Читать книгу Paddington Children's Hospital Complete Collection - Kate Hardy - Страница 16

CHAPTER SEVEN

NO, SHE CERTAINLY wasn’t his ex.

Two days later Dominic sat in the back of the lecture theatre and watched as a very efficient Victoria took to the stage.

She was wearing a grey linen dress with flat pumps and her hair was tied in a loose ponytail. She was petite, but her presence was commanding and despite stragglers arriving in the lecture theatre she started the meeting on time.

‘Let’s get started,’ Victoria said. ‘It’s so good to see such an amazing turnout.’

She paused as someone’s phone rang out and, Dominic noted, Victoria was far from shy—instead of putting the person at ease, she glared.

‘Can everyone please silence their phones?’

‘It might be kind of important, Victoria,’ someone called out, and Dominic smiled at the smart response, given the people who were in the room.

‘Then put it on vibrate,’ Victoria said. ‘We’ve got a lot to get through and if we have pagers and phones going off every two minutes we shan’t get very far.’

There was a brief pause as a lot of people turned their phones onto silent.

Dominic’s was already off.

He had started carrying it at work, though he kept it on silent. He still did not want his personal life intruding. But now, if his parents called, which they quite often did, he would let it go to message, then speak to them during a lull in his day rather than at the end of his shift.

There still wasn’t much to talk about. They opted to discuss the weather rather than face the unpalatable topic as to what their youngest son had done.

And, Dominic knew, he had taken out his malaise and mistrust on Victoria.

That was the real reason he was here tonight; he hoped to speak with her afterwards.

For now though, he listened to what she had to say.

Victoria kicked off the meeting. ‘The fire has really helped showcase to people how vital an institution the hospital is.’

Robyn’s hunch had proven right, and now Victoria and Dominic were the face of the Save Paddington’s campaign.

The image of them came up on the screen behind Victoria and she tried not to glance over at Dominic.

He hadn’t been at the other meetings, though she now knew he had been on leave. But even if she was glad of the big show tonight and for any support that could be mustered, there was one exception—Victoria rather wished he would stay away, for Dominic was a distraction that she did not need.

Then again, that’s what he had done since their night together—distracted her from her life.

Even before that, she had always found herself looking out for him whenever she and Glen brought a patient into the Castle.

‘The travel time is a vital point we should make,’ said Matthew McGrory, a burns specialist. He had been working around the clock with the patients from the school fire and looked as if he had barely slept in days. ‘Due to the sheer volume of casualties there were some patients that were taken to Riverside, but the most severely injured children came here and were treated quickly. That first hour is vital and a lot of that time would have been lost had Paddington’s not been here.’

‘Indeed.’ Victoria was up-front and well versed. ‘And we do need to push travel time and the difference it will make to locals. However, patients come from far and wide for treatment at Paddington’s. We need to promote both aspects and we need to start working out how best to do that.’

It was a call to arms meeting.

‘The press is onside at the moment,’ Robyn said, ‘but we need to keep up that momentum.’

Rebecca, a cardiothoracic surgeon who headed the transplant team, spoke about the real issue with doctors leaving and the problems the cardiology department were facing. ‘We’re only able to recruit on very short-term contracts. Paddington’s has always attracted world-class doctors and we can’t let that change. The campaign needs to showcase the hospital in its best light.’

Ideas were building and they were starting to run with them; it was decided that the first major event to be held would be a fundraising ball.

The meeting ran for a couple of hours and Dominic watched and listened.

He could only admire Victoria.

From an initial very scattered effort, the drive to save PCH was now starting to come together.

Certainly, with the fire and its aftermath still prominent in the news, the public were starting to understand the real implications of Paddington’s closing.

‘Right,’ Victoria said. ‘I think that gives us enough to be going on with for now. Anyone who wants to carry on the discussion can—I think most of us who are not working will be heading over to the Frog and Peach.’

Phones went back on and people started heading out. Dominic made his way over to the stage.

‘Well done,’ he told her.

Victoria simply ignored him and packed up her computer and things in silence.

She had been on days off since the fire and hadn’t seen him since the night she had told him about the baby. She certainly didn’t want to see him now.

There was no getting out of it though. Dominic waited till everyone was gone and, when finally they were alone, she turned to face him and hear what he had to say.

‘I want to apologise for my reaction the other night,’ Dominic said.

She understood it though.

Victoria had sat bristling on the Tube but, even as she had let herself into her flat, she had been able to see where he was coming from. Dominic, especially given what he had been through with his ex, had every right to be suspicious as to whether or not the baby was his, Victoria had decided.

And she was right to hold back, but for reasons of her own that she could not think about right now.

‘Dominic,’ Victoria said. ‘I’m pregnant from our one-night stand. Now, I accept, given what happened between us, you might assume that I drop my knickers like that...’ She snapped her fingers. ‘But actually I don’t. I broke up with someone before Christmas and since then...’

‘I don’t need your history. Victoria, I’m thirty-eight. I’m sure we’re both going to have had our share of past relationships.’

And that was perhaps the moment she fully realised just how very different they were.

Victoria was twenty-nine and as for relationships...

She hadn’t really had any of note.

Oh, there had been a couple of boyfriends who had lasted a few months, but she had never lived with anyone and, in truth, had never really been in love.

‘Well, you shouldn’t be so sure,’ Victoria responded. ‘I don’t do very well with relationships and so I tend to steer clear of them. As I said, I broke up with someone just before Christmas, and apart from a couple of first dates that went nowhere, there hasn’t been anyone since then.’ No wonder the condom hadn’t been up to much, Victoria thought; it had been in her purse for months. ‘This year, apart from one torrid tryst in a turret, there’s been no one.’ And she smiled at her little tongue twister. ‘I believe you were the said torrid tryst.’

‘Indeed I was.’

‘And I’m sorry your ex cheated and that you’re not over her, but that’s your issue and—’

‘It’s not that,’ Dominic interrupted.

She raised her eyebrows and Dominic had to concede a smile, because yes, it probably sounded to her as if he wasn’t over his ex. He guessed Victoria thought that he had run away to England because of a break-up, so knew he had to explain things a bit better than that. ‘The person that Lorna was sleeping with was my brother.’

‘Oh,’ Victoria said.

And he waited for her to avert her eyes or to do what everyone else did and move to quickly change the subject, but instead she gave a small grimace.

‘Well, that’s awkward!’

And he smiled a little and admitted, ‘Indeed it is.’

‘Are you and your brother close?’ Victoria asked.

‘We were.’

‘And had you been going out with her for long?’

‘Yes,’ Dominic said.

‘Were you living together?’

‘Yes.’ He nodded but Dominic didn’t want all these questions. He was just trying to explain, a little, why he had reacted to the news of her pregnancy in the way that he had. ‘I really don’t want to discuss it.’

Only that wasn’t quite true.

Dominic had discussed it with no one.

Everyone in his family wanted to simply move on from the uncomfortable topic and to act as if nothing had happened. Not Victoria though—she actually made him smile when she spoke next.

‘You’re very good at torrid trysts.’

‘It would seem that I am.’

‘Were you both sleeping with her at the same time?’

‘Victoria!’ His voice held a warning. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Fair enough.’ She shrugged. ‘But if that’s the case, then I’m going to go for a drink with my committee.’

‘Don’t we have rather a lot to discuss?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Victoria said. ‘I cope with things. So really, at this stage there’s nothing much to talk about. If you want a DNA test once the baby’s here, then that’s fine too.’

They started to walk down the corridor but as Dominic went straight she turned to the left.

‘Where are you going?’

‘It’s a short cut.’

Dominic didn’t want the short cut; he rather liked spending time with her and, though he didn’t say that, of course, it was actually nice to be walking and talking.

The short cut was an old quadrangle that he hadn’t seen before and there was a glimpse of a navy sky and the scent of fresh air; Dominic guessed it would be a very welcome space to know, if working over a long weekend.

‘Maybe it’s not such a short cut,’ Victoria added as she looked up and felt the cool evening air on her cheeks. ‘More, the scenic route.’

‘You really do know this hospital like the back of your hand,’ Dominic commented. ‘Did your father bring you here a lot?’

‘Yes, there were a lot of nanny changes and so I’d be brought along until a replacement was found.’

She had been close to a couple of the nannies but they all too soon found it unbearable to work for her father and left.

It had been the same with his girlfriends, who would attempt to win over the daughter to impress the father and then would drop her like a hot stone as soon as the relationship came to an end.

Even when she had been a bit older, Victoria would come here after school or on long weekends, rather than sit in an empty house. Here at the quadrangle, weather permitting, she had done an awful lot of homework!

‘What about your mother?’ Dominic asked as they started to walk.

‘They broke up.’ Victoria gave him no more information about her mother than that. She turned and looked at him. ‘I shan’t let you just drift in and out of my child’s life. And I’m not having him or her dropped off here just because you have to work. My baby will be at home with me.’

Dominic said nothing. If Victoria thought he would be a hands-off father, then she was wrong, but Dominic wasn’t going to argue about that now.

He had something to ask her. ‘I would like to be at the ultrasound.’

But Victoria had been thinking about just that over the last couple of days and immediately she shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. That offer has been withdrawn.’

‘Can I ask why?’

‘It just has.’

Dominic knew he didn’t have any right to be there and so he chose not to push the issue.

For now.

They were out of the hospital and walking over to the Frog and Peach but suddenly Victoria did not want to go in.

‘Are you coming?’

‘No.’

She offered no more explanation than that. Victoria didn’t need to give him one and was annoyed when Dominic walked after her.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘There’s surely more to discuss.’

‘I don’t see that there is. I’ll send you a copy of the images and you can...’ She shrugged. ‘You can do whatever you’re going to do. Measure its little crown rump length and decide if it might possibly be yours.’

Yes, she had read the baby books too.

And she walked off with more purpose this time.

It was all starting to feel terribly real.

For weeks she’d been stuffing down the possibility that she might be pregnant; now she knew for certain that she was.

But it wasn’t just the baby, or telling work that concerned Victoria.

It was Dominic MacBride himself.

She had heard his concern about her working the other night and now she could feel his slight push to be more present; she knew that it was only going to increase.

And she did not want to start relying on him.

She thought of her own mother, who had upped and left, and all the nannies and girlfriends and wives that her father had gone through.

There had been no constant in her life apart from her father and he had merely dragged her to work and palmed her off to others.

No, she did not want to start depending on a man who would no doubt soon lose interest and be gone.

She simply would not do that to her child.