Page 34 of The Holiday Cottage

Imogen, call me VERY URGENT

IMOGEN HAVE YOU DIED?

A fierce-looking nurse approached. “You can’t use your phone in here, it interferes with hospital equipment.”

“I thought that was a myth.” Imogen had worked for a pharmaceutical client and had watched entire box sets of hospital dramas. She knew how things worked.

“You can’t use your phone. It disturbs the patients.”

“I need to be somewhere urgently. I’m in the middle of work.” She gave a pleading smile, hoping to appeal to the nurse’s good nature. “Do you have any more information on how long it will be?”

“Since you asked me three minutes ago?” The nurse didn’t return the smile. “No. You’re not a special case, you know. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but we have a department full of people waiting to be treated. I’m going to have to ask you to sit down. When I have information, you’ll be the first to know.”

Imogen watched her go and wondered what it was about hospitals that made her feel so helpless.

That was pretty easy to answer. Some of her worst moments had happened in hospitals, and her mother had played a starring role in all those moments.

But honestly it could have been worse. Her mother had never been violent. She’d always had enough to eat. And there had been plenty of fairly long spells where her mother was fine. Not warm or affectionate or even particularly engaged, but at least things had been relatively calm.

Her phone vibrated again and she checked that the nurse wasn’t watching her and sneaked a look.

She was going to have to reply before Sophie had a meltdown.

She turned her back on the nurse and typed quickly.

Sorry. Dealing with minor crisis. Will be there soon.

Hopefully Sophie would assume it was a work crisis.

She still had more than three hours until the event started. That was plenty of time. She could do this.

How badly injured was her mother? What was taking so long?

Apparently, she’d fallen onto a train track. Fortunately, there had been no train in sight, and by the time the 12:46 had hurtled toward the station her mother had been rescued from her drunken mishap and transferred to an ambulance.

Imogen had been given no more information than that. Other than the fact she’d asked for her sister. She didn’t know if her mother had lost her balance, or if she’d thrown herself onto the track. Emotion knotted itself in her stomach. Had her mother done it on purpose?

It was that thought that kept her here. Her chest ached and she felt torn between wanting to be there for her mother and needing to protect herself. And she did need to protect herself, because if there was one lesson she’d learned in childhood it was that no one else was going to do it. There was no one supporting her. No one standing by her side. Still, on the positive side she’d learned self-reliance and she considered that nothing but a good thing. She didn’t have to learn how to look after herself. She’d been doing it since she was twelve years old.

It was one of the reasons she worked so hard. She had no backup.

She checked the time again.

Maybe she should leave. But if the doctor was right then her mother had been asking for her, even though she was still maintaining that ridiculous charade that Imogen was her sister. It was a change to be asked for something other than money.

Maybe this latest incident had shaken her mother and reminded her that she had a daughter. Maybe her mother was trying to reach out.

Another hour passed, by which time Imogen’s stress levels were soaring. How much longer? She couldn’t miss tonight’s event, she just couldn’t. The best plan would be to leave and come back later.

Decision made, she went and found the nurse.

“I need to leave for work, but I’ll have my phone with me at all times and I will be back later to—”

“Your mother is back from her scan. You’ll be able to see her in ten minutes. We’ll be keeping her overnight.”

Ten minutes. Imogen did some calculations. Ten minutes of waiting, twenty minutes of conversation, twenty minutes in a cab to the venue—she could still make it in time. She could still do this, and no one would be any the wiser.

She messaged Sophie.

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