Innocent Secret

It wasn’t that she needed a man in her life to validate it. She had grown strong and self-reliant in the years that she’d pined hopelessly after Nick, concentrating on her career and making her own way in the world.

That didn’t mean that she couldn’t appreciate the fact that Joe was concerned for her safety. As he’d suggested, she made a point of checking around the cottage to make sure that all bolts and locks were fastened securely.

‘Tomorrow, I’ll change my number,’ she muttered decisively. ‘And I’ll make some enquiries about the new laws about stalking.’

Part of her didn’t want to believe that it was really happening. That same part was trying to tell her that by simply changing her number she would put whoever-it-was off, and she’d never hear from him again.

Unfortunately, the more rational half knew that this was unlikely. The calls had started several days ago and had already escalated from silent calls at the hospital to a verbal one at her home. It might only be one word, just her name, but there was something about the tone of the man’s voice that made her feel uneasy.

Remembered scraps from a programme she’d glimpsed on television told her that many stalkers were satisfied just to observe. It was the ones whose observations grew into a need to make contact and from thence into total obsession that had her listening for noises outside her cottage.

It was a good job she’d already eaten her meal. The nervous cramping of her stomach would have left her with little appetite now. The trouble was, with nothing urgent to do and a busy day ahead, the only logical thing was to go to bed.

A leisurely bath was out of the question. She would feel far too vulnerable to relax. Even climbing into bed and pulling the covers right up to her nose didn’t make her feel totally safe, no matter that the cottage was securely locked.

It was only when she remembered Joe’s final words—a promise that all she needed to do was phone him and he would come to her—that she was able to unwind enough to fall asleep.

CHAPTER THREE (#u38335f78-98b1-5957-847b-0b77b91c96c0)

‘ANY more phone calls?’ Joe asked later on the next afternoon.

The sound of his deep voice set Vicky’s heart beating in an erratic rhythm. She had to concentrate to make sense of the words, especially when she was looking up into those gorgeous eyes. They seemed more green than brown today and filled with the concern she usually only saw focused on his patients.

He couldn’t have known that she’d just put the kettle on for a much-needed break, but Vicky was delighted with his timing. This way, if she was lucky, she might have a chance to talk to him without interruptions.

‘There might have been two,’ she said as she poured milk into both mugs and topped them up with tea. ‘But I’d had a quiet word with a couple of members of staff at the beginning of my shift. I asked them to offer to take a message from any male callers and to say that I would get back to them.’

‘Clever!’ he said with an admiring smile. ‘So it looks as if you’ve spiked his guns.’

‘I hope so.’ She opted to lean back against the edge of the sink rather than join him at the tiny table. As it was, she was all too aware of the scent of the fresh Cumbrian air that clung to his skin and his clothes, even from the other side of the room.

‘I also contacted the telephone company this morning,’ she went on, determined to keep her mind off the way his dark hair had been tousled by the breeze. He must have walked around the building to reach her department rather than braving the interminable corridors and stairs.

‘I explained what’s been going on and I didn’t even have to ask them to change the number. Apparently, the new anti-stalking guidelines mean they’ll organise it as soon as they’re notified that there’s a problem. I’ve decided that until the number’s been changed I’m going to leave it off the hook when I’m home, and I’ve switched the answering machine off completely so there won’t be any nasty surprises on it.’

‘Won’t that be a problem for you, not having a message facility? I’m sure there must be a spare mobile you could have in the interim.’

‘It shouldn’t be necessary. It’s not as if I’m on call, like GPs and midwives,’ she said dismissively, hoping she was managing to hide how much his concern mattered to her. She really shouldn’t let herself believe that it had any relevance—after all, much as she would like it to be, it wasn’t any more than his usual concern for his patients.

‘Even so,’ he said firmly as he leant round her to rinse out his cup, ‘I don’t like the thought that you might end up stranded somewhere at the mercy of some nutcase. If you call in on your way home, I’ll make sure that there’s one left for you at the reception desk.’

Joe’s proximity must have temporarily disabled her brain because she hadn’t even thought of objecting to his bossiness until he’d left the room, and by then it was too late. Anyway, the thought that he was determined to take his concern to practical lengths was oddly pleasant.

‘Contrary female. If Jack had tried that on, you’d have shoved women’s lib up his nose until he begged for mercy,’ she muttered under her breath as she rinsed her own cup and prepared to return to the ward. There were visitors due shortly and she needed to make sure everything was ready for the day’s heaviest influx.

At least she had a full complement of staff this shift, even if they were up to a maximum head count on patient numbers. The fact that they still hadn’t managed to transfer any of the high-dependency cases back across to Geriatric was something they were just having to make the best of.

Owen, their fifty-eight-year-old Down’s syndrome patient with a broken leg, wasn’t even waiting until he’d been fitted with a walking cast. He had been causing chaos, seeming to spend most of his time trying to work out how to disconnect all the pulleys to release the traction on his leg.

Vicky had been at her wits’ end until she’d realised that the attraction was the television at the other end of the ward.

With all the equipment surrounding his bed, moving him closer to the set wasn’t an option. In the end Vicky had contacted Marc Fletcher to ask him to pull some of his hospital manager’s strings.

The result had been the appearance of a small portable television complete with a remote control which would probably need to be replaced by the time Owen left.

‘Sister, I don’t know how we can ever thank you enough,’ his carers said when they’d witnessed the transformation in their charge. ‘It’ll be worth buying him his own television to see him this happy. Mind you, I don’t know how his neighbour puts up with having the channels changed every few minutes.’

Vicky had reassured them that it wasn’t a problem, but she didn’t tell them that the constant changes wouldn’t make much difference to Owen’s neighbour as he was profoundly deaf and far preferred to read his book.

‘Hey, Vicky, how are you doing?’ her brother asked, his arrival just in time for a cup of tea unlikely to be an accident.

‘I’m fine. And you?’ She busied herself with a second mug to stop herself groaning aloud. Ever since her marriage to Nick had been called off, Jack had been turning up at intervals to check up on her. Did he think she was suddenly going to collapse into floods of tears?

The fact that she had cried, but all over Joe’s shoulder, was no one’s business but theirs. Anyway, the tears hadn’t been about the fact that Nick was marrying someone else. She’d already explained, several times, that the decision to call a halt had been a mutual one. If Jack couldn’t accept it, that was his problem.

He was frowning a little as he inspected her face, almost as if he was trying to read her mind, but in the end had to give up the attempt. Vicky could only hope that she’d finally learned not to wear her heart on her sleeve. The whole world seemed to have known about her teenage crush on Nick. She was going to be much more careful in the future.

‘Have you heard about this?’ Jack asked as he unrolled the brightly coloured flyer he’d brought with him. ‘One of the patients, a farmer, brought some copies into the GP surgery today and asked if we could put them up around the hospital.’

“‘Easter Barn Dance”,’ Vicky read aloud, smiling at the pictures of dancing rabbits and little yellow chicks all sporting cowboy hats and clothing. ‘What’s that about?’

‘It’s a fundraiser-cum-social. Everything’s been organised locally—food, music, entertainment. It’s in aid of the farmers who were particularly badly hit by the foot-and-mouth epidemic last year. Apparently, they’ve had their compensation from the Government for the slaughter of their animals, but some of the smaller concerns are living from hand to mouth until they can get their farms properly stocked and running again.’

‘What’s involved in this barn dance, then?’ It didn’t really matter. Vicky would probably go purely because it was for a good cause but it would be nice to know what to expect.

‘According to my patient there’ll be a group doing an exhibition of line dancing, which they then undertake to teach the rest of us. The rest of the evening is more like the country dancing we used to have to do in junior school when it was too wet to play outside.’

Vicky checked the date. ‘That’s this weekend. They’re not giving people much chance to get the word around.’

‘I think they’re seeing this as a bit of a trial run. If it goes well, they’ll run several of them. We might even borrow a leaf out of their book later on when it comes to a fundraiser for the hospital.’

While he was speaking Vicky had been checking the duty roster and found that she was going to be free that evening. This could be just the thing to show the world that she wasn’t sitting at home, moping about Nick’s apparent defection.

‘Who are you going to be taking?’ she asked. ‘I presume this is a couples thing.’

‘You know me,’ he said with a grin. ‘I don’t like to plan anything too far in advance, especially something like a date. You never know what might have happened to the relationship in the meantime.’

‘Relationship?’ Vicky hooted. ‘I don’t think you’ve ever kept a girlfriend longer than a couple of days and I don’t call that a relationship.’

‘Are you any better?’ he retorted, startling Vicky with the sudden edge to his voice. ‘You eat your heart out for a dozen or more years, and when the guy finally asks you to marry him you back out at the last minute.’

There was something in the unexpected sharpness that made her wonder if her Jack-the-lad brother might not have sailed through his life quite as smoothly as she’d always believed. Was there something hidden in his past that had made him wary of even the most elementary level of commitment? Had she been too wrapped up in her own concerns to notice?

‘Well, if neither of us has a ready partner, perhaps we should go together,’ she suggested, shelving her intriguing thoughts for later.