Questions of Trust A Medical Romance - By Sam Archer Page 0,47

shone and sparkled before her, mesmerising her, lulling her finally into sleep.

***

Tom was a walker. As a child he’d rambled in the hills around Pemberham, and as a moody teenager, feeling rejected and misunderstood by every other human being on earth, he’d used to wander the streets on his own at all hours, thinking to himself, trying to make sense of a confusing world. Even later, when he’d been at medical school in London, after an especially stressful day’s work or a more-than-usually exhausting on-call shift, his favourite and most effective way to unwind was to stroll alongside the River Thames for miles or head through one of the city’s parks, relishing the simple pleasure of locomotion, and of course benefiting from the exercise in the process.

Since Kelly had been born his opportunities for solitary walking had of course been limited. Kelly was a lively, active child, and was more than happy to go for rambles in the countryside, which he enjoyed. But having to keep a constant eye on a four-year-old who was liable to race off at the slightest provocation meant that Tom couldn’t indulge in the sort of untrammelled, free-form thinking he’d found so comforting and useful before.

He could have done with some solitary walking time now.

Instead, with Kelly tucked up in bed, the dishes washed, and every other possible opportunity for distraction exhausted, he stood in the middle of the living room and gazed around him. He looked at the trappings of country life, some inherited with the house, some added by him, still others contributed by well-meaning visitors anxious to help him fit in to his new life. There was the hand-carved sideboard he’d snapped up for a song at a local auction. Here was a matching set of antimacassars and doilies, terribly twee for his taste but donated by the ladies of the local Women’s Institute and therefore on obligatory permanent display in case any of the good ladies dropped in to visit. All reminders that he, and Kelly, had left one life behind and adopted a very different one here in Pemberham. A simpler, more satisfying one.

And now, a mere eight months after they’d arrived, he was going to have to uproot them once more.

He wandered about the room, picking objects up, studying them as if for the first time. One print on the wall caught his attention: a Turner watercolour, showing an impressionistic ship in the centre of a violent storm at sea. He knew the feeling.

During the day his suspicion had been growing as to what the malicious allegation was all about, but he hadn’t allowed his speculation full rein until after he’d met Chloe in the car park outside the surgery. Up until that point, he’d entertained the notion that she might just possibly be the person who’d phoned the paper. One look at her face, at the horrified way she reacted to his anguish, persuaded him that she had nothing to do with it, and he immediately felt ashamed that he’d ever considered such a thing. From that moment on, he’d realised what was going on.

Rebecca was behind it. She’d made plenty of veiled threats, dropped hints on at least two occasions that her gloves were coming off, that she’d get custody of Kelly back come hell or high water. He’d dismissed all this as histrionic bluff. Well, he was discovering now just how far she was prepared to go, and he knew this was only the beginning of the trouble he faced.

She’d either phoned in the allegations herself, or - much more likely - had put somebody else up to the job. Tom wouldn’t know until more details emerged in the Pember Valley News tomorrow. But he supposed an actual accuser would come forward to be interviewed, and that couldn’t of course be Rebecca. she’d be there in the background, however, pulling the strings.

The allegations would turn out to be baseless, of course. Nobody would be able to prove anything. But, equally, Tom himself wouldn’t be able to prove his innocence. He wasn’t required to according to English law, but people’s minds didn’t always work as tidily as that. An absence of proof of guilt didn’t necessarily mean proof of innocence. Probably Tom would face no disciplinary action, and there’d be no stain on his record. But people would point fingers, and gossip. Every contact of Tom’s with a female patient would be subject to the closest scrutiny. And people had long memories, especially in a small country