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She put one hand on her hip and tilted her head. ‘Okay, so you obviously know that you haven’t been. What gives?’
‘What gives?’
She nodded and folded her hands over her chest. She couldn’t help her distinctly American expressions. It wasn’t as if he didn’t use enough Scottish ones of his own. Half the time she felt as if he should come with a dictionary. ‘What are you up to, and why have you decided to play nice?’
He finished drying his hands and turned to face her head on. Today he was dressed a little more casually. A short-sleeved striped casual shirt and a pair of jeans.
‘Someone gave me a telling-off.’
‘Who?’ Now she was definitely curious.
‘An older woman who came to the surgery this morning. She basically told me to behave. I haven’t been told that since I was six.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t believe that for a second.’
He paused for a second, as if he was trying to find the right words. ‘We need to talk about what’s been filmed—what it’s right for you to show. But there’s something else first.’
She’d just started to relax a little, but those words—‘what it’s right for you to show’—immediately raised her hackles. She didn’t like anyone telling her what to do.
She couldn’t help her short answer. ‘What do you mean—what it’s right for us to show?’ Part of her brain knew the answer to this already. She’d had a few tiny reservations about the filming at John Henderson’s house. But it had just felt too important—too big—to leave out.
She was automatically being defensive, even though she knew she might partly be in the wrong. She’d wanted to pick up the phone—not to ask his permission, just to give him a heads-up. But even though she hadn’t done that, something inside her now just wouldn’t let her back down. What was it with this guy? It was like he’d drawn her in, almost made her laugh, just so she might let her guard down a little then he could get into a fight with her.
The tone of her voice had obviously annoyed Rhuaridh. The smile dropped from his face and he straightened more. ‘I haven’t seen it,’ he said sharply. ‘But I’m not sure I approve of you showing film of John Henderson’s death. It seems...’ a crease appeared in his brow as he tried to search for the correct word ‘...intrusive, unnecessary.’ He shook his head. ‘You didn’t have the correct permissions.’
Every word seemed like a prickle on her skin. ‘We got permission from Mr Henderson before we visited his home, before he died.’
She didn’t mean to emphasise the word, but she was all fired up. And as soon as the words left her mouth she realised her mistake.
The look that passed over Rhuaridh’s face was unmistakeable. Complete and utter guilt. It was almost like her mouth wouldn’t stop working. It was like he’d questioned her integrity and her ethics. She wouldn’t let anyone get away with that. Parts of her brain were telling her to stop and think, but her mouth wasn’t paying any attention to those parts.
‘And we shot everything from the back. You obscured the view of Mr Henderson. The only thing that was seen was his feet. Do you really think we’d show a poor dead man on the TV show?’
‘You shouldn’t have shown anything at all,’ snapped Rhuaridh. ‘You might have gained John’s permission, but to show him after he died, that’s just ghoulish!’
She folded her arms across her chest. ‘Don’t you dare question the integrity of the show. You admitted yourself you haven’t seen it—you don’t even know the context in which the scenes were shown.’
‘The integrity of the show? You showed a dead man!’ His voice was getting louder.
‘We didn’t!’ she shouted back. ‘And you have no idea how the public reacted to it. They loved it. They didn’t think it was ghoulish. They thought it was wonderful. Emotional. And sad. The whole purpose of this show is to show them something real. You can’t get much more real than death.’
Those words seem to bubble up from somewhere unexpected inside her. They came out harshly, because that’s what death was to her. She could remember every emotion, every thought, every feeling that had encompassed her when she’d been in that hospital room. All the things she’d been trying to keep locked in a box, deep down inside her.
