Page 52 of Beyond Repair
‘Oh, Dafydd is handling that, K.K.’
Her eyebrows shot up. ‘What? Russ, are you nuts? He’s only just recovered from that bowel disimpaction fiasco.’
‘It’ll be good for him. Besides, I doubt he’ll actually have to see any of the patients. That man could convince someone who’d grown a second head overnight to just take some paracetamol and see how it goes.’
Katie closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath in through her nose. Russell was nothing if not persistent.
‘He’s worried about you too,’ Russell said quietly into the silence. ‘We all just want our K.K. back.’ Katie opened her eyes to look into their concerned faces, and gave herself a mental shake. What business did she have lurking around like a wet weekend, making all her friends worry about her? Was she such a pathetic specimen that she couldn’t appreciate what a lovely life she led and what great friends she had just because she’d endured a little heartbreak? For goodness sake, one of her patients this morning had had to flee all her friends and family to avoid being beaten to death by her husband; she was now in the women’s refuge with three bewildered kids in tow and only a tiny bedroom to stay in. Another had just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given under three months to live, at best. Now, there wererealproblems for you, Katie thought, even starting to feel a little ashamed of herself. So she forced her eyes open and pasted a bright smile of her face, which she hoped didn’t look too forced.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s feed the beast.’ She gave Sarah’s shoulders an affectionate squeeze, and although Sarah scowled at her Katie could still see the hint of relief in her eyes, and felt even more guilty for her moping about. The last thing Sarah needed in her state was having to worry about Katie.
Over lunch in the pub, Katie found that if you force yourself to smile, to banter with your mates and to swallow back your tears, you could actually start feeling a glimmer of normality. Kind of a fake-it-till-you-make-it type of thing. And once she started eating the pie Russell ordered for her, she realised that she was in fact hungry. So about halfway through lunch she felt like she was strong enough to broach the subject she’d been avoiding with Sarah and Rob for the last two weeks.
‘Where is he, Sarah?’ she asked in a low voice. Sarah’s eyes flew to hers; she didn’t need to ask who Katie was talking about.
‘He’s on another job,’ she said carefully, and to her surprise Katie saw a flash of anger in Sarah’s blue eyes before she masked it.
‘In this country?’ Katie asked. She wasn’t convinced Sam had told the truth about London, and she had a morbid need to at least know where he was in the world.
‘Yes.’
‘Is he …’ She looked down at her hands in her lap and took a deep breath. ‘… is he safe?’
Sarah let out a brief humourless laugh, which further confused Katie, before saying, ‘He’s safe enough, that is until I get my hands on him.’
‘It’s not a crime to not want to be with someone any more, Sarse,’ Katie said, her voice still low and only just audible over the background chatter of the pub. Sarah just snorted, giving the remains of her sausage and mash a dark look. And muttering, ‘Men are pigs.’
‘Yes they are, darling,’ Russell put in. ‘But sadly, we love bacon.’ Sarah scowled at him and Katie let out a bark of laughter. ‘What?’ he asked innocently. ‘It’s true.’ Katie nodded, grinning and feeling better than she had in ages, but her smile gradually faded when she spotted something over Russell’s shoulder.
‘What on earth?’ she muttered, rising out of her seat automatically, her eyes glued on the copy ofHeatthat was being held up in front of a woman on the table opposite. Sam’s face in glorious Technicolor was staring out of the front cover. He was sporting his standard grumpy look and he had shadows under his eyes, but what Katie noticed more than anything was that he was supporting a tall blonde who was hanging off his arm like a clinging vine. The headline underneath read, ‘The Hero’s Reward’. Katie moved to get a better look so that she could read the caption underneath, but Sarah, who had followed the direction of her gaze, grabbed her arm to stop her.
‘Katie, sit down,’ she said, tugging on her arm.
‘Sarse, you don’t –’
Sarah pulled something out of her handbag and held it out to Katie. ‘I said sit down.’ Katie looked from Sarah’s unhappy face to the copy ofHeatin her hand, then sat down heavily and grabbed the magazine.
Hero’s Reward.
Model turned actress Lydia Swanson was seen at the premier of her new film yesterday on the arm of a former member of her security team, ex-SAS war hero Samuel Clifton.
Katie flipped quickly to the page indicated on the front cover, scanning the article, which was peppered with pictures of Sam and a few more of Lydia, although thankfully the front cover seemed to be the only shot of them together.
Lydia and Sam were reunited on the set of her current film whilst they were shooting on location in Wales.
Sam’s long history in the SAS ended in 2009 after he received a Distinguished Service Order, a medal typically awarded for meritorious service in actual combat. The details of exactly what Sam received the medal for are confidential. But he was known to have served in a number of extraction and tactical deployments all over the world during his highly decorated career, and he lost at least one member of his team on his last mission, which is thought to have contributed to his decision to leave the army.
Silent Sam, as the paparazzi have quickly dubbed him, had no comment on his relationship with the star. Miss Swanson however toldHeatthat all they needed to know was that she was into ‘realmen’ at the moment and they could take from that what they would. This is thought to be a jibe at Lydia’s ex: French model Henri Bougard, who has yet to comment on her new relationship.
Katie let the magazine fall onto the table, and then pushed it away.
‘I wanted to show you before you saw it from anyone else,’ Sarah said, flicking Russell a nervous look. They were both obviously on edge, thinking that Katie was about to have a breakdown in the middle of the pub or something. Katie took a deep breath, then summoned up all the acting skills she possessed in order to manage an attempt at a nonchalant shrug and a weak smile. I will not cry, she told herself.
‘It’s fine,’ she said, her voice coming out a little hoarse, so she cleared her strained throat. ‘It’s not like he was ever really in my league or anything. I’m not an idiot. I mean, why would you go for a boring, short, un-glamorous GP when you could have that woman on your arm? It’s against the laws of natural selection. Like should breed with like. I’m surprised I ever came onto his radar anyway.’
‘They’re hardly breeding, K.K.,’ Russell said. ‘It’s one picture. The desperate cow probably just grabbed onto him for the cameras.’
‘Desperate?’ Katie asked, shaking her head and grabbing the magazine again to open it to the offending double-page spread. ‘Do you want me to read out a list of her ex-boyfriends? Honestly, Russell, it reads like GQ’s top fifty sexiest men in the world; she’s hardly desperate.’
