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‘We’re not going to hold you to adate.’ Ethan had a voice that could both be polite and hold warning. He wanted his question answered.
‘With treatment to shrink the tumour,’ the professor said, ‘I’d say six months. But this is Jobe we’re talking about, so I’m hopeful for maybe a year.’
Ethan did not let that sink in.
He couldn’t.
And so he asked another question.
‘Can we see him?’
‘Sure.’
Ethan had expected a pale shadow of a man in the bed, but the stubborn mule was sitting up—albeit resting on pillows.
‘You should have told us,’ Ethan said.
‘Don’t start,’ Jobe dismissed. ‘It’s to be business as normal.’
‘Howcanit be?’ Abe pointed out. ‘You need to rest and...’
‘I’ll orchestrate my own demise, thank you. I don’t want a sniff of this getting out.’
‘The board has to know.’
‘Not yet, they don’t.’
A new voice spoke and Ethan turned as Maurice came in.
‘Your father wants the move into Dubai announced first.’
And that was that.
On the morning he found out his father was dying, even then in the Devereux world business came first.
And so, on Ethan’s first day off in living memory, he was back in the office by lunchtime.
‘How’s Jobe?’ Helene asked, her eyes wide with concern.
‘Good,’ Ethan quipped, and then glibly lied. ‘Gallstones or something. But that’s just between us.’
‘Of course.’
The show would go on.
* * *
For Merida, the show went on too.
Literally.
She performed at weekends and continued her work at the gallery.
But it was cold without him.
Oh, spring had burst into life, and the days grew longer and brighter, yet she shivered inside at his sudden departure from her life.
Well, not so sudden byhisstandards, Merida thought sadly. She couldn’t say that she hadn’t been warned.
