‘Car accident when she was sixteen,’ he said briefly. ‘The first time I forgot…my friends dragged me out to a movie and it was a silly, dopey movie where we all ended up drunk on laughter and life and sheer teenage silliness. And I came out into the night and thought, Elly’s never going to see that movie. It was so gut-wrenching that I threw up. My body reacted to mental anguish by physical revolt.’

‘Your friends wouldn’t have understood,’ Susie whispered.

‘I told them I had a stomach upset,’ he told them. ‘Maybe they believed me. They probably did, come to think of it, as how can you know what loss feels like until you’ve experienced it? What followed then was months of pseudo-stomach upsets, and even now I have moments. But I’ve learned…’ He hesitated, glancing at Kirsty as if unsure that he should reveal himself so completely in her presence. ‘But I’ve learned that I can’t not see movies. Or go to the beach, or have my twenty-first birthday or get married and have kids just to stop my gut wrenching. Because it doesn’t help. Grief and loss twists your gut into such a knot that every now and then you just have to let go, let it all out, sob or vomit or kick inanimate objects or whatever you find helps-but you have to do it. If you don’t you stay permanently twisted inside.’

‘I guess that’s what I have been,’ Susie whispered. ‘Twisted inside.’

‘Just a little bit battered,’ he told her, smiling. ‘Not so twisted as you’d noticed. Your walking is going great. Rory would be so proud of you.’

‘He would, wouldn’t he?’ she said, a trifle defiantly. And then she looked from Jake to Kirsty and back again. ‘So tonight, on the beach-’

‘I need to go to bed,’ Jake said, cutting her off. ‘I’ve only just got home. Three house-calls in a row and it’s two a.m.’

‘Tonight on the beach, were you trying to forget something?’ Susie said, deliberately and slowly. ‘Or were you both truly moving on?’

‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ Jake said, and cast a glance at Kirsty that accused her of going straight home to her sister and telling all.

Susie caught the glance and smiled.

‘Leave her alone. She hasn’t said a word. But Margie’s sister-in-law was in the car park and the phones have been running hot since. Margie popped in before she went to bed to ask what did I think and wouldn’t it be lovely?’ Her smile was tentative but it stayed fixed. ‘It’s only fair to warn you. I’m simply the first to ask the question.’

‘Well, you’ve asked it,’ Jake said, with another doubtful look at Kirsty. ‘Now I’m going to bed. Goodnight.’

‘You haven’t answered my question,’ Susie complained.

‘It’s none of your business.’

That was blunt, Kirsty thought, a bit shocked, but Susie’s smile peeped out again.

‘No. But I’m Kirsty’s twin. I know all her nearest and dearest concerns. Ask your own two if you don’t believe me. How many secrets do Alice and Penelope keep from each other?’

No, but I don’t know the answer to this one, Kirsty thought desperately, and she glanced at her twin and she saw that Susie knew this, too. And maybe that was why she was asking.

‘I have one set of twins in my life,’ Jake said, and there was a trace of desperation in his voice as he responded. ‘I can’t cope with two.’

‘Cut it out, Suze,’ Kirsty said, and there was even more desperation in her tone. ‘Let the man go to bed.’

‘Only asking,’ Susie responded, her intelligent eyes moving from one to the other. She hesitated. ‘Has Kirsty told you about her shadows?’

‘No…’

‘Our mother died when we were ten,’ Susie told him. ‘Our father suicided soon after. Since then, Kirsty’s taken on the cares of the world. She’s looked after me-protected me. She’s taken on her job at the hospice, taking care of the dying, and I’m sure that’s more of the same. Our father suicided because he couldn’t move on. I ventured out again and got hit hard. Kirsty’s watched from the sidelines and she’s decided she doesn’t ever want to go there.’

‘Cut it out,’ Kirsty said with desperation, and Susie smiled.

‘You can’t have it both ways, kid. You’ve worked on getting me better and now I am-or a bit. For the first time since Rory died I’m popping my head up from under the fog and taking notice of what’s going on around me. The gut twisting isn’t happening and I’m feeling…light. And very, very interested in what’s happening to my twin.’

‘That’s good,’ Jake said, but he was edging backwards. ‘I need to go.’

‘Of course you do,’ Susie told him. ‘Kirsty, you need to go, too.’

‘I’m staying for a bit.’

‘I don’t need you.’

‘Yes, you do,’ Kirsty snapped. ‘Goodnight, Dr Cameron.’

‘Goodnight, Dr McMahon.’

And he was gone.


With the door closed safely behind him, Kirsty turned on her twin with a mixture of indignation, anger and shock. ‘How could you? Susie, you’ve scared the man witless. You’ve scared me witless.’

‘You’re not scared witless,’ Susie said thoughtfully. ‘Oh, Kirsty, he’s gorgeous. And you kissed him.’

‘We were messing around. Having a lend of the locals.’

‘Truly?’

‘Truly.’

‘So,’ she said, fixing her twin with a look Kirsty hadn’t seen for a long time, ‘you’re saying you’re not in love with Jake Cameron.’

‘You’re delusional,’ Kirsty said. ‘I’ll take your blood pressure.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with my blood pressure,’ Susie murmured. ‘Yours, on the other hand… Ooh, Kirsty, what are you going to tell Robert?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I don’t expect you need to,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘He’s so limp he’s not even likely to notice he’s been dumped.’

‘Suze!’

‘Get out of it,’ Susie told her twin. ‘Off you go. Leave me to my dreams. But something tells me they’re not all dreams. You can’t be a twin without knowing a thing or two, and I know a thing or six!’


How was a girl supposed to sleep after that?

She hardly did. She woke up early, and decided she’d make herself breakfast. But when she reached the kitchen door she heard Jake’s voice and paused.

‘We’ve got to get you fat somehow,’ he was saying. ‘An accompanying bag of bones does nothing for my medical image. If you want to be a super-doctor’s dog, you need to look a walking advertisement for vitamin pills. Have another rasher.’

Jake and Boris.

She leaned back against the wall, unashamedly eavesdropping.

‘We have to go home soon, mate. We’re only here in protection mode and it seems there’s no threat.’

There was a faint whimper and she could imagine Boris’s dopey ears sprawled over Jake’s knee.

‘Yeah, it’s been good. But to pretend it could be like this all the time is dumb. Happy families are an illusion.’

Another whimper.

‘It’s coming.’ He sounded exasperated. ‘You don’t want your bacon non-crispy, do you?’

Silence. The sound of spitting bacon.

‘If she wasn’t here, I’d stay on for a bit,’ he said softly. ‘But she is. And it’s a dangerous road. The twins and you and me…we’re a unit and I’m not letting anything threaten that. Or anyone.’

She should go in. The bacon smelled terrific.

She didn’t. She went upstairs to check on Angus.

Jake wasn’t letting anything threaten his precious family unit, she thought as she trudged upstairs. She didn’t intend to let him threaten her independence. Fine. They were of like minds.

All she felt like doing was bursting into tears.

Check Angus. Forget the tears.

Forget men! Or every man but Angus…

She knocked. When Angus didn’t answer she opened the door a crack, as she’d been doing since they’d arrived, assuming he was still asleep.

He wasn’t asleep. He was sprawled on the floor by the window.

He’d tripped on the mat, she thought in dismay. His oxygen cylinder was on its side and his nasal tube had been ripped from his face in his fall.

No!

‘Jake!’ she screamed in a voice that was meant to be heard in the middle of next week.

He’d stopped breathing. She couldn’t find a pulse. Damn, where was it? She was feeling his carotid artery. His neck was warm to the touch but she couldn’t find…she couldn’t find…

Airway. Check airways, stupid. Keep the panic for later. Her fingers were in his mouth, seeking for an obstruction and finding none.

Heart attack? Stroke?

Get the breathing back and find out. Get oxygen. A defibrillator?

‘Jake!’ Angus must be dead if that scream didn’t have him jerking to wakefulness.

Don’t die, Angus.

Keep yourself professional.

Ha!

She ripped his pyjama coat open, hauling him onto his back. She was kneeling over him, breathing for him, cupping her hands to start the rhythmic pounding of CPR.

How long had he been on the floor? She’d checked him at four a.m. and he’d been fine. How long hadn’t he been breathing?

He was still so warm. Maybe…maybe…

From behind her she heard boots taking the stairs three at a time. Then Jake’s barked query. ‘What the-?’

‘It must be cardiac arrest. Have you got-?’

‘I’m going.’ The boots retreated. Steps retreating, stairs taken four at a time.

She went back to breathing. Went back to pounding. Breathe, then fifteen short, sharp thumps, breathe…

Come on. Come on.

Susie was in the doorway now, leaning heavily on her crutches. How had she got up the stairs? Behind her was Margie, and the twins behind her. Their faces were appalled.

‘Keep the littlies away,’ she managed between breaths, but every ounce of energy was going into rhythmic pumping.

Jake was back then, pushing them unceremoniously aside, dumping equipment on the floor. A portable defibrillator. Thank God.

Please.

He worked around her, ripping Angus’s pyjama jacket further, sticking on patches, readying…

Checking the monitor.

‘There’s pulse,’ he told her. ‘There’s still pulse.’