought, and I won but at a cost. And after that … every little thing meant a fight. If I defied him, heaven help me. He wanted total control. And then Dad died, Simon’s father went into care with Alzheimer’s and the whole thing crashed.’ She faltered. ‘It seemed … Simon gambled. No one knew. No one suspected. But he’d mortgaged the business. He’d forged signatures so my half as well as his was forfeit. I knew then why he’d married me and I knew why he had to stay married. But after one vicious fight too many I walked away, and then, after what happened next, I ran.’

      ‘Cathy—’

      ‘I’m Kate,’ she said fiercely. ‘I’m Kate Martin. Cathy Heineman is divorced and has disappeared because Simon still thinks he owns her.