Chapter Thirty Three

L ydia washed her face in the tiny bathroom sink and then stretched. She was no stranger to sleepless nights, but the combination of lack of sleep and the responsibility of dealing with two crises alone, had left her feeling like a wrung-out sponge.

But all was well now.

Magda and Ewa were doing fine, she’d checked up on both of them. And Sharla was safe in a hospital bed awaiting surgery. She’d acquitted herself well and she wondered now why she’d ever thought that working alone wasn’t for her.

It wasn’t until she’d been in the middle of things with no one else to turn to that she’d realized that actually, this kind of doctoring was exciting. It wasn’t all snotty noses and vaccinations. Whitebridge, she’d realized, had only one person to rely on for whatever happened.

There was a challenge in that.

It was more though.

Being connected to her patients like this, knowing who they were, made things somehow more personal. More important even. Magda wasn’t just a name over a hospital bed. She was a person. Someone whose life had been in her hands, someone she’d have to face every day. Someone who could thank her or cry on her shoulder.

Someone that she’d helped.

She straightened up as she walked out of the bathroom, only to find a guilty looking Max patrolling the hospital corridor.

“Lurking outside women’s toilets isn’t a great look, Max,” she said.

He pulled a face. “Probably better than going in there after you. Although much longer and I might not have had a choice. Is everyone doing alright?”

“All safe and sound, with much thanks to you,” Lydia said. He was antsy though and still looked worried. “What is it?”

“Nat,” he said.

“Nat Greene? Toby’s mum?”

He nodded. “She’s been found. And, um, well, things are a bit of a mess, I’m afraid.”

“Where was she? What was she doing? Is she alright?”

“She was with Elias. Her partner. They, well, they were working, following some band around.” He sighed and rubbed his face. “Here’s the thing. Nat wants to come home.”

“Right,” said Lydia, not quite following.

“Which, as an adult, it’s her right to do, of course. The problem is, that having left her son, Nat can’t exactly go back to how things were before. Social services are involved and, well, there’s an emergency meeting happening in a half hour to determine what happens to Toby and Nat and, well, everything.”

He looked miserable. Lydia took a breath. “And you want me there?”

“You’re Nat’s GP, it’d make a difference if you were there.”

She looked at him. “I can’t promise that I’m about to walk in there and back her to the hilt, recommend that she get her child back.”

“I wouldn’t ask you that. Just… just talk to her and then go in and see what can be done for the best. I trust your judgment on this, doc.”

Lydia was tired. So tired that all she wanted to do was fall into bed. But she nodded. “Alright. You’d best drive me where I need to go, I’m in no state to do it myself.”

NAT WAS SITTING on a hard plastic chair in a corridor outside the room where the meeting was supposed to be held. Lydia put her hand on Max’s arm. “Maybe let me talk to her alone, if that’s alright?”

He nodded. “I’ll go and track down some coffee.”

She smiled gratefully at him and waited until he was gone before she walked over and took the seat next to Nat’s. “Alright if I sit here?” she asked gently.

Nat bit her lip but nodded.

“I’m going to go in with you, Nat. So you’ll have at least one friendly face there.”

“Are you friendly?” Nat asked, not looking at her.

“I am.”

“Even after everything that I’ve done?” Her voice sounded so sad and small and young.

Lydia breathed in. “Even after everything. But it would help me a lot to understand what went on before we go in there. Can we talk about that?”

Nat did look at her now. “I fucked up,” she said simply. “I fucked up and don’t know how to unfuck things.”

“Right, well, maybe that’s something you need a bit of help with,” Lydia said, taking Nat’s hand. “So how about we start with what happened when you left.”

Nat shrugged. “I found Elias, he was working as a roadie for this band, following them around and getting paid. I told him I needed him home and he said that he’d come home in a few weeks when the band’s tour was finished.”

“And a few weeks was too long to wait?” suggested Lydia.

Nat sighed. “At first it was a bit like a holiday. There were no responsibilities. I could wake up when I wanted and do what I wanted. But then after a few days I got scared. Scared that if I came back I’d be in trouble and that they’d put Toby in care.”

“You left him though,” Lydia said .

The girl nodded miserably. “I did. And I shouldn’t have. And I regret it with everything I have, doc. I swear I do. I just… I couldn’t do it on my own anymore.”

“But that doesn’t mean that you could leave Toby with me.”

Nat’s head shot up, her eyebrows arched. “Oh, I didn’t leave him with you, doc. I left him with Cordelia.”

Lydia felt slightly offended at that. Not to mention confused. “With Cordelia?”

“Yeah, course. I know she’s a bit rough sometimes and she can get snappy and, well, she doesn’t always remember my last name and things like that. But she’s kind and reliable. And I knew she’d be good with Toby, sensible, you know, like a mum should be. Like… like I’m not.”

For a second, Lydia thought about Cordelia holding Toby. “She was lovely with him,” she said honestly. “You couldn’t have chosen better.”

“I don’t want to not have him,” Nat said, eyes filling with tears. “That’s not what any of this was about. I swear to you, doc. I love Toby with all my heart. He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. But… but it all got too much and I honestly only ever intended to find Elias and bring him back. But then I got scared.”

“You need help,” Lydia said.

Nat nodded. She sniffed. “I didn’t mean for things to turn out this way.”

“You know,” Lydia said, stretching out her legs. “I’ve learned something very recently, would you like to hear about it?”

Nat nodded.

“I’ve learned that plans are quite good. They make you feel safe, they let you do big things step by step without getting lost. But they’re also quite limited. The problem with plans is that they’re not very realistic. See, life doesn’t always do what it’s supposed to. Sure, maybe if you live your life by the ‘shoulds’ all the time it might.”

“Shoulds?” Nat asked.

“You know, you should go to bed early, you should eat all your vegetables, you should take the job that pays you more. Those kind of shoulds. But living by shoulds isn’t very… exciting. Or possible. Because sometimes you don’t know about the shoulds, or the shouldn’ts, until later.”

“Yeah,” Nat said sadly. “It’s pretty easy sitting here and knowing that I shouldn’t have left Toby at the surgery. But back then it seemed like the only option.”

“Right,” Lydia said. “So plans are all very well and good, but then life comes along and gives you a surprise. Maybe it’s a lovely surprise like Toby. Or maybe it’s a not so lovely surprise like finding out how hard it is to be a single mum.” Or maybe it’s the perfect surprise all wrapped up and ready for the taking, like Cordelia. “And then your plans don’t seem to work anymore and you get all het up and stressed about not keeping to the plan.”

“When really, it was the plan that was the problem in the first place,” Nat said. “Cos plans have to change, don’t they? I was going to be a hairdresser before I had Toby, you know.”

“Not all plans have to change,” Lydia said. “You can still be a hairdresser. Plans have to be flexible though, they have to bend a little here and there to accommodate life’s little surprises.”

Nat looked up at her. “Doc, are they going to take Toby away from me?”

“I can’t promise that they’re not, Nat. But I can promise that we’re going to go in there and put your side of the story to them.” Lydia rubbed her face. “Life isn’t going to go straight back to the way it was before.”

“I know.” Nat looked down at her hands. “It shouldn’t. I did something wrong. But more than that, I need help. I’d sort of like to think that these people do want to help me.”

“I think they do, Nat. But I’ll be there with you, alright?”

Nat nodded. “Thanks, doc. It’s probably more than I deserve.”

“No,” Lydia said. “No, it’s not. What you deserve is support and love. And we all let you down a bit, didn’t we? You were struggling and we should have stepped in to help more. You came to me and I didn’t see how much you were struggling. So this is me stepping up now to help you. And to help Toby.”

Nat squeezed her hand. “I’m a bit scared. ”

“Me too,” Lydia said.

She wasn’t scared about the social workers. She knew they were there to help. She knew that Max would be there.

She was, however, scared about talking to Cordelia. Scared because she didn’t know exactly how Cordelia would react. Scared because changing plans was always scary, wasn’t it? And scared because after all this she was pretty sure that she was falling in love with Cordelia.

But she wasn’t sure that Cordelia was falling in love right back again.