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“What!” Rachel’s interest sharpened. “A genuine man of mystery.”
“So it seems,” Harriet returned on a sigh. “Hewashandsome, but I don’t think he’s from around her and I’m ninety-nine per cent sure I’ve never going to see him again, so…”
“You never know,” Rachel returned sagely, and Harriet rolled her eyes again.
“Sometimes,” she replied, “you do.”
*
A couple ofhours later, the call came. Rachel took it on the landline; working in the dining room, she was closest to the phone on the table in the hall, with its old-fashioned, insistent buzz of a ring.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she called a bit irritably, as if the phone could hear her. She’d been sitting at the dining room table for the last few hours, staring at her laptop and not feeling particularly effective. Danielle still hadn’t responded to her email about taking some time off, which was most unlike her, and Rachel didn’t know if she should take it as some sort of sign—although whether to keep working or stop, she didn’t know.
She reached the phone on the third ring. “Hello?”
“May I speak to Peter Mowbray?”
“I’m afraid he’s sleeping.” Her dad had been sleeping a lot since getting back from the hospital. “Can I help?”
“I’m calling from the neurology department at James Cook. Mr Miller, a consultant in the department, would like to schedule an appointment to discuss the results of Mr Mowbray’s MRI.”
Rachel felt as if her stomach had dropped down to her toes. She hadn’t forgotten this call was coming, of course she hadn’t, not for a moment, and yet…
She sort of had. She’d let herself not think about it, at least for a little while, because it had been so utterly blissful simply to be with Ben.
Now the reality was staring at her, smacking her, in the face. “Yes, of course,” she managed after what felt like an endless pause but was probably only a few seconds. “When would be convenient?”
“Tomorrow, at eleven in the morning?”
So soon? She supposed she should be relieved, since waiting lists on the NHS were notorious, but the immediacy of it, the urgency, alarmed her. “All right.”
“Wonderful. See you then.”
The receptionist rang off, leaving Rachel standing there in the hall, holding the phone. Harriet came in from the kitchen, where she’d been baking another batch of scones for the tea room in Pickering; they’d said they wanted a weekly order.
“Rachel?” she asked, the uncertainty as well as the knowledge there in her tone.
Slowly Rachel replaced the receiver in its cradle. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “That was the hospital. Dad’s MRI results have come back. They want to discuss them tomorrow.”
“Did they say…?”
“No, but it’s what they didn’t say, isn’t it?” Rachel said heavily. “They didn’t say ‘all clear, no worries’.”
“Well, they wouldn’t say anything, not over the phone,” Harriet argued, a stubborn note entering her voice. “We don’tknow, Rachel.”
“But we sort of do,” she replied quietly.
“These things are treatable—”
“I know. They can be.”
They stared at each other for a long, silent moment.
“Well, there’s absolutely no point in speculating,” Harriet declared as she turned back to the kitchen. Rachel stared at her retreating back for a moment before she followed her in.
“I know that,” she told her as Harriet began kneading the scone dough as if her life depended on it. “I just want to be prepared. And Dad should be, too. We’ll have to tell him—”
“We can tell him he has an appointment,” Harriet replied, flipping the dough over and patting it out rather forcefully. “We don’t have to tell him anything else, because we don’tknow.”
