The Harder They Fall (48 page)

“Good boy, Casper. Good boy.” The dog licked at his face and it made him cry all the more, but he pulled himself together again, for Oliver’s sake.

“OK, Ollie. I can’t carry you, because your leg is hurt. I’m going to come and sit with you, though. And soon, you’re going for a ride in a helicopter.”

“Why?”

George climbed down onto the ledge and sat next to him. “So they can take you to a hospital and fix your leg.” The way it was bent under him, it had to be broken, but otherwise he seemed fine.

“I don’t want to go hospal,” Oliver said, blinking up at him with anxious, round eyes. “I want to go home with Enna.”

“You can, soon,” George promised.

Immediately on hearing the shout that Oliver was OK, Dan and Andy had doubled back to tell Eleanor and James. Adele took Toby from Eleanor and she ran, with James, all the way down the hill. They were both standing above the ridge now, tears flowing freely in relief. George was shivering, from the shock and the cold, having wrapped Oliver in his jacket, and when the helicopter arrived, it took some persuading to get the terrified little boy to let go of his hand, but he did so as soon as they winched him up and his dad gave him a huge cuddle.

“I sorry, Daddy. I wanted to play bikes. I be a good boy.”

George turned away and collapsed into Josh’s waiting arms. Together they made their way through the trees and up to the playground, from where they watched the helicopter until it was nothing more than a distant dot of light blending into the stars. The others had already started walking back to the cabins, but they stayed a moment longer so that George could get his legs working again.

“You ready?’ Josh asked. George buried his head in Josh’s jacket. “Hey.” He gently lifted George’s face so he could look him in the eyes. “You were awesome.”

George tried to laugh it off. Josh wiped the tears away with his thumb.

“Can you show me how to do that?”

“Yeah,” George said, stepping unsteadily. “See page sixty-eight of your module guide: ‘Animal Psychology for Amateurs’.”

Cuts, bruises and a broken foot: little Oliver Brown had got off fairly lightly, and was so enthralled with his blue plaster-cast and crutches ‘like Granpad’, as he called Eleanor’s dad, that he’d forgotten all about swings and slides and bikes. This temporary amnesia was being helped along by a visit from the older boys, who brought him sweets, followed up with a hefty dose of paediatric pain relief once his visitors had left, with the other welcome side effect being that he was drowsy and somewhat more compliant than usual, which was a good thing, for a sleepless night at the hospital had made James ill-tempered. He began the phone call to Oliver’s mother with a gentle and, Eleanor thought, very convincing reassurance that everything was well; he remained silent during her scathing indictment of his capabilities as a father, interspersed with frequent reference to the likelihood that Oliver’s schooling, due to commence on his fourth birthday two weeks from now, would undoubtedly have to be delayed, with disastrous and somewhat overstated consequences; he even managed to utter a polite farewell at the end of the conversation, such as it could be called that. However, the terms in which he referred to her after he hung up were far from polite and so unlike James that they left Eleanor agape. When she recovered, she ushered him off to bed, promising (with fingers crossed) to wake him if he were needed.

Fairing just as poorly, in the cabin next-door-but-one, was Jess, who had woken with nausea and a banging headache and at first assumed it was due to the vodka, thus refused to give voice to what she believed was yet more self-inflicted suffering. An hour later and Kris was sent for the ‘doctor in residence’, even though the sum total interactions Eleanor and Jess had engaged in since the wedding came to less than one. Kris stayed with Oliver and Toby (both fast asleep) whilst Eleanor tended to the patient, whose high temperature, muscle stiffness and general state of lethargy could mean only one thing.

“Flu,” Eleanor announced, stripping the cover from her thermometer.

“Terrific,” Jess groaned. “And there was I, thinking it couldn’t possibly get any worse.”

“At least it waited until almost the end of the holiday.”

Jess didn’t say what she wanted to say to this. It had been a truly awful week, with no contact from Rob for three days and the whole thing of pussy-footing around Andy. She was staving off telling him, in the hope that, in spite of the evidence, she was wrong; that she hadn’t been ripped off.

“So, how is Rob?” Eleanor asked without a trace of sympathy or interest. “I’m assuming he’s still alive?”

“How would I know?” Jess responded, trying to sound equally uninterested and failing miserably.

“He’s not been in touch?”

She shook her head, the dizziness combining with the irrepressible tears and making it impossible to hold back any longer.

“Oh, Ellie. I don’t know what’s going on anymore. I wanted to do the right thing and I messed up and I’m so sorry for everything.” Each sob was making her wheeze, and each wheeze was hurting her chest so much that she didn’t know what to do with herself. For all that she had done, Eleanor couldn’t stand by and watch her suffer like this.

“Oh dear. What’s happened?” She sat down and Jess collapsed against her.

“I think Rob’s conned me,” she gasped, struggling to catch her breath. “I gave him everything in my bank account and now he’s disappeared.”

“Why did you give him money?”

“To pay for his operation. How could I have been so stupid?” Jess was breathless and doubled up in pain, but there was little more Eleanor could do than rub her back and wait for her to stop putting herself through this.

“OK, honey. Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to help you get into bed and make you comfy with some painkillers and a cool flannel. Then I’m going to ring Lois and ask her to get him to call you. How does that sound?”

Jess nodded listlessly. Eleanor helped her to her feet and escorted her to bed, making sure she had plenty of cold water nearby and forcing her to take paracetomol. She located Jess’s phone and made the call.

“Hi, Lois, it’s Eleanor. How are you?”

“Oh, hello, Doctor Davenport, oh. I mean, Doctor Brown. I’m much better, thank you for asking. I’m so sorry to have missed your wedding. Did you have a lovely day?”

“It was wonderful, Lois, thank you. Please don’t apologise. As long as you’re on the mend now.”

“Very much so. I felt so awful, leaving Miss Lambert without any assistance.”

“Ah, yes. It’s safe to say she’s realised how indispensable you are. We’re thinking of hiring another assistant, actually, to help you out a little, but I’ll talk to you about that later in the week. What I phoned for was to ask a small favour.”

“Of course.”

“I wondered if you could pass a message on to your Uncle Rob?” The line was silent. “Are you still there, Lois?”

“Err…yes.” Her voice was suddenly much quieter. “That might be a bit of a problem.”

“Why’s that?”

“I can’t say too much, but we haven’t seen him since before your wedding and my mum is furious with him. He borrowed some money—quite a lot of money, in fact—from the trust fund set up for my sister and me.”

“For his operation?”

“I’m sorry?”

“He’s waiting for surgery for a heart condition, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know anything about that, I’m afraid. No, this was for his business. He held a big investors’ meeting at a hotel, and invited Mum along. She said she wasn’t interested. Then he came to the house with a fancy bike he was supposed to be selling to meet the shortfall, but the sale fell through. She offered to help him out in the short term, and he hasn’t been back since, on top of which, his phone’s going straight to voicemail and emails are bouncing.”

“Oh, that doesn’t sound too good,” Eleanor said. “Has he ever gone off like this before?”

“I, err…”

“It’s OK, Lois. You must all be very worried.”

“Not really,” she said lightly. “Has he taken money from you too?”

“Not from me, no, but I can’t really say any more than that. Look, we’ll have a good chat when I get back, see what we can sort out.”

“All right, Doctor Dav…Brown. Enjoy the rest of your honeymoon. Bye now.”

“Bye, Lois.”

Eleanor hung up and spent a few minutes weighing up her options. It was risky, and if she got caught she could get into trouble. Of course, it was possible that Rob was trying to protect his family from worrying about his health, but she was far from convinced, for the implication was that he had done something like this before. And then there was the investors’ meeting, which, coupled with the reunion, pointed to a rather more elaborate scheme to defraud not only Jess, but quite a few other people. In light of all of this, she didn’t see there was much choice: she went out to the car and retrieved her laptop from the boot (where it had remained all week), and logged in to the patient database. The connection was frustratingly slow, but even so, it didn’t take long to establish the truth: Simpson-Stone wasn’t exactly a common surname, and there was only one patient registered with the first name of Robert. Apart from an overnight stay and follow-up for gall stones a couple of years ago, the only other entry was from the minor injuries clinic the previous Sunday, for a cheek wound requiring a couple of steristrips and a preventative course of antibiotics. Rob had been lying all along. She wasn’t sure how she was going to break the news to Jess, but for now it could wait, because she was resting and Kris was still looking after the other invalid. She left Jess’s phone within arm’s reach and returned to her cabin.

“Time to swap patients.”

“So soon?” Toby had woken up not long after Eleanor had left and was now sporting a clean nappy and a full tummy. Kris looked very disappointed that she’d come back.

“You’re a superstar. Thanks.”

“Well, he smiled at me so beautifully, I just couldn’t resist,” he said, rubbing the gurgling little chap’s back until he let out the most enormous belch and sicked up all down his front. “Although…” Kris grimaced and handed him back to his mum.

“Yeah. He does that when he’s fed from the bottle, don’t you Toby?” She rubbed her nose against his and he smiled again. “And one for Mummy too? What a clever boy!”

“So how is she?” Kris asked.

“Jess? She’s got flu. She’s in a dreadful state over this thing with Rob. I haven’t told her yet, but I’ve just spoken to his niece and he’s gone AWOL. He’s a conman.”

“Oh no! Did Jess tell you she gave him everything from their joint account?”

“Yeah, although she didn’t mention the joint part. That’s really going to see the you-know-what hit the fan.”

“Think I might go AWOL myself,” Kris joked. “Right, well I guess I’d best go and keep an eye on her. Thanks, Ellie.”

“No problem. Thank you for saving me from the joys of nappy-changing.”

“Oh, the pleasure was all mine!” he said dolefully and returned to his own cabin for an afternoon of reading and care-giving.

Their final night: James chose to stay ‘home’ and look after his sons, leaving Eleanor free to join the rest of her friends for an evening of eating, drinking and general merriment. There was a real party feel in the air, with just one dark cloud looming: Jess was now aware of the full extent of Rob’s trickery and had sent for Andy. Some thirty minutes later, the door of the cabin was slammed so hard that it bounced, and the seven of them watched as Andy marched off up the footpath and into the woods without so much as a backwards glance. Dan moved to follow and Kris stopped him.

“Leave him. He’ll come back when he’s got it out of his system, if his little brother’s anything to go by.” Dan accepted these words of wisdom and opened another beer. Casper, on the other paw, did not, and tore off after Andy, with Shaunna and Kris shouting themselves hoarse, but to no avail.

“All the praise has gone to his head,” Shaunna said, watching as Casper’s tail disappeared from view.

“He’ll come back when Andy does,” Kris consoled her. “Once he’s happy they’ve collected their full quota of pine cones.”

“Who? Andy or the dog?” she asked wryly.

As it was their last night, Adele contended, they had to make the most of the hot tub, and it had been burbling away for the best part of two hours before Andy (and Casper) strolled back into their midst, acting as if nothing had happened.

“Come and join us,” Shaunna called from in amongst the steam and bubbles.”

“D’you know what? I think I will!” he said, pulling off his jacket. Adele started up a raucous rendition of ‘The Stripper’ and Andy slowed down, making a big show of lifting his t-shirt inch by inch, before spinning it in the air and launching it in Eleanor’s direction. By this point, everyone was singing along and producing the most atrocious, tuneless noise that it was as well no-one else could hear them. One button at a time, his jeans were next, landing at Josh’s feet, then his socks, until all that was left were his boxer shorts, and he started to push them down at the back, with much whooping and encouragement from the women, whilst Dan’s smile melted into a look of pure terror.

“Nah,” Andy grinned and jumped in the water. “Just kiddin’!” Dan had never been so relieved, although he was also feeling a little unsettled at seeing his girlfriend and her best friend flirting with his brother, all of them semi-naked in a hot tub.

“You know the simple solution?” Kris said, noticing his friend’s jealousy. “Get your kit off and join them.”

“Ooh, I don’t know about that.” He flexed his shoulders and started acting all macho.

“Go on, Dan!” George said. “It’s great fun!”

“So why aren’t you in there tonight?”

“I thought I’d give everyone else a chance.”

“Well, if you put it like that.” Dan kicked his shoes off, and removed the rest of his clothes on the way. “Shift over, bro,” he said, climbing in between Andy and Adele. Shaunna leaned across to get the wine bottle and emptied the rest of it into their glasses.

“A toast,” she said, “to the absent Mr. James Brown, esquire, and his lovely lady wife, El-e-a-nor.” Eleanor laughed and hid her face.