AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Which was nursing.’ Jaye chuckled. Megan had always seemed so sure of her goals, so focussed, and it was ironic that she’d fallen into the one thing that seemed to define her by accident.
‘Yes. You’re not taking notes, are you? I’d be devastated if this turned up on my employment file.’
‘I don’t need to take notes. I’ve got this place fitted with hidden cameras.’
‘Oh, hidden cameras are okay. So, anyway, I started the course, with the idea of dropping out in six months’ time and going travelling. But then I fell in love with the job.’
Jaye chuckled. ‘So you were caught out by your own scheming.’
‘Yeah. I was pretty immature in those days. Nursing knock
ed a lot of things out of me, and I’m lucky I found it before I did something stupid.’
‘I...can’t really imagine you doing something stupid.’
‘No? I found out who my father was when I was thirteen. Before that I just thought he was an uncle. I spent a bit of time after that concentrating on doing as many stupid things as I could think of, just to annoy him.’
‘That sounds...’
‘Constructive. It was a very constructive reaction.’ She turned the corners of her mouth down, giving the lie to her words.
‘How about understandable, then? It must have been a bit of a shock.’
‘Yes, it was a shock. He used to come and visit when I was little, and he’d bring me presents and take my mum and me out to nice places. When I found out that it was all a lie...it felt as if I was a lie. As if I had no real right to exist.’
Jaye’s heart thumped. He wanted to reach out and comfort her but that wasn’t what drinking buddies did. He picked the bottle up from the table, tipping another splash into both their glasses. She seemed to understand the meaning of the gesture, giving him a little nod before she took a sip.
‘And nursing was your one big rebellion.’
‘It is now. When I was a teenager I used to specialise in unsuitable boyfriends.’ She flashed him a grin that was pure mischief.
‘You can’t stop there. Unsuitable how?’
‘Well, they weren’t really unsuitable as far as I was concerned. Being unsuitable in my father’s eyes was always a big plus point for me. One of them was a professional poet. He travelled around in a beat-up minibus, giving readings in the evenings and doing odd jobs to make ends meet during the day.’ She laughed.
‘And your father didn’t like him.’
‘He loathed him. The whole thing was a bit of a non-starter really, but the fact that Harry was purple with disapproval made me hang on in there for almost two years. I had a lot of fun, went to quite a few music festivals, and then we went our separate ways.’
‘So you wouldn’t mind if we put a few poetry books in the back of the medical truck? Did a few readings when we weren’t otherwise occupied?’
She laughed. ‘No. We’re not doing that. I think that’s enough skeletons in cupboards for this evening. What are your top ten favourite films?’
* * *
Megan rolled over in her bed, reaching for something. Someone. It took a few moments to slough off the remains of sleep and remember that Jaye wasn’t there.
They’d talked for a long time last night. Favourite films, favourite books. Best music tracks had been a hard-fought one. Jaye preferred jazz and she liked rock. And lubricated by a long day, a dark evening and more than one measure of brandy, they’d both probably said far more than they’d intended about themselves.
And when finally he’d propelled her towards her bungalow, both stumbling and laughing quietly in the darkness, he’d lingered for a few moments on the porch. So close that Megan had found herself melting at the thought of a goodnight kiss.
But she hadn’t been that drunk. If the darkness would cover anything they did, if Jaye’s sense of discretion could be relied on to keep it away from anyone here, it would still have been a secret. And Megan wasn’t like her mother. She didn’t do secret relationships, and she didn’t do relationships with her boss.
The banging on the door made her jump. It was far too loud to be Jaye, he would have knocked. Megan crawled out of bed, disentangling herself from the mosquito net and grabbing her dressing gown, and headed blearily for the door.
‘We have many people for clinic today.’ One of the junior nurses stood on the porch. ‘Dr Jayananda says no time for sleep.’
A faint remembrance of how they’d come so close to having no time for sleep once before drifted into her mind. Megan was sure he would have woken her himself then, and in quite a different way.
