Questions of Trust A Medical Romance - By Sam Archer Page 0,56

more important in all of this than yours or mine. So let’s calm down, and discuss the details like a couple of adults.’

Rebecca stepped closer, almost within the invisible area around Tom that constituted his personal space. In a wintry voice she said, ‘Oh, it’s too late for that, Tom. Too late for an amicable arrangement. You had that opportunity weeks ago. I gave you plenty of chances. Even this morning, I might have been willing to consider it. But now that I’ve learned you’ve set your girlfriend on the trail, sniffing around like a dog, things have moved on. I’m going to make sure you never, ever have the chance to regain custody of Kelly. I’m going to prove, in court, that you’re unfit.’

He watched her, absorbing the bitterness, the meaning of the words. Carefully he said, ‘What else have you got up your sleeve, then, Rebecca? More cooked-up allegations? Because I tell you this. If you ever, ever dare suggest that I’m in some way a risk to Kelly, I will never forgive you.’

Once again her eyes flared, but this time there was more than just fury there. There was triumph, too, as if she’d won a small victory over him. Which he supposed she had. She’d rattled him, almost provoked him into countering with hysterical threats of his own. At the last minute he’d pulled back and ended with the lame-sounding I will never forgive you, hardly something that would give her pause.

Rebecca pushed past him and headed for the door. Instinctively he put out a hand to stop her but she swept it aside. The heaviness of the front door was the only thing that prevented her from slamming it.

When Tom had heard the engine of her car start and recede into the distance, he sank into the armchair, his hands in his hair.

So it was going to be even uglier than he’d expected. He’d give Rebecca and her solicitor anything they wanted, but it seemed she still wanted her day in court, so that she could rake up all sorts of other allegations about him and put him through the equivalent of standing in the stocks on the village green. No doubt there’d be more women coming forward alleging harassment, and even though their stories too would be easily discredited, the sheer number of the charges against him would start to weigh heavily in the public mind.

And Kelly… every day she’d watch and listen in growing bewilderment and misery as her parents fought and people whispered and pointed. Then, at the end, she’d be whisked away to live somewhere else, like a toy being fought over by a pair of self-centred toddlers and finally claimed by the stronger of them.

Tom no longer pitied Rebecca. He was furious at her for the way she’d allow this obsession with getting her own way to take over her mind, to blind her to the damage she was going to do to her daughter. He was furious at himself, too, for having misread the situation as he had, for underestimating his former wife’s capacity for vindictiveness, for not having done more, somehow (though if he was onset, he wasn’t quite sure what he might have done better), to protect Kelly from this unpleasantness.

And, Tom realised suddenly, he was furious at Chloe. Just what exactly had she done? Had she been interrogating Sabrina Jones, as Rebecca claimed, and was she spreading word that Rebecca was behind the allegations? Even though it was true, it wasn’t the sort of thing that was going to help the situation. What was Chloe trying to achieve by meddling like this? Now she’d made things worse, and a merely terrible situation had been turned into a catastrophic one.

Tom got up, took the whisky glass into the kitchen and poured what was left into the sink. He needed a clear head, because he had a lot of thinking to do. As a doctor, Tom was used to finding solutions to problems. In the practice of medicine, this was often more straightforward because the problem could be viewed dispassionately. In matters of personal significance, strong emotion had a tendency to cloud one’s judgement.

Tom paced, then sat, then gazed out the window at the balmy night. But try as he might, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that he’d met his match. That here, at last, he’d come face to face with a problem which not only didn’t have a clear solution, but didn’t have a solution at