One Summer Sunrise, page 25
She was getting closer. Closer still. She was definitely hallucinating. Concussion. It had to be.
She was almost upon her now, and as if sensing that someone was staring at her, the young woman turned, caught her eye, then…
‘Stop!’ Harriet blurted.
Yvie looked panicked as Freddie immediately pulled back and stopped. ‘What’s wrong, Harriet. Do you feel sick? Dizzy?’
Harriet was right beside the singer now, only a few feet away, as their eyes locked. The young woman frowned as if she were trying to place her, then Harriet watched as the realisation dawned and she said, ‘We met… today… didn’t we?’
The penny dropped for Yvie too and she answered for her. ‘Yes! At the garden party. You sang the last song. You were amazing.’
‘You sang?’ asked the doctor she’d been talking to. ‘I thought you were doing the catering?’
‘I’m a multi-tasker,’ the young lady shrugged, then turned back to Harriet. ‘I think we were introduced earlier, but I’m Maisie. This is my sister, Hope,’ she gestured to her bewildered companion. ‘I hope you’re okay?’ she asked, taking in Harriet’s predicament.
‘I’m sure I will be.’ Harriet could have stopped there, wheeled on, gone to X-ray and let this moment pass, but hadn’t she already spent too much of her life doing that already? ‘I thought you were spectacular this afternoon…’
‘Thank you.’
‘And I wonder if… If… I know this might sound very strange, but I wonder if I could show you something?’
If Maisie was startled, she didn’t show it. ‘Of course.’
Fumbling, Harriet reached into her cardigan pocket with trembling hands and pulled out the photograph she’d put there earlier. ‘Would you mind looking at this. It’s just that… I wonder if we might be related?’
Midnight – 8 a.m.
33
Maisie
Maisie’s heart went out to this lovely lady on the hospital wheelie bed thingy. She must ask Hope what the correct technical terminology was. Mobile bed? Wheelie mattress? Anyway, the poor soul must have been in an accident or had some kind of fall, because she was pretty banged up: dressings on her head, bruising on one side of her face, an eye that was swollen and already turning a dark, angry shade of pain.
Yet, she was smiling, holding out a photograph and gazing at Maisie with such nervous hope that she felt devastated that she was about to deliver a crushing blow.
‘I’m sorry, but I’m afraid that’s not possible,’ Maisie said gently, wincing inside, feeling that she had to give a bit extra to cushion her words. ‘I don’t… I don’t have any relatives… except my mum and my sister here, and to be honest, they’re forever trying to disown me, so I promise you’re having a lucky escape.’
Beside her, Hope was nodding her agreement. ‘She’s right. You don’t want her. Totally high maintenance.’
The blonde woman who was with the elderly lady stepped in, tenderly placing her hand on the woman’s shoulder. ‘Och, Harriet, if it’s any consolation, you can have me. My mother wouldn’t notice.’
Maisie felt a pang of solidarity. Anyone who dealt with sadness by trying to inject some gentle humour into the situation was her kind of woman.
‘Move it along there, Freddie, you’re causing a traffic jam,’ bellowed a nurse, coming right up behind the bed, pushing a tall pole decked with all sorts of machines. Maisie had no idea what they were for but they looked like they could launch a space shuttle.
‘Keep yer teeth in, Teresa, we’re on our way,’ Freddie joked, eliciting an eye roll and a harrumph of exaggerated disapproval.
‘Please…’ Harriet whispered urgently, still holding up the photo.
Maisie was about to take it, just to be polite, when the porter took off, manoeuvring Harriet’s trolley bed thingy like he was in command of a Ferrari.
‘Take care,’ Maisie shouted after her, feeling awful that she hadn’t been able to help. ‘Will she be okay?’ she asked Hope, who responded with a kindly shrug. ‘I don’t know, she’s not one of my patients. She’s in good hands though. I’m pretty sure that’s Yvie Danton that’s with her. She’s the senior charge nurse up in Geriatrics. Anyway, I’ll find out who she belongs to and see if I can check on her for you if you want?’
‘Just if you’ve got time. I know you’ll be slammed for the rest of the night.’
At the end of the corridor, just a couple of metres away, the swing doors opened, and the receptionist Maisie had met at the front desk came through. ‘Dr McTeer, the very woman I’m looking for,’ she declared.
‘What can I do for you, Stephanie?’ Hope asked brightly and Maisie marvelled as always that this confident, incredibly smart woman was her little sister, the one who had chosen this field because she’d had cancer as a kid and spent many years in hospital.
‘There’s a gentleman at reception asking to speak to you. A Mr Jackson. Says it’s regarding your sister.’ The receptionist’s arched eyebrow of curiosity landed on Maisie at the end of that sentence.
Bugger. She should have known that Nathan wouldn’t let it lie, that he’d come and track down Hope and try to plead his case, or get some answers, or whatever it was he needed to satisfy his ego.
‘Ah great. Romeo isn’t giving up,’ Hope groaned. ‘What do you want me to do, Mais? It’s your call.’
Maisie swallowed, unsure what to say. Just a few minutes ago, when she’d walked away from the café in the general building, she’d been so sure, so confident that she was doing the right thing. She’d dashed over to seek some moral support from her sister, but she’d barely blurted out what she’d done, and they hadn’t even made it to the privacy of the staffroom, when the lady on the go-faster wheelie bed had stopped to speak to them, so she hadn’t yet managed to hear Hope’s opinion or reassurance that she’d done the right thing.
Walking away from people had always been so difficult for Maisie. She was the person who forgave friends anything, who hung onto relationships long after they were done. She gave people second, third, fourth chances, unwilling to cut them off just because of their mistakes. It would totally be in her nature to forgive Nathan, but then what? Would she spend all her life worrying when he was going to jack her in again when he decided he ‘needed’ something else? Would his self-indulgence press her buttons now that she’d been on the wrong side of it? Or had he learned his lesson, and after a suitable period of grovelling, be given another shot at their love? If so, was she prepared to risk it?
‘What are you thinking?’ Hope prompted again.
A flashback to another moment from her car journey with Scott.
‘I’m thinking, “what would Stevie Nicks do?”’
Hope grinned. ‘And?’
Maisie nudged Hope’s shoulder. ‘I think when you get off shift, Stevie would want you and I to go and get those pancakes.’
Her sister’s chuckle made everyone in hearing distance smile. ‘Thanks, Stephanie,’ Hope said, in her very best doctor’s voice, ‘but could you please tell Mr Jackson that I’m not available to speak to him tonight… or any night until the end of time?’
The chipper receptionist had no idea what was going on, but she was loving it. ‘I’d be very happy to, Dr McTeer,’ she replied before waltzing off. The details of this little interaction would be all round the staffroom by morning.
Hope repaid the shoulder bump with one of her own. ‘I’m proud of you,’ she said, giving Maisie a grateful glow. ‘But I need to get back to work, because the pubs are not long out and it’s about to turn into a crowd scene around here.’
Maisie sighed deeply. ‘You should definitely think about getting a real job. All this saving people’s lives is so overrated.’
Hope could match her underplayed sarcasm all day long. ‘You’re right. That advert for thrush cream was a level of giddy success I could only aspire to.’
Giggling, Maisie adjusted her bag on her shoulder, ready to go. ‘Exactly! Right then, I’ll get out of your hair.’
‘Try not to have any more life-altering dramas before I get home,’ Hope teased.
‘I’ll do my best. See ya la—’
It was the draught from Stephanie exiting the A&E door that caused the movement that caught Maisie’s eye, a piece of paper, or maybe a pamphlet, fluttering on the floor, next to a trolley of dressings. Her first instinct was to ignore it. She had no idea why she didn’t.
She took a few steps forwards, scooped it up, realised what it was. ‘Hope, that lady in the bed must have dropped…’
She froze.
Her words stopped.
The photograph.
The picture.
The man.
‘Maisie? Are you okay? What’s up?’ The voice was in the periphery somewhere, but Maisie couldn’t absorb it or formulate a reply, utterly transfixed.
The man in the photo.
‘Maisie! What is it?’ Hope was right next to her now and all Maisie could do was drag her eyes from the image and then slowly, like she never wanted to let it go, hold it out towards her sister.
As she took the photograph, Hope’s face transformed, from a furrowed brow of concern, to wide-eyed astonishment. Her slow exhalation came with a whispered, ‘Holy crap.’
Maisie was still staring at the image in Hope’s hand, unaware that her sister’s gaze was going from Maisie’s face, to the photo, to Maisie’s face again.
‘Now I see why she asked you to look at this,’ Hope affirmed. ‘He’s your absolute double.’
Maisie was nodding slowly, still trying to kick-start her reaction. Hope was right. The resemblance was uncanny. The skin, the eyes, the tilt of the nose, the little crooked cinch of the top lip, he even had her dimples. It was all she could do to force out a strangled. ‘Who is he?’
‘I’ve no idea… Wait.’ Hope turned the photograph over.
On the back all it said was: Leo Bassett. Age 25.
Maisie repeated the name, hoping that something would come to her. ‘Leo Bassett.’
Hope was pensive. ‘I don’t recognise the name. Does it mean anything to you?’
‘No, nothing at all. Wow. It’s so bizarre though. I’ve never…’ Maisie couldn’t get the words out.
‘You’ve never what?’
‘I’ve never looked like anyone before.’ It had been such a common conversation between them growing up that she knew Hope would grasp how much that mattered. It had been one of Hope’s biggest thrills when she’d met her biological family and saw resemblances for the first time.
‘Dr Robertson,’ Hope spoke to a tall, preoccupied gent in a white coat, who was standing at a nearby computer terminal. ‘Do you mind if I take an extra ten minutes’ break? I’ve got a family situation I’d like to deal with and I don’t have anyone on the board at the moment.’ Maisie had seen Holby City – she knew that meant Hope wasn’t currently tending to any patients.
The doctor glanced over. ‘Dr McTeer, have you taken your full break on any shift since you started working here?’ he asked pointedly.
‘Erm, no.’
‘Exactly. I think we can spare you for another ten minutes.’
‘Thank you,’ Hope beamed, before grabbing Maisie’s hand. ‘Staffroom,’ she hissed, pulling her towards a door further along the corridor.
They were the only people in the stark, white-walled room. Maisie saw there was a small kitchen unit with an inbuilt steel sink on one side, and a microwave and kettle the other. A fridge sat next to it, and in the centre of the room were eight chairs, positioned around a low white coffee table.
‘I think you should call Mum,’ Hope suggested, flicking on the kettle, then taking two mugs off the drainer.
Maisie shook her head. ‘I’m not calling Mum after midnight on a Saturday night to say, “hey, I just saw a photo of some random bloke who looks a bit like me.”’
Hope put her hands on her hips. ‘He doesn’t “look a bit” like you. He looks exactly like you after we did those Snapchat filters that show you what you’d look like if you were a bloke.’
It was a fair point, but… ‘I’m still not phoning Mum. I’ll see if I can track down that lady and ask her a few questions and I’ll discover that there’s no possible connection and I’ll have forgotten about it by the time we get to the Pancake Shack.’
Hope was spooning instant coffee into cups now. ‘You don’t actually believe that, do you?’
‘Of course I do! How could there be any other outcome?’ Maisie blurted, challenging Hope’s comment. In her head, she reinforced that thought. It was ludicrous to think there could be any other reason for this other than a weird coincidence. People didn’t just bump into long-lost family members. That was the kind of stuff of soap operas, and only then because an uncannily large number of soap characters had a secret evil twin.
Over at the kettle, boiling water was going into the mugs now. ‘Maisie, I know you’re scared…’
‘I’m not!’ A realisation. ‘Okay, I am.’
‘But you know what you’re like – you’re not going to be able to stop thinking about this and it’ll drive you crazy. Mum will understand. Actually, I think she’d be really pissed off if you didn’t call her. And I’ll grass you in a flash, so you’re as well doing it.’
‘Man, I’m glad I don’t share your evil streak. I think this whole Florence Nightingale do-gooder thing is a cover for your dark side.’
Hope slipped her mobile phone out of the pocket of her scrubs, unlocked it and thrust it into Maisie’s hand. ‘Call her.’
Maisie realised that she had no choice. If she were honest, that was probably a good thing because she absolutely didn’t know for certain if she would do this on her own.
Sweeping the screen up, she went on to Hope’s ‘favourites’ list, gratified to see that she was at the top. Her mum came next. Then there were many of her new family members: her dad, Aaron, his new wife, Aggs, then her myriad stepbrothers and sisters.
Maisie had three people on her favourites list – her mum, Hope and Sissy.
Her thumb took charge, pressing her mum’s picture.
‘Hope, are you okay?’ her mum answered after just one ring.
‘It’s me, Mum,’ Maisie corrected her, ‘but you’re on speaker and Hope’s here too.’
‘What’s happened? Where are you?’ This woman didn’t share their DNA, but she’d been the absolute best mother they could ever have wished for and Maisie adored her.
‘We’re fine, I promise. Hope made me call you.’
The relief in her mum’s laugh was instant. ‘Ah, have you two been in at the cocktails? If you’re phoning again to make me tell you the words of “Fernando”, I’ll have to go and get my Abba album.’
‘Yeah, sorry about last weekend, Mum,’ Hope said sheepishly. ‘That was Maisie’s fault. She spiked my drink.’
Maisie made the throat-slicing gesture to her sister, then took the lead on the call. ‘It’s nothing to do with Abba, Mum. It’s a bit of a bizarre story. I met a lady today – I think her name is Harriet – and, well, long story short, she showed me a photograph of a man and asked me if I was related to him.’
‘Oh, dear Lord, darling Why did she think that?’
‘Mum, he’s Maisie’s absolute double,’ Hope jumped in.
‘Really? Did you ask her about him? Who is he? Can you go and speak to him?’
‘I know nothing at all about him yet except that his name is…’ she flipped the photo over again and read the name out loud. ‘Leo Bassett. Does that mean anything to you?’
‘No, my darling. You know that we were given no information at all when we adopted you. All we ever had was a little wristband with the name you’d been given when you were born.’
At exactly the moment her mum said that, Hope and Maisie made the connection.
The name she was born with. Her mum had told her a million years ago, when she was just a kid.
‘Mum, can you tell me the name again?’ Maisie asked, not trusting her memory.
‘Of course, sweetheart. It was Leona.’
Leona.
Harriet’s son was called Leo. So did that mean…?
Maisie didn’t have time to finish the thought, because her own phone began ringing in her pocket. Dammit. It could only be one person. She needed to handle this herself. ‘Mum, I’ll buzz you back.’
She ended the call and switched from Hope’s phone to her own.
‘Nathan, enough. We’re done. There’s no point…’
‘Maisie?’
A woman’s voice. It took Maisie a minute to pinpoint it.
‘Oh my God, sorry Francine! I thought it was someone else.’
‘That fuckwit you used to go out with?’ her agent replied, with typical blunt candour.
‘Yes, that would be the very fuckwit I was referring to,’ Maisie quipped, her mind way too distracted to absorb the fact that Francine was calling her late at night.
‘If you go back to him, I’m dumping you as a client. Just saying. Anyway, I don’t usually call my clients at this ungodly hour, but I just stepped off a plane… I’m in New York, darling… and when I checked my emails, there was one I thought you may want to hear about immediately. You got the part. The Netflix series. Lead role. Enough money to buy a new boyfriend every night of the week if you so choose. It’s a guarantee for one season, with an option for a further five. I’ll forward the contracts over tomorrow. Maisie?’ Silence. ‘Maisie? Have you fainted?’
‘No, I’m still…’ Maisie got three words out, before her brain shut down again. She’d landed the role, the kind that every jobbing actor dreamt about getting. The lead character. A gritty crime drama. A massive production budget. A fantastic script. Global distribution. And she might never know how good that would feel because she was fairly sure her heart was beating so fast it was close to exploding. Thankfully, Hope had heard enough and decided to intervene. She took the phone from Maisie’s hand.
‘Hi Francine, it’s Maisie’s sister, Hope. Maisie’s faculties appear to have short-circuited at the moment, but if she still had the power of speech, she would tell you that she’s delighted, and thank you very much for letting her know. She’d also like to say you’re a freaking phenomenal agent for helping her land the role.’
