Playing the Joker

The green screens were set up, masking their activity from June and her husband, and she was swabbed and draped ready for her operation.

‘OK, June, I’m just going to make the first incision now.’

She stroked lightly and swiftly with the scalpel, and Anne Gabriel, who was assisting, swabbed and irrigated and held retractors and smiled at June over the curtain as Jo worked.

Jo herself was busy working her way through the layers of scar tissue in the old incision line. In very little time she reached the uterus, and looked at June. ‘OK, here we are. The scar actually looks fine, so I suppose that means you don’t want to be sterilised?’

Mike grinned. ‘Nice try, Dr Harding.’

She laughed. ‘OK, I’m just going to open the uterus and then you’ll have your baby.’

June smiled, Mike held her hand even tighter and Jo carefully penetrated the first layer.

‘Suction, please,’ she said, but Anne was there already, and in no time the baby was in her hands. ‘It’s a boy,’ she said with a smile that lit up her eyes above her mask, ‘and he looks lovely!’

She handed the baby over the screen and into his mother’s waiting arms, and then clamped the cord and cut it as Mike leant over and kissed his son.

The pain crashed into her with all the force of an express train, and she took a steadying breath.

You really would think it would get easier, she mused, but it doesn’t, and for some reason today it’s even worse. In the midst of all the chaos and congratulations, she lifted her head and met Alex’s eyes, and looked away.

Her own must have reflected her misery because later, after the Turner family had left the theatre and Jo had completed her list, she found Alex by her side, his face concerned.

‘Are you OK?’ he said in an undertone.

‘Of course I’m OK. Why should I not be?’

He shrugged. ‘Search me. I just thought you looked a bit pole-axed in there for a minute with the Turners.’

She busied herself removing her soiled gown and putting it in the bin. ‘Don’t be silly. Everybody’s moved by the birth of a baby.’

He moved round in front of her and tipped her chin. ‘I didn’t say moved, I said——’

‘I heard you. You were mistaken. Excuse me.’

She pushed past him and went to shower and change. When she emerged he was gone, and she managed to avoid him for the rest of the day.

She went home exhausted at seven, and made herself an omelette. She was too tired and stressed out to eat it, though, and poked it around for a few minutes before giving up.

Anne rang her later to ask if she was all right.

‘Of course I’m all right—what’s the matter with you all?’ she snapped, and then felt immediately guilty.

Anne, however, knew her too well to take umbrage, and quietly wished her goodnight before hanging up.

It was a long week, and by the end of it Jo’s nerves were flayed to a shred.

Alex had been everywhere, popping up like a jack-in-a-box every time she turned round. However, he had taken her at her word and was leaving her alone, making no further attempt to persuade her to go out with him.

He had made a real impact with the staff, and Anne thought he was charming and could quite see why Jo had fallen so hard and so fast.

‘Why don’t you talk to him?’ she said again, and Jo had to avoid her after that.

That afternoon Jo had delivered a baby and Alex had popped in just in time to see her cradling the babe against her breast and holding the tiny hand in her own.

‘It suits you—you ought to try it some time,’ he suggested, and with a wicked wink he left her.

Anne Gabriel had been there, too, and after one look at Jo’s shocked face had taken the baby from her and finished clearing up after the delivery without asking any questions.

As soon as possible, Jo had escaped home and attacked the housework, but that just made her even more exhausted and left her mind whirling in a body that ached from end to end. Feeling even more miserable, she made a cup of tea and took it up to wallow in the bath with a book she hadn’t had time to finish.

She undressed and hung up her skirt, throwing the blouse and underwear into the laundry basket.

How could she get Alex Carter out of her mind? He was haunting her, the might-have-beens overwhelming in the light of his constant presence.

And the worst of it was she still loved him—loved him more with each minute that passed, because she was getting to know him now and everything that she discovered just reinforced her first impressions.

The sadness that she always carried with her seemed almost too heavy to bear tonight. How right he had been, because she wasn’t the person he had known four years ago. It would be strange if all the things that had happened had left her quite untouched.

She closed the wardrobe door and stood back to study herself with a critical eye.

Her hair was thick and heavy, falling over her shoulders and framing her face with a tumble of wild flame. Her skin was pale and smooth, though cursed with freckles, and her full breasts were firm and creamy, tipped with rose-pink nipples. Below them her waist was neat, her tummy smooth and flat.

Beneath the gentle swell of her hips her legs were endless, long and shapely, and at their juncture the soft, thick curls clustered enticingly.

She was all woman—strong, healthy, designed to tempt a man and lure him to her bed, and there to conceive his children in the wild ecstasy of passion.

Her mouth twisted and her gaze returned to the curls that hid the hated scar.

It was just an illusion, that mother-earth look of hers. She wasn’t a woman at all, just a cardboard cutout, an android, an imposter.

How could you be a woman without a womb?

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_1a903597-2e78-5c62-bf91-074ad7a1b3b9)

FOR most of the people there it was just another party, but Jo was celebrating the end of her last day as an SHO prior to her forthcoming appointment at the Audley Memorial Hospital in Suffolk as a very junior registrar.

Her new boss, Owen Davie, was probably one of the old school, but Jo was confident that she would get a good grounding in what was quite definitely an up and coming hospital.

The long and gruelling year as SHO was finally ended, she had a new job to look forward to, and she was in the mood to party.

Although she was on her own, she wasn’t truly on her own. The hospital community was a close-knit one, and she would know most of the people who would be there tonight.

She had dressed with her usual flamboyant zeal, in a silky, figure-hugging sheath with a thigh-high split and a low back, in shimmering coral-pink silk that draped like a dream. With her red hair it should have been a disaster, but it was a devastating combination and she felt as good as she looked.

By the time she arrived the party was already going with a swing, and she found herself a drink and a convivial group of friends and settled down to celebrate.

An hour and a couple of glasses of cheap wine later, she was dancing with a bespectacled and rather amorous young doctor who was barely tall enough to look her in the eye when the door opened to admit another group of people.