That got the denial over and done with. The last few days couldn’t have been easy for Ethan, and they hadn’t been easy for Kate either. But she was managing, and she couldn’t imagine that Ethan was doing any differently.
‘I was wondering if it would be okay for me and Sam to see the puppies you were talking about. Um, hold on a minute...’
Kate grinned. The shrill voice in the background told her that Sam was obviously getting excited at the prospect.
‘Sorry about that. Sam! Holding your breath isn’t going to make any difference.’
People were starting to look. Kate hurried into her empty surgery to hide the stupid grin on her face. ‘When do you want to come and see them?’
‘Would the weekend be convenient for you?’
Kate was taking the puppies this weekend. She dismissed the feeling that it would be better to see Ethan again on neutral ground. She should look at it as seeing Sam. Letting him into her home, her safe place, was a great deal easier to contemplate.
‘The weekend would be fine. Sue, the nurse who’s looking after them, is going away, and I’m going to be taking them. How about Friday evening? I’m finishing work early.’ From the sounds in the background, the sooner the better for Ethan. He obviously had a very excited child on his hands.
‘Friday would be great.’
‘That’s good. Come to my place around seven. Do you remember where I live?’
‘Yes. I remember.’
‘Okay...’ An awkward silence reminded Kate that really the only connection she had with Ethan was a professional one, even though it felt so very personal. ‘I’ll see you then. I’m in the middle of a surgery. I’ve got to run.’
‘Of course. Thanks, I’ll see you tomorrow.’ The line abruptly cut out. Maybe the excitement was just too much for Sam and Ethan had to go and calm him down. Or maybe, that was really all they had to say to each other.
* * *
Settling the puppies into their home for the weekend had taken a while. Kate looked around the cottage and decided against vacuuming in favour of changing out of her work clothes. The top that she picked from the wardrobe was one that she rarely wore, but particularly liked.
‘Stupid little...’ Her fingers fumbled with the tiny mother-of-pearl buttons. Ethan wasn’t going to notice, and Sam almost certainly wouldn’t. Maybe the pups would like it, but if they gnawed at the fine cotton she’d be sorry.
Pulling the scrunchie out, she brushed her hair. That was going to have to do. Any more and it might give the impression that she’d dressed up, and dressing up to spend Friday evening at home wasn’t really her style any more.
There was a time when it had been. After the first mugging, she’d returned home from the hospital and locked herself in her flat. Locking out the hurt and the fear. Telling herself that she had to cope alone, because no one else would help her.
And s
he’d stayed there for six months, immobilised at first and struggling to get out to the hospital for her outpatient appointments. Her body had healed, but her heart hadn’t, and she’d found herself alone, hardly ever going out and never letting anyone in.
As soon as she’d been able to, she’d dressed up on a Friday evening, marking the end of the week in the same way that ordinary people did, despite the fact that her weekends were pretty much the same as her weekdays. She’d cooked a nice meal and settled down to watch a film on the TV.
That wasn’t her any more. She’d given in to the fear after she’d been mugged the first time, but this time it would be different. She would go out and invite people over just like any other normal human being. And Kate had to admit that she was looking forward to seeing Ethan, even if it meant letting him and his son into her home.
The sound of a car in the lane outside reached her. Hers was the last cottage in the row and it was either Ethan or someone who’d taken a wrong turn and got lost. Kate approached the window, standing back from the net curtains so that its occupants couldn’t see her. Ethan’s dark-blue SUV was manoeuvring into a parking space.
She paced up and down the hallway impatiently. How long did it take to get one child out of a car and up the front path? Kate was just considering peeping through the letter box to see what was going on when the doorbell rang.
* * *
‘Hold the flowers, Sam.’ Ethan retrieved the small bunch of flowers from the footwell of his car and put them on the back seat next to Sam.
‘Dad!’ Sam clearly wasn’t in the mood for flowers. He was in the mood for puppies and viewed anything else as an obstacle.
The choosing and buying of flowers and their careful arrangement into the kind of posy that a child might give had been a calculated time waster, intended to fill the hour between picking up Sam from his parents’ and arriving at Kate’s house. But, even though the urge to give them to Kate himself had grown during the course of the exercise, it was impossible.
‘Come on, Sam. Kate’s helping us, and this is our way of saying thank you to her.’
‘But she’s not my girlfriend!’ Sam protested.