Freya North - Pip

For the most part, Pip doesn’t feel used or hard done by. Quietly, we can surmise that her eagerness to be the Great Looker-After and Dispenser of Laughter in some way guards against any enquiries into her own welfare. Pip wants everyone to be safe and happy, but she is also aware that, for as long as they are the ones in need, they won’t have the wherewithal to probe or pry into her well-being.

Consequently, she hasn’t told anyone about Caleb. She’ll argue that there’s nothing to tell. Perhaps, though, it’s to avoid being questioned. Pip doesn’t have any answers. And she doesn’t like to be questioned. Nor has she told them about Zac – what on earth is there to tell? After all, she doesn’t yet know even his name – and she can’t very well refer to him as Stalker Bloke. Anyway, quietly she’s aware that she’s elaborated to herself, for her own amusement, the extent of his interest in her. Deep down she knows he’s not a stalker, just a bloke who keeps bumping into her, whose social graces are clumsy. Pip believes it is preferable to keep Caleb and Zac to herself, so she can indulge in imaginative tangents whilst she’s having a bath or travelling to work; sneak in a little day-dream whilst Megan or Cat or Fen discuss this grave matter or that. Fundamentally, though, Pip knows that to expose the bare facts surrounding either man would reveal that there’s not much there at all, really.

There’s been little development between Caleb and Pip since their late-night doorstep embrace. Dr Pippity’s visits to St Bea’s don’t always coincide with Dr Simmons’s ward rounds and when they are on the same ward at the same time, both clown and doctor are too focused on their patients and their jobs to sneak away for even a quick hi-how’s-it-going, let alone consult diaries and arrange dates or steal a kiss, for goodness’ sake. Yesterday, he pinched her bottom just before she changed wards. She was quite taken aback. She felt compromised – believed his behaviour to be unprofessional. Fortunately, she was just about to go into the washroom to disinfect her props and wash her hands, so the symbolic wiping of a paper towel against her posterior restored her composure and enabled her to continue with her ward rounds in fine style.

‘I’d rather you didn’t pinch my bottom again,’ she warned, somewhat prissily, when she came across him having a cigarette in the ambulance bay as she made her way to the tube.

He looked crestfallen. ‘What, never ever again? But it’s so damn pinchable , Pip.’ He stood up and came close. ‘In fact, I’m glad I have a fag in one hand and the Telegraph in the other or I’d be in full fondle of your buttocks right now.’

Don’t bloody laugh at his lousy rubbish joke. He’s incorrigible. Don’t even bloody smile.

‘You’re incorrigible!’ Pip protested, frustrated that she was so easily flattered and praying she wasn’t blushing.

‘You’re blushing,’ Caleb said. ‘And I’ll be happy to bet dinner that you’re not blushing on those cheeks alone,’ he remarked, kissing them for emphasis, ‘or that it’s merely these lips that are moist right now,’ he whispered, kissing her mouth.

Pip McCabe was truly stuck for words. His blatancy, his lewdness, was an unexpected turn-on. What was she meant to say? Should she admit that, yes, she really did want to go to bed with him, and judging by the state of her knickers, why didn’t they just forget the whole dinner-wager thing and cab it back to one of their flats right now? Or should she act all demure? Or should she play hard to get but flirtatious with it?

For Christ’s bloody sake, this is the kind of advice I dispense to my sisters and friends the whole time. I’m forever helping them to compose fabulous soliloquies. And now I’m standing here like a lemon, gawping and speechless, flushed, drooling and damp. I can’t practise what I preach because I can’t remember what on earth it is I advocate.

‘Cat got your tongue?’ Caleb asked slyly, raising one side of his mouth into a sly smile.

Pip McCabe regarded him. Momentarily, her thoughts wandered to her sister, Cat. She ought to call her. She really ought. Later.

Now, however, she tilted her head and placed her hands on her hips. ‘Actually,’ she heard herself say, ‘there’s a pussy who’ll have your tongue in a flash.’

Jesus, Pip! Was that you? You minx!

God knows where that came from! How can I switch from pissed off with him for pinching my bum to suggesting cunnilingus? I should go. I really should. I have no idea whether this is a good idea – and that is the point precisely. I’ll go. I’ll go and see Cat.

‘Dinner, then?’ said Caleb. Now it was his turn to hope that his excitement wasn’t too obvious and he nonchalantly held his Telegraph against his bulging groin as a precaution.

She’s speaking my language. And it’s an invitation beyond my expectations at this stage.

Though Pip’s mind was flooded with half-sentences of ‘I should …’ and ‘I’ll phone Cat to …’ and ‘For God’s sake, I really …’ and ‘Django won’t be …’, her voice had a mind of its own. ‘Your place or mine?’ Pip asked. ‘And let’s not bother with dinner.’

Time will tell whether it was a good thing or bad that a seamless, Hollywoodesque scene-change straight to the bedroom – to humping, writhing, sighing, happy, glistening bodies – was denied them. Caleb was on a late shift that night. And the next night, Pip had promised to accompany Fen to the birthday party of the editor at her work who she was furtively starting to see. So Caleb suggested Saturday night and Pip accepted as demurely as she could.

However, the verbal acceptance of carnal relations between the two of them – the acknowledgement of the imminence of this – took Pip a good few strides on from her senseless celibacy. Her attitude changed and with it, her demeanour. Quite possibly, the subtle but significant shift altered the potency of her pheromones. Or at the least, simply bestowed an allure of availability and willingness.

Little did she know that before Caleb would get her into bed, she’d have been bought drinks by Zac and would have accepted a date from him.

When Pip saw Zac across a crowded bar, she was hardly going to tell her sisters ‘Oh look, there’s my stalker, yes, I suppose he is quite handsome but don’t be fooled by good looks because actually he’s rude and odd, to say nothing of the baggage he lugs around, brimming with an ex-wife and sick son.’

There again, nor was Pip likely to reveal that, in the next twenty-four hours, there was a strong possibility that she’d be in bed with a doctor from St Bea’s with whom she’d already had great aural sex.

But Zac was there that night and Pip was quite taken aback that she should be amused rather than disconcerted, perhaps just a little excited rather than unnerved, that she had a certain pride rather than horror that the man over there, yes, the good-looking one in the navy jeans and navy shirt and spectacles that used to be free on the NHS but no doubt now cost a small fortune, was her own personal stalker.

Perhaps there was a part of her that would quite like to say ‘See that bloke? I can’t get away from him.’ Not because she sought her sisters’ protection – because she didn’t really fear him at all and of course she could look after herself well enough, thank you very much – but because actually, she was rather proud that her so-called stalker was so easy on the eye. However, duty called and decreed that the only blokes who warranted her focus were the one Fen was considering sleeping with, and the one Cat was deludedly desperate to have back. Tonight was about encouraging Fen to go for it and persuading Cat to leave well alone.