St Matthew's Passion - By Sam Archer Page 0,31

of Melissa somewhere deep within his psyche, he turned and headed back towards St Matthew’s, his stride even longer and faster than before and this time driven by a sense of purpose.

***

Normally a phone call at three in the morning was cause for alarm, but when Melissa glanced at the ‘caller display’ screen and saw Emma’s number she reached across and unplugged the phone from the wall.

Emma had already tried Melissa’s mobile numerous times, leaving messages that were at first humorously suggestive but gradually became more and more concerned.

Melissa, are you okay?

Call back just to let me know you’re safe.

Eventually, to put and end her friend’s calls as much as to allay her fears, Melissa sent a terse text message: Am fine. Hope rest of party was fun. That was when Emma had started ringing her landline.

Melissa lay in the darkness, staring up through swollen eyes at the vague expanse of the ceiling. She needed sleep, desperately, for its healing properties and because she had to work in the morning. But she knew it wouldn’t come. Not yet, anyway.

She could handle rejection. She had experienced it before, and she herself had ended relationships with men before, and knew how painful it was for both parties. Rejection by Fin was vastly more devastating because he was the first man she’d ever truly loved. She realised that now. But she could cope with that, too, even if a small part of her died in the process.

What she found hardest to deal with was not understanding why he’d rejected her.

He clearly wanted to be with her. Melissa wasn’t a vain person, but like all women she knew when a man was attracted to her. So it wasn’t that he simply felt nothing for her but was trying to preserve her feelings by not coming out and saying it.

Yet again she replayed his every word, searching for the nuance, the inflection, that would give a clue as to his reasons. Was he uncomfortable entering into a relationship with a trainee under his tutelage? Did he see it as a potential abuse of the power he had over her, or was he afraid colleagues would view it as such? Melissa could appreciate such concerns. But if Fin harboured them, why couldn’t he say so? Why did he have to be so cagey about his reasons?

Or was there another woman? That would be the most obvious reason for Fin’s pushing her away. When she’d asked him he’d answered ambiguously, saying not really. What on earth did that mean? Was he half in love with someone else? Was she married and he couldn’t be open about the affair?

As the night deepened into the hours before dawn, and sleep still eluded Melissa, her mind began to come up with ever more fanciful possibilities. Did Fin have some terminal illness he couldn’t talk about and which made him afraid of opening his heart to anyone? Was he gay, or impotent? (She immediately discounted those two notions.) Melissa knew Fin had been married before; Emma had said so. But she knew nothing about his former wife. Was the woman blackmailing him in some way, preventing him from getting on with his life and finding someone new by threatening to reveal some terrible secret he was hiding?

Maybe you ought to have been a novelist, not a surgeon, Melissa told herself wearily.

At daybreak, having abandoned all hope of sleep, Melissa sat in the tiny kitchen of her flat nursing a mug of strong tea. She had a decision to make. She accepted that Fin meant what he said, that a relationship couldn’t be allowed to develop between the two of them. There seemed little point in trying to change his mind on that point. But should she press him to explain his reasons to her, badger him until he finally gave in and told her why he’d made the decision he had? She did after all, she thought, have some right to an explanation. Or should she save her energy, avoid the escalation in tension between them that any such pursuit of the truth would produce, and accept the situation as it was?

Melissa went to the window and pressed her forehead against the cold glass, looking out. The city, or what she could see of it, slumbered below. She was reminded of where she was and what she’d achieved. She was in London, in a plum job that most other young surgeons would give their eye teeth for, in the heart of