A Family To Come Home To. Josie Metcalfe

and Kat could have hugged her.

      ‘You might as well lock up and go home as soon as you’ve finished with the files,’ Kat said with a smile, then turned to the silent man behind her. ‘At least it’s only a morning surgery tomorrow, so I should have time to show you all the intricacies of Ditchling’s finest…Ditchling’s only GP surgery.’ A stray thought leapt into her head and she turned back to Rose. ‘Was there any problem with the O’Gormans?’

      ‘None at all,’ Rose said airily, before giving an evil cackle. ‘I just threatened to sit on them if they didn’t behave.’

      Kat couldn’t help laughing, too. Rose’s diet-resistant shape would be enough to strike fear into the rowdiest of preschoolers, even if they arrived in groups of four.

      ‘Right, well, I’d better get going or Sam will be old enough to drive the car himself by the time I get out there.’ Kat waved farewell and set off for the door, all too aware that she had an eleven-year-old thundercloud following her, one who had been glowering almost non-stop at Ben even before she’d introduced them.

      She sighed heavily, hoping she hadn’t just made a monumental mistake. Hiring Ben was supposed to make her life easier, not more stressful.

      ‘I should be back in about fifteen minutes,’ she said as she pressed the key fob to unlock the car. ‘If you don’t mind waiting, I’ll get you a set of keys and show you where everything is when I get back—unless you’d rather have Rose get them for you and settle yourself?’

      ‘I’ll wait,’ he said decisively. ‘There’ll probably be questions that only you can answer.’

      ‘Fine,’ Kat said briefly, managing to limit herself to a single word this time and sliding into the car. If Sam didn’t arrive soon, she’d be making a complete idiot of herself, babbling non-stop. She switched the engine on then glanced into the rear-view mirror to check that Josh had put his seat belt on, before turning her head and starting to reverse out of her parking space in front of the practice.

      Out of the corner of her eye she saw the briefest flash of something moving before Josh shouted out and something thumped against the car. Something hard.

      ‘Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God!’ she wailed as she slammed on the brakes and flung her door open. ‘Sam!’ she shrieked as she leapt out of the car and sped towards the back.

      ‘Mum…I’m sorry! I forgot!’ wailed her youngest as he threw himself into her arms.

      ‘Sam!’ Relief that he was apparently totally unharmed took all the starch out of her knees and they nearly buckled.

      ‘I forgot about going round the front of the car where you can see me,’ he said urgently. ‘It’s all my fault.’

      ‘Well, you’ll remember next time,’ she consoled him, wiping an uncharacteristic tear from a cheek that still retained a trace of childish chubbiness. All too soon he would be grown up and…She shuddered at the realisation that his whole future could have been wiped out in that split second.

      ‘At least you weren’t hurt, so—’

      ‘But he was!’ wailed Sam. ‘And it’s my fault!’

      ‘He?’ Kat glanced up sharply. ‘Who?’

      ‘I think he means me,’ said a voice somewhere at the back of her car, and her knees completely gave out.

      ‘Ben?’ She was reduced to crawling on her hands and knees but she didn’t have to go far to find him, his long legs out of her sight under the chassis while his upper body lay spread-eagled on the ground in front of her. ‘Oh, God, Ben! Are you hurt? Oh, that’s a stupid question! You wouldn’t be lying there if you weren’t. How badly are you hurt?’

      Without even realising how she’d got there, she was at his head, her fingers gently winnowing through the thick dark strands as she searched for bleeding, lumps or, God forbid, depressed fractures. It certainly wasn’t the time to notice the sprinkle of silver strands at his temples.

      ‘Where did I hit you?’ she asked as she worked her way down his neck, conscious of the strong musculature even as she was examining each vertebra for damage or misalignment. ‘How did you fall?’

      ‘My leg,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘I realised you were going to hit it and tried to get out of the way but…’ He shook his head in spite of her attempts to hold it still. ‘I managed to stop my head from hitting the ground.’

      ‘Is your leg broken?’ Her hands were shaking now as she continued her assessment with his arms, not daring to examine the rest of his spine while his lower half was restricted by the vehicle. She didn’t have enough people around to log-roll him.

      ‘If not, it’s the worst dislocation I’ve ever—Agh!’ His attempt at moving it must have been agony but he’d closed his mouth on the curse when Sam had crouched down beside them. Kat was immeasurably touched.

      ‘It was my fault, Mum,’ he hiccuped. ‘I was right behind the car and he…Is he going to die?’ The words were almost hysterical and she suddenly realised just how traumatic this was for a child who had lost his father only a year ago.

      ‘I’m too grumpy to die,’ Ben volunteered suddenly, and when Sam gazed at him in surprise, he aimed an exaggerated scowl at her son. ‘And I’ll get grumpier and grumpier the longer I’m lying on the ground.’

      ‘Kat! Oh, my stars!’ exclaimed Rose. ‘Josh came in to get me. Do you want me to phone for an ambulance?’

      ‘No!’ It was Ben who answered first. ‘No ambulance.’

      ‘But, Ben…’ she protested. It was obvious he needed expert help.

      He hardly gave her time to speak before he was pushing himself up onto his elbows and beginning to inch himself backwards, out from under her car.

      ‘It’s not serious enough to warrant tying up an ambulance,’he declared decisively. ‘Drive your car forward again, then you’ll have room to strap my legs together for support…if Rose will fetch some bandages?’ He threw a quick smile in the receptionist’s direction but if he’d looked gaunt before, now he looked ghastly. His skin was pasty and had a waxen sheen and the muscles in his jaw were bulging as he gritted his teeth to brace himself for the next few inches of progress across the tiny car park.

      ‘You will give me a lift to the hospital, won’t you?’ he asked, almost as an afterthought.

      Of course she would give him a lift to the hospital if he was so stubborn as to refuse the offer of an ambulance. After all, it was her fault that he’d been injured. If she hadn’t been distracted with her thoughts about the way he’d almost shanghaied her into giving him the job, she would have been more vigilant.

      ‘Yes. Of course I’ll give you a lift,’ she said crossly. ‘Just stay still until I’ve moved the car. You could be doing yourself more damage like that.’ She turned to get into the car and saw her two sons staring down at the injured man with very different expressions on their faces.

      Sam’s was easy to read—a mixture of terror that he was going to watch another man dying, the way his father had, and guilt that it could have been his thoughtlessness that had caused the injury. Josh’s was more complicated, most of it hidden behind the mask of impassive resignation he’d worn since his father had died, but she was almost certain she could see a measure of respect for the man’s stoicism.

      ‘Sam, you had better get in the car,’ she ordered briskly. ‘Get in the front and put the belt on. Josh, can you wait beside Ben? I’m going to need your help to get him in the car and then you can look after him on the way to hospital. Can you do that for me?’

      For the first time in nearly a year there was a crack in his impassivity, the sudden glimpse of fear swiftly replaced by pride that she’d asked him to do this and determination that he wouldn’t fail her. ‘No problemo,’ he said with a shrug full of the nonchalance of youth. ‘And if you need some pieces of