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‘You’ve been avoiding me.’
She could deny it. But he would know. And she didn’t want to look even more pitiable than she already did. The shameful truth was that Tak’s opinion of her had begun to matter. Which only made it all the more ludicrous that she should have opened herself up the other night, thereby confirming just how much of a charity case she really was.
‘What were you doing, talking to Mrs Kemp?’
‘And now you’re changing the subject.’
His voice poured through her, altogether too liquid. ‘I was merely asking a question,’ she replied dryly, impressing even herself.
She might have known it wouldn’t fool Tak.
‘You were asking an obvious question,’ he corrected. ‘But, to answer, I’m here doing the same thing I imagine you are intending to do. Providing a bit of companionship to a lonely, frightened old woman.’
Something shouldered its way into her chest and lodged there. As hard as she tried, Effie couldn’t ignore it. Was it sentiment at his show of compassion?
‘And you came down here just for that?’
‘You did,’ he pointed out. ‘She’s asleep, by the way. Best not to disturb her.’
‘You didn’t really come to see her.’ Effie was sceptical. ‘How do you even know her?’
‘You’re the one who brought her in. How do you think?’
‘They called you for a consult,’ Effie acknowledged grudgingly. ‘She told me she hadn’t hit her head when she’d fallen but I suspected otherwise. She’s okay?’
‘Fine. But I’m also checking over a couple of other patients.’ He quirked an all too astute eyebrow. ‘Is that a more plausible reason for you? Or perhaps you were hoping that I was using Mrs Kemp as some sort of excuse to see if I could bump into you?’
Her cheeks were burning. She could feel the heat. Because the humiliating truth was that a small part of her possibly did wish there was an element of the latter to his visit. How pathetic did that make her?
Not for the first time, she wished she was the kind of person to whom witty retorts came easily. Instead she found her fuzzy brain scrambling for anything to say whilst it seemed more interested in the electrifying sensations that darted all over her body when Tak was near. Just as they had the other night.
She remembered barely getting to her room and slamming the door behind her before her legs had given out and she’d collapsed to the floor. She’d had no idea what had just happened. Or, more to the point, she’d known what had happened, she just hadn’t understood how she’d let it happen. And with Tak Basu.
Forget the sex, she’d instructed herself as the familiar flush had soared through her. She would be able to over-analyse that particular turn of events later, and she certainly hadn’t been ready to deal with that yet. What of the things she’d told Tak? Things she hadn’t told a soul in almost fifteen years.
Eleanor Jarvis.
She’d hugged the name to herself like a favourite comforter. The woman after whom Effie’s daughter had been named.
Eleanor. The woman who had seen her potential and convinced her to try for Oxford University, even though the kids in school had called her thick or stinky or a heck of a lot worse because she might not have been able to get home to have a shower for days. Even the teachers had let their distaste for her outward appearance blind them to the clever child she’d been underneath.
Eleanor. The woman who had been about to adopt her. To finally make Effie a part of something good. Something loving. Something special. Before a car crash had stolen Eleanor’s life away. Hit by a drunk driver on her way home from the snooker hall one night.
And with that the driver had stolen away the last life-line at which Effie had been grasping. Gone. Snuffed out. In a single instant. Even now Effie still relived the pain, the loneliness, the suffocating blackness, whenever she thought about that night.
Which was why, the day after her daughter’s birth, she’d made a point to banish those memories from her mind. Never to let herself go back. Only to look forward.
That she should remember Eleanor at that moment, after Tak had...done things to her, had been bad enough, but that she should have unravelled so instantly at the memories had been so much worse. Yet none of that had compared to the confused storm raging inside at the idea that, of all people, Tak Basu, her colleague, should have been the one to rake up all these memories.
She
’d glanced at the clock. Six-thirty. Little point in trying to go to sleep. Even though her tiredness had gone bone-deep, she’d known sleep would still elude her when her head was on that pillow. Her head had been too full. Her brain too feverish.
In the end she’d sneaked down to Tak’s home gym for a run, relieved to have the place to herself.
Unlike right now, when she couldn’t seem to get any privacy from him if her life depended on it.
‘You’re very welcome to join me if you want,’ he offered.
