The Doctor's Destiny
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Meredith Webber
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11
CHAPTER ONE
ALANA walked out of the hospital, not with her usual brisk stride but with her feet on autopilot as she pondered the problems she saw developing in her precious Ward Eight B—the admittance ward at Royal Westside Hospital.
‘Hey, slowcoach, what’s with you?’
She turned towards the source of the voice then wished she’d kept walking.
‘Honestly, Kirsten,’ she groused at her recently engaged friend. ‘You could dim the radiance a little. Happy as I am for you and Josh, this glowing thing you’re doing is very depressing for a single, unattached-and-likely-to-remain-that-way thirty-year-old.’
Kirsten simply grinned and glowed a little brighter, making Alana wish she hadn’t lost her latest pair of sunglasses.
(Where did all the world’s lost sunglasses end up? Sunglass heaven?)
‘You’re just tired because you’ve had a long day,’ Kirsten said, her overwhelming happiness making allowances for even the grumpiest of friends. ‘And why’s that, anyway? You’ve been on seven o’clock starts—seven to three-thirty shifts—so what are you doing walking home at five-thirty?’
Unable to provide an answer—Kirsten might seriously doubt her sanity if she said she’d been up on the ward, staring blankly at her time sheet for the last hour—Alana kept walking.
Not that a little silence would put Kirsten off the scent.
‘It’s not this hang-up you’ve got over Rory Forrester again, is it?’ she demanded. ‘Honestly, Alana, for someone who’s never met the new senior physician, you’re behaving very strangely.’
‘He’s disrupting my ward!’ Alana stormed, lengthening her stride as anger built. ‘Students in an admittance ward! The whole idea’s ridiculous. I went along with it for a month at the end of last year, then managed to persuade Ted Ryan, the registrar, that it just wasn’t working. The students’ year was about to finish anyway, so it wasn’t too hard. Now, apparently, the phantom is due back and Ted’s got his trousers in a twist over the fact that he hasn’t reinstated it. He tells me they start again on Monday week, whether I like it or not!’
‘Why are students such a nuisance?’ Kirsten asked, as they waited for a break in the traffic before crossing the road. ‘I mean, I know there are a lot of them, and they take up time, but why’s it worse in Eight B?’
Alana sighed.
‘You know they type of patients we get, Kirsten. They’re often elderly, they’re usually either confused or panicky, and for a lot of them, Eight B’s only a brief stopover on their way to somewhere else in the hospital. Depending on what their test results show, they might be transferred to Neurology, or to the renal unit, or slated for surgery and go from Eight B to Theatre then to a surgical recovery area. Most nurses avoid it like the plague, but I love the challenge of helping patients feel comfortable and at ease in the hospital surroundings. It doesn’t bother me that they’re only temporarily in my care. My job is to see they receive the best possible attention, that they understand at least something of what’s happening to them, and what could be happening in the future.’
‘And students mess this up?’
‘Of course they mess it up!’ Alana snorted, when they’d dashed across the road in a small break between two cars and a council truck. ‘In order not to be caught out by a question during a round, students straggle in whenever they feel like it and ask patients what’s wrong with them, and the whole point of being in Eight B is that no one quite knows what’s wrong with them. If renal failure had been picked up down in A and E the patient would have gone straight to the renal ward, ditto acute appendicitis. In Eight B we wait for the results of tests ordered by A and E, and order more if these are inconclusive. The doctors don’t know what’s wrong with half the patients, so how would the patients?’
Kirsten nodded.
‘I can see your point, but as soon as they’re through their studies, doing their intern year, most youngsters end up in wards like Eight B doing admittance procedures, so don’t they need to see these places?’
Alana glared at her.
‘I hate people who argue practicalities,’ she muttered. ‘And I don’t mind them seeing Eight B, even walking through it from time to time, preferably on their way to somewhere else. I just don’t want student rounds in my ward!’
‘Then you’ll just have to talk to Rory Forrester about it. I hear he’s finally due to start on Monday.’ Kirsten paused and looked at her friend. ‘Which, no doubt, you’ve also heard, and which explains why you’re so touchy!’
Alana decided the comment didn’t deserve a reply. Besides, she could hear the sound of a tennis ball thwacking into the practice wall at the end of the tennis court of the Near West apartment complex.
It reminded her of just how long it had been since she’d had any practice. Winter fixtures began in early April, just over four weeks away.
Deciding a hit-up would be infinitely better than practising alone, she mumbled at Kirsten, ‘Ha, a possible tennis partner!’ And instead of accompanying her friend up the front steps of the building where they both had flats, she detoured around the side to suggest a game to whoever was on the court.
A skinny kid with the obligatory baseball cap, bill backwards, on his head. He was either visiting someone in the building, or using the court illegally, but as she watched him chase down the balls he spun into the wall, she decided legality didn’t matter—he was good.
‘Want a game?’ she called, startling him into missing a return. And into using a swear word she pretended not to hear.
He chased the errant ball, then turned towards her, his arrogant young eyes skimming her far from pristine navy skirt and aqua top and bulky but comfortable work shoes.
‘Can you play?’
Arrogant mouth, too!
‘A little,’ she said, her voice as mild as milk, though she wanted to shake the young brat. ‘Give me ten minutes to change?’
He shrugged as if he couldn’t care less whether he played with her or not, but Alana knew from experience that playing was far better than hitting practice balls against a wall. He’d play!
She hurried through the back entrance to the foyer, raced up the two flights of stairs, threw off her skirt and top and leapt under the shower, before pulling on an old pair of shorts and a loose T-shirt.
She found a new tube of balls, grabbed her racket and rocketed back down the stairs, intent now not so much on tennis practice but on beating the bratty youngster.
He was practising his serve now, using balls from a bucket he must have brought with him. Serious practice, then, whoever he was.
Alana watched him for a few minutes, admiring his technique, then moved forward to introduce herself.
‘I’m Alana Wright. I live on the second floor.’
‘Jason McAllister.’ His blank-eyed expression told her that was all the information she was going to get. ‘Toss for serve?’
‘No, you’ve been practising, you go right ahead,’ Alana told him. ‘Best of three? I’ll turn on the lights as it will be dark before we finish.’
She offered the tube of balls and he glanced at the label then checked out her racket. She could practically hear his brain assessing her ability at the game, then the smile, matching the eyes in arrogance, told her he’d decided he could beat her anyway—the phrase ‘she’s only a woman’ transmitted as clearly as if he’d spoken it.
Jason was good. And he was younger and faster, and had obviously not missed as much practice as she had over the summer, but he hadn’t had an extremely frustrating day in Ward Eight B and didn’t have a whole lot of anger to work off.
He won the first set easily, but she took the second in a tie-break and, using every ounce of guile she’d developed over the years, broke his first service game in the third set and hung on grimly to win two sets to one.
‘Best of five?’ he suggested, which was as close to conceding defeat as his youth would allow.
Alana grinned at him.
‘You’ve got to be kidding. I haven’t been practising, and after this little effort I probably won’t be able to walk tomorrow.’
‘Most people let kids win!’ he grumbled, almost but not quite under his breath.
‘I’m not most people and it doesn’t do your tennis any good to have people letting you win,’ Alana countered. ‘But you’re not bad and we made a game of it. Do you live around here? Would you like to play a regular game with me? Or even occasionally?’
The blank-eyed stare returned, and the lad shrugged then began to collect some stray practice balls from over by the fence.
Alana waited, but he obviously wasn’t going to reply so in the end she said, ‘Well, thanks for the game. I’m in Unit 2A on the second floor of this building, if ever you want someone to knock up with. I’m usually home from work by four-thirty and until fixtures start I’m available most afternoons.’
He didn’t answer, simply picking up his bucket of balls and walking towards the gate. When he’d opened it, he paused, turned back towards her and nodded, and she could have sworn she heard a whispered, ‘Thanks.’ But it was the look in his eyes that remained with her—a look that encompassed loss and despair and such empty nothingness it was like being sucked into a deep black hole.
She switched off the lights and left the courts, wondering, as the lock on the gate snicked shut, how Jason had found his way in. All the tenants had keys, but Near West apartment building was home to mainly young—OK, youngish—mostly medical people who worked at the nearby Royal Westside hospital. The Frosts, in the penthouse, had infant twin boys, but as nominal landlords of the building, by virtue of the fact Madeleine Frost’s father owned it, they rarely leased to other families, preferring singles or perhaps newly married couples.
No one she knew in the building owned a teenager.
She made her way back to her unit and was unlocking her door when Daisy Rutherford, a psychologist who had the other unit on the second floor, emerged from the opposite door.
‘Off to work?’ Alana asked, and Daisy nodded, but this evening her smile didn’t seem quite as serene.
‘Getting sick of your vampirish working hours?’ Alana teased, and Daisy grimaced.
‘I don’t think it’s the night work that’s getting me down, although the hours I work mean I don’t get to have a proper life.’ She released a breath that in anyone else might have been taken for a sigh, but Daisy was so together it couldn’t possibly have been one. ‘It’s the people who contact me. I mean, I have parents phone in for advice about their toddlers or teenagers, I give it to them, and do they take any notice? Not a bit. They ring again the next night and ask the same questions. That was one of the reasons I changed the focus of the show to include a segment for kids to phone in themselves, but I think that was a mistake. I’ve got ten-year-olds phoning up at ten o’clock at night to tell me their parents keep making them go to bed, and twelve-year-olds complaining because their mothers think they’re too young for sex.’
Alana chuckled.
‘I thought that’s what psychology was all about, providing an outlet for people who need to get things off their chests.’
‘You can do that at the complaints department of the local department store,’ Daisy growled at her, then she pressed the button to summon the lift, and found a reasonable facsimile of her usual smile. ‘Or in the foyer of your building if you’re lucky enough to live near Alana,’ she added. She smiled as she stepped into the lift, and added her punchline, ‘I’m thinking of giving it up and going back to real people rather than voices on a phone!’
Alana walked into her flat, shaking her head over this revelation of another side of Daisy, who was usually the most placid, sunny-tempered and quietly optimistic of women. And who, up till now, had always seemed to love her job.
Maybe her own mood was being reflected in other people, Alana decided, as the cat wound its way around her legs, reminding her it was way past feeding time.
‘OK,’ she told it. ‘I’ll see to you now.’
But before she’d finished washing out his water bowl, the phone rang.
Alana studied the instrument for a moment then decided there was absolutely no one in the entire world with whom she wished to speak, so she let the answering machine, still turned on, pick it up.
Kirsten’s voice.
‘Come on, Alana, we know you’re there. We’ve just seen Daisy. Get out of your tennis gear and come down to Mickey’s for a drink. Gabi and Alex are here, but Josh is working so you can keep me company.’
‘No, thanks,’ Alana said, picking up the receiver as ordered and hoping she sounded firm rather than bloody-minded. ‘I haven’t fed the animals, and when that’s done, I’ve got “me” stuff to do. Hair-washing, leg-shaving, and general depilatory and maintenance processes. You know the kind of thing.’
Kirsten protested she could do all that the following day—what else were weekends for?
‘Shopping, for one thing,’ Alana told her. ‘The only human edibles in the flat are a rind of cheese, a slice of bread and a tin of artichoke hearts. If I don’t do a major shop tomorrow, I’ll be fighting Biddy for her guinea-pig food and, believe me, I wouldn’t want to win.’
Kirsten argued lack of food was a good reason to eat at Mickey’s, the bistro connected to the bar on the ground floor, but Alana remained firm.
‘Tonight’s an at-home night,’ she said, then she said goodbye and hung up, leaving the answering machine on to handle any further invitations.
Not that there was likely to be a rush of them.
She went about her tasks with no regrets, finally settling into a foaming bubble bath with a book, a glass of white wine and every intention of relaxing there for some time to come.
But the wine failed to relax her and the bath failed to soothe, the frustrations of the day refusing to be washed away by sudsy water.
Was it the job itself? Had she become too involved with Ward Eight B? Was this involvement making her exaggerate the student problem?
She sighed and sank beneath the water, feeling her long hair mingling with the bubbles. She’d wash it under the shower when she’d finished, she decided, then, as the problem seemed no easier to solve underwater than it had been above it, she sat up again, pushing soap and hair off her face, wondering if it was time for a career move.
This question was still fluttering in Alana’s head some twenty hours later as she dressed for the first night of a concert she’d particularly wanted to attend—back in September when she’d read the full programme for the summer concert season. Tonight, however, Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 and a cello concerto by a composer she didn’t know lacked the appeal they had held for her last spring, and only the fact that she’d just happened to catch sight of a divine designer trouser suit as she’d shopped, and it had just happened to fit, so she’d just happened to buy it, so she now really needed to wear it out to justify the expense, was forcing her along to the State Theatre.
Reluctance made her late, so the lights were already dimmed and the orchestra tuning up as she made her way to her seat, murmuring hellos and apologies to the regulars in the seats between the aisle and her allotted position.
She managed to get as far as the seat next to hers before she finally trod on someone’s toe—Mrs Schnitzerling’s toe, in fact. Mrs had shifted Mr to the other side of their pair of seats very early on in the season.
Apologising quietly, Alana sank down into her own padded chair, grateful for the darkness that had covered her floundering arrival. She reached out automatically to dump her handbag on the seat next to hers—a seat that had been vacant for the entire season.
But not tonight.
Her handbag struck a solid block she assumed was a body. A large-sized body, which a quick embarrassed glance proved to be male. Panic skittered through her, though why she’d be panicking over someone finally taking that seat she had no idea.
Perhaps it was embarrassment, not panic.
She murmured another apology, then, because she didn’t want creases in the new suit, leant forward to tuck her handbag under her seat instead. But she missed the space somehow and in the confusion managed to grab the man’s leg, which led to the third apology in as many minutes.
And more panic and/or embarrassment.
The arrival of the conductor and the loud applause which greeted him should have settled things down, but though she tried to relax and let the music do its work, freeing her from the everyday world, her muscles refused to oblige, remaining tense—all her nerves standing to attention, as if aware of some imminent danger.
Refusing to believe it could have anything to do with the man in the seat beside her, she nonetheless decided she needed to get a better look at him. Not easy to do while keeping her head turned towards the stage so he didn’t know she was looking.
Squinting sideways didn’t help much, though her olfactory senses picked up on a faint hint of masculine aftershave—an undertone of citrus blended with something fresh like gum leaves—while her other senses offered a general impression of height and solidity.
Male solidity.
Very male solidity.
She grinned to herself in the darkness.
Because the seat had been empty since the beginning of the season, she and her friends had joked about the possibility of the man of her dreams turning up in it one night.
Not that she had a dream man—not one defined by height or looks or colouring, or even profession or nature. If asked to clarify this vagueness, she’d explain that she was sure she’d know if he did turn up, because he’d be a friend first and friendship would develop into love. Then, to stop the nonsense the others might indulge in, she’d add, firmly, that in the meantime she was happy with her life as it was.
Except that she wasn’t, was she?
But surely that was to do with work?
Loud applause from the audience reminded her she was here to listen to music, not worry about perfect men—should such animals exist—or her job. The prelude was over, and the concert was under way.
As the music swelled and ran with a variation, finally lifting her out of herself into the rarefied air of the senses, she felt the tension slide out of her nerves and her body relax.
But not slump! She mustn’t slump into Mrs S., who could sleep through half a concert without slumping, or against the man in the spare seat. Slumping on him would be worse than hitting him with her handbag and grabbing at his leg.
She squinted his way again, this time turning her head far enough to see the straight, strong profile of a man not young but certainly not old.
Distracting, though—possibly because she’d become used to the spare seat.
Definitely not because he was a man, and as such was exuding masculine vibrations into the air around him—her air in fact.
But as the music soared, violins chasing the flutes up the scale, lifting and lifting until all the instruments joined in a wildly enthusiastic repetition of the theme, crashing to a whisper before rising again to a triumphant conclusion, her awareness of the man failed to diminish. In fact, it expanded, as if in tandem with the symphony, so, far from slumping, Alana felt her body growing more and more rigid.
Because of a man’s presence by her side?
Impossible!
Because a straight, almost severe profile had affected her?
Doubly impossible.
She sneaked another look as the audience applauded then, shamed and confused by the way her mind was working—it had to be due to the fact she and her friends had joked about the seat—she turned away from him, leaning towards Mr and Mrs Schnitzerling, to ask, as she always did, if they’d enjoyed the first part of the concert.
By the time the couple had given their opinions of the visiting conductor—excellent but flashy—the guest first violin—knows her stuff—and the programme in general—better than last month—most of the audience had departed, including the newcomer who’d been sitting on the other side of Alana.
He must have headed for the far aisle rather than interrupt by walking past them.
She felt a twinge of regret that she hadn’t seen him in the light, but there’d be another chance later, when he returned to his seat.
Muscles which had relaxed—slightly—during her conversation with her concert neighbours tensed again at the thought.
Maybe if she saw him in the light—went out to the foyer and had a good look—she’d be able to settle down. But would she find him? Surely there couldn’t be all that many tall, solid men with straight strong profiles at the concert tonight…
‘Aren’t you coming out to stretch your legs?’ Mrs Schnitzerling asked, and Alana shook her head.
Searching the foyer for a man?
She must be out of her mind!
She’d stay right where she was, breathe deeply and get over whatever it was that had affected her during the first session.
Besides, if she remained in her seat, she’d get a good view of him when he returned. Seeing him as a person, not just a profile, should cure whatever ailed her. He probably had deep frown lines, betraying a fearsome temper, and wore a wedding ring, keeping him off-limits even if he didn’t have a fearsome temper.
Just thinking such thoughts made her sigh.
It had to be the problems she was having—or anticipating having—at work which had her so uptight and had her entertaining such ridiculous thoughts.
But she would look at him when he returned to his seat. After all, she could hardly avoid it.
If he’d returned to his seat!
‘You’re sure you’d remembered deodorant?’ Kirsten asked, when she, Daisy and Alana had met for breakfast at a local coffee-shop next morning and Alana was explaining the mystery man’s appearance then disappearance.
‘Deodorant and a little designer perfume,’ Alana replied. ‘Though maybe that was it. Maybe he was allergic to perfume. People are, you know.’
‘Then they shouldn’t go to concerts where other people are sure to be wearing it,’ Kirsten retorted, while Alana remembered a certain aftershave and decided it couldn’t have been an allergy to her perfume that had caused the disappearance of her fellow concert-lover.
‘I don’t think it was the aftershave,’ she muttered to herself—or not quite to herself if the others’ reaction was any guide.
‘What wasn’t the aftershave?’ Kirsten demanded, while Daisy merely echoed the final word.
‘The—I suppose awareness is the word I’m after, but it’s not strong enough to explain how conscious I was of him. It was weird. Still is, because I can close my eyes and see his profile, and feel whatever it was I felt then.’
She turned to Daisy with an embarrassed grin.
‘Please, assure me I’m not going mad—or entering some disastrous phase of a woman’s life where she’s turned on by profiles.’
Daisy offered her usual calming smile.
‘You know, if the aftershave wasn’t strong, it could be that the man’s natural scent came through. I was reading an article where, in a properly constituted scientific study, a group of men were asked to wear the same T-shirt for four days. These were then put into plastic bags, and women were asked to choose a man on the basis of the smell.’
‘Oh, gross!’ Kirsten cried, holding her hand across her nose at the thought. ‘Though I guess socks would be worse.’
They all laughed but the idea intrigued Alana, who was desperate for a rational explanation for her reaction, so when things settled down again, she asked, ‘And what did this prove? Did the winner of the smelly T-shirt competition get the girl? It doesn’t sound very scientific to me.’
Daisy chuckled.
‘It was, and all the women chose a different man, then when the men and women were tested, it showed that in every case the women, based solely on smell, had chosen the man with the immunity system most different to theirs. The researchers argued that this made mate selection more effective as the couples would have the widest possible range of genetic difference to pass on to their children.’
‘I bet he was wearing a suit,’ Kirsten said, and Alana, who was still thinking about mate selection, raised her eyebrows at her friend.
‘Well,’ Kirsten explained, ‘men wear suits more than once between dry-cleaning, so maybe their natural scent gets caught in the fibres and enough of that remains to overcome things like aftershave.’
‘Given they also wear shirts and underwear next to their bodies, it’s more likely to be dry-cleaning fluid caught in the fibres.’ Alana squashed this theory, then she sighed. ‘So I’m attracted to men who smell like dry-cleaning fluid. Great!’
The others laughed but her concern remained. Not long ago, Kirsten had admitted to feeling something Alana had heartlessly put down to ‘nesting syndrome’. Surely she wasn’t suffering the same thing!
And why?
Because a stranger had sat beside her at the concert?
Maybe it was time she agreed to meet Jeremy, the man she’d first spoken to in an internet chat room, and with whom, from the frequent emails they’d exchanged, she seemed to have a lot in common. Maybe a normal relationship would put a stop to whatever subconscious stuff was going on.
Yet the scent of the aftershave seemed to have lodged in her senses so she could smell it now, and she was recalling the autocratic profile to her visual memory when she realised Kirsten was speaking again. Something about a problem in the building. Fire brigade?
‘Why was the fire brigade called?’ she asked, needing clarification before she could follow the story.
‘Because of the cat. I thought it was your cat—not Stubby but the stray you feed—but apparently it belonged to the new people on the third floor, in the unit under Gabi’s, and when it got out the boy tried to get it off the ledge between the balconies and he got stuck. Hence the fire brigade who brought ladders.’
‘Did they get the cat? Was the cat all right?’ Alana asked, and Daisy laughed.
‘We might have known you’d be more interested in the cat. It was fine. It came down long before the fire engines arrived.’
Daisy seemed about to say something more when Kirsten spoke again, telling them about a cat who’d adopted Mrs Phillips, her fiancé’s mother, which hissed and spat whenever a man came near it.
‘But what I want to know,’ Kirsten finished, ‘is how the cat knows the difference between human sexes. I mean, I can go out there in jeans and a T-shirt and it rubs against my legs. Josh appears in identical clothing, and the hissing stuff begins.’
‘We’re back on the scents we humans give off,’ Daisy suggested. ‘I imagine a sense of smell is far more highly developed in animals and that’s how the cat tells.’
Alana nodded her agreement, adding, ‘Yes, intelligent as cats are, I doubt they realise one human sex generally has long hair and the other short. A lot of the time these days even I can’t tell at first glance. So it has to be some other sense.’
The conversation lingered in Alana’s mind when she returned home, and she found herself wondering if it had only been the aftershave that had made her so certain—right from the start—that the person next to her at the concert was a man. Or had she subconsciously picked up a masculine scent?
A masculine scent that was attractive to her immune system?
No way! The only time she ever gave her immune system even a passing thought was on the rare occasions she picked up a cold—and then she’d give it a talking to for letting her down.
‘At least I didn’t hiss or spit!’ she joked to herself, as she put food out on the balcony for the stray who hadn’t caused the problem the previous night. Thinking of that story—anything was better than thinking about ‘the man’—she peered upwards, wondering who’d shifted in above her. The flat had been vacant for ages, leased, though not inhabited for some reason neither of the Frosts had been willing to share.
Had the boy involved in the previous night’s drama been her tennis partner?
Was that where he’d come from?
The flats on her side of the building were all two-bedroomed, which would allow enough room for a couple and one child, two children if they were small and shared. On the other side were single-bedroom dwellings, the space for the stairwell and lift taken from where the second bedroom would have been.
But children?
Was Near West changing its image? Going for family tenants now?
Would she eventually have to leave her home as well as her job?
She shook away the stupid train of thought. There was no reason on earth why she should leave Near West.
She stared out over the roofs of neighbouring houses, looking towards the hospital.
Or leave her job!
A sudden clatter from the balcony above made her move back towards the sliding glass doors, then a slim, elegant Siamese sprang down onto her balcony railing, studied her with incurious blue eyes for a moment, then leapt again—either to its death or to the balcony below.
‘Damn you!’ someone yelled, then legs appeared, feet feeling for the same railing, finding it, steadying, then dropping lightly onto the floor in front of her.
‘Couldn’t find the door, Jason?’ she said, and saw his start of surprise when he realised she was standing watching him.
‘It’s the cat!’ he told her, anger emanating from him like heat waves from the bitumen on a hot day. ‘The vet said to keep her inside for three days, but the moment I open the door she’s out.’
He looked anxiously around, so obviously worried that Alana felt a reluctant sympathy for him.
‘Cats can make their way back to their old homes across thousands of miles,’ he added, voicing the fear and uncertainty she could see in his eyes. ‘I saw a movie about it once. A true movie. I don’t want it to do that.’
‘Maybe she’s just checking out her new territory. Being shut in might make her feel there’s something out there she’s missing, and she wants to look around. How long have you been here?’
‘Three days,’ he mumbled, turning his back to her to peer down into the garden. ‘But I let her out last night too, and the Dungeon Master didn’t half go off his block.’
‘The Dungeon Master?’ Alana echoed, but Jason wasn’t listening. He was whistling softly to the cat which had appeared on the path that encircled the building.
‘She’s just there,’ he said, ignoring her query. ‘Do you mind if I go through your place to the lift so I can get her?’
‘I’d far rather you did that than tried the balcony trick again,’ Alana said. ‘Think of the blood on the path if you missed your footing. But before you go, I’ll give you some cookies which cats just love. Darren, at the local pet shop, makes them to a secret recipe.’
She led the way into her flat but, though Jason followed, he didn’t come far, stopped first by the sight of her featherless parrot, then further distracted by the guinea-pig cage, fish tank and large box that currently housed an injured rabbit.
‘Look at all these pets. How come you’re allowed to have them in a flat? I thought I was lucky being allowed to keep my cat. But I guess that was the Dungeon Master’s decree, not the flat owner’s.’
He was offering his finger to the guinea pigs, trying to coax the babies out of their box.
‘It was my mother’s cat,’ he added, almost in an undertone, and once again Alana was struck by a vulnerability beneath the cocky veneer of the young teenager. ‘I suppose that’s why he let me keep it.’
Was ‘he’ the man Jason had called the Dungeon Master?
His father?
And did the unflattering nickname mean he kept the kid on a tight rein?
‘Why don’t you get your cat then come back to check out the animals?’ Alana suggested. ‘She can meet my cat, Stubby.’
At the sound of his name, Stubby emerged from under a chair, blinked sleepily at Alana, then leapt lightly up onto the chair, apparently so he could get into better sniffing distance of Jason.
More olfactory senses getting a workout!
‘No tail—is that why he’s called Stubby?’ Jason stroked the broad, butting head. ‘Is he a Manx cat?’
‘No, just a fighter! Or he was. That’s how he lost his tail. He had it torn in a fight and infection set in. The vet had to remove it. Then his owners thought he looked so odd he should be put down, which is how I got to have him.’
Jason shook his head, gave Stubby one last pat, then, taking the small biscuit Alana offered, he left the flat.
Alana moved back onto the balcony, hoping to spot the Siamese for him. Not hard, when it was sitting grooming itself in the sun, immediately below her balcony.
Jason appeared and approached with caution then held out the biscuit. The cat yawned to show she really wasn’t interested, then stood up and picked her way delicately towards him, condescending to nibble on the biscuit but refusing to show any affection or closeness.
‘Cats!’ Jason said, grinning up at her. Then his grin faded and as a mutinous expression took its place, she wondered what she’d done to upset him. Until she realised he was looking beyond her—higher.
‘The DM,’ he mouthed at her, scooping up the cat and disappearing from view.
Moments later, he knocked on her front door.
‘I’ve got to go, but thanks for the biscuit, and if it’s OK with you, I’d like to come back and look at your animals some other time.’
He was gone before she had time to answer, making for the stairs rather than the lift, pausing, as he opened the fire door, to throw a cheeky smile over his shoulder.
‘I make up names for people. Want to know yours?’
Not particularly, Alana thought, but, remembering the vulnerability she’d sensed earlier, she nodded anyway.
‘Dragon Lady!’ he said, then he disappeared into the stairwell, the heavy fire-door shutting slowly and noiselessly behind him.
Alana smiled to herself. Would he have called her something nicer if she’d let him win the tennis game?
