#YouToo Page 5

  ‘I was trying to make sense of all these notes. He seems to have had an awful lot of tests for a, well many different diseases but there don’t seem to be many actual diagnoses on his past history.’

  ‘No, well, that’s because we’ve never actually found anything wrong with Mr Herring other than acute hypochondria.’

  ‘Oh.’ Richard looked disappointed and went back to the sheaf of papers in his hand. ‘But-’

  ‘Richard, you were right, I really don’t have time for this. Mr Her- ring is the bane of all our lives. He Googles symptoms that he thinks he has and comes in with printouts of diseases he wants to be tested for. He is single-handedly costing the NHS hundreds of thousands of pounds a year and no one has ever found anything wrong with him.’

  Richard looked crestfallen and that, in turn, made Jo feel guilty. ‘Look,’ she continued, hoping to cheer him up a bit. ‘He’s a great

  case to discuss with your clinical supervisor, might even make a good case study.’

  Richard visibly brightened and Jo hurried away to grab a coffee and make a start on her paperwork before he could manage to get out so much as a thank you.

  Armed with a list of visits and a tuna salad sandwich, Jo went into her consulting room to make a quick phone call before leaving the surgery. Much as her colleagues understood her desire to run her two jobs in parallel, Jo was not unaware that her police work often meant she had to leave them, and her patients, in the lurch. There had been many occasions when visits did not get done or surgeries had to be covered by others. She tried, as much as possible, to keep her police work out of their sight as she found it the best way to avoid eye-rolls from the other GPs and lectures from Dr Grantham, the senior partner, about it being time to confine herself to just one career and do it well rather than flitting about and letting people down all the time.

  That was why she was sitting in her consulting room where she could unobtrusively make a call to Mike Parton, knowing that lunch- times were often a good time to catch him in his office.

  ‘Hello, Mike? It’s Jo here. I just wondered if you knew whether or not the paraphernalia from the Townsend case had been sent off?’ There was a slight pause before Mike answered.

  ‘I was about to say I assume so, but-’ he paused again.

  ‘Lucy Cavendish isn’t known for her efficiency.’ Jo finished for him.

  ‘Quite. Can I ask, do you know something about this?’

  ‘I did hear, from a pretty reliable source,’ Jo knew that Mike would guess exactly who that source was, ‘that she might not have signed the release forms for them to go to forensics yet.’

  They both knew that with the backlog of work that had built up since the forensic department had been put out to tender – a tender which had been won by a quote that was naïve at best – meant that it was hard enough to get the evidence together in time for inquests and trials without the pathologist adding in extra delays.

  ‘Thank you, Dr Hughes, I’ll get onto it right away,’ Mike said as he quickly hung up, clearly keen to do just as he said.

  The third visit on the list was June Springfield. Jo had not managed to persuade her patient to actually ask for a visit, but equally she hadn’t expressly forbidden it when Jo rang and suggested a medication review. Visiting patients at the request of relatives was always a slightly grey area. Everyone has the right not to see a doctor if that is what they want, and provided they are capable of making that decision. June Springfield was an intelligent woman and even when she had been drinking seemed to Jo to be more than able to make decisions about her own care.

  When she let Jo into her charming and historic half-timbered house on the High Street, Mrs Springfield had clearly remembered that she was coming. Or perhaps she had learnt to cover her memory gaps after so many years of heavy drinking. Unlike some houses she visited, Jo never worried about sitting down in this tiny living room. The décor was classic and appropriate for such an old cottage, with old prints on the wall and a tapestry footstool in front of the wingback chair set next to the fireplace. It didn’t look as though Mrs Springfield had lit a fire in a long while, but despite the cool day, the room was overly warm from the central heating. Jo looked round the room carefully, but there was no sign of any alcohol anywhere, no empty bottles tucked behind cushions that she could see, or red wine stains on the carpet. In fact, there wasn’t so much as a speck of dust anywhere and the cut-glass vases and silver photograph frames sparkled. It seemed to Jo that whenever Mrs Springfield wasn’t actively drinking she must be cleaning or tidying in order to keep the house this immaculate.

  ‘My husband always liked things just so. Hated untidiness, disorder, dirt of any kind. It’s hard to break a habit, even when the reason you did it has gone.’ Mrs Springfield seemed to read her mind.

  Jo knew that Mr Springfield had died many years ago, leaving his wife with their teenage son to bring up alone, and by all accounts she had managed admirably. But as soon as her son had left home, June had turned to alcohol to help her through the days.

  Once she had sat down in the wingback chair with Jo on the small sofa next to it, June looked at Jo expectantly.

  ‘I’ve come to review your medications and see how you are getting on with them,’ Jo started as she opened her brief case, but June held up her hand to stop her.

  ‘It’s all right, I know Ben’s asked you to come and see me because he’s worried.’

  Jo closed the case and turned to give June her full attention. ‘And is he right to be worried?’

  ‘From his point of view, perhaps, but from mine? No.’

  ‘And what does that mean, exactly?’

  June let out a long sigh before she answered.

  ‘I’m dying, Dr Hughes. You and I both know that. No more treat- ment, that was the Consultant’s decision. And mine. Nothing is going to change my prognosis now.’

  ‘But you still haven’t told Ben that.’

  ‘No. I’ll tell him when I’m ready and not before.’

  ‘He needs to know.’

  ‘Yes, but when he finds out and from whom is my decision. Not yours. Am I clear?’

  Jo nodded reluctantly. She whole-heartedly disagreed with her patient but June was right, it was her decision to make. Jo had made the mistake of telling another patient’s husband about her cancer in order to push her to have treatment once before, and it hadn’t ended well.

  ‘He thinks you might be depressed. Are you?’ ‘No more than everybody else.’

  ‘Why do you think he believes that?’ Jo persevered.

  ‘Presumably because he worries that I drink too much and the fact that I have no intention of cutting back.’

  ‘And are you? Drinking too much?’

  ‘It depends on how you define too much.’

  ‘I think if you resort to arguments like that, you probably are.’ June smiled.

  ‘You know you really are quite a clever young lady. Much too clev- er to be a doctor.’

  ‘Flattery will get you nowhere.’ Jo turned back to her case. ‘Now, we could try-’

  ‘No!’ June interrupted her. ‘I don’t want happy pills or talking ther- apies, thank you very much. I don’t want to stop drinking as there really doesn’t seem any point. I am not in any pain, not much at least, and if I need more painkillers, I’ll let you know. I just want to be left alone to get on with my life, and death, as I see fit.’

  Jo looked at her patient and tried to think what she could say to change her mind. It wasn’t easy. They had had this conversation so many times in the past and absolutely nothing Jo had said or done had made the slightest bit of difference.

  June recognised that Jo was struggling to think of a way forward and leant over and patted her on the knee.

  ‘Why don’t you give up? I’m a stubborn old woman and you are not going to change my mind.’

  Jo sighed. She had to concede that she couldn’t honestly think of anything else she could do, or offer her patient.

  ‘Promise me that if you e
ver change your mind, if you decide you do want some help, stronger pain killers, Macmillan nurse, hospice care, anything, you will let me know?’

  ‘Of course. Who else would I go to?’

  And Jo left her on that note, promising herself she would drop by occasionally just to check for herself that June was still adamant that she didn’t want any help and that she was coping and not a danger to herself or others.

  Her only problem now was what on earth was she going to say to June’s son?

  Jo was jumpy throughout evening surgery, half-expecting to get a tirade of abuse from Lucy Cavendish for interfering in one of her cases, but there were no calls. Either the pathologist didn’t care, or she was just biding her time to have a proper go at Jo somewhere public, like the inquest.

  Mike had called earlier to tell Jo that he had dropped off the gear at the police forensic laboratory and requested the tests on behalf of the Coroner’s Office. He confided in Jo that not only was she slow, but that he didn’t think the locum pathologist was particularly thorough.

  ‘If it wasn’t for me and Mr Rickard checking that everything that should be done has been, I sometimes think we would get to the in- quests without any idea as to how people died, and still be just as much in the dark afterwards.’

  Jo knew that Mr Rickard, a pedantic and very thorough solicitor who was now the local Coroner, must hate being presented with incomplete or slapdash evidence. No wonder Mike was looking a bit strained these days. It was bad enough having to make sure his own work was in perfect order without having to double check the pathologist’s work as well.

  Having completed her paperwork, Jo had finally left the surgery and stopped off at the supermarket to buy some chicken breasts, mushrooms and fresh pasta, along with the makings of a salad, some milk and fresh bread. She was just debating with herself the best way to cook the chicken when she parked at the end of the lane where she lived. Her home was the top flat, or penthouse apartment as the estate agent had insisted on calling it, created when a large Edwardian house was divided into six separate flats in the nineties. She was lucky that conversions then were much more sympathetic to the architectural style and retained many of the original features, unlike earlier examples she had seen. In the sixties and seventies developers had been far too quick to rip out fireplaces and stick up stud walls straight through elaborate cornices and ceiling roses.

  The house was situated at the end of a narrow lane that led to nowhere except the cliff-top park and it had magnificent views over Hastings Old Town and to the sea beyond. It was the views from her large living room windows that had sold the flat to Jo several years earlier when she had come to live and work in the town. Some peo- ple might have considered the house’s position a little isolated, but Jo liked the feeling of peace and separation from the town whilst knowing that it was still within easy walking distance. It was coming home again, up the steep steps and twittens, the walkways and lanes that turn Hastings into a maze, that was a chore, although at least during the day she had the East Cliff lift and could then walk through the country park to her home. The lift stopped at six o’clock, but Jo wouldn’t want to walk across the cliffs on her own at night, anyway. There were often flashers in the copses and it would be downright embarrassing if she recognised one as a patient.

  The phone was ringing as she entered the flat and even as she picked it up, Jo knew it was a mistake. No good could come from speaking to her mother, even before she’d had a couple of gin and tonics, but Jo had ignored several messages to call and there was only so long she could delay the inevitable.

  ‘Hi Ma, how are you?’ she said, trying for a level of brightness she wasn’t feeling.

  ‘Really, Jo, could you not just return my calls occasionally?’ ‘Sorry, I’ve just been too busy...’

  ‘Too busy for your own mother?’

  There was no honest and acceptable answer to that, so Jo wisely kept quiet.

  ‘And here I am doing my best for you.’ That sounded suspicious.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘ You remember Rita and George’s son?’

  ‘Rita and George?’ Jo didn’t even remember them, let alone their son, and she definitely didn’t like the way this conversation was going. ‘You know, they own the oast house in the village down the road.

  Edward went to Harrow and then up to Cambridge to read Maths. You must remember him.’

  Jo certainly did. Teddy at sixteen had been pretty unprepossessing, pale, spotty and underweight, and sported a permanent scowl. Not that Jo had necessarily been drawn to the sporty or buff boys who thought so much of themselves, but she had her standards as a teen- ager, and Teddy was well below the line. He also had no idea how to talk to girls, or boys for that matter. He could really only talk maths.

  ‘Anyway, whether or not you remember him, he’s back staying with his parents at the moment and I’ve invited them over for dinner tomorrow night and I’ll need you there to even the numbers up.’

  Her mother’s age-old excuse when she was setting her daughter up with yet another supposedly eligible bachelor was that she needed Jo to come so that there would be an even number of men and women at the table. Quite why that was so important, Jo had never really understood.

  ‘But-’

  ‘Rita was saying that it’s really quite trying having your child boo- merang back to live with you at this stage of your life, so we are doing them a big favour just getting him out of the house for an evening.’

  ‘Yes but his parents are coming too, so it’s not like you’re giving them a break.’

  ‘Well, of course they don’t need a break from him, darling, he’s their son, but they are worried that he doesn’t get out enough.’

  ‘So why does that need me to be there?’ Jo knew that the whole point of the dinner party was for her to meet him, but she wasn’t going to roll over that easily.

  ‘Well he won’t want to come to dinner with a bunch of old fogeys, will he?’

  Actually, from what Jo remembered of Teddy, he probably wouldn’t notice.

  ‘You are there to add glamour, darling.’

  And, of course, if she and Teddy got along and eventually married, two families would have solved their unmarried children problem, because Jo had no doubt that this was yet another attempt by her mother to marry her off before she became an old maid. Jo seemed to remember that her mother had never liked Rita and George anyway and was about to say she was busy tomorrow night when her mother added a final comment.

  ‘Besides which, your father’s dying to tell you all about how his motorcycle renovation is going. After all, it is entirely your fault he’s doing it in the first place.’

  Game, set and match. She had indeed suggested her father get a hobby, and he had chosen to do up a wreck of a classic motorbike. She had never imagined it would become quite such an all-consuming hobby, but at least it made her father happy, and unfortunately gave her mother more time for her own hobby – finding a suitable husband for her daughter. With a sigh, Jo accepted the invitation.

  He leaned back in the hot water that was bubbling around him, took another sip of his whisky and looked up at the stars, or the few stars that were visible. Even on a cool night he loved sitting naked in a hot tub and looking at the stars, but the light pollution and clouds in Kent meant that there were not very many to be seen. He remembered a similar night in the Cayman Islands. He had been able to see hundreds then. Maybe he should take it as a sign that it was time to cut his losses here and go? Go to the Caymans where he had a fair-sized fortune stashed under another name. He could even change his identity there, and hide from his money-grubbing bitch of a wife. Stupid cow, threatening to divorce him and take him for every penny. Did she think he wasn’t prepared for her trying to do exactly that?

  He sipped his whisky and idly scratched his balls. He should stay and fight the allegations against him, which he could do successfully, he knew, in time. The problem was that the Chief Exec. was itching to get rid of him anyway, s
o he wouldn’t be given time, any more than he would be given access to the system so that he could prove it wasn’t him who had sent those emails. Unless... he thought for a moment... that Friday night when the emails had been sent, it was when he was on the train home, drunk as a skunk as befitted the end of the working week. Could he have sent them? A massive act of self-destruction? He didn’t think so. Particularly not the one about screwing the CEO’s wife. I mean, she must be at least forty. Well-preserved, but older than anyone he had ever shagged. So, he wouldn’t have sent that one, would he? Even if he had sent the ones about illegal dealing. Which he didn’t, obviously. Someone else must have set him up. No shortage of candidates there. Could someone have lifted his phone and sent them while he was out of it on the train? They would have needed his thumbprint to open the phone – surely he would have woken up if they did that? He thought for a moment and took another sip from his drink. God, it didn’t taste as good as he expected it to. It was supposed to be one of the best single malts money could buy. Maybe the bitch had tipped it out and put some cheap shit in there as a “fuck you” gesture. He wouldn’t put it past her. He wouldn’t put anything past her now. She had been furious when he was sacked for gross misconduct. Furious that she hadn’t been able to start divorce proceedings before the humiliation, not to mention before his income took such a turn for the worse.

  He was beginning to feel a bit fuzzy headed. Perhaps he’d had too much to drink? Well, why not? After all, he didn’t have to go to work in the morning, did he?

  He snorted with laughter and took another defiant gulp of the foul-tasting whisky and drained the glass, shouting ‘Up yours, you stupid cunt!’ He’d have to make plans tomorrow. Plans to cut loose. Forget the bloody job and the bastards that worked there, especially the cunt who had sent those sodding emails in his name, and forget his stupid cow of a wife who had no loyalty to him, let alone love for him. No loyalty at all. Christ, he felt tired, perhaps he should go to bed. He closed his eyes momentarily and slid down in the water, floating on the bubbles. So tired, so sleepy, he didn’t feel the hand stroking his forehead and pushing his head gently under the water.