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Maybe that was why he’d always maintained his distance. He’d helped her as much as she would let him in practical terms, but always shied away from the emotional. It was time to redraw the boundaries.
‘What do you need?’
She shrugged, shaking her head. ‘I’ve had a takeaway and some music. Now an early night.’
She obviously wasn’t going to discuss the matter any further, and Alex needed a plan. Something with no loose ends, that she wouldn’t be able to argue with or reject out of hand. Something that was going to work and maybe change things in the long term.
‘I’ll take you home, then.’
‘That’s okay. It’s early enough to take the Tube.’
Alex got to his feet. ‘You can take the Tube, then, and I’ll drive over to your place. I’ll see you there.’
The expected smile almost tore his heart in two.
‘Since you’re going my way, I suppose I could ask you to drop me off, then.’
He walked through into the hall, picking up his car keys and waiting for her there. Marie appeared, her bag slung across her shoulder, but before he could reach for the latch on the front door she suddenly flung her arms around his waist.
‘Uh!’ He allowed his hands to move slowly towards her back, returning her hug as impersonally as he could. ‘What was that for?’
‘For being my best friend. And for listening to me blather on.’
She hugged him tight, and then let him go, stepping back. Alex’s knees almost gave way.
‘This is just between you and me, right?’
She saw everyone else’s needs and yet treated her own as weakness. And she was clearly regretting saying as much as she had.
‘Of course. What are friends for?’
The look on her face seemed a lot like relief that he’d decided to drop the subject. For once, Marie had misread him. Alex wasn’t going to back off and if she put up a fight then so be it.
He’d fight her back.
* * *
A good night’s sleep had applied some perspective to the matter. Marie would deal with Zack, and she’d deal with her mum the way she always had. Alex couldn’t help her with this.
She retreated to her office, and then spent most of the day showing a few local GPs and hospital doctors around the clinic while Alex saw patients. Working together with other health professionals, becoming one of their options when they thought about what their patients needed, was a must if the clinic was going to reach its full potential for helping the community.
When Alex appeared in the doorway she couldn’t help starting. Last night had lit a slow-burning fuse, which had been fizzling all day. Sometimes it seemed to go out, but that was just an illusion. The spark never quite died.
‘How was your day?’
His question was much the same as it usually was when they’d been working on separate things and hadn’t seen much of each other.
‘Good, thanks. They all seemed impressed with what we had to offer, and a couple of them have said that they already have patients on their books they’d like to refer.’
‘That sounds great.’
He dipped his hand into his pocket and put a small box on her desk. Marie looked inside, finding a tangle of pink paper clips, and when she tipped some of them out she saw that they were in different animal shapes.
‘They’re wonderful—thank you. Where do you get all this crazy stuff?’ Marie already had a collection of unusually shaped, brightly coloured things on her desk, which Alex had bought for her.
‘That’s my secret. If you knew, you wouldn’t need me to feed your stationery habit. And, by the way, I saw Anita just now. She popped in to see Nisha today.’
‘Yes? How is she?’
