11. Adam

11

ADAM

N atalie sits huddled on the other side of my Range Rover, black coat on and arms wrapped tightly around herself as she gazes out the window at Piccadilly crawling past us.

It’s pissing it down, which has made the traffic even shittier than normal, but she’s safe and warm in here. Still, hostility radiates from her, and I have to give her credit for finding the energy to hate me quite so actively when she must be utterly shattered.

She brushed her hair and cleaned herself up a little in the bathroom with Gen, it would seem, while I waited in Alchemy’s lobby and made a hasty, furtive call to Clem, one of my assistants. Get Dr Dyson to my house immediately. Patient is a type 1 diabetic. Tell him to bring supplies. And call the personal shoppers at Selfridges and get them to send over a load of stuff asap. I need women’s pyjamas, underwear, trainers, lounge wear—all confortable but stylish. And get them to put together a toiletry pack, too.

I can’t imagine how much she’d resent my thinking this, but she’s stunningly beautiful .

She was beautiful when she was kissing Gen’s arse at the start of our meeting while shooting me what she thought were discreet death stares.

She was beautiful when every bodily fluid her face could produce was streaming and getting all over my hands.

And she’s beautiful now, sitting there as streetlights and headlights pan across her delicate features, even if she’s clearly drained.

‘Can I ask you something?’ I venture.

She turns her face, but not her body, wariness in her eyes. I don’t blame her. To think this woman and I are connected in the worst way, by the most grotesque thing I’ve ever done to another human in my life, is as sickening as it is surreal. I’m sure she’d rather be anywhere but here, including on a packed tube back to Seven Sisters.

I push on. ‘Have you thought about having alerts set up on your phone for when your glucose drops—I assume they can do that, these days?’

In other words, what the fuck were you playing at? But I can’t risk antagonising her any further than my mere existence already does.

‘I’ve got alerts set up.’

I raise my eyebrows, and she rolls her eyes at me.

‘I muted them yesterday, okay, because I had a trunk show, and I forgot to unmute them.’

I stay silent, judgement radiating from every pore.

‘Look, I’ll prove it to you.’ She rummages in her enormous bag, which I repacked on the sofa before we left, and pulls out her now-locked phone. A tap on the lock screen shows a series of Freestyle Libre alerts.

‘A stunningly effective method for safeguarding your health,’ I snap, all efforts at diplomacy forgotten. ‘You have to do a better job than that. ’

I’m pissed off. I can’t help it. I don’t begrudge her the continuous glucose monitor or her pump, but God knows, a basic CGM would have saved Ellen’s life, had we had them available to us back then.

She gives me a you can’t be serious look. ‘I do a good job, believe me. I’m a highly responsible person, usually.’

‘ Usually won’t cut it. You don’t get second chances with this shit, Natalie. You can’t afford to be this cavalier. All you need is one bad hypo and you’re done for.’

Her expression tells me she’s taking my advice as interference and not concern. ‘You know nothing about me, and you certainly don’t have the right to get to know me any better than this.’

‘Maybe not, but I bet Gen could have done without having to witness that back there. What the fuck are you thinking, not having briefed your entire team on your condition? Every last one of them should know what symptoms to look for if you’re hypo or hyper, and they should know what to do. You should have a tube of gel in every single fucking desk drawer in Alchemy and wherever else you work. This is basic, basic stuff.’

We glare at each other, and a tiny part of me feels bad for giving her a hard time when she’s still recovering, but a far larger part is incandescent with rage and frustration. Gen wasn’t the only person who could have done without what was a harrowing trip down memory lane for me.

‘You’re right, of course,’ she says stiffly. ‘And my colleagues at my company are all well briefed. I’m usually—I can usually spot them before they get bad, you know? I’m usually in control of it. I don’t want the Alchemy guys having to deal with that.’

Despite the shit I’m giving her, I suspect she is usually in control. She seems like someone who prides herself on having it together, who probably despises the lack of control a condition like type 1 gives her. But this illness isn’t something to be pushed under the carpet. It’s a daily threat, a daily fucking battle. It’s running to stand still your entire life, and she’d be far better off if she made peace with that instead of trying to fight it.

‘They’re good people,’ is all I say. ‘You can trust them with this. And after today, you can bet Gen will have St John’s Ambulance in for a full team debrief. She’ll probably have a powerpoint, knowing her.’

She shuts her eyes briefly, as if the thought pains her, but it’s true. No fucking way Gen will stand for her and the team not being up to speed on basic hypo management after what went down this evening.

‘What makes you such an expert, anyway?’ she mutters.

I hesitate, and it’s prolonged enough for her to look at me with curiosity.

‘A family member had type 1,’ I say shortly. ‘I’m far too familiar with its dangers, unfortunately.’

That knocks the wind out of her sails. She stares at me, no doubt registering my use of the past tense.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she says quietly.

‘Thank you.’ I’m not willing to say more. She’s holding me at arm’s length, with good reason. Like she said, I have no right to any knowledge of her. But I won’t let her have any knowledge of me, either. She thinks she has me sussed, but she’s nowhere near accurate, and I won’t entrust one iota of Ellen’s memory to someone who condemned me long before she laid eyes on me.

I lean my head back and close my eyes, signalling that the conversation is closed.