Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series

‘I don’t know,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘It’s too soon to say. Right now he’s alive. We won’t know any more until we get him into hospital. He’s obviously had a pretty major heart attack, how major we won’t know until—’ He broke off as they both heard the wail of an ambulance siren. ‘You stay here with him,’ he instructed Jenny unnecessarily. ‘I’ll go and tell them what’s happened.’

As they waited for the ambulance crew, Jenny turned to look at her husband. If anything, his face was even greyer than David’s, his skin putty-coloured. He had been the first to react to David’s collapse, reaching out to him as he yelled at her, ‘For God’s sake, do something. He’s had a heart attack.’

Almost single-handedly he had tenderly lifted his brother off the table and placed him carefully on the ground. He had not said a single word since and that was because he was, Jenny knew, expending every single ounce of energy he had in willing his twin to stay alive, his hand clasped tightly around David’s as though he could physically pour his own strength, his own life’s blood, into his brother’s inert body. It was as though no one else, nothing else, existed for him.

‘David … David …’ Tiggy started to scream, trying to throw herself over her husband’s motionless body as the ambulance crew placed him on a stretcher, and she had to be physically restrained by Olivia and Caspar.

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 …?

It had shocked and disturbed him to see her looking so different … so … so … desirable and … feminine. She had not looked like the Jenny he was familiar with and an odd sensation had gripped his chest as he realised the trouble she had taken with her appearance; revealing herself as a serenely sensual and feminine woman had not been done for his sake. Never once in all the years they had been married could he ever remember Jenny taking the trouble to dress like that for him.

And there had been no doubt that David had been impressed, and not just David. Jon wasn’t blind. He had seen the way the male guests had looked at Jenny, a quick, startled frown of semi-recognition followed by a much longer and far more sexually appraising study of her feminine attributes.

What had David been saying to Jenny whilst they danced? Had he been telling her how attractive she was, reminding her that the two of them once …? And what had Jenny felt, or did he really need to ask himself? As a teenager Jenny had loved David even if she had sturdily dismissed her feelings as a mere teenage crush when she had accepted his proposal of marriage.

David was his brother, his twin brother, and he had been raised from childhood in the belief that that relationship created a closeness between them, a bond formed on his part by unquestioning love and loyalty and on David’s by a careless affection that must come before everything else and everyone else in his life.

David might now be dying, but all he could see in his mind’s eye was not his brother’s stricken face as he collapsed, but his brother as he danced with Jenny.

Of course he wanted David to live. Of course he did. So why did he feel this hollowness inside, this emptiness, this almost complete and total lack of emotion?

Tiggy was still crying and trembling. Automatically his arm tightened protectively around her. Here at least was someone whose feelings were not tainted, whose sole concern was for David. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Jenny, to see what she was feeling, to read what was in her eyes, just in case …

Jack still had his arm around his mother whilst she clung weepily to him, Olivia noticed. She would have liked the support and comfort of Caspar’s arms around her right now, she reflected, but he’d stayed behind, probably seeking out Hillary for company and support.

‘Try not to worry. I’m sure they’re doing everything they can.’ Saul gave Olivia’s hand a comforting squeeze as he picked up on her tense anxiety.

The waiting-room door swung open and the specialist walked in. He looked tired and grave-eyed as he began to speak in an even graver voice.

‘David is out of immediate danger—for the moment. But …’ He paused and looked round the room, choosing his words carefully as he took in Tiggy’s tear-drenched, pale face and Jon’s equally tense, too rigid one. Ben was holding on to Hugh’s supporting arm whilst Ruth stood slightly behind him, Joss’s hand tucked comfortingly within her own.

Without knowing she had done so, Olivia took a step closer to Saul, glad of the male comfort of his arm and the heat of his body as he drew her closer.

Only Jenny stood alone, somehow positioned so that the specialist was closest to her, and perhaps for that reason he addressed himself more directly to her than anyone else. To an unaware onlooker it might have seemed as though Jenny were the sick man’s wife and Jon and Tiggy the married couple.

‘He’s had a very serious heart attack,’ he continued, pausing briefly as Tiggy sobbed audibly and clung harder to Jon, ‘and in fact he’s very lucky to be alive. But he is alive and …’ He paused again and it was Jenny who stepped into the silence.

‘What exactly is it you’re trying to tell us?’ she asked quietly.

‘David is a very seriously ill man. The next twenty-four hours will be critical. Until then, we won’t know—’

‘You mean there’s a danger that he could have a second attack? Is that what you’re trying to tell us?’ Jenny demanded.

‘It does happen,’ the specialist warned them gravely, ‘but hopefully …’

‘Can … can we see him?’ Jon asked huskily.

The specialist shook his head. ‘No. I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Not at this stage. It’s imperative that he’s kept calm and sedated. In fact, the best, the only thing you can all do for him right now is to go home and try to get some sleep, because …’ As he saw the quick, frowning look Jenny gave in Ben’s direction, he beckoned to a hovering nurse, then took Jenny aside and said reassuringly, ‘I’ll prescribe something for your father-in-law. I know his own heart’s not as strong as it might be.’

‘Tiggy’s very upset, Jenny,’ Jon announced ten minutes later as Saul started to usher everyone back into the corridor. ‘She can’t be left on her own. I think I’d better go back with her tonight, just in case she needs me.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Jenny agreed, quietly refraining from reminding him that Tiggy had a house full of Chester relatives to turn to should she decide she needed a shoulder to cry on during the night in addition to her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend.

What would be the point after all? Jon simply wouldn’t understand. He would expect her to accept, just as he had always accepted, that David’s needs and wishes and therefore the needs and wishes of David’s closest relatives must automatically take preference over everything and everyone else.

As she got back into the car, she remembered that he had never commented on her dress. Silly to cry over something as senseless as that when she had so many more important things to cry over. Appallingly selfish of her, too, to even be thinking of her own hurt at Jon’s lack of response to her tonight, to have that at the forefront of her mind rather than, if only momentarily, David’s heart attack.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t concerned for David; of course she was. He was, after all, Jon’s brother and as such … She and Jon hadn’t even managed to have a dance together; she couldn’t, in fact, recall the last time they had danced together. This was so wrong. She shouldn’t be thinking about her own selfish needs when David was so desperately ill. Why hadn’t Jon said anything about her dress? Hadn’t he liked it? Didn’t he …? Stop it, she warned herself. You’re not a teenager any more; you’re an adult.

8

‘Well, at least the specialist seems pretty optimistic that David’s over the worst.’

Olivia turned towards Saul.

‘He’s over the worst,’ she agreed, ‘but Mr Hayes has warned us that it’s going to be some considerable time before he’s completely out of danger—they’re keeping him in intensive care until the end of the week but he won’t be allowed home immediately. Mr Hayes says there’s no question of his being able to go back to work for at least three months, and even then …’

‘No,’ Saul returned gravely. ‘It’s going to be hard. What will Jon do, do you think, hire a locum?’

‘I don’t know. No one’s really discussed what’s going to happen with the practice as yet,’ Olivia admitted. ‘We’ve all been too concerned about Dad, but something will have to be done.’

‘Mmm … I wish I could offer to help out myself, but …’ He spread his hands expressively. ‘It just isn’t possible. The company’s heavily involved in negotiating some new contracts with Japan. I can’t go into details, but from the legal point of view it’s proving pretty complex. Hillary’s always complaining that she hardly sees me any more, or rather she used to. I get the impression these days that the less she sees of me the better.’

The bitterness in his voice made Olivia wince. It had become increasingly obvious over the past three days, when Saul had elected to remain in Haslewich with his family until the immediacy of the crisis with David was over, that he and Hillary were no longer happy together. Olivia felt very sorry for him. It was plain that he adored his three children and she suspected that he struggled to make his marriage work more for their sake than his own.

They were in the drawing room of Queensmead along with the rest of the immediate family who had gathered there to hear the latest bulletin from the hospital on David’s progress.

It had been Olivia’s turn to see him today. She and Jon had been taking turns in accompanying her mother to the hospital on her daily visits to see her husband who was now conscious and able to communicate, although still quite heavily sedated and in intensive care. It had been tacitly acknowledged by the family that Tiggy was far too shocked and distressed by her husband’s heart attack to endure the trauma of seeing him without some family support.

Hugh and Ann had remained at Queensmead until the immediate danger was over but had had to return home as Hugh was due to sit on the Bench. Saul, though, had opted to stay on in his father’s stead, telling Olivia wryly that he might as well use up what little holiday allocation he had left.

‘I had hoped we might get away, take the kids on holiday somewhere, but Hillary says the last thing she wants to do is spend any length of time cooped up with them and me. She was talking about flying home to see her family on her own.’

His face had been bleak as he delivered this last piece of information and tactfully Olivia had made no comment. Besides, she had enough problems of her own to worry about.

Caspar had moved into her room following her father’s heart attack and last night … She closed her eyes, not wanting to have to think about the problems that were surfacing in her relationship with Caspar or the mixed-up feelings of panic, resentment and anguish they were causing her.

How was it possible for their relationship to have changed so much? Yes, of course she had been aware of Caspar’s leftover feelings of rejection from his childhood. He had talked quite openly about them, as she had done about her own. She had thought that she understood Caspar and that he understood her and that even whilst he occasionally drew attention to her inability to verbally admit to her feelings for him, he knew that her fear of actually saying the words ‘I love you’ in no way lessened her commitment to him just as she had thought that his own wry awareness of his need to rewrite the emotional history of his childhood by placing himself first in her emotions meant that he had come to terms with it.

Now she was not so sure. It had shocked her to discover that far from being the mature adult she had believed him to be and someone she could lean on and respect and even look up to as she had never been able to do with her father, Caspar was just as capable of behaving emotionally and irresponsibly albeit in a different way. Just as able to be selfish and demanding, just as able to ignore her needs and focus on his own. Just as masculinely capable of putting pressure on her to get what he wanted from their relationship without giving a second thought to what she might want or need. Just as he had done last night …

Tensing, she wrapped her arms around herself. It had been at her suggestion that Caspar had moved into her room. She missed the comfort of his body in bed, his warmth … just knowing that he was there. Dismaying, too, was the knowledge that she had been more disturbed and upset by the discovery that her mother was suffering from an eating disorder than she had been in some ways by her father’s heart attack and shamingly she knew why. A heart attack was something that could be explained, discussed, understood. Her mother’s bulimia …

She had wanted desperately to talk over her feelings with Caspar, to know that he not only understood but sympathised, empathised, with what she was feeling; to see if he realised how torn she now felt. How much on the one hand she longed to be able to simply walk away and escape, to turn her back on the situation here at home and start a completely new life with him in Philadelphia. A life where she would be judged only on her own merits and by people who knew nothing and never would know anything of her family background. And yet on the other how guilty she felt, how compelled to do something to protect and help the vulnerable person she now saw her mother to be.

She felt so confused … so helpless. More than anything she needed Caspar’s understanding … she needed time. But Caspar quite obviously wasn’t prepared to give her either.

Last night, when she had turned to him, wanting to talk … She closed her eyes again and was instantly back in her own bedroom, the faint light of the moon shining through the curtains.

‘Caspar,’ she whispered softly, ‘are you awake?’

‘What do you think?’ she heard him grunt, the bedclothes rustling as he raised an arm, pushed them aside and slipping it around her, his mouth nuzzling the soft, warm skin of her throat. ‘Mmm … I’ve missed you.’