The Doctor's Diamond Proposal

‘Oh... It’s the latest thing apparently, for teenagers.’ She tilted the cover towards him and he nodded. ‘I like to keep up. It’s actually pretty good.’

He smiled, and suddenly warmth zinged in the air between them. He was dressed in jeans and a dark blue sweater that looked far too soft to be anything other than cashmere. However hard Alex tried to look at him dispassionately, he still took her breath away.

He slung a leather jacket down onto a chair and sat down. ‘How are you feeling? Nervous?’

Sick with nerves. That must be probably pretty obvious. ‘A little...’

‘You’ll be fine. Once we get started, the hour will go too fast and you’ll be wanting more time.’ He was leaning towards her, his elbows on his knees. This was clearly Leo’s pep talk for beginners and, strangely, it seemed to be working. Now that the dreaded time had come, and he was here, she felt better about everything.

‘So... What are we going to say?’

Leo shrugged. ‘No idea. I’ll introduce you, we’ll take a few calls and we’ll talk. That’s the thing about phone-in radio—there’s no script.’

‘You like that? The uncertainty?’

He grinned. ‘Yeah. Keeps me on my toes. You’ll be just great, trust me. And if you’re not, then I’ll just interrupt and steer things back on course.’

‘Right. Thanks.’ She’d rather be just great, and not need Leo to save the day. But then that might be a bit too much to ask on her first time.

The door burst open and Alex jumped as the production assistant who’d showed her around popped her head around the door. ‘Leo... Fifteen minutes.’

‘Okay, thanks. We’re ready.’ He turned to Alex as the door closed again. ‘Just relax. It’s a conversation between you and me. Concentrate on that, and the one person out there who’s listening.’

‘One person?’

‘Yeah. Just visualise someone you know, and talk to them. You’ll be surprised how well that works.’

‘I’ll try.’ Alex wondered who Leo visualised. Maybe he’d been doing this long enough not to need anyone. ‘Was it this nerve-racking for you? Your first time?’

He shook his head. ‘Nah. I didn’t have any nerves left to be racked. I was so numb with fear that you could have knocked me over the head with a brick and I probably wouldn’t have noticed. And I wasn’t tipped in at the deep end, like you. I’d been volunteering on a student helpline for years, and done some spots on local radio in connection with that.’

‘That must have been pretty tough. Manning a helpline at the same time as you were studying and working at the hospital.’ Leo hadn’t said anything about a helpline ten years ago, and Alex had thought they’d talked about almost everything in their lives.

‘It was something that meant a lot to me. You make time for the things that are important.’ His face seemed to harden a little, as if the memory was difficult.

‘And you’ve stayed here. Even though you’re on TV now.’ It seemed a little odd that he should hang on to this, when he obviously had other opportunities. Leo didn’t seem the type for sentimentality.

‘Yeah. I like talking to people.’ He shook his head, as if to clear it, and then grinned. ‘You’ll see.’

He ushered her through to the studio, giving her time to get settled. The producer hurried in, putting a few sheets of paper in front of him, and then the call for silence and the ‘On-Air’ light glowed red.

She hardly heard the music that heralded the start of the show, hardly saw what was going on around her. Then she felt Leo’s fingers brush the back of her hand. His gaze caught hers and he smiled, then started the introduction.

‘And tonight I have Alex Jackson with me. She’s the founder of Together Our Way, a charity which helps young people with all kinds of disabilities participate in sport...’ He glanced down at the paper the producer had put in front of him and frowned suddenly. ‘Alex is going to be on the line with me here, and so if you’ve got any questions for her then you know the number to call...’

The jingle for the phone number started to play and Leo took the opportunity to scrunch up the paper in front of him, tossing it towards the control room. It bounced off the glass and dropped to the floor and then suddenly, seamlessly, Leo was talking again.

‘To start us all off, I’m going to ask Alex a few questions about Together Our Way. And, just in case anyone accuses me of monopolising her time here, she will be right here with me every Monday for the next four weeks, as part of our Charity Partnership Project...’

Suddenly his gaze was on her. The smile on his lips, the look in his eyes, said that he was talking just to her. ‘Alex, how long since you founded your charity...?’

He’d given her an easy one to start with. ‘Five years.’

‘And in that time you’ve made yourselves felt. How many sports fixtures are you planning next month?’

‘We have eight. But our own sports meetings are just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve been working with schools and clubs, advising them on how their sport can be fully inclusive, and we’ve developed a training day for group leaders. Mostly, though, we work with the young people themselves, to help...’

Suddenly, her mind went blank.

‘I imagine that there’s a bit of confidence-building to be done.’ Leo’s eyes were suddenly warm and soothing, dark as a blue Mediterranean sea.

‘Yes, that’s right. Many of our young people need assistance with special equipment or training, but it’s also a matter of showing everyone what’s possible.’

‘So you’re out to capture hearts and minds?’ Somehow, he made it seem as if it was his heart and his mind that were the ones in question and that they were just waiting to be captured.

‘Yes. I think that’s the aim of any charity, isn’t it? Money’s vital to us, of course, because we couldn’t do what we do without it. But hearts and minds are just as important.’

‘And I see that the charity’s run on a shoestring, so all the donations you receive go straight into your work.’

He was feeding her lines, bringing up all the points that Alex wanted to highlight. She smiled a thank you. ‘Yes, that’s right...’

* * *

Alex felt as if she’d run a marathon. It had only been an hour, but she was exhausted, her heart thumping in her chest. All the same, Leo had been right. She was eager for more, and had been disappointed when he’d announced that this was all they had time for tonight and handed over to the next presenter.

‘Did we speak to everyone?’ Leo had said that there were callers waiting but Alex had been unable to gauge how many, or whether they’d been able to speak to them all.

‘There are always people who don’t get through. Some of them try again.’ Now that they were off-air, Leo seemed suddenly more guarded.

‘But... They may be in trouble. They might need someone to talk to...’

‘Yeah, a lot of them do. We have procedures to deal with that. You needn’t worry about that side of things.’

She couldn’t—wouldn’t—let him give her the brush-off like this. ‘I’m... I’m sorry Leo, but that’s not the answer I’d hoped for.’

Alex was expecting some kind of reaction; Leo clearly wasn’t used to being challenged by anyone around here. But she hadn’t expected a smile.

‘What answer were you hoping for, then?’

She took a deep breath. ‘That there’s some way that I could get back to the people who didn’t get through.’

He leaned forward, flipping a switch on the console in front of him. Alex’s headphones went dead and she realised that, even though the sound engineer in the control room seemed to be paying no attention to it, their conversation could be overheard. She slipped the headset off and laid it down.

‘The call-handlers take names and numbers from everyone, and they always ask what the caller wants to say.’

‘And they make a note of that?’

‘Yes, they do. And they pass the list on to me.’ That seemed to be the end of it as far as Leo was concerned. He was the trustworthy one, the one who got things done, and he was ready to steamroller over anyone who questioned him.