Page 56 of Welcome to the Cornish Country Hospital

‘It’s you or a care home.’ Connie laughed at the expression on his face. ‘They’re telling me I can’t live on my own again yet, so if you fancy being at my beck and call for the next couple of weeks, we can see how it goes?’

‘Will they give me a uniform?’ Richard raised his eyebrows. ‘Or one of those little upside-down watches nurses used to wear?’

‘I don’t think so, but would you settle for a kiss?’ Connie would know when she kissed him whether moving in and risking giving things a second chance was the right thing to do. Or whether they were just setting themselves up to get hurt all over again.

‘I thought you’d never ask.’ As Richard closed the space between them and pressed his lips against hers, Connie discovered something she’d never have believed: it turned out that time travel was possible after all, because four decades had disappeared in an instant.

* * *

After the phone call Danni had got from Connie, telling her that she and Richard had reconciled, Danni had felt euphoric. She hadn’t even felt the need to sound a note of caution when Connie had told her that she was moving into the farmhouse and that Richard would be helping her through the final stages of her recovery. After all, as Connie had put it, they’d wasted almost forty years already and they didn’t want to waste a moment more. It was only afterwards that Danni started to realise Charlie’s reasons for staying on in Port Kara had gone. He’d wanted to make sure that both his birth parents were being properly looked after and now he could relinquish any responsibility he might feel, knowing they would be looking after one another.

It meant that Charlie would be leaving Port Kara as soon as his mum and dad had decided where they were moving to. Without Charlie, the last reason Danni had been holding on to for staying would be gone too. She’d already grown fond of some of her colleagues, especially Aidan, but it wasn’t enough to make life bearable. Not when Esther was bending over backwards to avoid even working the same shift as her, let alone having contact outside of work.

That’s why, at 10p.m. on a Friday evening, Danni sat down to write. The first thing she wrote was an email to the HR department of the hospital, resigning from her role. And the second was a letter to Esther.

Essie,

I don’t know if you’ll read this or see it’s from me and throw it away before you even look at it. Either way, I need to write it.

I want you to know how much I love you, and how our friendship has meant more to me than anything else for more than ten years. I know you might not want to believe me, but deep down I think you know it’s true. I was an idiot for thinking I’d fallen in love with Lucas. I don’t know what it was, and I don’t want to blame the fact that we both lost parents in difficult circumstances, but that did form a bond between us. There were times when I was treating patients who were at risk of dying in the same way my dad did, and it was only Lucas being there that stopped me unravelling at that moment. But what I forgot was that it was you who stopped me unravelling so many more times, and it was the support of you and your family, as well as Joe, that got me through my training at all.

It’s not just that love and support I miss. It’s laughing with you, the way only we do, until my stomach hurts and my head aches. Whatever I thought I felt for Lucas, and I know now it was never love, it never even came close to what I feel for you. That’s why nothing ever happened, and why it never would have done, even if you and Lucas hadn’t been together any more. I wouldn’t have traded the chance of a lifetime with him if it meant missing one day of our friendship.

You’ve got every right to hate me, but I need you to know that I’ll never close the door on our friendship. If you ever change your mind, I’ll be waiting. If anyone ever hurts you, I’ll be there for you and I’ll happily track them down and make them pay.

For now, though, I’m giving you the space you need and leaving St Piran’s. I owe you the chance of some peace and the opportunity to experience a relationship that’s finally lost its third wheel. I pray you never have to come looking for me because you’re unhappy, but I hope with everything I’ve got that one day you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me, and that you’ll decide to come looking for me because of how happy you are.

Never stop being you, because you’re the best person I know.

Danni xx

Putting the letter into a brown envelope, which wouldn’t give Lucas any reason to assume it was from her and intercept it, Danni printed off a label to complete the disguise. Writing letters had worked for Connie, but it had taken almost forty years for her to send them to Richard, and Danni didn’t even want to think about forty more days without Esther in her life. Jumping into her car, she drove to Esther’s house, parking around the corner so that neither she nor Lucas would see her. She even pulled the hood of her jumper low over her face to avoid being seen on the doorbell camera. For just a second before she posted it through the door, she hesitated. There was a chance that the letter might inflame things, but there was nothing to lose when she’d already lost so much. Pushing the envelope through the door, she let it go and turned to walk away. If this was the last chance of saving her friendship with Esther, she was glad she’d taken it, even if it didn’t end up changing a thing.

30

Danni had sworn to herself that she wouldn’t go back to Esther and Lucas’s house, unless she got a response to her letter. But she’d barely lasted twenty-four hours before the urge to drive past their place overwhelmed her. It wasn’t like they’d see her, but if anyone had asked her why she was doing it, she couldn’t have come up with a logical answer. She just wanted to be able to visualise Esther, inside the house, re-reading the crumpled letter she’d probably screwed up and binned first time around, and slowly realising that her friendship with Danni was worth saving. It might have ranked up there with the same unlikely scenarios that had seen her fantasise, in great detail, about the moment when Justin Timberlake would propose, when she’d been in her early teens. But she had to hope.

Rounding the corner of Esther’s road, it suddenly hit Danni how ridiculous she was being. If she could have turned her car around, she would have done. But like the streets in many Cornish seaside villages, the road was narrow, with cars parked on either side in most places. So unless she wanted to attempt what would probably turn out to be a thirty-three-point turn, she was committed to driving past the house.

Please God don’t let Lucas be coming out of the door at the precise moment I drive by.

Keeping her eyes firmly fixed on the road in front, she was determined not to even glance in the direction of Esther’s front door. And by the time she spotted something large and black hurtling towards her out of the corner of her eye, it was too late to stop in time. As she slammed on the brakes, the object landed on the bonnet of her car with a thud, and a scream filled the air as she skidded to a halt. It took a couple of seconds for Danni to work out that the person screaming wasn’t her. When she looked towards where the object had come from, she realised she was almost directly outside Esther’s house. At that very moment the front door was flung open, and Esther came hurtling across the path and into the road.

‘Oh my God, oh my God, I’m so sorry!’ She didn’t even seem to take in the fact that it was Danni at first, as she wrenched open the car door. ‘I was throwing bags of clothes down to my car and I misjudged that one.’

When Esther finally looked up at Danni, her mouth fell open and all the hostility between them the last time they’d met felt like a distant memory. Esther’s concern for Danni was written all over her face, even before she spoke again. ‘Are you okay? I could have killed you.’

‘I don’t think a black bin bag filled with your pants is going to do the job, not even if you’ve started wearing granny knickers.’ Danni grinned and Esther started to laugh.

‘What are the odds of me hitting your car with it?’ She shook her head. ‘What are you even doing down here?’

‘I came down because…’ Danni sighed. ‘I can’t even finish that sentence. I came down because I miss you, and I hoped you’d read my letter and I don’t know… maybe I hoped there’d be a moment of serendipity, and you’d see me and realise you missed me too. It sounds ridiculous, but given the fact you just hit my car with a black bag you chucked out of your bedroom window, I think the bigger question is why on earth you were doing that?’

‘Because going up and down a narrow staircase carrying all my stuff felt like it was only going to end one way, with me at the bottom of the stairs in a pool of blood.’ Esther blinked as she looked at Danni, and then widened her eyes. ‘Oh, you mean, why am I packing up all my possessions in the first place?’

‘Well, yes, that question had crossed my mind.’ There was only one logical explanation, but Danni didn’t dare hope for it, until Esther actually said the words out loud.

‘I’m leaving Lucas and moving in with Mum and Dad for a bit, until I work out what to do.’ Esther was resolute and if there was the threat of tears, Danni couldn’t see them.

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