Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.
Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
Chapter 1.
Natasha Wagstaffe stepped out of the taxi in front of the hospital where Cleo worked. She sniffed. It was hot. After the coolness of the cab the heat hit her hard. She could feel a dribble of sweat run down her spine.
Dallas, a city in a desert.
Her brother, David and his band, Artwork, were due to play there the following day. It would be the last show on their current tour.
She remembered the previous year when she had been persuaded to play on a number of their dates while they recruited a replacement keyboard player. Staring out upon thousands of faces. She had nearly frozen the first nights. But with practise and the encouragement of the others she had had learned to enjoy it.
The hardest part was getting rid of the tension that built up inside her during each show. Most of the others had used the never-ending string of young girls who seemed only too willing to let the band members and any other members of their entourage have them.
She couldn't do that. Take a different man every night? That was unthinkable. So she had been left to her own devices in the toilet or beneath her blanket as they moved from show to show.
That had been quite some summer. She had met some friends of her father's. A girl called Laurie and her two friends Amanda and Taylor. She should look her up while she was there. And Frankie, the daughter of Len and Stephanie who ran the pub in her village back in Somerset. She wondered how she was getting on her exchange year at university in Dallas.
"Hello Nat." She heard Cleo's soft New England accent.
"Hello Cleo." She replied embracing and then kissing her.
There was a group of about eight other people all in white coats standing behind her. Natasha thought they looked like chicks following a mother hen.
"I'm showing a group of prospective doctors around today." Cleo answered her unasked question.
"Sounds like fun." Nat replied looking over the group.
They all looked the same. Young, fresh faced, keen. Well, apart from one. A small girl. From the Indian sub-continent Nat guessed. Her long black hair shone.
She looked like the others in many ways. She was certainly young and she was fresh faced. But she didn't look keen. She had the look on her face that Nat remembered being on her own so many times in the past when she had been dragged away from her piano to look at some old building or visit some historic site she hadn't the slightest interest in.
Those had been times when she had resented Cleo's visits from America. David she knew had had a crush on her. She remembered the Christmas three years before when the police had been on the phone and visited their house. Cleo had gone missing in America and they were trying to trace her. How she had been found eventually at the cottage of a schoolteacher then, strangely had refused offers of either a lift to their house by the police or her father's offer to pick her up. Nat had discovered later that the schoolteacher lived with a woman who hadn't been in the cottage that night. That had all been very strange.
"Have you got the tickets for the show tomorrow?" Cleo asked as they walked towards the security desk. "We need you to sign in."
"I'm hoping to see David in the morning. He knows I'm here."
"Will you be going to the party?" Cleo smiled.
"I expect so. If only to keep Marianne company."
"When's the baby due?"
"Not for three months yet."
Nat pinned on her visitors badge and turned to face the group of prospective doctors. Were they standing a little bit closer than before? They all had excited, expectant looks upon their faces.
"This is my friend Natasha Wagstaffe." Cleo made the pronouncement. "Some of you may have heard of her brother."
"You know David Wagstaffe?" The Indian girl spoke first.
She seemed keen now, Nat thought.
"Quite well." Nat confirmed.
"Sorry." The Indian girl said. "Of course you would. You played on some concerts last year."
"They were desperate."
Nat turned to Cleo.
"Where are we going for lunch?"
"I thought here." Cleo said apologetically. "See I'm a little stuck today now."
Cleo looked about her then pressed the button for the lift.
"Well I don't think anybody is likely to have died from eating here." Nat smiled.
"You haven't tasted it yet." A tall blond boy quipped.
"You will soon."
"What's your name?" Nat asked the Indian girl as the doors closed behind them.
"My name is Pranoo." She replied.
Chapter 2.
Nat put down her knife and fork and pushed the plate away from her. She didn't suppose it would kill her.
She looked around the table. Cleo was explaining some surgery technique and all of the others were giving her their un-divided attention. All except Pranoo. She was looking past Cleo and out over the Dallas skyline.
At least it gave Nat the chance to look at her.
She had an interesting face. Dark brown, almost black eyes. A nose a size too big for her face and a mouth that seemed a year in advance of the rest of her.
She turned her head towards her and Nat hurriedly looked away.
She'll be thinking I fancy her next. Nat thought.
Nat picked p her disposable cup of what had jokingly been advertised as coffee and took another sip. She wished she took sugar now.
Nat looked down the table to where Cleo sat. She was thirty now, she thought, and seven years older than she was. A qualified doctor and surgeon. She had really made something of her life. Nat thought of her own life. A degree in music. But was she going to do with it? Become a pop star like her brother? She had tried that life and it wasn't for her. Teach? Give piano lessons?
Marianne, David's girlfriend wanted her to go into a recording studio with her and cut some tracks. That was after the baby was born. She'd be an aunty then. Her father would be a grandfather. Her mother had said he had never really come to terms with being a father so she thought this might hit him hard.
Pranoo was standing up opposite and walking to where another, older woman was standing. The family resemblance was obvious.
They seemed to be arguing about something. Then she returned to the table.
Cleo stood up and went to speak to the lady.
"Who is that?" Nat asked.
"My mother." Pranoo replied. "She is head of the surgery department here."
"Does that mean she's Cleo's boss?"
"Doctor Mc Toomb." The tall blond boy said as if correcting her.
"Sorry." Nat stood corrected. "Doctor Mc Toomb."
It felt strange using her title. She couldn't ever remember calling her Doctor before.
"Yes." The blond boy said. "She's a very important person."
Nat looked at him. He was hardly a boy. She thought. He would only be two or three years younger than her at most. He was well built already. Wide shoulders. She could feel her hole start to moisten.
She needed a man. It had been so long since the last one. But there were no one she fancied.
She had made up her mind. She was going back to England. She could teach music at the local primary school where her mother was the head teacher. If only up until Christmas. Her mother had suggested she organise and run the children's nativity play for that year. That was if her mother could get the board of governors to allow the name of Jesus to be spoken at Christmas time.
"Sorry." Somebody had spoken to her. "What did you say?"
"I said we have to stay here tomorrow afternoon." Pranoo spoke. "We have a chemistry exam. My mother could have changed the time but she won't."
