500 Miles from You Read online

  Lissa collapsed. She was sobbing so hard she couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t her boy, wasn’t her tragedy. She was drawing attention to herself. This was awful, completely inappropriate. People were looking at her crossly, and she didn’t know what to do, even as she sounded louder than the choir. Someone tutted. Righteous and noisy grief was expected from contemporaries, and family, and young people. Not from a thirty-year-old young professional who didn’t even know the family.

  Kim-Ange looked at her, made a decision, and half dragged, half hauled her outside and set her down, quite roughly, on a park bench. There were still mourners trying to get in who watched them with interest.

  “Breathe,” said Kim-Ange, and when Lissa didn’t respond, she pushed her head between her knees. “Breathe!”

  The brusque tone, oddly, was just what Lissa needed. Being told what to do without having to think about it. The panic attack was intense, but gradually, her heart rate slowed, the blood came to her head, and she started to feel ever so slightly better.

  “Sister,” said Kim-Ange, rubbing Lissa’s back as she finally came back to herself, “this cannot go on. This absolutely cannot go on. Also the walls in our rooms are really thin and I can hear you getting up and pacing about half the night and it’s extremely annoying. But I am mostly thinking about you. Although also, when you have a shower at five A.M., you make a lot of noise. But also, for you, this cannot go on.”

  Chapter 13

  Lissa liked the HR director, Valerie Mnotse, always had; she considered her a friend and mentor, supportive of her career choices when working in the community was often seen as second best.

  Valerie got it. She understood the importance of connecting the hospital with the people who used it, and how the better the care they got at home, the less likely they were to boomerang straight back to the hospital and clog up A&E, whether because they were so endlessly confused with the labyrinthine system or because they felt bad but couldn’t get a GP appointment. But this morning, Valerie looked grave.

  “Health care in London is always difficult,” she started carefully.

  Lissa was about to fire back that she wasn’t burned out, she was fine, she was a good nurse, she knew she was . . . but she found, suddenly, that she couldn’t get the words out—couldn’t get any words out—because she was going to cry again.

  No. She couldn’t. She couldn’t cry in front of Valerie, the most immaculate, punctilious woman she knew. She had to be strong. She’d defied her family to go to nursing school, get her university qualifications. She’d done it by herself and worked in some of the toughest, most deprived wards in the entire country, in the whole of Europe. She could do it. She could . . .

  “It’s all right to cry,” said Valerie, pushing over a box of tissues.

  Lissa felt the tears leak down her face and was furious with herself. If she showed weakness, they were going to move her, she knew it. Lissa nodded slowly as Valerie picked up her phone.

  “Could you send Juan in? Thanks.”

  A slight man Lissa had seen around came in, looking neutral and nodding to her. She was terrified suddenly. “What’s happening? Am I getting fired?”

  “No, you’re not getting fired,” said Valerie. “If we had the resources, we’d sign you off. But we don’t.”

  “I don’t need to be signed off! I’m fine!”

  “We think,” said Juan softly, “that you might need to recalibrate.”

  “That I might need to what?”

  “We want you to see someone,” said Juan. “We’ve assigned you a counselor from Occupational Health. And . . .”

  “We think maybe a quieter beat,” said Valerie. “Just for three months. Just to give you a chance to breathe, to have another look at your approach.”

  “We really feel this program works well,” said Juan. “We’re desperately trying not to lose you. You must see that.”

  He handed her a leaflet with pictures of lovely rolling green fields on it, sun going down behind some cows.

  “What’s this?” said Lissa sullenly.

  “Just . . . about your options. We do swaps with rural practitioners who want to broaden their skills. Like a student exchange.”

  “I’m not a student!”

  “We’ve found the program mutually beneficial,” said Juan.

  “Lissa,” said Valerie quite firmly, “I’d highly recommend you give it some very serious thought.”

  Chapter 14

  Islay’s recovery was going well, and Cormac called the London hospital to update them. Transplants happened in total secrecy and Cormac knew better than to ask. But what accident involving a fifteen-year-old could be anything other than a dreadful tragedy?

  Instead he conveyed as soberly as possible that patient B had come through the operation and was currently in intensive care; that the prognosis was good, maybe even extremely good; and that everything was proceeding as usefully as possible.

  The voice at the other end of the phone paused. “And you’re the NPL?” he said, looking something up on his computer.

  “Uh-huh,” said Cormac.

  “Cormac MacPherson?”

  “Aye.”

  “Because I’m looking at your HR form here.”

  “Are you now,” said Cormac, instantly wary.

  “You haven’t always been an NPL, have you?”

  Cormac hesitated. He hadn’t been expecting this at all. “No. I was an army medic. Why?”

  “Have you heard of the exchange program?”

  “The what?”

  “The three-month exchange program. You could move up a grade. We have a place opening up here.”

  “I’m not moving to London!”

  “The idea is to bolster the skills of people in different areas. So if you’ve always worked in a rural district, you might benefit from some more acute specialization, that kind of thing. And vice versa.”

  “You mean you’re looking for somewhere to dump your burnouts,” said Cormac tartly. He might live in a village, but he wasn’t its idiot.

  There was a wry chuckle at the other end of the line. “I think you’d be good down here,” came the voice. “Let me send you the brochure.”

  “Aye, whatever,” said Cormac, who then hung up and thought no more about it.

  He headed home and had a long shower. He found himself missing having someone to talk to, the black-humored camaraderie of the army. He wondered if the London front lines were like that. Probably.

  He went out into the village to pick up some of the good local butter they did up at Lennox’s farm. Lennox wasn’t much of a talker, but the farm produce was spot-on. He picked up some local bacon too. It would make quite the sandwich.

  KIRRINFIEF WAS A village arranged around a central cobbled square, with a war memorial in the middle, Eck’s pub on the corner, Mrs. Murray’s general store, a hunting and fishing shop, three antique/bits-and-bobs stores, a bakery, and, most days, a little bus that stopped to sell books. It was nestled in the hills, hidden away near Loch Ness but not on the main tourist routes. Any tourists who did stumble upon it, though, were generally taken by its atmosphere—an air of a timeless place, a Brigadoon—which wouldn’t last long as soon as they heard old Eck and Wullie shouting from outside the pub, although they meant well really. The sleeper train from London to Fort William ran close by; otherwise, Kirrinfief was a haven of peace and tranquility, and that was just how people liked it. Well. Mostly.

  Cormac stalked across the square. It was a cold but sunny day; too early for lambing, but a few ambitious crocuses were pushing their way up in between the cobbles. He got three steps before an old lady stopped him. “Ooh, Cormac, what was all that kerfuffle with young Islay?”

  He smiled politely. “Och, you know I canny talk about that, Mrs. Norrie.”

  “Yes, well, everybody already knows,” she said rather sniffily.

  “Well then.”

  Mrs. Murray in the shop was even more direct. “Why did I see that young Emer in here earlier sni
ffing and buying three bars of Dairy Milk?” she said. “That’s not like her, young slim thing that she is. Three! Were they for you?”

  “No,” said Cormac.

  “Well then,” said Mrs. Murray, as if that proved something. “How’s your ma?”

  “She’s good,” said Cormac slowly. He hadn’t seen her in a fortnight, which was a long time around here. His brother Rawdon had been commended for something, and she’d wanted to talk about that in a rather emphatic way.

  “Still fussing you about your job?”

  “I’ll just take this cheese,” said Cormac, smiling heartily. The shop was so overstuffed with things he had to lean over the counter away from the newspapers. “Thanks, Mrs. Murray.”

  “Oh well,” said Mrs. Murray, who took rather a lot quite personally, as Cormac escaped.

  He got home to an email from London. The brochure had a picture of bright high skyscrapers. “Secondments in a fast-moving environment!” he read. “Experience a high-paced community in central London and sharpen your clinical skills!”

  Cormac had been to central London with a girlfriend long ago. They’d gone to the Imperial War Museum; eaten at a steak house, where they’d had to sit in the window and get gawked at by other tourists and where the food was absolutely awful; then gone to see a West End show about a lady murderer that had made him fall asleep fifteen minutes in. That relationship hadn’t lasted much longer either.

  Chapter 15

  Valerie had sent Lissa home for the day—which was anxiety-creating enough in itself—and Lissa found the crowds on Tottenham Court Road rather overwhelming. She stumbled over the vast, polluted Euston Road, escaping the honking into the relative quiet of Regent’s Park. It was too warm for this early in the spring. It should have felt good, the sunshine, but it didn’t: it felt ominous and scary, as if the world were shifting and changing beneath her feet. Every teenage boy she passed, every loud laugh he made, shoving around with his mates, crowding her off the pavement, playing his music too loud—every single one made her flinch, made her want to grab him, hard, shout at him in his face to be safe, to keep safe, to stay indoors, to not draw attention to himself.

  But they were teenage boys. It was part of their makeup to yell, to beef, to get into each other’s faces. They felt invincible. Indeed, their towering size, their massive trainers; they looked invincible.

  But they were as fragile as day-old lambs.

  Lissa hurried on. She could feel her breathing speeding up again, her heart pounding in her chest, and tried to calm herself down. She sat near a bright wave of daffodils, concentrated on breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth as much as she could, in and out, slowly and not rushing, trying to get her equilibrium back, even as she wanted to scream, to scream to everyone: The world isn’t safe. It isn’t safe.

  She swallowed hard. Maybe Valerie and Juan were right. She couldn’t work like this, couldn’t think like this. But it would pass, wouldn’t it? Would it?

  She took out the leaflet they had given her. With its soothing view of rolling hills, it looked more like a funeral-planning leaflet. Oh God. The funeral. She couldn’t bear it. If she felt this bad, what on earth was life like now for his mother? How did you go on? How could anybody go on?

  She turned open the leaflet.

  Chapter 16

  Jake and Cormac went to have a pint in the pub, nodding hello to Eck and Wullie and petting the cheerful sheepdog who lived there and who appeared in perfect and glossy health despite living on a major dietary supplement of beer nuts and pickled onion crisps. It was a chilly evening, but the sun had come down purple in the sky, which was a pretty sight to render anyone more or less cheerful about the world. They’d even persuaded their friend Lennox in for half an hour, although it would literally be half an hour, and he’d be glancing at his watch for half of it. He had a wee lad at home and wouldn’t miss bath time for the world.

  Jake was staring at Cormac, aghast.

  “Run this past me again,” he said. “They’re offering you cheap accommodation in the middle of London for three months and a London bonus on your pay packet, to hang out in London, work a bit, and do whatever the hell you want, without every old lady you meet in the street asking if you wouldn’t mind looking up her bum?”

  Cormac frowned. “They don’t do that.”

  “Mrs. MacGonnagall does that!”

  “She does, aye.” Cormac drained his pint.

  “Seriously, you’re so lucky. They should do that scheme with ambulance drivers!”

  “Ha, that’d be a lot of use.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “‘Hello, welcome to London, off you go to Oxford Street . . .’ ‘Och, aye, sorry, where would that be now?’”

  Jake sighed. “Oh. Aye. Even more reason why you’d be absolutely mad not to go. The women in London, oh my God.”

  “How do you know?”

  Jake shrugged. “In the papers, aye?”

  Cormac looked at him suspiciously, but Jake was refusing to look his way. “Have you been reading Grazia again?”

  Jake sniffed. “This is the chance of a lifetime, man. Kirrinfief, it’s all right.”

  In the corner, Eck’s dog let out a massive fart right next to the fire then looked around with an innocent expression on, as if it couldn’t possibly have been him.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But London! On a cheap rent! Hot summers and amazing women and everything going on and famous people and stuff off the telly and that!”

  “Well, I’ll be working.”

  “Yeah. Looking after hot models with toe injuries from wearing really, really high heels,” said Jake sadly, who had clearly given this quite an astonishing amount of thought. “Seriously, mate. You’re insane. You’ll be back in three months. What’s going to change for you in three months?”

  Cormac stared out the window. The clouds had been low today. Rain threatened for tomorrow. Being somewhere sunny with models in it suddenly seemed rather exciting.

  “Plus, you know, since you got back . . .”

  Cormac gave him a sharp look. “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing,” said Jake hastily. You didn’t talk about Cormac leaving the army. You just didn’t. “I just mean, it’s quiet.”

  Cormac looked at Lennox, who as usual wasn’t saying much. “What do you think?”

  That was a pretty stupid question. Lennox had been to agricultural college, then come straight back to the farm he’d been born on. The most surprising thing Lennox had ever done was get together with the clever nerdy English girl who ran the local bookshop, and even then she’d been renting one of his farm buildings. Literally all he’d had to do was fall across the road.

  Lennox shrugged. “Not for me,” he said, to absolutely nobody’s surprise.

  Above the crackling fire, the old clock ticked mournfully on.

  “But you’re just a bairn. You’ve no ties, nothing holding you back. Why wouldn’t you?” He stood up. “And send me back some lads, will you? Brexit’s put a bloody big hole in my harvesting teams, I’ll tell you that for nothing.”

  And with that he put down his glass, smiled, and went home to his lovely Nina and their perfect darling baby boy, deeply happy in his soul that as far as he was concerned he never need decide to go anywhere else other than home ever again.

  Part II

  Chapter 17

  There are few places lonelier than a crowded station platform five hundred miles away from home, where you know nobody but a lot of people are trying to get past you, or get you out of the way.

  Cormac had taken the sleeper train down. He thought he wouldn’t sleep, given he had so much to think about, but the comfortable bed and the rocking motion of the carriage, as well as the nip of whisky he’d bought from the onboard bar, had all combined to send him off into a surprisingly deep sleep, punctuated by dreams that had him swimming or riding a horse—anything involving motion.

  Euston station at 7:30 in the morning was absolu
tely heaving: grimy with dirt, full of smartly dressed people moving—why did they all have to walk so fast?

  He looked around them, standing under a huge four-faced clock, feeling ridiculously out of place. He must have stood out a mile to anyone with his freckled complexion, his messy sandy-brown hair, his corduroy trousers. Perhaps he would have to rethink the trousers. His mum had bought them for him, telling him that’s what everyone wore in Edinburgh. Why she thought Edinburgh was the height of fashion sophistication he wasn’t entirely sure. Nobody here was wearing corduroy. She was happy he had gone anyway. It wasn’t easy, bearing the weight of his mother’s disappointment. Another good reason to take some time away.

  Anyway, everyone here was wearing expensive suits or skinny jeans or baggy pants and all sorts of weird and wonderful colors you didn’t see much of in Kirrinfief. And Jake hadn’t, it turned out, been lying about the women; some of them did indeed look like models, all made up, with bright blond or pink or blue hair, strange eyebrows (Cormac was not the expert on eyebrows), and incredibly outlandish clothes. The whole thing was bewildering. How did all these people know where they were going? Why didn’t they all bang into each other? Why were they all holding to-go cups with green drinks in them?

  Cormac scratched his chin and slowly—clumsily, rather, with his heavy rucksack—went in search of a London Underground map, narrowly missing clouting a tiny girl clip-clopping her way around him, who let out a sigh louder and more pointed than he would have expected from such a small woman.

  KIM-ANGE HAD GIVEN her a big kiss as Lissa set off.

  “Into exile,” Lissa had moaned, looking sadly around the little room she was leaving behind.

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Kim-Ange, bundling a cake into Lissa’s bag. “It’s not for long! It’ll be an adventure.”

  “I’m being suspended,” said Lissa. “They never want me back.”

  “Of course they do,” said Kim-Ange. “You’re definitely the second-best nurse on this floor.”