Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series

Jenny winced as Olivia used the flat of her hand to give her mother a short, swift blow against her cheek, not out of pain for Tiggy but more out of sympathy for Olivia.

All round her she could see the shock and disbelief mirrored in people’s faces as they found themselves unable to fully take in what had just occurred.

‘What’s happened to Uncle David?’ she heard one of the younger children asking in panic. ‘Is he dead …?’

It was one of Saul’s children who asked the question and Hillary immediately tried to silence her.

Poor child. She hadn’t, after all, done anything wrong. Jenny sympathised even if Ben was looking at the girl as though he would like to murder her.

‘David … David … where is he? I want to be with him. Where is he …?’ Tiggy was crying noisily.

‘They’re taking him to hospital, Tiggy,’ Jenny said, trying to soothe her. ‘He’s in the best of hands now and—’

‘They can’t take him without me. He could die without me. I should be with him….’

‘Uncle Jon’s with him, Mum,’ Olivia was telling her mother quietly whilst she looked appealingly at Jenny, silently asking her for help, just as all of them were looking to her for help, Jenny realised as she looked round at the shocked faces that surrounded her.

She took a deep breath and then said as calmly as she could, ‘Caspar, if you could take Olivia and her mother and Ben to the hospital. You can use my car and—’

‘I’ll drive them,’ Saul interrupted her tersely. ‘It will be quicker,’ he added as Caspar looked as though he was about to argue. ‘I know the way. Come on,’ he instructed, taking hold of Tiggy’s arm and relieving Olivia of her weight so that she was able to go over to Ben and gently guide him towards the exit.

‘I can hold the fort here,’ Ann, Hugh’s wife, told Jenny. ‘You’ll want to get to the hospital yourself.’ She patted Jenny on the arm. ‘Don’t worry, David and Jon might be twins, but that doesn’t mean that Jon …’

Quickly Jenny shook her head. ‘No. No, I know it doesn’t,’ she agreed, anticipating what Ann was going to say. How many other people were wondering the same thing. David had had a heart attack … would Jon be stricken down in the same way?

‘They’re two separate people, Jenny,’ Ann was reiterating firmly.

‘I know that,’ Jenny agreed, ‘but I sometimes wonder …’

Shakily she took a deep breath. Now wasn’t the time to start losing her temper or her self-control and especially not with Ann.

‘Are you sure you don’t mind taking charge here? I would like to be there….’

‘Of course I don’t mind,’ Ann assured her. ‘You’ll ring us—’

‘Just as soon as I hear anything,’ Jenny promised. She could see Ruth standing a little apart from everyone else, Joss close to her side, her arm pressed around him. ‘I’m going to the hospital,’ she told Ruth. ‘Ann’s offered to take charge here, if you want to come with me.

‘Max,’ she called out, summoning her elder son who virtually hadn’t moved from the moment David had collapsed and whose face was still blank with disbelief. ‘Max,’ she repeated more sharply when he looked uncomprehendingly at her, waiting until she was sure she had got his attention before telling him, ‘Laurence and Henry will want to know what’s going on. We can’t all go to the hospital. I want you to stay at the house with them. As soon as we know what’s happening, we’ll give you a ring.

‘Luke will drive his parents and his Uncle Laurence back and James will take the others. Apparently Luke is the only one his father will trust to drive his Rolls, and fortunately, since he was late arriving, he hasn’t had anything to drink,’ Jenny explained to her son.

The mention of Luke’s name seemed to have caught his attention.

‘God bless Saint Luke,’ Max sneered nastily under his breath, causing Jenny to draw a sharp breath and then bite down hard on her bottom lip. Quarrelling with Max was the last thing she had the energy for right now.

Behind his back, Ann gave a brief understanding shake of her head. ‘Don’t worry,’ she mouthed reassuringly, ‘I’ll sort everything out here. You go.’

As she drove her car into the parking area for the hospital’s new cardiac unit, Jenny acknowledged the irony of the fact that she herself had been extremely active in helping with the fund-raising for the unit and was more grateful than ever for all those people who had contributed their time and their money to making its existence possible. Whether or not the unit and the skills of its specially trained staff would be enough to save David’s life was another matter.

Shakily she released her seat-belt and turned to smile as reassuringly as she could at Ruth.

The receptionist’s greeting was a comforting blend of professionalism and sympathy. ‘The specialist is still with your brother-in-law,’ she told Jenny, once she had given her name. ‘If you’d like to join the others in the waiting area.’

‘Joss, why don’t you and Jack go and get your mother and me a drink?’ she heard Ruth instructing her younger son. ‘It’s given them a bad shock,’ Ruth told Jenny when they had gone.

As they walked into the waiting room, Jenny automatically looked for Jon. He was at the other side of the room with Olivia and Tiggy and hadn’t seen her walk in. Tiggy was crying and Jon had his arm around her. Gravely Jenny watched them.

‘It’s Livvy I feel the most sorry for,’ Ruth announced unexpectedly. ‘If she’s not careful, she’s going to find herself turning into a leaning post for Tiggy.’

‘You stay here with Ruth while I go and have a word with your father,’ Jenny instructed Joss when he came back in, carefully carrying their coffee.

Jon still looked as though he was in shock, Jenny noted as she reached him and saw the way he was barely able to focus on her, even recognise her, his face almost a total blank.

‘Is there any news yet?’ she asked him anxiously. It was Olivia who answered her.

‘No, nothing concrete. They’ve confirmed that Dad’s had a heart attack but as yet they don’t know …’

She put her hand over her mouth as her eyes started to fill with tears.

‘Come on now, take it easy. At least he’s still alive and he’s in the best place … safe hands …’

Olivia gave Saul a grateful look as he had obviously overheard Jenny’s question and come across to join them.

He had been marvellous on the way to the hospital, taking charge calmly and easily, even managing to stop her mother’s hysterics without betraying any of the disdain or disapproval she suspected that Caspar might have shown, and once they had got to the hospital he had dealt equally efficiently with everything there, even managing, Olivia noticed, to have a discreet word with one of the nurses to make sure that a professional eye was kept on Ben who, shockingly, seemed to have aged a decade in as many minutes, turning from a domineering, irascible patriarch into an almost frighteningly frail and vulnerable old man.

Just like the rest of the family, she had always known, of course, how much David meant to him and it made her heart ache with pity for him now to see the debilitating effect David’s heart attack had had on him.

Uncle Jon, too, looked equally devastated although in a different way. He had remained with her father right up until the specialist had arrived to examine him, and the moment he had walked into the waiting room, Tiggy had run over to him, flinging herself into his arms, demanding, ‘He’s not dead, is he? Tell me he’s not dead. I can’t live without him. I can’t …’

‘No. He’s not dead, Tiggy,’ Jon had reassured her.

No, David wasn’t dead, thank God. Thank God. No doubt it was the shock of seeing his brother collapse in front of him—his fear for him, his love—that was responsible for the feelings he was experiencing now. He had the oddest sense of somehow not really being a part of what was going on around him, of somehow having stepped outside himself, seeing himself as though his mind, his spirit, had somehow become detached from his body.

His movements, his behaviour, his words, were all automatic, instinctive. He was acting as he always had, as the dutiful, responsible brother.

He tried to put himself in his twin’s shoes, to imagine what it would be like if he were the one lying in the hospital bed. Would Jenny be weeping over him, distraught, inconsolable at the thought of losing him?

Or would she be looking at David and thinking … wishing …

He had watched them dancing together earlier, their bodies so close, Jenny’s head resting against David as he whispered in her ear. What had he been saying to her?

Jon had never been under any illusions about Jenny’s reason for marrying him. If it hadn’t been for the baby … And he, after all, had been the one to insist that they did get married. He couldn’t blame Jenny for that. He had known all along, too, how she had felt about David. Had known how almost relieved his father had been when he announced that he and Jenny were getting married and he had discovered why. Once married to him, Jenny could not pose any threat to the future Ben had planned for David. There had been the expected stern parental lecture, of course, about the fact that Jenny was pregnant and he had sat stoically through it, speaking only once to defend Jenny and to remind his father that creating a new life took two people and not just one.

He had seen the relief in Jenny’s eyes when David had written to say that he couldn’t make it home to attend the wedding and then naïvely he had taken that to mean that Jenny hadn’t wanted David there; that she no longer wanted him in her life.

He knew that Jenny had tried very hard to make their marriage work just as he had done himself; that she had been a good wife and was an even better mother—that could never be called into question—but he had seen the look in her eyes earlier in the evening, watching her as she stood in front of the bedroom mirror studying her reflection, not realising that he was there.

Her face had looked unfamiliarly flushed, her lips half-parted, her eyes shining with … with what? Expectation … excitement … because she had known even then that David …?