‘But you’re not trained for mental-health first-aiding, are you? Isn’t there a mental-health nurse there? A community psych? A neurologist stroke specialist, even? Rehab-physio?’
‘No, none of them. It’s just me here.’
‘She’s the only medic involved, Cranmer!’ her mum relayed.
‘What!’ Her father commandeered the phone. ‘Are you covered for that? Insurance-wise? Seems risky to me.’
‘We’re fine, we’re just pottering in a garden.’
‘Were you party to the risk assessment? I’m not sure about all of this, Alice.’
She tried to explain that if they could see how laid back and informal it all was, they wouldn’t be so alarmed, but their fretting had set off some feelings of insecurity within her that were glowing like hot embers now. Maybe thiswasrisky? What if she did actual harm, instead of helping? There were vulnerable people here who deserved a properly trained therapeutic gardener, not Alice, a newbie GP.
Distraction was her only escape. ‘Don’t you have afternoon plans?’ she said, pinching at her closed eyelids, feeling the tiredness she’d held at bay all morning washing over her.
‘We might take a pootle out to Knutsford for supper,’ her dad began.
‘Who? You and Mum?’
‘Yes,’ her dad snapped, a warning not to push it.
Alice desperately wanted to ask what his new girlfriend thought about this cosy exes-who-brunch set-up they had going on, but she didn’t even know the woman’s name and the whole situation left her with a queasy seasickness.
‘And Bastian’s joining us,’ he added shiftily.
‘What? Why?’ She knew Bastian absolutely idolised her father, but she’d no idea he was involved in their weird games of Happy Families now they’d broken up. This didn’t feel right at all.
‘He’s interviewing for a position with my team soon, joining in my grand rounds in anticipation of the selection process, and doing very well, as it happens. I thought he deserved some fatherly advice…’
‘You’re not his father.’
Silence filled the space where he might have blurted, ‘Well, I almost was!’
‘How often do you see him, outside of work, I mean?’ Alice asked.
More awkward silence down the line, before the admission, ‘He comes to Friday suppers with me and Kimberly.’
So Dad’s new girlfriend was called Kimberly? And the three of them shared cosy dinners in the new house she hadn’t even set foot inside. It was all a bit sick. She wanted to tell him this wasn’t a soap opera. Why couldn’t he just leave Bastian out of things?
‘The way you and Bastian left things…’ her dad began.
‘No,’ she cautioned, definitely not wanting to talk about this.
‘It seems a shame, just because you’re there and he’s here, temporarily. That’s all I’m saying. You know, your mother and I spent a lot of time apart when she was pregnant with you and the hyperemesis gravidarum meant she couldn’t work…’
‘I know, I know, and you were away doing your stint in that Romanian hospital.’Like a saint.She’d heard this story a hundred times and her parents came out of it like a regular Romeo and Juliet, only with more morning sickness, surgical heroics, and lots of late-night Skype calls. They’d stayed together through it all. ‘I don’t want to talk about Bastian,’ she said firmly. ‘Please.’
‘OK, if that offended you, I apologise.’ His voice softened. ‘Are you at least socialising up there?’
‘Well…’ Reluctantly she told him she was attending the Burns supper and ceilidh tonight as a guest of honour. ‘They’re making me deliver the “Address to the Haggis”.’
‘Are they now!’ His bellowing laugh made her pull the phone from her ear. ‘How wonderful!’ She listened to him repeating this information to her mother, whose laughter sounded a little less certain.
‘Public speaking?’ she heard her mother say ominously.
‘I’ve practised. I know what to do,’ she told them quickly.
It was true. She’d hit the Burns books last night with the same amount of dedication she’d expended brushing up on the carpal tunnel injection procedure which she’d performed on Mrs Causwell this week under the watchful eye of Dr Millen.
