Jules Wake - Peony Place

Breathe, Claire. Breathe.

Even with the slow, careful breathing, it took a whole ten minutes before I felt as if I could even stand up. It was just extreme tiredness. Two hours of sleep did that to a body. I had this. I could do the report. It would just take a lot of hours.

I finally emerged from the ladies, fifteen long, panicky minutes later and strode to my office, rolling up my metaphorical sleeves as I went. I could do this.

When I finally allowed myself the treat of checking my messages at half past six, hoping there might be a few texts from Ash, my spirits nose-dived when I realised there hadn’t been anything since the first ones this morning. I read them again, a little sunshine dancing in my heart. He’d obviously had as busy a day as me. The thought gave me a sense of solidarity. Me and Ash hard at work, both bossing it. We were so similar above and below the surface.

There was a text from my mother.

Hi darling, can we change the time tomorrow? Could you make it 6pm instead of 7.30? See you soon xxx

I closed my eyes. Damn, I’d completely forgotten. Reluctantly, I picked up the phone.

‘Hi Mum, it’s Claire.’

‘Hi, darling. Did you get my text?’

‘Yes, that’s why I’m ringing. I’m not going to be able—’

‘Claire, don’t you dare say you’re not coming.’

‘Mum, I can’t. I’ve just been given—’

‘But darling, it’s the last time we’ll see you before we go.’

‘I know, Mum—’

‘We’ll be gone for four months.’

To be fair, with Mum and Dad’s imminent departure on a four-month cruise, tomorrow’s date had been reserved for two weeks. It was a measure of my state of mind that I’d forgotten. I normally kept a pretty good handle on my diary.

‘Okay, Mum. But let’s stick to seven-thirty.’ That would allow a couple of additional hours in the office.

‘But then it’s late for the girls and Alice wants to leave at a reasonable hour because she has a yoga class in the morning.’

Alice had a yoga class! I rubbed at my forehead trying to ease the tightening bands of headache gathering there. Bully for bloody, bendy Alice.

‘Well, she should have thought about that, earlier. We said seven-thirty two weeks ago.’

‘Claire, please,’ sighed my mother in her familiar referee voice. ‘Your Dad and I really want to see you before we go. And you work far too hard, darling. Take a night off.’

If it weren’t for the fact that this really was the only chance I’d see them for four months, I might have stood my ground.

‘I’ll see you at six, then,’ I said with finality and hung up, annoyed at myself for being annoyed at Alice for derailing the evening.

That was her default. Derailing things. At sixteen she announced she was pregnant, on the morning of my first A-level exam. You try concentrating after that bombshell. Conscious that she was missing the best years of her life, my parents became surrogate parents themselves rather than grandparents. A huge mistake, in my opinion. Somehow Alice managed to get pregnant a second time with Ava, just four years after Poppy.

In recent years, my parents had bought her a small terraced house in Churchstone. It was pure chance I’d moved to the same small market town six months ago. The gorgeous perfection of the house more than made up for its proximity to my sister.

Amazingly, on first viewing, it had ticked every box on my extremely detailed – I overhead the estate agent use the word ‘demanding’ – list and instantly I knew it was my Instagram perfect I’ve-made-it home. Or rather, it would be when I got round to finding the right workmen to do the renovations and chose some decent furniture. Bizarrely, it had been the one and only time I’d gone with my gut and it had been the biggest purchase of my life.

I winced and woke up my computer. The last thing I had time for right now was daydreaming how my house might look one day. If I didn’t get this blasted report done, I could kiss goodbye to a partnership and then buying the house would have been a complete waste of time.

But I did have one thing to do. I picked up my phone, smiling again at Ash’s earlier text and sent one back.

I have been known to compromise but don’t get used to it. x

I checked my emails and my palms turned clammy. Twelve already and it was only ten past nine. I studied the busy receptionist and prayed that the doctor was running to time. I was going to be an hour late into work. If the festering wound on my arm from trimming Alice’s hedge hadn’t started leaking greenish stuff I probably would have cancelled today’s appointment.

I typed a couple of quick responses to my emails, although it was like a game of whack-a-mole. No sooner had I answered five, another six had popped up.

With a heavy sigh, out of habit rather than any real hope, I checked my text messages.

Nothing. The familiar lump in my throat rose. Not one text from Ashwin Laghari in over two weeks.

Whatever had happened with him had burned fast and furious and like a firework. It had clearly been a one-time-only deal but it still left this odd, hollow pain in my chest.

I reread, for what must have been the hundred millionth time, the last text he’d sent. What had made him change his mind?

Hadn’t that brief, sizzling connection meant anything to him? I’d shared with him a glimpse of my fears because I’d thought he understood. The rejection hit hard. I’d even cried again at work one day but that had probably had as much to do with realising I was going to miss the Ashdown report deadline. It was the one and only deadline I’d ever missed and it felt like a huge great blot on my career. And the more I worried about it, the more I struggled to meet the next deadline and the one after that. It was as if I was caught upside down in some whirlwind and I couldn’t right myself.

‘Let’s have a look then,’ said Dr Boulter with a kind smile.

I rolled up my sleeve to show him the gash – thanks, Alice’s hedge – which had not healed properly and had been looking decidedly manky for weeks and this morning had reached a whole new level of manky. Around the wound my skin was red and inflamed and had acquired a furnace-level heat. My whole forearm was now tender to the touch.

‘Ouch.’ With gentle gloved fingers he prodded my arm and a glistening gob of greenish yellow pus welled up and oozed from the jagged edges. I flinched.

‘This is nasty. How long has it been like that?’

‘Er… a couple of weeks,’ I admitted, shamefaced.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Why haven’t you been to see me before now? You’ve got a nasty infection. This needs antibiotics.’

For some stupid reason, tears filled my eyes and I had to swallow back the lump that had, if I was honest, taken up permanent residence in my throat.

‘Claire?’

That was the problem when your GP was an old golf buddy of your dad’s and had known you from when you were in ankle socks. No, I certainly didn’t come to see him about women’s things, instead opting for one of the female doctors in the practice, but I did come for minor things like stupid, flipping scratches that refused to heal.

Ashwin Laghari – bugger his gorgeous, indifferent soul – had probably been right about the Savlon but in that glorious immediate-post-date haze I’d completely forgotten about applying antibiotic cream. Yeah, I was holding him personally responsible for my infected arm. The bastard.

‘Claire?’ Dr Boulter’s voice broke into my thoughts. Damn, he was being kind. I didn’t want kind. I wanted brusque and curt.