The Summer We Loved Page 3

  A slap brought Pete round and he stirred, disorientated.

  “Wake up, mate.”

  Pete squinted into the light and colours tore into him. A dark shape formed in front of what looked like… a ceiling. He struggled to pull the shape into focus and then realised it was a face he knew well. He beamed. “Jimmeeee! What’re you doing here?”

  James Florin picked up his brother and apologised to the staff and customers around him. He dropped a couple of notes on the bar and hoisted him up to standing. “Come on, mate. Let’s get you home.”

  Outside the pub, James managed to persuade a taxi driver to accept them (for a premium) and wrestled his brother inside.

  Pete’s home was in an old Georgian building on the edge of town. It had been converted into flats at some stage, badly, without style or grandeur; a basic set of rooms, where doctors on various rotations stayed for the duration of their job.

  At the front door, he rifled through Pete’s pockets to find his door key.

  “Ooh, cheeky,” Pete teased, wobbling precariously against one arm while James struggled to open the door with the other.

  He lugged him across to his bedroom and dropped him down onto the bed. With a lot of encouragement, he managed to get a pint of water down Pete, and on him for that matter, and then he pulled off his shoes and covered him with his duvet. It was going to be a long night.

  James picked out his phone and rang home. “Rach, it’s me.”

  “Jamie, did you find him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Same again?”

  “I think so. He’s out for the count at the moment, but I’ll speak to him in the morning.”

  “Don’t forget to put him into the recovery position and then you really must try and get some sleep, sweetheart.”

  “I might nod a bit. But I think maybe I should stay awake,” he said.

  There was a pause on the other end of the phone.

  “It’s not his fault, Rach,” he told her.

  “It’s not yours either.”

  “I know, but I have to help him. I owe him that much, at least.”

  “Still?” She let out a long breath. “It was all such a long time ago, Jamie. Haven’t you done enough?”

  “I’ll ring you tomorrow,” he told her.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “Love you too. Give the kids a kiss from me.”

  “Will do.”

  James made sure Pete was safe to go to sleep and then settled himself in a chair beside him, ready to keep vigil for the night.

  At five-thirty the next morning, Pete’s body stirred to the chirruping song of a bird sat on the ledge outside of his window. A groan released the breath from his lungs and he pulled his hands to his head. James awoke from the brief, drowsy haze that had overtaken him just before dawn. He looked across. “Morning,” he said, and waited for the light of comprehension to take form behind Pete’s eyes.

  “What day is it?” Pete asked.

  “Saturday.”

  Pete lifted his head and peered at the light stretching in around the curtains. Apart from the relentless chatter of the birds outside, there was silence all around them. “What time?”

  “Early.”

  Pete sucked in a deep breath and winced. “My head.”

  “Is as much as you deserve. In fact you’re bloody lucky I showed up when I did.”

  Pete was confused. He was usually grateful for the blur that followed one of these binges, but this time there was nothing.

  “It seems you decided to hit on some poor young woman waiting for her boyfriend at the bar.”

  Pete cringed and let out a sigh.

  “Where are your pain-killers?” James asked him.

  Pete pointed to his bedside drawer and James reached in, popped a couple out and handed them to his brother. He fetched some fresh water and then sat down again while Pete knocked back the tablets with practiced ease. There was a moment of silence between them.

  “How long this time?” James asked him.

  Pete looked up. His head sank back down again and he rested back. “Thursday night…”

  James shook his head. “Why do you keep doing this to yourself, Pete?”

  “I-”

  “Had the dream?”

  Pete opened his mouth to protest, but then closed it again. “Something like that.”

  James looked at him, his head shaking slowly. “Why can’t you just let it go, mate? It’s been years. Even Adam’s managed to move on since then.”

  “Adam didn’t kill anyone, though, did he?” Pete said, his tone flat.

  James pierced his brother with a solemn look. “Neither did you.”

  Pete shrugged. “Semantics.”

  James rolled his eyes and let out a deep sigh. “The courts exonerated you of all responsibility, Pete. You weren’t the one to blame.”

  “Wasn’t I?”

  “It was an accident. Shit happens. You can’t carry on beating yourself up over this for the rest of your life. You’re just throwing it away. It wasn’t you killed in that car that night, you know?”

  “Maybe it should have been.” Pete closed his eyes and the dream replayed inside his head. Desolation swept across his face as the turmoil of the memory evolved once again. He couldn’t get past it, try as he might. Sometimes he thought he had cracked it, but the dream just kept recurring, bringing it all back and refreshing the agony again.

  His voice calmed, aware he had snapped at his brother and he shouldn’t have. If it wasn’t for Jimmy he would have nobody. “I’m not sure I can,” he admitted, his voice barely more than a whisper. “I’m not even convinced I want to.”

  “You need to get some counselling,” James told him. “I can’t keep driving around bailing you out all the time. You need to get yourself some proper help.”

  Pete let out a puff of derision. “Nobody asked you to keep coming here.” He winced and held onto his head. “How did you know?”

  “It was Shane’s stag night last night.”

  “Shit! I’m sorry. I’ll call him. Tell him I was ill or something.”

  “I’ve already told him. But you can ring and apologise. When you didn’t answer your mobile or your door, I started making my way around the pubs again. I got lucky. Third one this time. You’re getting more predictable, Bro.”

  Pete let out a choke of unhappy laughter.

  “Look, I don’t mind for me,” James told him. “But I think Rach would be happier if you stopped trying to drink yourself into oblivion.”

  Pete smiled and shook his head. “Tell her I’m sorry, won’t you. And I am grateful. Really.”

  “It’s your future I worry about,” James told him, after the moment had settled again. “You’ve got some big exams coming up soon and you seem determined to mess it all up again. All that work you’ve put in. Don’t throw it away like this.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “So you’ll get some help?”

  Pete took the path of least resistance. Not in a million years was he planning on sitting down with some poxy counsellor and spilling his guts to a random stranger, but his brother was looking at him, desperately concerned and with such grave fear in his eyes, so he nodded.

  “Good. We’d better get some food into you before I get back home to my long-suffering wife and then you can start getting your act together and get things straightened out. You might want to give your liver a break while you’re at it. And the female population, for that matter. There can’t be many women you haven’t been through left around here now, are there?”

  Pete gave him a withering look and thought of the face that had pierced him with enigmatic eyes the night before, or was it the one before that? One of the few supposed to be ‘off limits’ (if Kate had anything to do with it). Jenny Wren: stunningly beautiful, bold and disapproving, devastatingly sexy and tantalising as hell. But she had witnessed the rage inside him. Her turbulent nature and mysterious, all-seeing eyes were unsettling to him. It would be dang
erous to get too close to her. From the confines of his mind, however, the delicious taste of fantasy was a spectacular thing. “One or two,” he said.

  Monday morning Pete was back in work and, on the surface of it, happy as a pig in mud. His consultant gave him a dressing down for his no-show the Friday before, but he apologised and managed to talk his way out of it, claiming a brief stomach bug, and all was forgiven (on the understanding that his lack of communication never happened again).

  New faces appeared on the wards as a couple of young nurses joined the team and Pete was revived for the moment. He flicked his predator switch to “on”, cranked up the charm and watched as fresh eyes turned dreamy; he was back on form.

  Pete gassed and consulted with patients for different lists for the following day, and then he went home to his flat, where he had no need of bravado, except for himself.

  For some reason he felt out of sorts that evening. He couldn’t put his finger on why, but he was uneasy. He couldn’t settle and he needed to; he had exams coming up, even his brother had mentioned them. He looked at the great pile of books crouching ominously at the side of his desk and he had every intention of working. He had an ENT list in the morning, so it would have been an ideal time to recap on the problems particular to that and the different strategies for dealing with them. But instead, he shoved a shepherd’s pie in the microwave and flicked on the TV. Tomorrow night, he thought, when he was feeling better. It wasn’t worth trying to study when you weren’t on top form.

  The following afternoon, Jenny was on a late, and the feeling on the ward, as she walked on, was seriously off. Red-rimmed eyes and softly spoken whispers crowded in on her on all sides. The new shift was quickly rounded up and taken into an empty room.

  “I have some incredibly sad news to tell you all,” Debbie, the nurse in charge, said. “This morning, we were informed that two days ago, whilst on holiday in the Caribbean, Mr and Mrs Elliott, together with their daughter, were lost at sea when the yacht they were sailing capsized in a freak storm. Their bodies have been recovered and there will be a funeral when they’ve been returned home. I’m sure we’ll hear more nearer the time, but for now, that’s all we’ve got. I’m very sorry.”

  Whatever was said after that, Jenny never heard it. What a way to hear about your friend’s death. Debbie wasn’t to know they’d been close, but… Kate was dead? No. Kate; her oldest friend and partner-in-crime. And Adam. Poor Adam, who had turned out to be such a lovely guy, surprising them all. And even little Selena… all gone. Maisie passed across a tissue. Jenny hadn’t even noticed the tears flowing down her face until then. She took the tissue and dabbed at her eyes numbly. She couldn’t process it, so she did all she could do; she worked.

  Turning to the nurse in charge, her voice said, “Can we get on?” and she wandered out onto the ward.

  The shift drifted by in a surreal daze, but that evening, when she walked in, Jenny found Flis sobbing her heart out on the settee. She walked over; they looked at each other and then folded up in each other’s arms and wept. “I know. I know. It’s so unfair,” she said, pulling back and plucking a tissue to wipe her face. She passed one to Flis. “After all the good they’ve done for others, and just when it was all starting to come together for them.”

  “It just doesn’t seem real,” Flis sobbed, pulling another tissue clear to wipe her nose. “Adam had only just… And Kate… Our Kate.” She shook her head. “All gone. It’s just… It’s such a terrible waste!”

  They talked for a while, gradually turning the tide and reminiscing about the fun times they’d shared and then, with neither of them having much appetite, they put on a late-night chat show and stared at the screen, before drifting off to bed.

  Kate is dead, Jenny wrote in her diary that night. Kate and Adam and Selena. What can I say? It’s too tragic for words.

  Jenny was off the following day, so she spent her time trying to keep her mind busy. She rang her aunt to see how she was doing. As her dearest relative, Jenny felt very protective of her. She had been the one who’d taken care of her since the age of 17, a time when she had needed so much and been granted so little.

  Jenny got through all her laundry and stocked up on food and then, having no more chores left to do, she decided she would finally succumb and lose herself in Lorna Doone, a story she had always wanted to read but had never quite got around to. She didn’t want to face her inner thoughts that night, couldn’t bear to, so she just kept on reading until she fell asleep.

  Thursday she was back in work and rumour was sweeping through the hospital that Dr Florin had disappeared again. This time Jenny was cross. At a time when everything seemed suddenly so vital, such a gift to be living, he had decided to bail out. He was probably skulking around somewhere with a bottle and a bad woman. It was as if he didn’t even care. She knew the three of them had been friends, but so had she. The man had no backbone. How was he ever going to make consultant carrying on like this? He certainly didn’t deserve to. Jenny was disappointed. There were Kate and Adam trying to do so much good with their lives and living life to the full, and they had been cut down in their prime and here he was just pouring it away.

  Her mood got under her skin and she bristled at the thought of what he was up to, instead of what he should be doing, which was taking care of all those people on the wards waiting for him. The anaesthetist was the one they most relied on, the one whose very presence could easily calm their fears. “No good, womanising, beer-swilling…” She ran out of words, and it pained her to see him through different eyes.

  But by Friday he was still nowhere to be found. Rumours were flying about. Some said he was lying dead in his flat, although Jenny noticed this was mostly put about by those whose hearts he’d broken. Had he suffered bereavement in the family Jenny wondered? Was he lying in a hospital miles away? Or had he finally been thumped hard enough by some boyfriend or husband and lost his memory? Wherever he was, and whatever he was doing, there wasn’t one scenario that looked good for him.

  A shadow had been cast over the staff at the hospital. One missing, considered reckless, and two lost for good. Time dragged by on every shift as the light and ease of everyday mirth was suppressed by the weight of their loss.

  The funeral was arranged for the following week, and luckily for Jenny, she was free that day. Flis was working and the other two in the house were so new they’d barely had time to get to know Kate, or Adam, so she was going on her own and she was daring Pete not to show.

  The day arrived and it was bright and sunny. As one of Kate’s closest friends, Jenny found herself invited to Kate’s parents’ house before the service. As she approached, she sadly found no need to recheck the address. Curtains were drawn and flowers had begun to carpet the front lawn up the edge of the driveway. Jenny walked up to the front door, took a deep breath and rang the bell.

  A gentleman introduced himself as Kate’s uncle and showed her inside and Jenny looked round for someone she might know. More flowers attempted to brighten the inside of the house, but the lost looks on the faces there overpowered them all. She met Gloria in the hallway, a nurse she knew from A&E and they hugged. It was one of those brief, stoical hugs that dared not linger in case it broke the fragile façade and brought on the tears.

  “Hi, Jen. I just need to quickly check on Lena.” They walked the few steps to the living-room door and peered through. On the far side of the room was a young girl, about 18 or so, Jenny thought, sitting on her own among a selection of empty chairs, her eyes downcast. Gloria took a calming breath, paused for a second and then turned away. Jenny looked at her.

  “She’s had a tough time recently. I just need to keep an eye on her,” she explained.

  They walked further back, into the kitchen, where she was introduced to Kate’s mum and Rebecca, her sister-in-law. Jenny offered her condolences and gave Kate’s mother the same brief hug she had given Gloria. She stood back and tried to collect herself.

  Another relative walked in and the
family were distracted, so Jenny wandered over to the back window.

  In the corner of the garden stood two men: the father and a brother, she assumed. They were standing, locked in a powerful embrace that almost broke her heart. It was too intimate a moment to pry on, so she turned back to face away again.

  Gloria offered to make her a cup of tea, but just as she was about to pour, word filtered through that the cars had arrived. It was time to go.

  Not a single eye was dry by the time the service had finished, but in all the sadness and tragedy of the day, Jenny had not missed the fact that there had been one face that hadn’t shown: Pete. And although she wanted to be angry at him, all she felt was pity. She didn’t know him that well, but she knew he had been friends with both of them and unless he had a solid reason for not being there, she felt sure that he would regret missing the goodbye… one day.

  After the interment, the congregation began to split up and Jenny started looking around for the kind couple who had given her a lift. She was just starting to believe they had forgotten and gone without her, when from behind a large yew tree at the side of the church, she spotted a flash of blonde hair. She took a step back and then prowled across to investigate.

  The graveyard was virtually empty now, apart from one elderly couple walking slower than the rest. It was just her and the blonde figure behind the tree.

  Jenny stepped around the corner and was startled by a figure she barely recognised. Drawn and pale, like a frightened ghost, stood Peter Florin.

  Chapter 3

  Jenny went to reach out to him, but he flinched away. “Pete? Whatever’s the matter?” she asked him. “You look awful. And why were you hiding back here? Why didn’t you come and pay your respects with the rest of us?” Her mouth moved again to scold him, but something in his demeanour made her hesitate. She looked into his eyes and saw the turmoil inside him. The guy was in torment and her voice fell to a whisper. “What is it, Pete?”

  A woman appeared across the far side of the churchyard, calling and beckoning to her. “Jenny, dear, there you are. I’m so sorry. We got to the end of the road before we remembered we were meant to be giving you a lift. Hurry along! I’ve left Harold in the car with the engine running.”