Like Doctor, Like Son Read online

  ‘Should I get them to bury her face down so she’d have a long way to dig?’

  ‘Sounds about right.’ Joan chuckled, but it had a slightly guilty edge. ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong. Towards the end of her life, she did a lot of good with that mountain of money, but I dare say there’ll be a few will sleep easier knowing she won’t be ringing them at crazy times of the night demanding they come up to the Barton for instructions.’

  Quinn felt strangely disloyal to be joking with her in such a way, even though she was probably right. He was grateful that he hadn’t been one of those at her beck and call but, having seen with his own eyes the valiant way Constance Adamson had met her death, he couldn’t help feeling a grudging respect for her. It felt strange after years of despising her for the part she’d undoubtedly had in Faith’s sudden change of heart.

  As he settled himself behind the wheel he snorted at his recent thoughts.

  How pathetic was he, to have hung on to his resentment for so long? It was more than sixteen years since he’d turned up on the doorstep of the Barton looking for Faith, and the domineering matriarch had sent him on his way with little more than a disdainful look down her patrician nose. She’d never given him a chance to test her assertion that Faith had gone away and wouldn’t be returning to Rookmere.

  In the end he’d gone away to medical school still convinced that she would be joining him there soon, just the way they’d planned during the torturous weeks while they’d waited for their exam results…those unbelievably happy weeks when he’d actually believed that she’d fallen as deeply in love as he had.

  His disbelief when she’d never contacted him again had turned to depression at his gullibility, and it had only been his burning desire to be a doctor that had eventually forced him into getting on with his life.

  Still, that was all ancient history. He was certain that she’d barely crossed his mind at all until he’d made the mistake of answering that fateful advertisement and had become the locum GP in what had once been his home town.

  When the job had become permanent the situation had grown worse. For the last six months she’d been in his mind at least a dozen times a day as he drove past the familiar lanes they’d walked on their way between school, library and home. Even after all this time it was impossible to forget the special place where they’d liked to watch the sun set and the stars come out, where they’d declared their love and made plans for their future.

  ‘Not again!’ he groaned, when he realised just where his thoughts had taken him once more. But how could he be surprised that she was on his mind so much today? In a few moments he would be attending her mother’s funeral, and he knew, from the gossip spreading through the village, that Faith had come home as soon as she’d heard Constance had died. That meant that in a few minutes he was going to have to come face to face with the girl who…

  No, he sighed as he had to park his car nearly a quarter of a mile from the stone-built Norman church, so great was the number of cars jostling for space. She wasn’t a girl any more. She was a woman in her early thirties now, and independently wealthy beyond his wildest dreams even before she inherited her mother’s estate.

  A small part of him had wished that she was too busy with her globe-trotting career to attend today’s service, but he knew that was a forlorn hope. He was going to have to come face to face with her in front of almost everyone in Rookmere, when he would smile and say all the right things in spite of the fact that she was the one who had ripped his heart out by the roots and shattered his trust in women for ever—the one he’d never been able to forget, no matter how many years went by.

  Or would he?

  He paused inside the vestibule, suddenly struck by a thought. This could be his chance to confront her and find out exactly why she’d left him that way. After all this time it would be good to find out once and for all if it had been something he’d done…or something he hadn’t done…that had driven her away like that.

  Well, there was the service to get through first, and then some sort of gathering back at the Barton afterwards.

  The last thought Quinn had as he slipped into the pew at the back of the church was that it was probably quite unseemly to attend a funeral with such mixed emotions churning around inside him. Half of him was definitely eager to speak to Faith after all this time, while the other half was dreading it in case the truth was something even harder to live with than sixteen years of ignorance.

  Faith froze with her hands poised over the familiar piano keys, every nerve suddenly painfully alert.

  ‘He’s here,’ she breathed to herself.

  Even though the Barton’s impressive hall was packed with people and she couldn’t possibly see him, she somehow knew that Quinn was in the room somewhere. She could feel his startling green gaze with the same searing intensity as if he were actually touching her skin with those gentle, clever hands and—

  No! She stopped that thought as soon as it started. The days when she’d welcomed his touch—when he’d wanted to touch her—were over and done with and too far in the past to have any effect on their lives today.

  For heaven’s sake, they hadn’t even set eyes on each other for more than sixteen years, and after today…After today, they wouldn’t ever have a reason to be in the same town again. Once she’d performed this specific request for her mother, she’d be able to leave for the last time the town where she’d grown up, and get on with what she did best.

  ‘Are you ready?’ prompted the voice at her shoulder, and she forced herself to focus on what she had to do.

  Not that she wanted to do it. The last thing she’d expected had been that her mother would ask her to play the piano for her guests, and she’d never have dreamed that her mother had even known of the composition she’d written for Quinn all those years ago, let alone that she would choose that particular piece for the occasion.

  Well, so far she’d complied with every one of the arrangements that her mother had made for this day and there really wasn’t any reason why she shouldn’t manage to do this, too. What was another five minutes added onto sixteen years of guilt and regret? Maybe, after today, the knowledge that Quinn had been somewhere in the room, listening to her play, would help her to find some sort of closure. Maybe she would finally be able to draw a line under that part of her life.

  She drew in a steadying breath and finally she nodded.

  The magnified click of the microphone as it was switched on immediately cut the volume of conversation in the room by half, and when she began speaking, she almost imagined that she could have heard the proverbial pin drop on the richly polished wood of the floor.

  ‘Good afternoon, everybody,’ she began, surprised to hear the tremor in her voice. It certainly couldn’t be from nervousness—she’d spent most of her life in front of microphones over the last dozen or so years. She swallowed and began again, grateful that she hadn’t completely forgotten the words she had prepared.

  ‘Even those of you who didn’t know my mother well will probably have heard how meticulous she was about details and planning.’

  There was a ripple of soft laughter across the room at the blatant understatement. Constance Adamson had been a domineering woman who had accepted nothing less than her way in anything, and as a wealthy woman not averse to paying for what she’d wanted…

  ‘Ruling from the grave, too?’ called a voice somewhere to her right, and Faith recognised the rich accent of Molly Beech, the woman who’d put up with nearly twenty years of following orders as she’d organised the staff that had kept Constance Adamson’s impressive home as spick and span as she had demanded. ‘She never wanted to leave anything to chance, she didn’t.’

  ‘You knew her very well, Mrs Beech,’ Faith said, and made herself smile even as she settled her hands over the familiar keys again. She gently stroked her fingertips over ivory worn smooth by many years of use and used the cool perfection to centre her and calm her. The next few minutes were going to be very hard—even ha
rder than hearing the hollow thud of the first clod of earth landing on her mother’s coffin this afternoon—and made all the more poignant by Quinn’s presence in the room.

  ‘My mother asked you all to come back here, to her home, with the express command that you weren’t to let the occasion turn into a maudlin wake. She wanted this gathering to be a celebration of her life, so you’ll find Mrs Beech and her team have prepared all her favourite dishes at the buffet, accompanied by a selection of her favourite wines.’

  She’d put the moment off as long as she could, but couldn’t delay any longer.

  ‘But first,’ she continued, the amplification of her voice making the tremor all too obvious, ‘she asked that I should play the piano for her one last time.’

  She closed her eyes and began to play.

  Without her having to think about it, the opening refrain flowed from her fingers, the soft melody one that she’d never forgotten even though she deliberately hadn’t played it in more than sixteen years.

  She could remember writing it so clearly, feeling for the first time the excitement of realising that she could somehow magically transfer all her emotions into a joyous outpouring of sound. First there was the haunting refrain that echoed the wonder of meeting Quinn on his first day at her school, her shyness quickly overcome first by her immediate fascination with his amazing green eyes then with the realisation that he had felt the same instant attraction. The composition became richer and more complex as it traced the story of their deepening emotions as they’d studied together towards their mutual goals, and soared into a crescendo as it recreated their declaration of love.

  She had put her heart and soul into those five minutes of melody, committing every last chord and harmony to paper for posterity in the aftermath of the most wonderful night of her life. It was little wonder that she hadn’t been able to bear playing it once she and Quinn had parted company. It brought back too many memories, too many regrets, too much guilt.

  By the time the echoes of the final chord had faded into the ornate cornices, Faith was trembling all over and all she wanted to do was escape.

  ‘It was sixteen years ago, for heaven’s sake,’ she muttered angrily under her breath. A simple composition played on a piano shouldn’t have the power to reduce her to a quivering heap, but it had. She was completely overwhelmed by every one of the emotions that had gone into the composition, almost as if the events depicted in it had happened yesterday.

  Suddenly, she knew she couldn’t bear to face anyone in such a state. What if Quinn should see her like this—so out of control?

  Of course, there was no guarantee that he would bother to try to speak to her. Why should he want to? It had been all too easy to find out that Quinn had gone on with his life as if he’d never met her, first when he’d qualified as a doctor then the unbelievable information that he’d moved back to the area when he’d specialised as a GP. She’d always known that he possessed the single-minded determination to achieve his goals, and he certainly hadn’t needed her by his side to do it.

  No, she thought as she deliberately slid the piano stool back under the cover of the applause and straightened up. If she had to face him, she didn’t want it to be like this, with all her emotions as raw and bleeding as the day she’d had to leave him—the day she’d been forced to rip her own heart out.

  No! Quinn screamed silently when the first notes rippled out into the room, agony freezing his breath in his throat.

  He might not have heard that particular melody for nearly half a lifetime, but there was no way he could mistake it. He would never forget the first time Faith had shyly played it for him, or the emotions it had aroused in him when she’d told him how it had come to be written.

  At the time, he’d been completely bowled over by the concept of someone having the ability to encapsulate so many feelings in a piece of music, and he’d been astounded to discover that each time she’d played it for him over the ensuing weeks it had re-created that same sense of wonder. Each time, it had been as if they’d rediscovered each other all over again.

  And she’d chosen to play it now, at her mother’s funeral?

  Was this her way of telling him that those precious memories had ceased to be important, discarded in the same way she’d discarded her plans to become a doctor, the way she’d discarded him and the life they’d planned together? Perhaps that was something else he needed to ask her.

  In spite of his resentment, his angry thoughts fragmented. How could he hold on to any logical thought at all when her music was wrapping itself around him, appealing to his emotions instead?

  It was all there, just as she’d explained the first time she’d played it for him, the sweet innocence of discovery growing into a deeper awareness that had all too quickly became a sublime ecstasy that, even then, he’d known he’d never find again.

  The applause was a shock, jerking him out of his thoughts.

  He’d been so wrapped up in his memories that he’d completely forgotten about the throng surrounding him. Now he merely resented them for being here; for hearing the melody that he’d wanted to think of as something private…something just between Faith and himself.

  Well, if nothing else, the fact that she’d just played it in front of all of them was proof that it meant no more to her than all the other melodies she’d penned in the last sixteen years. It might not have been what her mother had wanted for her—the illustrious career as a classical pianist that could have been there for the taking for one as gifted as Faith—but by all accounts her own style had been infinitely more lucrative.

  Almost before he realised he was moving, Quinn began making his way across the room towards the elegant woman seated so calmly at the grand piano. He couldn’t help cataloguing the changes that time and an obvious abundance of money had wrought on the girl who had once delighted in dancing barefoot in the grass in a pair of disreputable cut-off jeans.

  He would never forget the first time they’d met, on his first day in that new school. He’d been late, out of breath and lost, with no idea which way to go to find the biology lab, when she’d appeared out of nowhere with a shy smile and an offer to show him the way.

  Just that easily she’d captured his heart, and from then on he’d been unable to see anyone else when she’d been in a room.

  For all too brief a time he’d believed that she’d felt the same way—that they would be seeing each other every day for the rest of their lives—but even after that fairy-tale had been shattered it had been all too easy to follow her progress.

  It had taken her little more than a year before her name had hit the headlines for the first time, an instant media darling with her first release, and her progress had been little short of meteoric after that. Whether it was her gimmick of acting the camera-shy recluse and her refusal to agree to interviews that had caught the imagination of the music press he didn’t know, but her trade-mark album covers with their series of enigmatic silhouettes couldn’t disguise her to someone who’d known her as well as he had.

  ‘I’m so glad you could come, Dr Jamison,’ Molly said as she planted herself directly in his path, halting his progress towards Faith. ‘I don’t know if I thanked you at the time but I was so grateful that you came so quickly when Herself…And to sit with her like that…’ She halted, clearly fighting tears.

  ‘Molly, you don’t have to thank me,’ he said, giving her hand a squeeze. ‘It’s all part of the service, you know.’

  ‘Huh!’ she scoffed, her indignation apparently helping her to control her weaker emotions. ‘As if that were true. You’re the only doctor we’ve had around here in years that didn’t have half an eye on the clock. In fact, you work so hard that we don’t see nearly enough of you around the village. Either that or you’re trying to raise money to set up that place for the sick children. What is it called?’

  Quinn groaned silently, wondering how long he would have to talk to her for politeness’ sake. She was a lovely woman but she did like to talk.
Perhaps he would be able to get away from her by the time Faith finished her recital.

  ‘A hospice and respite care centre,’ he said, and gave her the details she wanted about the current state of affairs over his attempts to find the funding to set something up not too far from Rookmere. He was gratified that she wholeheartedly agreed that it needed to be somewhere not too far away—anything to lighten the load for families who currently had to travel many miles to spend time with their terminally sick children. The fact that there was a lack of public funding to build a new facility and the difficulty in finding an affordable building big enough to convert were topics for another day.

  At the other side of the room he saw Faith stand up and he suddenly realised that ‘their’ composition hadn’t been the start of a programme put together for their entertainment, but the only one she was going to play this afternoon.

  For a moment he thought she was going to mingle with the rest of the guests then realised that she was actually making her way towards the door.

  ‘I’m sorry to be rude, Mrs Beech,’ he interrupted hastily, giving her hand an apologetic squeeze, ‘but I need to see Faith for a minute before she leaves.’

  As he set off between the chattering groups it sounded as if Molly said ‘There’s no hurry’ but that couldn’t be right. Perhaps it had been ‘You’d better hurry’ because he, of all people, knew that Faith rarely visited the Barton. In fact, now that her mother had gone, would she bother visiting again? If the press was right, she had a lovely home of her own and had no need for a mansion that size. She might even decide to sell, permanently cutting all her links with the place where she’d grown up.

  Was it his hasty dash across the room or his fear that she’d leave before he had a chance to speak to her that had his heart beating so fast? After all, it wouldn’t be the first time she’d disappeared from his life without warning.