Page 8 of Counting Down To You

I feel like an idiot as I drag my suitcase along the paved path, earning a fair few looks from passersby. Now that I’m here, I’m not really sure what to do. I should have just bid on the silent auction online, from the safety of my bedroom. Ten minutes, I decide. I’ll give it ten minutes, buy as much as I can, then leave again.

With that in mind, I head over to the raffle stall, which is being manned by two nurses and is demonstrating an impressive array of prizes including an enormous hamper and a voucher for a year’s membership at a local gym.

It’s only once I get to the table, still awkwardly lugging my suitcase behind me, that I realize I know one of the nurses handing out raffle tickets. Nurse Kate, who had been particularly brilliant during Robyn’s time here. She must only be in her early thirties, a couple of years older than me, but she always had such an impressively wise demeanor. I’m not expecting Kate to recognize me, given she must have to deal with hundreds of patients each year, but she beams when she sees me, readjusting the Santa hat on her head.

“Ali! You came!” She says it with such sincere delight, it makes me a little emotional. I wonder if Kate remembers because she was subject to one of the hospital challenges I set Robyn last year: perform an entirely solo version of the Nativity to one of the nurses. We made Kate sit down to watch, and Robyn threw herself into it with gusto, doing different voices for each character. She’d had to do it all from her hospital bed, but it had been a performance for the ages. And Kate had gone along with it, even though, from the way she’d given them so much of her time, she was clearly at the end of her shift.

“Hi!” I say. “I hope it’s okay that I’m here. I just came along to—”

“Of course you should be here,” Kate says. “I’m so glad to see you. How are you?”

“I’m good!” Will I ever stop doing it, I wonder, this overly bright, fake tone whenever someone asks this question? “And you?”

“Oh, you know, busy, but that’s not a bad thing.”

I ask for ten raffle tickets, and when Kate hands them over she smiles. “I still think about Robyn, you know. She was a lovely woman.”

My damn eyes are stinging as I nod. “She was.” And this, maybe, is a reason that hopping on a plane to somewhere I’ve never been with no idea what I’m doing is not a terrible idea. Because no one there will know what happened, no one there will ask me about it.

Lovely, though? I hear Robyn’s voice in my head. Is that the right adjective?

Shut up, it’s a compliment.

I last more like eight minutes than ten before I head back to the car park. It’s harder than I thought, being back here. Despite the fact that I’m genuinely grateful for the way the hospital took care of Robyn, there is an uglier emotion bubbling away inside me, getting harder to suppress the longer I’m here. I know it’s wrong, but a part of me blames them for not saving Robyn. Which is unfair, and horrible, and I shouldn’t be thinking it.

What I should be doing is looking out for hot men. There could have been the perfect hot doctor passing me by and I wouldn’t have noticed. I’ll just have to hope there’s a suitable candidate at the airport. Although it’s the kind of thing I’d rather not do in the queue for security—I need to be able to make a quick getaway.

There is a really long wait time for Ubers out the front of the hospital, probably because I’m practically in the middle of bloody nowhere. I head toward the main street and am trying to decide whether to admit defeat and drag my suitcase to the nearest bus stop when I see a black cab pulling up outside an organic café—one I know serves the most excellent smoothies. I run toward it as fast as I can with my suitcase—i.e., not very fast. I reach the cab, unable to believe my luck that there is one all the way out here, just as a man is getting out.

“Wait!” I call as the man straightens on the pavement, holding a wrapped present in one hand, with an enormous box of chocolates tucked under his elbow. The other hand is reaching to slam the sliding door shut. He looks toward me, keeping the door open. “Thanks,” I breathe, letting go of the suitcase and pushing my hair away from my face.

I stick my head in through the open door of the cab. “Can you take me to Paddington?” I ask the driver.

“Sure, love.”

I grab the handle of my suitcase, ready to haul it in, but the man beats me to it. “Here, let me help.” He has a nice voice, a kind of low rumble with a soft lilt of an accent I can’t quite place. Maybe that’s an odd thing to notice about someone, before you’ve even registered what they look like. He readjusts his grip on the present and chocolates, then lifts the suitcase through the open door with apparent ease, placing it on its side so it doesn’t roll around on its wheels once the cab is moving—a mistake I’ve made plenty of times.

I smile up at him. “Thanks.” He only gestures for me to get in, one hand returning to the sliding door, like he’s going to close it for me. I don’t move, staring at him instead. He’s tall, broad shouldered, with dark russet hair and pale green eyes—a striking combination. Stubble grazes his chin, and his nose has that slightly crooked look that suggests it may have been broken at some point. Yes, “hotness” is subjective, but this man is definitely attractive. Really bloody attractive.

Before I can think too hard about what I’m doing, I fumble in my bag for my phone. I hold it up. “Do you mind?”

His brow furrows as he looks at it. Maybe he thinks I’m going to ask for his number. Maybe random people are often stopping on the street to ask for it—I wouldn’t be all that surprised. Instead, I click the camera button, then turn the screen to face us in selfie mode.

“What are you—?”

“Smile!” I declare before he can move out of shot, and beam at the camera. I click the button twice in quick succession. A hand comes to rest on my forearm. Just a light touch, though I still feel the force of it through my winter coat. The slightest pressure has me lowering the phone, my heart jumping as I glance up at him.

He removes his hand, his gaze flickering from my phone then to my face. Shit.

“What are you doing?” It’s almost a polite question.

“I just…” I raise my hand in a sort of apology. And, really, I should have thought this through, shouldn’t I?

“You took a photo of me.”

“Well, yes.” I can feel heat flushing my cheeks, because, oh God, I actually did.

“With you in it.”