Best Friend to Perfect Bride

He ditched that thought as well, not needing any more distractions. He knew where his loyalties lay, knew that if he had to take sides then he would be firmly allied to Tim. Tim had poured out the whole sorry tale, told him what had happened from start to finish, and whilst Mac was realistic enough to know that it was rarely all one person’s fault when a marriage ended, it was obvious that Bella was more at fault than Tim. No, Tim’s biggest mistake had been to love Bella too much and be too soft with her. The thought firmed his resolve and he smiled thinly at her.

‘Is that what brought you to Dalverston, the chance to work in a wonderful new facility like this? I must confess that I was surprised to learn you had moved out of London.’

‘It was one of the reasons, yes.’

Bella’s expression sobered and Mac’s heart twisted when he saw the pain in her eyes. Maybe Tim was hurting but Bella was hurting too, it seemed. The idea affected him far more than it should have done, far more than he wanted it to do. It was an effort not to let her see how he felt when she continued.

‘I needed to get away and moving up here seemed like the right thing to do. It’s a fresh start for me and, hopefully, it will be a fresh start for Tim as well.’

Bella could feel the animosity coming off Mac in huge waves and it hurt to know that he had judged her and obviously found her wanting. She knew that Tim would have told Mac his version of the story but she had hoped that Mac would wait until he had spoken to her before he started apportioning blame. However, it appeared that he had accepted what Tim had said without question. She was the one at fault, the bad guy who had called time on her marriage, while Tim was the innocent victim.

She swung round, refusing to stand there and try to justify herself. She had made up her mind that she wouldn’t retaliate after she had found out that Tim had been spreading all those lies about her. She had seen that happen with other couples, had watched as the situation had deteriorated into an unseemly sparring match, and she had sworn that she wouldn’t go down that route. People would believe what they wanted to believe anyway. If she tried to contest Tim’s claims that she had been unreasonable, that she had ruined his career, that she had ended their relationship rather than have a baby with him, few would believe her.

She had always been the reticent one in the relationship, the one who took longer to make friends, whereas Tim had always been very outgoing. Tim drew people to him and made instant friends of them, and if he tended to drop them just as quickly later, then nobody seemed to mind. No, if there were sides to be taken then most folk would take Tim’s. Including Mac, it seemed.

Pain stabbed her heart as she led the way to Reception. Even though she knew it was silly, she hated to think that she had sunk so low in Mac’s estimation. Dredging up a smile, she turned to Janet Davies, their receptionist, determined that she wasn’t going to let him know how she felt.

‘This is Dr MacIntyre, Janet. He’ll be covering the senior registrar’s post until Dr Timpson is fit to return to work following her accident.’

‘Oh, I know Mac. Who doesn’t?’ Janet got up and hurried around the desk to give Mac a hug. She grinned up at him. ‘So where was it this time? Africa? India? Outer Mongolia?’

‘The Philippines.’

Mac hugged Janet back, his face breaking into a smile that immediately warmed Bella’s heart. He had always had the most wonderful smile, she thought, then pulled herself up short. Maybe Mac had smiled at Janet with genuine warmth but he certainly hadn’t smiled at her that way.

‘Oh, grim.’ Janet grimaced. ‘Was it as bad as it looked on TV?’

‘Worse.’

Mac shook his head, his dark brown hair flopping untidily across his forehead. It needed trimming, Bella decided, even though it suited him, emphasising his craggy good looks and that air of toughness he projected. Mac looked exactly like the kind of man he was: tough, unflappable, someone you could depend on, someone who would never let you down. Her heart ached even harder at the thought. She could have done with Mac’s support this past difficult year.

‘The typhoon destroyed whole cities and left people with nothing except the clothes they stood up in. We had a devil of a job getting hold of even the most basic supplies in the beginning,’ he continued.

‘How awful!’ Janet shuddered as she went back to her seat. ‘Makes you grateful that you live here, doesn’t it.’

‘It does indeed.’ Mac grinned. ‘Even if it does rain a lot in this part of the world!’

Janet laughed as she reached for the telephone when it started ringing. Bella moved to the whiteboard and checked the list of names written on it, determined to start as she meant to go on. Maybe there were certain issues that she and Mac needed to address, but they were colleagues, first and foremost, and she intended to keep that at the forefront of her mind. There were just three children in cubicles and each of them had been seen and were currently awaiting the results of various tests. She pointed to the last name on the list when Mac joined her.

‘I’d like you to take a look at this one, if you wouldn’t mind. Chloe Adams, aged eight, admitted at four a.m. this morning complaining of a severe headache. She’d also been vomiting.’ She sighed. ‘Apparently, she’s been suffering from violent headaches for several weeks. Mum took her to their GP, who thought it was probably a sinus infection, but I’m not convinced.’

‘So what are you thinking?’ Mac queried. ‘That it’s something more sinister?’

‘Yes. I noticed a definite lack of coordination when I was examining her. It made me wonder if it’s a tumour. I asked Mum if she’d noticed anything—clumsy gait, frequent falls, that kind of thing—but she said she hadn’t.’ Bella shrugged. ‘Chloe is one of five children and I get the impression that her mother is finding it hard to cope since their father upped and left them at the beginning of the year.’

‘I see. It must be difficult for her when she’s been abandoned like that,’ Mac said blandly, so blandly in fact that Bella knew he was thinking about her situation.

Colour touched her cheeks as she led the way to the cubicles. She hadn’t abandoned Tim! She had left because Tim had made it impossible for her to stay. She had tried to help him, tried everything she could think of, but nothing had worked. He had been too dependent on the painkillers by then to give them up. Oh, he had promised that he would, swore that he had umpteen times, but he had lied. The drugs had changed him from the man she had married, turned him into someone who lied and deceived at the drop of a hat. It had reached the point where she simply couldn’t take any more and she had left and, amazingly, it had been the best thing she could have done for him.

Tim had sought help after that. He had admitted himself to rehab and finally kicked his habit. Maybe she should have gone back to him then—she had thought about it. But then she had found out about his affair and there hadn’t seemed any point. She would only have gone back out of a sense of duty and that hadn’t seemed right or fair to either of them.

It made her wonder all of a sudden if she had ever really loved him—loved him with the depth and intensity that people were supposed to feel when they married—if she hadn’t been prepared to fight for him. The problem was that she had never been truly in touch with her feelings. As the only child of career-minded parents, she had learned at an early age to keep her emotions in check. Even after she had grown up, she had always held back, had always been wary about letting herself feel. Tim had seemed like a safe bet—the type of man she was used to, someone from her own social circle, someone she felt comfortable with. Unlike Mac. Mac had been very different. Even though they’d only been friends, his self-assurance and experience of life had unsettled her. Everything about him had seemed alien. Dangerous. A threat to her peace of mind. He still was.

Bella’s breath caught. If Mac had seemed dangerous all those years ago, he was even more of a threat now that she was so vulnerable.

‘Mrs Adams? I’m Dr MacIntyre. Dr English has asked me to take a look at your daughter.’

Mac smiled at the harassed-looking woman sitting beside the bed. He knew that Bella was standing right behind him and forced himself to focus on the other woman. He had sworn that he would behave with the utmost propriety and wouldn’t take Bella to task about what she had done. Maybe he did believe that she had behaved deplorably by ending her marriage, but it wasn’t his place to say so.

‘She’s feeling a lot better now, aren’t you, Chloe?’ Donna Adams turned to the little girl, urging her to agree, and Mac sighed. No matter how long this took or how inconvenient it was for the mother, they needed to get to the bottom of Chloe’s problem.

‘That’s good to hear but I still think it would be best if we carried out a couple more tests.’ He smiled at the little girl. ‘We don’t want you having any more of those horrible headaches if we can avoid it, do we, Chloe?’

‘No.’ She smiled shyly back at him, clutching tight hold of a battered old teddy bear.

Mac grinned at her as he sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘What’s your teddy’s name? I have a bear just like him and he’s called Bruno.’

‘William.’ Chloe gave the bear a hug. ‘He’s my best friend and I take him everywhere.’

‘I expect he enjoys it.’ Mac took hold of the bear’s paw and solemnly shook it. ‘It’s nice to meet you, William. My name’s Dr Mac.’

Chloe giggled at this piece of nonsense, but Mac knew that it was important to gain her trust. He smiled at her again. ‘So, now the introductions are over, I need to ask you some questions, Chloe. There are no right or wrong answers, mind you. And if you want William to help you then that’s also fine. OK?’

‘OK,’ Chloe agreed happily.

‘So, Chloe, have you noticed that sometimes you don’t seem quite as steady on your feet as normal and fall over?’

‘Sometimes,’ Chloe murmured. She glanced at her mother then hurried on. ‘It happened in school the other day. I got up to fetch a piece of paper to do some painting and fell over. Teacher thought I was messing about and told me off.’

‘I see.’ Mac glanced at Bella and saw her nod. Poor balance could point towards a disturbance to the function of the cerebellum and was often an indication of a tumour. Although he hoped with all his heart it wasn’t that, it was looking increasingly likely.

‘And have you found it difficult to walk sometimes, as though your feet don’t want to do what you tell them to?’ he continued gently.

‘Yes. Sometimes they keep going the wrong way,’ Chloe told him guilelessly.

‘I’m sorry, Doctor, but what has this got to do with Chloe’s headaches?’ Donna Adams demanded.

‘It all helps to build up a picture of what might be wrong with Chloe,’ Mac explained, not wanting to go into detail just yet. If their suspicions were correct then there would be time enough for the poor woman to face the fact that her child was seriously ill. He stood up and smiled at Chloe. ‘I’m going to send you for a special scan, Chloe, so we can see what’s happening inside your head. I just need to make a phone call first and then the porter will take you and your mum downstairs to have it done.’

‘Will it take long?’ Donna Adams asked anxiously. ‘Only I’ve got to get the others ready for school. They’re with my neighbour at the moment but I can’t expect her to see to them. She’s in her eighties and it’s far too much for her.’

‘The scan itself won’t take very long,’ Bella said gently. ‘However, Chloe will need to stay here until we get the results back. Is there anyone else you can contact who could see to the children?’

‘No.’ Donna’s tone was bitter. ‘There’s nobody since their dad upped and left.’ She glanced at her daughter and sighed. ‘They’ll just have to miss school today, I suppose.’

Mac didn’t say anything as he followed Bella from the cubicle, but it didn’t mean that he wasn’t thinking it. Breaking promises was a definite no-no in his view. He only had to recall his own father’s despair after his mother had walked out on them to know that it was something he would never do. If he ever made a commitment then he would stick to it, no matter what.

He glanced at Bella and could tell from her expression that she knew what he was thinking, but it was hard luck. Letting Tim down the way she had was beyond the pale, in his opinion. She had promised to love and cherish Tim for the rest of her days but she hadn’t meant it. She couldn’t have done if at the first sign of trouble she had turned her back on him. He felt guilty enough about not being there when Tim had needed his support, even though he’d had no idea what his friend had been going through. However, Bella had been there and, as Tim’s wife, she should have been the one person he could rely on. It was little wonder that his friend was so devastated.