Page 7 of Welcome to the Cornish Country Hospital

They stayed liked that, the three of them doing nothing but breathing until the police arrived with Karen’s daughter. Danni held the older woman’s hand the whole time, and a wave of complete exhaustion swept over her when she finally left the police to talk Karen and Kelsey through the details of what had happened.

‘You were amazing.’ Lucas stopped, turning her to face him in the corridor outside.

‘I should have found a way of getting her out of the department before I said anything.’ Danni shivered, all the emotion suddenly hitting her hard.

‘You couldn’t have done things any differently and I wouldn’t have been able to do a better job – no one would. Karen will never forget your kindness.’

‘You were the one who sorted everything out, getting hold of the police and making sure her daughter got here.’ She was close enough to hear Lucas’s breathing, the scent of his familiar aftershave clinging to his skin.

‘Speaking to her daughter was tough, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle. Why can’t you ever see how amazing you are, how amazing we’ve always been together?’ Lucas put a hand under her chin and she felt it again. That almost irresistible pull towards him, as her body ached for just the slightest touch.

‘Esther will be wondering where on earth you are.’ Stepping away was like a physical wrench, but she had to do it. ‘Come on. You must have a million things to do at home and I’ve got other patients to check up on.’

‘Danni, wait. Danni—’ She had no idea what he wanted to say, but one thing she knew for certain was that she couldn’t afford to let herself hear it. She sped up, breaking into a run, because that was all she could do: keep running and running in the hope that, one day, she might finally be able to outrun her feelings for Lucas.

5

Danni could hear Brenda snoring as she hurried down the pathway to her home. She still had to pinch herself to believe she lived in Castaway Cottage. If someone had painted it and put it on the front of a tin of biscuits, people would say it was too perfect and that nowhere that quaint could exist in real life, let alone perched on a ridge overlooking the bay in Port Kara. That came with its own risk, of course, and she could still hear the surveyor’s sharp intake of breath when he’d come to take a look at the property.

‘You’ll never get a mortgage on this. Too much risk of it crumbling into the sea before you’ve even had the chance to pay it off, never mind that it’s timber-framed.’

‘Just as well I don’t need a mortgage, then.’ It had probably been foolhardy of her to be quite so blasé, when the risk of coastal erosion was very real, and her father would probably have been horrified that her inheritance had been spent on something that wasn’t guaranteed to last. But then Trevor Carter had been cautious his whole life and where had that got him? Dead on his office floor the week after he’d turned forty-two.

It hadn’t mattered to Danni that Castaway Cottage might not be a sound financial investment; it had filled her heart with joy back when she’d been a kid and that hadn’t changed when the estate agent had walked her around the place again. Since joy had been in short supply for a long time, it was enough to convince Danni the cottage was a good investment in other ways. Brenda loved it too. Her favourite spot was at the end of the mercifully long garden, which separated the back door from the edge of the cliffs, howling at the boats coming in and out of the harbour. Ever since the day Danni had brought her home, Brenda had claimed that spot as her own. When she was indoors, she mostly slept – recovering from the exertion of all that howling – and her snoring was loud enough to wake the dead. On more than one occasion, Danni’s Apple watch had warned her she was in a loud noise area which could put her in danger of permanent hearing damage if she exposed herself to it for too long. It turned out that Brenda’s snoring matched the decibel levels of a snow-blowing machine, and sometimes even the dog would wake herself up with a start.

‘Hey, girl, sorry I’ve been so long.’ Danni reached down to pat Brenda as she went into the kitchen. She had her bed by the Aga, whatever the weather, and on the one occasion when Danni had attempted to move it, the dog had taken the corner of the bed in her mouth and dragged it back to her favourite position. Danni had never made the same mistake again.

‘Do you want to go outside?’ It was already dark and Brenda’s usual enthusiasm for barking at boats had waned as a result. She opened one eye, looked at Danni and promptly shut it again, dropping her head down onto the bed. ‘Come on, girl, you need to go and do a wee, at least, and then I’ll make us both some dinner.’

Danni had considered grabbing a takeaway on the way home, but she’d been so exhausted after the day she’d had that even the thought of stopping somewhere had made her bones ache. Danni hadn’t seen Lucas or Esther again, which had been a relief. It had been another two hours before she’d felt able to leave work, when the A&E department had finally started to look less like a post-apocalyptic scene, and the next shift of staff had arrived to take over. Danni had thought about going up to see Connie, but she’d still be recovering from her op. So she’d taken Connie’s letter home with her.

Pushing the still resistant Brenda out into the garden, she shut the back door and opened the fridge. To say the contents were uninspiring was an understatement. There was some tenderstem broccoli with a serious case of droop, some fresh Parmesan and three yoghurts, a week after their best-before date. This was not how she’d envisaged life when she finally bought her own place. She’d wanted one of those big American fridges, filled to bursting with ingredients she could whip up into delicious meals in minutes, like every other advert she saw on TV. But cooking for one had turned out not to have nearly the appeal she’d thought it would and trying to think of something to make every night seemed beyond her. Esther had always been the cook when they’d shared a place and Danni had learnt to be self-sufficient years before, because there’d been no family members she could call to bleed a radiator or put up some wallpaper. They’d made a good team back then and she still missed Esther’s cooking.

‘When I leave, you’ll have to get yourself another 1950s housewife.’ Esther had made the joke on the night before she’d moved in with Lucas, when she’d cooked a lavish farewell dinner for herself and Danni. ‘But God knows what I’m going to do without you. Lucas struggles to change a lightbulb. You’d think being a surgeon would have given him some transferable skills!’

‘I’m sure he’s got other talents.’ Danni hadn’t meant for it to come out the way it did and the last thing she’d wanted was to hear about Esther and Lucas’s sex life. Before Esther had started dating him, those were exactly the sort of details they’d shared with one another – the good, bad and the downright ugly of their dating lives. She still couldn’t hear a cockerel crowing without starting to laugh, not since Esther had described the sound her boyfriend before Lucas had made when she’d stayed over at his place for the first and only time. But it had been different with Lucas. Maybe Esther had sensed it wasn’t something Danni wanted to hear, or maybe it was because from the very first date, Esther was clearly more serious about Lucas than she had been about any other boyfriend she’d had.

‘My nan always used to say when you know, you know, and I thought it was rubbish. Until now.’ Esther’s face had taken on a wistful look whenever she’d spoken about Lucas in the early days of them dating. Even now, seven years on, and after almost two years of living together, it didn’t seem to have changed. Maybe Esther’s nan had been right all along. It was just a shame that Danni’s ‘one’ already had a ‘one’ of his own.

‘Come on then, girl, it’s dinner time.’ She waited as Brenda came through the door. The basset hound was surprisingly quick for a dog of indeterminate age and unwieldly proportions. Having such a long body and little legs could be a challenge. She insisted on being lifted into the car, because she couldn’t possibly jump up by herself. But when Danni had left a pizza cooling on the table, while she went to get a drink, Brenda had somehow managed to heave herself onto a chair, just high enough to be able to snake her body along the length of the table and take a big, slobbery, uneven slice out of the pizza. It was certainly the best diet Danni had ever tried, because she went right off the idea of deep pan pepperoni after that.

‘Here you go then, sweetheart.’ As Danni put the bowl of dog food down, her stomach gave a loud grumble. It came to something when a bowl of Tender Chunks almost looked appealing. One of the downsides of living in Port Kara was that the takeaway delivery service was limited at best and all she could think about now was how much she wanted a bag of crispy, golden chips from Penrose Plaice, the fish and chip shop in neighbouring Port Agnes, which did the best chips she’d ever tasted.

‘Do I want them enough to get back in the car and drive over there, Bren? That’s the question.’

Brenda might not have been able to answer, but Danni’s stomach could, giving another loud rumble in response to her question.

‘Do you want to come with me for a ride out? I don’t want to leave you all on your own again.’ It was another rhetorical question, and the truth was Danni was the one who could use the company. ‘You finish your dinner and then we’ll go and get mine. We might even have time for a walk around the harbour in Port Agnes, seeing as you’ve been stuck in all day.’

Danni had just got to the hallway to grab Brenda’s lead, when someone rapped loudly on the front door, making her jump. It was a long way from the neighbouring property and not the sort of place you could chance upon accidentally, so getting an unexpected visitor was definitely out of the norm. Freezing to the spot, she tried to decide whether to pretend no one was home, or to call out and ask who it was. But then the average axe murderer probably wasn’t going to announce that he was standing outside ready to strike. Instead, she stood perfectly still, so much so that the only sound she could hear was her own breathing. But then the mystery caller knocked again and, having finished her dinner, Brenda decided to leap into action. She hurtled along the hallway as fast as her stubby little legs would carry her, howling a greeting to whoever had knocked on the door, then looking back at Danni and howling some more.

‘Shush, Brenda, shh.’ Danni’s attempts to quieten her down came to nothing. The dog clearly couldn’t understand why her owner could obviously hear someone at the door, but was doing absolutely nothing about it. ‘Oh, for God’s sake! Well, if we both end up in a tin of Tender Chunks after the axe murderer has done away with us, you’ve only got yourself to blame.’

‘Dan, it’s me. Let me in!’ As the voice outside finally rose above the noise of Brenda barking, Danni’s shoulders slumped with relief. It was Esther and unless she’d somehow discovered that Danni had been harbouring secret feelings about her fiancé for the last seven years, the chances of becoming the victim of an axe murderer had fallen sharply.

‘Sorry, I was in the kitchen, and I couldn’t even hear you knocking over the sound of Brenda howling.’ Danni didn’t want to admit that her imagination had been in overdrive. She was even more relieved to discover that Esther was on her own. The prospect of seeing Lucas again so soon was only marginally more appealing than facing an axe-wielding maniac. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

‘Mum made about six lasagnes for moving-in day and, even with all the family coming over to help out, there was still masses left over. And I know you – the chances are you’ll have come in from an epic shift like you’ve had today, with nothing more than a packet of Super Noodles in the cupboard.’

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