500 Miles from You Read online

  “Call an ambulance,” he yelled, but several people already had their phones out. Most were calling. One or two were filming, but Cormac couldn’t think about that just then.

  He put the man in the recovery position, opened his mouth, and took off his tie. Then, as the man started spasming, he cushioned his head and opened his top button.

  “You’re fine,” he said, promising. “You’re going to be fine, you’re going to be safe. Hang on.”

  The man had stopped thrashing but now seemed to be suffocating. He couldn’t catch his breath and turned a horrible shade of blue as his head went back, banging onto the ground. Someone in the room screamed; the music had been turned off and the beautiful young bar staff was standing around looking panicked.

  Cormac immediately started doing mouth to mouth on the man, feeling for a pulse worriedly. He lifted his head briefly. “Have you got a defibrillator?”

  Someone nodded and a yellow box was opened.

  “Give it here . . . Is there a doctor around?”

  Of course not, thought Cormac, as he continued to perform CPR. Real people with real jobs didn’t really belong here. He noticed in his eyeline the man who played a doctor on television approaching.

  “You must be joking,” he snarled.

  “Well, you see, I have done it a lot and performed it, and I feel quite qualified.”

  “You’re fine,” said Cormac shortly, relenting. “Okay, hold down his arms.”

  There was no heartbeat at all now. Cormac knelt over the man’s chest and took the defibrillator.

  “Right, when I say clear, let him go. One, two, three . . . clear!”

  The actor sat back as the body beneath him jolted. Cormac leaned over, listening for a heartbeat.

  “Come on,” he said. “Come on, wee man. You can do it. Come on.”

  He shocked him again, fingers crossed. Honestly, once you got into this, he knew—as anyone else who worked in actual medicine, rather than TV medicine, knew—that it was over. He had a horrible, horrible feeling that as well as looking like a cheap, tongue-tied country bumpkin idiot, he was also going to look like a killer or a lazy and useless nurse, according to people who’d only ever watched resuscitations from the comfort of their own trendy leather sofas, in which everyone miraculously returns to life.

  “Clear! Come on,” he almost screamed in frustration, jumping back down to perform mouth to mouth. “Come on!!”

  Suddenly the man’s body jolted. Cormac took nothing from this; aftershocks were incredibly common in the dead. He bent, though, and lowered his head to the man’s chest. The relief he felt when he heard, slowly, first one thump then another, was one of the most gushing feelings of his entire life.

  “Yes,” he hissed. “Come on, Billy Boy. Come on.”

  An ambulance crew ran into the room through the now-silent crowd, which had parted to let them in.

  “Asystolic?” said the ambulance paramedic, a large, sweet-faced Indian boy.

  “Ventricular fibrillation,” said Cormac.

  The paramedic nodded and threw him an oxygen mask, which he took gratefully with a thumbs-up, placing it over the man’s mouth. After several more minutes of working on him, and with both the ambulance crew down, one setting up a drip in situ, they sat back on their haunches as the man, very carefully, opened his eyes.

  The three professionals regarded him.

  “How you doing?” said Cormac finally.

  “You’ve been taking something naughty, haven’t you?” said the paramedic. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  The man, however, once he’d regained consciousness and looked around, realized suddenly where he was.

  “Oh fuck,” he groaned, raising a shaky hand to wipe the sweat off his forehead. “Seriously? In front of these tosspots?”

  Worse was to come as the man was loaded onto a wheeled stretcher and it became apparent to everyone he had peed himself in his very expensive suit, then had to be led out in front of everyone. He covered his eyes with his hands. “Christ on a bike,” he said mournfully. “No photos. If anyone tells the Mail I will have you, and don’t think I won’t.”

  “Oh my God, was it a speedball?” came a very loud posh voice from the back. “Christ, how terribly nineties.”

  The man on the stretcher groaned and lowered his eyes in shame.

  Cormac blinked as the paramedic thanked him and took his name and address. The man on the stretcher’s nose had started to hemorrhage everywhere and a waitress was screaming.

  “That’s our cue,” said the paramedic, wheeling him out. “Will take him forever to get to sleep, then he’ll wake up tomorrow and won’t remember a thing about it.”

  “Aye,” said Cormac. “Well, his friends all will.”

  The paramedic laughed. “Yup,” he said. “Oh well. Cheers—you performed a miracle.”

  And as they left, the entire room turned around toward Cormac—who was suddenly extremely worried about the state he’d gotten Kim-Ange’s jumper into—and, to his complete surprise, gave him a round of applause, led by the man who played a doctor on TV.

  AFTER THAT IT was mayhem. People vied to buy him drinks. Kalitha and Portia were suddenly all over the hero of the hour. Various men came over and announced that they had just been about to do the same thing, or would have done the same thing if he hadn’t gotten there first (this was not, to be fair, an attitude confined to London clubland and had happened at pretty much every single incident Cormac had ever encountered). Finally the manager, an incredibly smartly dressed woman with a brisk manner, took him aside and thanked him from the bottom of her heart for not letting someone die on the floor of their toilets. “I mean, it’s terrible for business,” she said. “Well, not at first, everyone comes to have a look—rubberneckers—but once that falls off. Well.”

  Cormac blinked at this. “Well, hopefully he’ll let you know he’s all right.”

  “He can’t,” said the woman shortly. “He’s barred. Again.”

  THEY HAD MOVED from the high table, Cormac noticed, to a booth littered with vodka bottles and champagne. He realized, to his shame, that his biggest relief wasn’t just that he’d saved a man’s life: it was that he wasn’t going to have to face the bar bill.

  And then he looked around at the roomful of incredibly beautiful people laughing, joking, gossiping, and yelling at each other and, well, maybe it wasn’t what he was used to, and maybe he felt poor and out of place, but, well. A bit of glamour wasn’t the worst thing in the world, was it? Everyone dressed up, trying to impress, to get on, to have fun. It might not be real, but there wasn’t a lot of fantasy in Cormac’s life, not much glitter. He might as well enjoy a bit of it, he thought, even as an incredibly beautiful brunette puckered very puffed-up lips at him and handed him a glass of champagne.

  Chapter 36

  Lissa woke up on Saturday morning remembering she’d agreed to work in order to catch up on some appointments she’d missed getting lost from one end of Loch Ness to another.

  But she didn’t mind, she found. She’d be quite glad of the company. And she didn’t feel bad, not really. Not stomach-clenchingly frightened. She watched the lambs jumping about the fields from her bedroom window, clutching a cup of hot tea in her hands. In the woods beside the cottage, she noticed something suddenly. She pulled a cardie over her gray Friends T-shirt, tied her wild hair back with a wide tartan band, and walked out into the waking morning in her old, soft tartan bottoms. At first she was embarrassed she was wearing her pajamas, and then it occurred to her, with a sudden burst of freedom, that it didn’t matter! Nobody could see her on the road! She could wander wherever she liked!

  The birdsong struck her first as she opened the back door, the sun illuminating the dew in the grass. It was getting long. She frowned and wondered if she’d have to cut it. She hadn’t the faintest idea how one might go about doing that.

  Now that she was closer to the trees, she could see it better, and she gasped. Suddenly, all at once, it seemed, the wild grasses had
shimmered and completely changed; instead of having bright green shoots everywhere, it was now completely covered with a sea of bright purple bluebells. The color was so ridiculous it looked photoshopped. A sea of them—countless thousands running up and over the hill, to goodness knows where—for nobody, it seemed, except her.

  She knelt and breathed in their delicate heavenly scent. It was extraordinary. She found she didn’t even want to cut some for the house; they belonged together, a great, secret sea, and she crouched down, still clasping the mug of tea, and took a dozen photographs, but none of them seemed to capture the thick velvety beauty of the sight, so she put her phone away and simply sat still. As she did so, she was rewarded with a startle of movement in the distance, the flash of something white, which she quickly realized was a tail. A doe was bolting through the forest, followed close behind by the most perfect honeycomb-colored fawn, its legs impossibly spindly—the speed of them darting through the wood, as if she’d been visited by magical creatures—and she found herself gasping, then shaking her head, amazed at herself. Next thing she knew she’d be getting wellies.

  SHE TOOK THE car, as she had to drive a ways out of the village to a house that GPS was absolutely no use for, as far as she could tell, because the signal burst in and out at unexpected moments. Joan had said something along the lines of “it has its own postcode,” which made no sense to Lissa at all until she’d found the road where it was meant to be, more or less, and driven up and down it several times until she’d realized that the rusty gates that looked abandoned were, in fact, exactly where she was meant to be.

  She drove up the narrow one-track road, absolutely marveling at the idea of it. Vast woodlands petered away on either side of her—the bluebells had gotten here too, a magic carpet, and daffodils burst into view over the crest of a hill. Coming toward the house, she turned the car around the gravel forecourt—there was an empty fountain that looked rather sorely neglected—and stared at something glinting behind the house before finally realizing it was the loch itself. Imagine. Imagine living here. She couldn’t.

  She went up to the huge old main door and could hear various banging and music happening behind it, but nobody appeared to have heard her knock. She hadn’t been in the country long enough to realize she ought to go around the back until a little voice alerted her.

  “Are you absolutely going to give us jabs?”

  A small boy with too-long hair was standing by the corner of the house. Next to him was an even smaller boy with olive skin and very long eyelashes. They were wearing identical short yellow dungarees and yellow T-shirts.

  “We’re absolutely twins,” the boy continued.

  “Are you?” said Lissa dubiously. On the other hand, she’d seen lots of unusual things and it was very rude to assume.

  “Aye!” shouted the smaller boy. “We is and all!”

  “Okay then, great!” she said. “Is your mother around?”

  The boys froze suddenly, then they turned as one and marched around the back of the property. Slightly spooked, Lissa followed them.

  A very petite dark-haired woman with a friendly, open face came out of the kitchen door with a tea towel over her shoulder.

  “Hello! I forgot you were coming! Well, I thought you were coming the other day . . .”

  “Sorry about that,” said Lissa.

  “That’s okay,” said the woman, smiling in a friendly way. “I know what it’s like when you first get here. Isn’t everything huge?”

  “I thought Scotland was meant to be a small country.”

  “I know . . . Shackleton! Get the oven.”

  A tall shambling teenage boy came out with a tray of cooling scones. “Chill your boots, already done it,” he said.

  “Excellent,” said the woman, introducing herself as Zoe. “Want to come in? And have a scone?”

  “You’re English?” said Lissa, surprised.

  “Oh yes! You too! Ha, we’re invading the place. Oh God, Mrs. Murray will have a fit.”

  “Is that the woman who runs the grocery?”

  “Don’t mind her, her bark is worse than her bite,” said Zoe. “You could say that about a lot of people round here,” she continued, as they passed an older lady who was cleaning boots rather ferociously by the sink.

  She put an old-fashioned kettle on the stove, then picked up a list from the messy sideboard. What a comforting room this was, Lissa found herself thinking. She started unpacking her kit.

  “Hari needs his MMR booster, but I don’t think Patrick has had his at all.”

  Lissa frowned. “But . . . I thought they were twins.”

  Zoe yelped with laughter. “Boys!” she shouted. “Stop it! Nobody believes you’re twins, and you’re just confusing people!”

  “We are absolutely nearly twins,” said Patrick, and Hari nodded solemnly, pointing at his dungarees as proof.

  “Isn’t it clear they’re not related?” said Zoe, still smiling as she poured out tea.

  “I’ve met mixed-race twins before who looked different races,” said Lissa.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes, absolutely. Fascinating.”

  “She absolutely thinks we’re twins, Nanny Seven,” said Patrick.

  Zoe rolled her eyes. “Right,” she said. “Patrick is five.”

  “And a half.”

  “Five and a half, and he’s Shackleton’s little brother . . . half brother. Did Joan not explain this all to you?”

  “She just said it was complicated, then went back to reading a book about cow operations.”

  “That does sound like Joan,” mused Zoe. “Okay. She’s right, it’s complicated. Hari’s mine and the rest are Ramsay’s. Oh, actually, that’s not too complicated when you think about it.”

  “Zoe and Ramsay are in love,” said Patrick. “And that is why we are now absolutely twins.”

  “Aye,” said Hari, nodding his head to emphasize the wisdom of Patrick’s pronouncement.

  Zoe colored. “Oh well,” she said.

  Lissa smiled. “Did you move all the way up here for a man?”

  “Quite the opposite,” said Zoe. “I moved here to get away from one. Anyway, here we are.”

  “Right,” said Lissa. The scones were delicious, but it was time to get moving. She washed her hands carefully in the big old butler’s sink, then looked around for a place to line the children up.

  A thin, sallow girl loped in, looking anxious. “I hate medical things,” she said.

  “You hate everything,” said Shackleton. “What? Just saying.”

  Zoe shot him a look and put her arms around the girl. “It’s okay,” she said softly. “I’m right here.”

  “I’m just sick of nurses.”

  “It’ll be quick. But then you’ll be safe. And I don’t want you to catch the measles.”

  “Mum didn’t either!”

  “Of course she didn’t.” Zoe held the girl closer. “We’ll get through this, I’ll get some bought cake for later.”

  The girl smiled.

  “Oi!” said Shackleton. “What’s wrong with my cake?”

  “Bought cake! Bought cake!” the little ones were already shouting, clasping hands in delight.

  Zoe smiled. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s a bit of a madhouse here.”

  It didn’t look like a madhouse, Lissa thought. It looked lovely. A fire burned in the big kitchen grate and a large dog was wandering about aimlessly, and there were pictures on the wall and music blaring and a stew on the stove, and she couldn’t help herself feeling envious all of a sudden.

  “You like it here, then?” she said.

  “Oh yes,” said Zoe, sounding heartfelt. “Oh yes, I really do.”

  She saw Lissa’s face.

  “But it took a while, I promise.”

  “I’m only here for a bit. But I like it too!”

  “Well, try and enjoy it,” said Zoe, laughing. “Right, shall we move them somewhere slightly more hygienic than a kitchen with a dog in it and flour everywh
ere?”

  They pushed open the door to a beautiful sitting room lined with books, and Zoe sat all the children on a slippery ottoman.

  “Ramsay!” she yelled up the stairway, and just about the tallest man Lissa had ever seen came downstairs and draped his arms over Zoe’s shoulders.

  “Ah,” he said, looking embarrassed. “Yes. I’ve been meaning to . . . yes. Well.”

  “Have you got their red books?” asked Lissa.

  The very tall man frowned. “Ah. The thing is . . . I have about ten thousand books, and, well, I’m not . . .”

  Lissa produced three new health books from her bag—Hari’s was in perfect order—and made Zoe and Ramsay fill them all in while the children shifted uncomfortably and Patrick attempted to get into a kicking match with Mary, who finally grabbed a book off a shelf and moved to the window seat to ignore him.

  “Shall I put both twins down on the one form?” asked Ramsay wryly as he filled in the forms, and Zoe shot him a look.

  “Stop it! You’re making everything worse.”

  “Yes, twins,” announced Patrick, and the boys started marching around the room singing a loud song as Zoe gave Ramsay an “I told you so” look.

  “Okay, okay,” said Lissa, checking the syringes. “We’re ready.”

  Silence fell on the cheery room. Sighing, Shackleton rolled up his sleeve. Everyone watched him as he stoically endured the double injections. Patrick and Hari looked at each other.

  “Shackleton’s nae greetin’,” said Hari in his low growl.

  “Shackleton isn’t greetin’,” said Zoe automatically. “I mean crying. Shackleton isn’t crying. Seriously. Your dad isn’t going to be able to understand you.”

  “Naw, he willnae.”

  Patrick had pulled up his T-shirt sleeve and was presenting his arm with the air of a doomed soldier facing the firing squad.

  “I will absolutely not cry,” he said, screwing up his little face.

  Hari watched with interest, then, after it was done, went up and gently wiped away the tear from Patrick’s eye then, curiously, licked it.