Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series. PENNY JORDAN

the marquee. His shirt collar felt tight and he was hot, too hot, his stomach muscles tense, the meal he had eaten lying like a millstone in his stomach. That damned phone call. A spasm of pain ripped through him, paralysing him with its intensity. It seemed to spring out of nowhere, forking through him like lightning and with the deadly speed of a poised snake. First came the sharp sting of its poisoned bite and then the burning flood of its deadly aftershock; it was a pain like no other he had ever experienced or dreamed of experiencing. All around him he could hear noise but it no longer seemed to touch him; only the pain could touch him.

      Someone was screaming. It was Tiggy, Jenny recognised sickly as she and Jon struggled to get David into a recovery position, his body a leaden weight in her arms. She must not use the word ‘dead’. Not yet … please God, not yet.

      ‘What is it … what’s happened …?’

      That was Ben, his voice querulous and shaky, the frightened voice of an old man, as he stood helplessly watching the chaos erupt around him.

      Someone—one of Hugh’s sons, she couldn’t see which one—was trying to calm everyone down, to stem the panic that had flooded the marquee when David slumped across the table just as he was starting to give his speech.

      ‘The ambulance is on its way.’

      Jenny turned gratefully towards Neil Travers. ‘Thank God you were here,’ she told their doctor simply. ‘If you hadn’t been …’ Unable to stop herself, she asked anxiously, ‘How is he? Will he …?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘It’s too soon to say. Right now he’s alive. We won’t know any more until we get him into hospital. He’s obviously had a pretty major heart attack, how major we won’t know until—’ He broke off as they both heard the wail of an ambulance siren. ‘You stay here with him,’ he instructed Jenny unnecessarily. ‘I’ll go and tell them what’s happened.’

      As they waited for the ambulance crew, Jenny turned to look at her husband. If anything, his face was even greyer than David’s, his skin putty-coloured. He had been the first to react to David’s collapse, reaching out to him as he yelled at her, ‘For God’s sake, do something. He’s had a heart attack.’

      Almost single-handedly he had tenderly lifted his brother off the table and placed him carefully on the ground. He had not said a single word since and that was because he was, Jenny knew, expending every single ounce of energy he had in willing his twin to stay alive, his hand clasped tightly around David’s as though he could physically pour his own strength, his own life’s blood, into his brother’s inert body. It was as though no one else, nothing else, existed for him.

      ‘David … David …’ Tiggy started to scream, trying to throw herself over her husband’s motionless body as the ambulance crew placed him on a stretcher, and she had to be physically restrained by Olivia and Caspar.

      Jenny winced as Olivia used the flat of her hand to give her mother a short, swift blow against her cheek, not out of pain for Tiggy but more out of sympathy for Olivia.

      All round her she could see the shock and disbelief mirrored in people’s faces as they found themselves unable to fully take in what had just occurred.

      ‘What’s happened to Uncle David?’ she heard one of the younger children asking in panic. ‘Is he dead …?’

      It was one of Saul’s children who asked the question and Hillary immediately tried to silence her.

      Poor child. She hadn’t, after all, done anything wrong. Jenny sympathised even if Ben was looking at the girl as though he would like to murder her.

      ‘David … David … where is he? I want to be with him. Where is he …?’ Tiggy was crying noisily.

      ‘They’re taking him to hospital, Tiggy,’ Jenny said, trying to soothe her. ‘He’s in the best of hands now and—’

      ‘They can’t take him without me. He could die without me. I should be with him….’

      ‘Uncle Jon’s with him, Mum,’ Olivia was telling her mother quietly whilst she looked appealingly at Jenny, silently asking her for help, just as all of them were looking to her for help, Jenny realised as she looked round at the shocked faces that surrounded her.

      She took a deep breath and then said as calmly as she could, ‘Caspar, if you could take Olivia and her mother and Ben to the hospital. You can use my car and—’

      ‘I’ll drive them,’ Saul interrupted her tersely. ‘It will be quicker,’ he added as Caspar looked as though he was about to argue. ‘I know the way. Come on,’ he instructed, taking hold of Tiggy’s arm and relieving Olivia of her weight so that she was able to go over to Ben and gently guide him towards the exit.

      ‘I can hold the fort here,’ Ann, Hugh’s wife, told Jenny. ‘You’ll want to get to the hospital yourself.’ She patted Jenny on the arm. ‘Don’t worry, David and Jon might be twins, but that doesn’t mean that Jon …’

      Quickly Jenny shook her head. ‘No. No, I know it doesn’t,’ she agreed, anticipating what Ann was going to say. How many other people were wondering the same thing. David had had a heart attack … would Jon be stricken down in the same way?

      ‘They’re two separate people, Jenny,’ Ann was reiterating firmly.

      ‘I know that,’ Jenny agreed, ‘but I sometimes wonder …’

      Shakily she took a deep breath. Now wasn’t the time to start losing her temper or her self-control and especially not with Ann.

      ‘Are you sure you don’t mind taking charge here? I would like to be there….’

      ‘Of course I don’t mind,’ Ann assured her. ‘You’ll ring us—’

      ‘Just as soon as I hear anything,’ Jenny promised. She could see Ruth standing a little apart from everyone else, Joss close to her side, her arm pressed around him. ‘I’m going to the hospital,’ she told Ruth. ‘Ann’s offered to take charge here, if you want to come with me.

      ‘Max,’ she called out, summoning her elder son who virtually hadn’t moved from the moment David had collapsed and whose face was still blank with disbelief. ‘Max,’ she repeated more sharply when he looked uncomprehendingly at her, waiting until she was sure she had got his attention before telling him, ‘Laurence and Henry will want to know what’s going on. We can’t all go to the hospital. I want you to stay at the house with them. As soon as we know what’s happening, we’ll give you a ring.

      ‘Luke will drive his parents and his Uncle Laurence back and James will take the others. Apparently Luke is the only one his father will trust to drive his Rolls, and fortunately, since he was late arriving, he hasn’t had anything to drink,’ Jenny explained to her son.

      The mention of Luke’s name seemed to have caught his attention.

      ‘God bless Saint Luke,’ Max sneered nastily under his breath, causing Jenny to draw a sharp breath and then bite down hard on her bottom lip. Quarrelling with Max was the last thing she had the energy for right now.

      Behind his back, Ann gave a brief understanding shake of her head. ‘Don’t worry,’ she mouthed reassuringly, ‘I’ll sort everything out here. You go.’

      As she drove her car into the parking area for the hospital’s new cardiac unit, Jenny acknowledged the irony of the fact that she herself had been extremely active in helping with the fund-raising for the unit and was more grateful than ever for all those people who had contributed their time and their money to making its existence possible. Whether or not the unit and the skills of its specially trained staff would be enough to save David’s life was another matter.

      Shakily she released her seat-belt and turned to smile as reassuringly as she could at Ruth.

      The receptionist’s greeting was a comforting blend of professionalism and sympathy. ‘The specialist is still with your brother-in-law,’ she told