Out of Practice (24 page)

Jason tried to explain about his cycling race but Holly only shook her head. ‘They shave them, Jase. With a razor.’ She ran a hand gently over the reddened skin. ‘We need to
get these off.’

‘I can’t do it,’ said Jason. ‘I take one look and lose my nerve. And look what a bloody mess Dan and Taffy have made of it.’

‘I’m a doctor, Jason, not a sodding beautician,’ remonstrated Taffy huffily.

‘Okay then,’ said Holly, grinning. ‘It looks like it’s my turn.’ She rolled up her sleeves and cracked her knuckles, watching Jason flinch. ‘Or, you know, you
could just go home and sit in a hot bath until they fall right off?’

The three men looked at each other in sheer disbelief. ‘A bath? That’s all it takes?’ managed Jason.

‘That’s all it takes,’ she confirmed.

‘But how did you . . . ?’

‘This is not my first time,’ said Holly, attempting to waggle her eyebrows but giving in to the laughter instead.

Dan watched as Holly took pity on Jason and sponged down his legs with a warm flannel, easing the wax strips away.

‘He says it’s for a triathlon, but I reckon he’s getting all spruced up for the Spring Swim,’ Taffy said to Holly, holding out the bowl of warm water for another dip.
‘You are coming, aren’t you?’

Holly bit her lip as she eased off another wax strip with concentration. ‘I don’t know, maybe?’

‘Sorry, Holly, but maybe’s not good enough,’ said Dan, distractedly opening up his files for the morning. ‘I should have said, it’s a three-line whip. Everyone on
parade I’m afraid.’

Taffy swotted at him with the other damp flannel. ‘Well, don’t make it sound so tempting will you? Jesus!’

Dan looked sheepish. ‘Sorry. Taff’s right though, actually. We all go every year and it’s brilliant.’

‘Properly good fun,’ interjected Jason, who was beginning to recover from his dented pride.

‘Bring Milo and the kids and some hot chocolate – lots of towels. You can’t go wrong. George is even Master of Ceremonies this year,’ Dan said.

‘Seriously though,’ Taffy carried on, ‘it’s such a laugh. All the grannies and the little ones, all in together. It’s my favourite Larkford event of the
year.’

Jason sniggered, ‘You mean compared to the fête, the Hallowe’en parade and the WI cake sale? It’s hardly a riot a minute around here, is it?’

Taffy shook his head. ‘Now you’re just making me feel old. So be quiet and concentrate on your lovely smooth bits.’

Holly’s smirk did not go un-noticed.

Dan gave her a nudge. ‘Do come, Holly. If nothing else, it’s really good for the partners to see you getting involved in the community.’

Holly nodded. ‘I’ll crank up the water wings and we’ll be there.’

‘You need water wings?’ said Jason, slow on the uptake as ever.

Taffy cuffed him round the back of the head, prompting Jason to immediately try to rescue his ’do. ‘For her kids, you wally.’

Jason shrugged, pouting a little about his ruffled hair. ‘Well, I didn’t know, did I? Some grown-ups can’t swim.’

‘And some have no common sense,’ cut in Dan with a wry grin, ‘but we gave you a job anyway. Now, if you’ve all quite finished turning my room into a beauty parlour,
I’ve a delightful morning ahead of me . . .’

He stood up to shoo them out. ‘Oh Taffs, looks like I’ve got one of yours on my list this morning, Karen Dobbs?’

Taffy let out a belly laugh. ‘Well good luck with that then, mate. You’re very welcome to work your magic there. I’ve all but given up. She’s a heart-sink patient that
one.’

Dan knew immediately what he meant. There were a handful of ‘regulars’ at The Practice that literally made your heart sink the minute they walked in the room. Often, they seemed to
have spent far too long on WebMD and were only too quick to tell you if they felt their proposed course of treatment was too lenient, too aggressive, or flat out wrong.

‘There’s not a lot you can do to help that one, until she decides to help herself, to be honest,’ said Taffy.

‘We’ll get out of your way and leave you to it,’ said Holly, helping Jason to his feet. ‘Have a fun morning,’ she said with a grin as she walked out of the room,
several pencils seemingly holding up her hairdo and tripping slightly as she went.

Dan turned to Taffy, smiling. ‘For such a clumsy person, she does a remarkably good job of staying upright, don’t you think?’

Taffy said nothing for a moment, just watching her go. ‘For such a clumsy person, she does a remarkably good job at most things.’ He wandered back to his office, thoughts clearly
elsewhere. He didn’t even crack a smile about the patient that came out of the loo with her skirt tucked in her knickers and that worried Dan most of all.

‘So, Karen? What can I do for you this morning?’ Dan asked moments later, as his patient attempted to settle herself into the chair in front him. Politely put, she
was Rubenesque, but Dan had a feeling that the British Medical Council might be a bit blunter.

‘Well, Dr Carter, my kinesiology lady says my candida levels are very high again. And I have been having a few issues down there, so I wanted your thoughts really.’ Karen pulled a
print-out from her vast patent handbag and Dan tried to keep an open expression on his face, even though as promised, his heart was sinking. ‘This says that a one-off course of flucka . . .
floocka . . .’

‘Fluconazole?’ suggested Dan slowly.

‘Yes, that’s right! Fancy you knowing that. Well, this fluconazole works wonders apparently.’

‘Well, yes it does and it is very powerful medication too. Had you given any more thought to what you discussed with Dr Jones last time? Trying to lose some weight? Avoiding sugary foods,
alcohol, yeast and mushrooms?’

Karen folded her rather pudgy hands in her lap and looked a bit put out. ‘I know you doctors like to blame everything on my weight, Dr Carter. But not everything is down to that, you know.
I have very heavy bones and a rather slow metabolism, as I mentioned before.’

Dan took a calming sip of his coffee, before realising it was stone cold and grimacing. He tapped his pen on the desk and scrolled down the screen to double check. Yes, he was right. Karen had
been in roughly twenty times in the last year – often requesting a different doctor and seemingly always with some new ailment or malady and never with any intention of following the advice
she’d been given.

‘How have you been getting on with the walking programme? Has that helped with the swollen ankles at all? And you have been remembering to elevate them at night?’

Karen shifted in her seat. ‘Well, obviously I do it when I can.’

‘And how often would that be?’

‘Once a week, maybe once a fortnight when I’m busy.’

The silence hung in the room and Dan scrolled back further and saw Taffy’s own unique annotations. TEETH, he’d noted down, when Karen had come in about feeling tired. Again,
obviously that had nothing to do with the extra six stones in weight she was lugging around everywhere she went. Tried Everything Else; Try Homeopathy. Dan sighed, making a mental note to thank
Taffy later for foisting the alternative health brigade on him.

‘Well,’ said Dan diplomatically. ‘I’d like you to really give the low-sugar diet another go and try and do a bit more walking and then we’ll review in a month or
so. You haven’t any other symptoms to speak of, no itching or rashes?’

Karen shook her head, clearly disappointed not to have a little green piece of paper, after making the effort to come in to the doctor’s. She stood up, with considerable effort, and headed
for the door.

Dan’s eyes flickered to the clock, noticing that he was one patient in and already running late if he wanted to accompany Lance and Hattie to their appointment in Bath.

‘Oh there was just one other thing, Doctor,’ Karen said, hovering by the chair and looking embarrassed. ‘It’s been terribly painful having sex recently and my Gary says
he might have felt a lump. Do you think that’s something I should be worried about?’

A small vein in Dan’s forehead slowly pulsed and the calm expression on his face became a little more forced. Why did they always do this? Waste their appointed time talking about
trivialities and save the big stuff for when their hands were on the doorknob. ‘Sit down, Karen,’ he said gently, deliberately turning away from the clock. ‘Now, tell me all about
it.’

It only took Holly a moment to realise that two clichés she’d routinely discounted were actually bang on the money – you never did hear anything good about
yourself by eavesdropping and blood really was thicker than water.

Holly shrank back against the wall outside Dan’s office and tried to stop her thoughts spiralling. She’d only stopped by at the end of the day to give Dan some local stats about male
cancers and some promising research taking place in the States, that might, just might help Lance. Only minutes before, she’d imagined another sleepless night looming, worrying about Lance
and Hattie and their baby. Now, it seemed she would have something a little closer to home preoccupying her thoughts into the wee small hours.

Inside the office, Dan and Lizzie were locked in a heated argument, the edited highlights of which made Holly feel as though her chocolate muffin was about to make an encore appearance and
eclipsed every other thought in her head.

‘For fuck’s sake, Lizzie! Just let it drop, will you. I can’t magically snap my fingers and be kicking up my heels without a care in the world. I’m getting counselling.
I’m being a good little patient. You can’t just wish PTSD away, you know.’

‘But Dan – come on – you have to get yourself in a better place than this. You’re a wreck. Even if everyone else around here is too polite to comment, I’m not. You
look like shit. You look distracted and edgy – not the most comforting look for a GP, I might add. You said you wanted Senior Partner more than anything. So, what happened to everything we
talked about?’ said Lizzie, her voice rising in frustration.

‘Well you lied to me, didn’t you?’ he retorted.

‘White lies, Dan. White lies. And nobody got hurt did they? I said I’d find you moral support and she’s here. You said you needed to feel supported at work and I brought you
Holly. People don’t come more supportive than Holly. Jesus Christ, you could be a murderer on death row and she’d find a way to hold your hand while she looked for the silver
lining!’

There was an extended pause and Holly had to fight every instinct in her body, which was flooding with adrenalin and strongly urging fight or flight. She felt completely unprepared and
ill-equipped to cope with this. It was sheer strength of will that kept Holly rooted to the spot, trying to buy herself some thinking time. It wasn’t so much the acerbic words pouring out of
Lizzie’s mouth that were so hurtful; it was the cutting tone of her voice that made Holly feel so used and abused. That, and the feeling of being completely blindsided by someone you counted
as a friend – a best friend.

Obviously Dan too had registered the scornful dismissal as he leapt to Holly’s defence. ‘Would you listen to yourself there, Lizzie? This is your best friend that you’re
talking about. She’s uprooted her entire family to move here. She’s walked into a job that has fuck-all security – you know I couldn’t tell her what was going on here. But
you could. And damn it all, Lizzie, you promised you would!’

‘Well if I had, she wouldn’t have come, now, would she?’ Lizzie shot back, a sullen vicious bite in her words that was normally reserved for the bottom of the third bottle of
wine.

For all that Lizzie said, Holly was no clueless Pollyanna. She could see the flaws in her nearest and dearest with perfect clarity – when she chose to. But she also knew that she herself
wasn’t perfect and therefore made a conscious effort to cut everyone else some slack. She was only too aware that you never really knew what was going on behind closed doors.

Truth be told, moving to Larkford had given Holly more insight into the reality of Lizzie’s world than she’d ever had before. Lizzie’s constant quest for perfection on every
level was enough to make Holly feel tired just thinking about it. Working for a glossy magazine was one thing, but Lizzie seemed determined, driven even, to live the dream.

Yes, Lizzie was beautiful, indulged and ambitious, but until now, Holly had never thought that made her a bad person. She questioned Lizzie’s priorities sometimes – didn’t all
friends do that from time to time? – but she had never imagined such a chasm could develop between their moral viewpoints.

Her own moral compass was swinging indignantly at this point: her wounded feelings yelping for an explanation or an apology and in shock from the ambush; but her fairer voice of reason was
quietly and insistently pointing out that the sheer volume of Lizzie’s alcohol consumption of late, suggested all was not picture-perfect beneath the surface.

Holly tried not to think of herself as an enabler, but she was also well aware that confronting Lizzie about her drinking would have only one possible outcome. End of friendship. So she’d
held her tongue and bided her time. She could see now that had been a mistake. But Lizzie simply didn’t
do
criticism. More precisely, Lizzie couldn’t
take
criticism
– she was more than happy to dish it out, though.

Holly found herself straining to hear Dan’s reply, forced out as it was through gritted teeth. ‘You should have told her, Lizzie. You’ve put her and me in an impossible
situation. George is off. Any idiot could tell you I’m not up to the job of running this place and then what? Did you think about what would happen to her for a minute?’

‘Of course I did, but forgive me if I put my own cousin’s needs first. You needed the new doctor to be on your side, yes? She is. You needed someone who’d fit right in, yes?
She has. You needed someone pliable and people-pleasing and just a little bit needy? Ta da! I’d say you’re welcome, but I can’t help noticing that you’ve never once said
thank you.’

‘Thank you for what? For misleading and manipulating your best friend for me? For promising you’d tell her how the ground really lies here before she accepted the job and then not
saying a word? Of course, I love that you were looking out for me, but I never, ever would have wanted you to do it at this price.’