However, in an uncustomary display of cowardice, Olive wanted to be nowhere near Jack Bennett when he read that report.
She left the report on his desk and flicked off the light, her mind resolutely moving to the very large glass of wine she would consume before going to bed.
* * * * *
Gillie and Deborah
Gillie Matthews saw the large file marked “Urgent. Private and Confidential.” that Olive put on Jack’s desk sometime in the night.
This was a common occurrence.
It was also common for Olive to put the most important papers front and centre on Jack’s desk, indicating they needed his immediate attention.
Therefore, Gillie, preparing a packet of things to be couriered to Jack at his office at The Point in Cornwall, set the file on the floor so she wouldn’t forget it. She started to rifle through his desk to add other papers that needed his attention but her phone rang.
She ran from the room to get the phone and it was Jack who spent ten minutes giving her a list of directives through which she took careful and copious notes.
While she was doing this, she was meticulously concentrating and thus missed Deborah from the administrative pool who wandered through the outer office and into Jack’s.
It was part of Deborah’s daily tasks to enter Jack’s office and see to any filing and various and sundry other things that were slightly less important than Gillie’s responsibilities.
As Jack always did, anything confidential that needed to be shredded he tossed on the floor by his desk.
Deborah found the file, not unusually stamped “Urgent. Private and Confidential.” She picked it up and took it to the shredder.
Without reading it (something which was not her place in any way, shape or form), she shredded every last document.
In the meantime, Gillie had spent a goodly amount of her morning seeing to the priority tasks Jack had assigned her.
By the time she re-entered his office to ready his packet for the courier, she’d forgotten all about the file she’d left on the floor.
* * * * *
Mickey
Mickey Dempsey watched the man walk out of the hospital with his wife.
She’d slipped and fallen down the stairs.
Mickey knew this because, even though he wasn’t a qualified doctor, he had a lab coat and more than a dozen different badges proclaiming his right to be in more than a dozen different places, including University College Hospital, London.
Therefore he’d snuck in and read her file.
Mickey looked at the woman whose eye was swollen shut and an ugly shade of purply-blue. She also had a cut on her lip. Furthermore, she was holding her body like it was made of glass.
Mickey had never known anyone who fell down the stairs but unless the woman had fallen down the stairs on her face, he could not imagine how she’d acquired those injuries.
Mickey had known a number of people (including himself, on occasion), who had been in bust-ups at pubs and footie matches. He’d even seen himself in the mirror when a fist had hit his face more than once, looking exactly like the woman who walked out of the hospital.
He’d also seen his own mother looking like her.
Mickey turned his attention to the man with her.
He was lean, tall and handsome, with light brown hair and blue eyes.
His name, Mickey knew, was Calvin Cole.
He was once, Mickey knew, married to Belle Abbot, The Tiny Dynamo.