They found Stuart lying in a side ward, looking very small and vulnerable on the high white bed. A tall grey-haired man was bending over him. He straightened up when he saw Lyle and smiled.
‘Nothing much wrong here,’ he said reassuringly, ‘just a large bump and an aching head.’
While Jessica hurried to Stuart’s side, the consultant drew Lyle away slightly, and as she smiled down into Stuart’s pale face Jessica could hear the faint hum of their conversation behind her. When it ceased she didn’t immediately turn round.
‘Your husband’s gone to check up on one of his patients.’ Mr Jeffries was standing beside her. ‘I think you can go home now, young man,’ he told Stuart, adding to Jessica, ‘I can’t see that there’s any need to keep him in overnight. Even so you were right to call out the ambulance. He was lucky, he might easily not have been. Not that we’re really equipped to perform brain surgery here, we would have had to take him to the special unit at Partington for that.’ He shook his head regretfully and then stunned Jessica by saying, ‘It’s a pity your husband won’t come back into surgery. He had all the makings of a very skilled neuro-surgeon. I had thought now that he was married that he might reconsider. Of course a consultant has to work very long hours.’
‘So does a GP,’ Jessica retorted indignantly, firing up at the implication that Lyle might have opted for the easier role in life.
Mr Jeffries laughed. ‘Yes, yes, I know. But Lyle had a very special skill, and it grieves me to see him waste it. I take it that you would have no objection to his returning to surgery?’
Frowning, Jessica shook her head.
‘Umm, I know how much it grieved him to give it up, but perhaps now…’
Would Lyle prefer to return to surgery? It was a question that occupied much of Jessica’s mind for the drive home.
James was in the car with her, Stuart travelling with Lyle where he would have more room. Although he was still subdued, his colour had been coming back by the time they left the hospital, and Jessica sent up a devout prayer of thanks that he had got off so lightly.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IN THE FIRST FEW DAYS after Stuart’s accident, Jessica was kept far too busy to dwell too much on her own private feelings. Stuart had to be kept quiet for the first couple of days, and this had proved quite a challenge. What had surprised Jessica a little was that whenever Lyle was at home he willingly took over her nursing duties for her.
It was the first time she had been able to observe Lyle, the doctor, at close quarters, and she marvelled at his gentleness and patience. Coupled with a firmness which he exhibited whenever Stuart threatened to become frustrated with his enforced inactivity, he had a knack of soothing his son that she herself seemed unable to match.
Once, watching his tenderness with Stuart, she felt tears sting her eyes. This was the side of him she had known instinctively must exist but had never experienced. Nor ever would, she recognised drearily. Something in his relationship with Heather had sealed away any tenderness towards the female sex for ever. Now when she recalled Justine telling her how the much younger Lyle had placed his young wife on a pedestal, adoring her almost blindly, she felt sick with envy.
And then to cap it all, the morning that Lyle pronounced that Stuart was fully fit, Jessica discovered that she was not after all to have a child.
Until that moment she had not guessed how deep had been her hope that she might. A child of Lyle’s to love and cherish as she would never be allowed to love the father? Once she would have openly mocked such sentimentality, but lately she had changed. The love she had once denied could exist was there, and she knew instinctively that it was no mere sexual chemistry or infatuation she felt towards Lyle, but something that went far deeper and would be with her all through her life.
What she had discovered from personal experience meant that she would have to amend large portions of the outline for her new book, and when Lyle had gone out on his morning calls she telephoned her publishers in London to speak with her editor.
The conversation was a long one, but luckily her editor had been very understanding about agreeing to extending her earlier time limit. It would be impossible now for her to do any real work until after the summer holidays when the boys would be back at school.
She was going to miss their company once they went back, but they needed the stimulus and c
ompanionship of friends of their own age unless they were to grow up solitary, and that was not what she wanted for them.
Andrea rang her during the afternoon, primarily to chat to her about the barbecue—how long ago that now seemed, Jessica thought wryly as she listened to her sister. She couldn’t quite overcome her sense of guilt every time she saw Lyle, and she had taken to quietly slipping out of a room when he entered it, dreading to find herself alone with him and perhaps forced to listen to him saying that he now considered their marriage should end.
Lyle was no fool. He knew quite well that she was deliberately avoiding him, she had seen that in the cold and deliberate way his eyes challenged her, but it was a challenge she no longer had the heart to meet.
‘One of the reasons I’m ringing is to ask you and Lyle to join us for dinner on Saturday evening,’ Andrea told her, and then, as though sensing the refusal hovering on her sister’s tongue, added coaxingly, ‘please, Jess, the other guests will be colleagues of David’s, and you know how much store he sets by having you as his sister-in-law. There’s a senior lectureship coming up that he badly wants, and…’
‘I honestly don’t know if we’ll be able to come, Andrea,’ Jessica interrupted her sister. ‘I’m not sure if Lyle will be free. I’ll have to ring you back tomorrow and let you know.’
She had already decided that she wasn’t going to tell Lyle about the invitation. In her present vulnerable state it would be impossible for her to endure a full evening in his company without betraying herself, and the long drive to and from Andrea’s would give him ample opportunity to bring up the subject of their marriage. Her face burned, even though she was alone, as it did every time she thought about her passionate response to him. It seemed impossible that he could not have guessed how she felt, but luckily he seemed to think that she had merely seen him as a substitute for David. Or perhaps that was what he wanted to believe.
The following morning she was downstairs later than usual. James had been sick during the night and when she went in to wake him up she had found him looking very pale and sorry for himself. Suspecting that too much half-ripened fruit from the garden was the culprit, she suggested that he stayed where he was until he was feeling a little better.
Lyle was standing by the kitchen table when she walked in, gulping down a mug of coffee. The work on the new kitchen was due to start the moment the boys were back at school, and much as Jessica longed for her new kitchen, she was dreading the upheaval.
‘James is looking rather peaky,’ she told him. ‘Too many green apples, I suspect.’
‘Umm, I’ll go up and take a look at him. By the way, Andrea’s phoned, and I’ve confirmed that we’ll be able to make it on Saturday night. What’s wrong?’ he jeered, watching her face. ‘Can’t you stomach the thought of seeing Chalmers with your sister—his wife?’ he reinforced before turning on his heel and heading for the hall.
It was just her luck that Andrea should have phoned while she was upstairs. Now there was no possibility of escaping from Saturday evening’s dinner party—or from Lyle.