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‘Well, that’s good.’ Sarah nodded approvingly. ‘But, Elspeth, if you think that you split up because you didn’t want to move out, then you’ve missed something important. You split up because he wasn’t prepared to have this conversation with you. Fraser’s not doing too badly so far...’
Elspeth could feel Fraser’s eyes on her, trying to judge her reaction.
‘Anyway,’ Sarah said at last, ‘if you put my tea in my bottle I’ll leave you two to it. Oh, and Mum and I have booked a carer for the morning. So don’t you dare use me as an excuse not to... Well... You get the idea.’
And with that parting shot Sarah left the room, leaving a heavy silence in her wake.
‘Your sister wants to move out?’ Fraser said, breaking the silence. ‘You never told me that.’
Elspeth shook her head. There was a good reason for that. ‘No, because it’s not happening.’
‘How does that work?’
Fraser came to stand in front of her and her whole body hummed with the awareness of knowing she could just reach out and touch him.
‘Surely if she’s an adult she gets to decide for herself.’
‘Or maybe she should listen to her doctor sister when she tells her it’s not a great idea.’
Fraser crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes. ‘You don’t want her to be independent?’
‘Of course I do! I bend over backwards helping her to be independent. I don’t want her to—’
She stopped herself, suddenly aware that the sentence had nearly got away from her.
‘Finish the sentence,’ Fraser prompted her gently. ‘Come on—we were getting somewhere. You don’t want her to...what?’
‘I don’t want her to die,’ Elspeth said, her voice breaking.
‘And is that likely to happen?’ Fraser asked gently. ‘If Sarah’s care comes from somewhere else—like she says she wants? Does that make it more likely? Because she said that’s not going to happen. Is she wrong?’
Her objective doctor brain provided the answer. ‘No, she isn’t.’
‘Then why is it so hard to let her go?’ he asked gently.
Elspeth thought about it for a second. Considered dodging the question. But she had been carrying this around for so long. Trying to make sense of her life. Trying to make the best of it. But it hadn’t made her happy. It wasn’t making Sarah happy. It wasn’t going to make Fraser happy either. Maybe it was time that she started telling the truth.
‘Because I’ve been scared that she might die for as long as I can remember. Since I was a little girl and she was born and there was nothing I could do except sit by her and hope that she wouldn’t. I studied hard and I went to uni and I became a doctor because I didn’t want to feel helpless. And now I can do something about it.’
The thought of living without her sister was unbearably painful. The thought of sitting and doing nothing was almost as bad.
‘And what do you think would happen if you stopped?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. She had already voiced her darkest fear. And it didn’t lose any of its power just because her objective brain knew it was unlikely. ‘Do you think I’m completely irrational?’
Fraser shook his head and reached for her hand. ‘I think you love your sister and you’ve spent your whole life putting her first. But now she’s grown up I think she wants to take care of herself.’
‘I don’t know if I can just...stop caring. Stop being afraid.’
He squeezed her fingers, caught her eye and smiled. ‘Well, then, it’s a good job you don’t have to do it by yourself. We’ll work it out between us. All of us. In our own time.’
Elspeth brushed away a tear with the back of her hand.
‘I asked you earlier what you want. You never gave me an answer,’ he reminded her.
She reached up on her tiptoes, aware of her bump between them as she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her, finally breaching those millimetres between their lips that had been driving her insane, making it impossible for her to think straight.
He let her come to him, true to his word, letting her lead, not demanding more from her than she was giving. But there was a time and a place for being restrained, and right now she wanted the Fraser who had pinned her wrists and made her moan the night they had met. She pressed harder against him, letting her fingers tighten slightly in his hair.
