The Real Fantasy
Author
Caroline Anderson
Reads
15.5K
Chapters
12
Chapter 1
‘How about this? “Busy general practice in bustling seaside town close to Lymington offers year’s post to trainee”—blah, blah—“ten minutes from the beautiful countryside of the New Forest” et cetera, et cetera.’ Tricia brandished her toast at the view through the window of the concrete tower block opposite. ‘Beats this dump. Why don’t you apply?’
‘Lymington?’ Linsey wrinkled her nose and scraped her long blonde hair back from her face. ‘Funny things happened to me in Lymington. I’m not sure I want to go back—it wasn’t my lucky place, really.’
Tricia’s delicately pretty face screwed up with remorse. ‘Oh, Lord, yes, you nearly drowned. Sorry. Forget it.’
‘I fell off a boat into about five feet of water,’ Linsey said drily. She leant back in the chair, arms raised above her head, and twisted her hair into a knot at her nape. Murky, weedy water, covering thick, clinging mud that had nearly claimed her life. If he hadn’t been there—
She released her hair and it fell, slithering down her back like golden rain. ‘It was no big deal,’ she lied.
Tricia eyed her sceptically. ‘If you say so. Still, you’ve got to train somewhere and it sounds nice. Why don’t you apply? Perhaps you’ll meet your mystery doctor again,’ Tricia teased gently.
Linsey’s mouth lifted at one corner in a reluctant smile. ‘Unlikely. He wouldn’t still be there—not after eight years.’
Tricia sank neat, even teeth into her toast and looked across at her friend. ‘Why not?’ she mumbled.
Linsey shrugged. There was no reason—no reason at all. Lots of doctors built up their practices in one place and stayed there for the whole of their professional lives. There was no reason at all to suppose that her mystery rescuer would be any different. The thought had a certain appeal...
Linsey’s nose wrinkled again, but she reached across the breakfast table and plucked the professional journal out of her flatmate’s hand. ‘Where’s the ad?’
The toast waved again. ‘There—middle of the page.’
She turned her eyes to the advert. Tricia was right. The New Forest, with or without her mystery doctor, had to be better than the outskirts of Birmingham, especially for her with her love of the sea.
There were days, working here in this landlocked community, when she thought she’d die for want of the screaming of the gulls and the tug of the salt wind in her hair. She hardly ever sailed any more, but she loved to. Perhaps she’d have a chance, if she got the job.
She slid back her chair, then, scooping up the journal in one hand, she wandered out of the kitchen into the sitting room and curled up on the saggy old sofa, her long legs tucked up, bare feet under her bottom. Tricia followed her, plopping down beside her on the ancient sofa, her diminutive figure hardly denting it.
Delicate, almost fragile beauty as she was, Tricia had all the tenacity of a pit bull terrier. ‘Going to apply?’ she persisted.
Linsey shrugged again. ‘I might.’ She glanced at the date on the magazine, then at her watch. Today’s, and if she moved fast she might get the letter in the post before she had to be at the hospital. She was on duty this weekend and if she didn’t apply now she’d miss the boat. She had a copy of her CV and a letter of application ready in her computer. All she had to do was add the specifics of the job, juggle the wording a little to suit the occasion, print it and bung it in the post. ‘Yes, I think I will.’
It took ten minutes. They drove to the postbox in Linsey’s car because it was the only one with petrol in it, posted the letter of application and went on to the hospital, arriving in the nick of time.
They parted in the car park, Tricia for Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Linsey for Accident and Emergency. As she walked in, an ambulance screamed up to the entrance and within seconds the trolley was bowling through the doors, a paramedic working furiously to resuscitate someone while another ambulanceman ran alongside with a breathing bag.
‘Catch,’ Linsey said to the receptionist, threw her coat and her tote bag and followed the trolley down the corridor to Resus at a run. ‘I’ll take over,’ she told the paramedic, and her hands slid over his, picking up the rhythm immediately.
‘Intubate, please. Let’s get some monitor leads on here fast as well.’ She turned to the paramedic. ‘Right, do we have any history?’
Flung head first into the grim reality of life and death, Linsey didn’t give Lymington, her mystery doctor or the letter another thought.
‘This one sounds good.’
Matthew Jarvis ran his eye over the profferred application letter, scanned the CV and frowned.
‘What now?’ Rhys growled.
He shrugged evasively. ‘I’m not sure we want a woman.’
The big man sprawled across the sofa sighed with exasperation and stabbed his hand through tousled black hair, not for the first time. It had already suffered considerably throughout the sifting process they were engaged in.
‘Matthew, we need a woman,’ he said patiently. ‘With Rosie retiring, we have to replace her with a woman. If we get a sufficiently good trainee, we could take her on. We’ve agreed that. Most of the others we’ve pulled out have been women. Why pick on this one to turn into a misogynist?’
Matthew grinned involuntarily and glanced down, a frown gathering on his forehead again. It was the name of the applicant that put him off, but he could hardly tell Rhys that without sounding like a totally off-the-wall nut case. He made himself read the letter again, and finally set it down on the miserably deficient ‘maybe’ pile. They really didn’t have a great deal to choose from, he admitted wearily to himself, and hers was the last letter—and the best.
‘OK, we could look at her,’ he conceded.
Rhys unravelled his legs and stood up. ‘Thank God for that. Right, I’m going home, such as it is. I’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll go over them all again and draw up an interview list from that bewildering selection.’ His mouth tilted in a wry smile and, with a waggle of his fingers, he left.
‘Such as it is’. Matthew watched through the window of the little sitting room at the back of the practice as his friend and colleague went out to his car, started it up and drove off. Was his home life falling apart still? Rhys and his wife had had a rough patch before the third baby had come along. Matthew didn’t suppose another batch of sleepless nights and postnatal depression was helping either of them. He made a mental note to pay Judy a social call one day, just to check up on her. He turned back to the table and picked up the top letter again.
Linsey Wheeler. Unusual spelling. It was that, of course, that had set off alarm bells.
The only other Linsey he had known had had a catastrophic effect on his life, quite literally. One chance encounter had changed the course of history for ever.
A twinge of guilt and remorse plucked at him yet again, but he suppressed it. He had to move on.
And that reminded him...
He reached for the phone, jabbed in a number and leant back in the chair, the letter still in his hand. ‘Jan—I’m sorry. I’ve been held up at the surgery.’
The voice at the other end was resigned. ‘That’s OK, Matthew. I understand.’
He felt another twinge of guilt and remorse, this one from a different source and touched with irritation. If only she’d yell at him, rant a bit, act as if she cared.
But he didn’t want her to, of course. What he wanted was her indifference, so that his own went unnoticed.
His conscience prickling, he arranged to ring her in a few days, then hung up the receiver and turned his attention back to the letter.
Linsey.
His eyes lost focus, gazing far into the past—so far that fact and fantasy had blurred at the edges.
She had had beautiful hair. That had been the first thing he’d noticed about her. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off it. Long, golden, falling around her shoulders like a glossy curtain, slithering over one arm as she turned her head and met his eyes.
Green eyes. Jade-green, the colour of a tropical sea, crystal-clear and pure, not the murky, greasy sea he had plucked her from just moments later—the sea that had nearly claimed her life.
A shudder ran through him. If he hadn’t been there, she might have died.
And Sara would be his wife.
