LITMIR.BIZ

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if we’d got Entonox, Kate.’

      ‘Yes—I’ll get it. And we’ll come. Come on, Fran, I’ll drive you.’

      The props weren’t working. The weight of the upper trunk was too great, and they couldn’t shift enough wood to secure it. The fire crew was gathered round Mike, having a muttered conference that didn’t inspire confidence. He just wanted to get the hell out, and he needed those drugs.

      ‘I’m going to dig it out,’ Joe said. ‘If I undermine it, under that leg and foot, we can ease him out. The other one’s free.’

      ‘Sounds like a plan,’ he mumbled, but the fire officer in charge had other ideas.

      ‘Sorry, I can’t let you get that close,’ he said.

      Joe’s reply was pithy and not in the least bit polite, and it made Mike smile. Seconds later he felt him digging, felt Joe’s hands under his leg while Ben supported it, stripping away the shale that was digging into his shin, and then his foot moved a fraction and he let out a whimper as he felt his leg sliding down gradually, away from the weight of the trunk.

      He bit down on his lip, knowing it was necessary to dig around his foot so he could wriggle free but not sure he could take it.

      Not without pain relief, but Nick was there, bringing him Entonox. He knew about that—Kirsten had had it when she’d been in labour with Sophie, and he sucked greedily on the mouthpiece while Joe tunnelled away like a mole, shifting the stony soil away from his leg and foot while he tried not to yell. Nick was putting something in his hand—some kind of IV set—and then injecting something that made him feel woozy and light-headed.

      ‘Whazat?’ he mumbled.

      ‘Morphine, and metaclopromide, to stop you feeling sick from the morphine.’

      ‘’S lovely,’ he replied. It was. The pain was going, fading a bit, less global.

      ‘Right, that’s as good as it gets,’ Joe said.

      ‘OK.’ That was Ben. ‘Mike, can you get your legs out yourself? Just slowly and carefully.’

      He took a deep breath of the Entonox, wriggled his left leg free, took another suck of the gas and tried to move.

      Pain lanced through him despite the drugs, and he swore viciously, suddenly wide awake. ‘I need a hand, guys,’ he said, sweat beading on his brow. ‘Just pull me out, nice and carefully. I can’t do this myself.’

      ‘It is free,’ Ben said, feeling round his leg gently. ‘We should be able to do it. It’s a very unstable fracture, though, and I don’t want to drag you. And you need a spinal board.’

      ‘To hell with that. What I need is to get out of here now,’ he muttered as the tree groaned again. He felt it shift against his calf, and yelled, ‘Just get me—Joe and Nick maybe?—and he could feel Ben’s hands on his leg, steadying it. On the count of three they pulled, he gasped and swore and bit hard on his lip, and then he was free, and they were dragging and lifting him away from the tree while everything went black for a second and he fought the urge to scream with the pain.

      As they put him down and shifted him to his back, Fran’s white, terrified face swam into view. He thought she was going to yell at him, but she just smiled a little shakily and said, ‘I didn’t know you knew half of those words.’ And then with a last tortured groan the tree slipped and fell the last few feet with a thundering crash, and she burst into tears.

      ‘What the hell were you doing down there on your own with the chainsaw?’

      He gave a rueful smile, and Fran felt a terrible urge to smack him. She’d hung on as long as she could, but the ‘what the hell’ question just wouldn’t stay locked up any longer, and she sat by his bed in the hospital and clamped her hands together. So she didn’t strangle him, or so they didn’t shake?

      She didn’t know. She didn’t care. All she cared about was that Mike was alive—damaged, but alive—and only because Ben, Joe and Nick had got him out when they had.

      She and Kate had got there just as he had been yelling at them to pull him out, and she’d watched in horror as his face had blanched and he’d let fly a string of words she’d never heard him use before.

      And then the trunk had dropped, right where he’d been lying, and one of the firemen had been lucky to duck out of the way of the flying branches.

      It could have been so, so much worse.

      Infinitely worse. Unimaginably worse—

      ‘I’ve done the milking for you, you idle skiver—and can you stick to Monopoly and not pick-up-sticks in future?’ Joe said, walking up behind her and saving him from the strangling he so surely deserved.

      ‘Hi, Joe,’ she said with a smile of welcome. ‘Give your brother a hard time for me, could you? I’m just going to ring your mother again and let her know they’ve moved him.’

      ‘She’s here. She and Dad have just pulled into the car park. I told them where to come.’

      Ensconced in his hospital bed, Mike groaned. ‘Did you have to? They’ll make such a fuss.’

      ‘A fuss? A fuss!’ Fran all but shrieked. ‘I’ll give you fuss, Michael Trevellyan! If that tree had fallen a minute earlier—ten seconds, for heaven’s sake—’

      ‘Michael! Oh, my goodness, are you all right? We came as soon as we heard but we were on our way back from Plymouth and there was a huge tailback because of this accident—’

      ‘I’m fine, Mum,’ he said, grimacing as he caught sight of his father’s stern face.

      ‘How many times have I told you—?’ Fran’s father-in-law started, and Fran just smiled, stepped back and left them to it. She didn’t need to strangle him. His parents would do it for her. In the meantime, she might go and get herself a cup of coffee.

      ‘So how’s the invalid?’ Ben asked as she bumped into him at the ward entrance.

      ‘Getting an earful from everyone,’ Fran told Ben with a wry smile.

      Ben smiled back, but his eyes were gentle with concern, and she felt hers fill again. ‘You OK?’ he asked, and she nodded, then shook her head, then shrugged a little helplessly and laughed, her traitorous eyes welling.

      ‘I don’t know. Yes. Maybe. At least he’s alive.’

      ‘He’ll be fine. He’ll be going to Theatre shortly to have it plated, and he’ll be in for a couple of days, then they’ll send him home in a cast to rest.’

      ‘He’ll be horrible. He’ll be so bored,’ Fran said with a sigh, and Ben raised an eyebrow.

      ‘So entertain him,’ he said with a smile. ‘He’ll be laid up and fizzing over with all that pent-up energy. I’m sure you’ll be able to find something to do together to alleviate the boredom!’

      She felt herself colour slightly, and found a smile. If only, she thought. ‘I’ll buy him a Sudoku book,’ she said, and Ben chuckled.

      ‘Yeah, right. Like that’ll do it!’ He tipped his head on one side. ‘You going anywhere important?’

      ‘Yes—to get a coffee,’ she said, wondering if it mattered if she started Kate’s diet a day later and deciding that today justified it. She could have lost Mike—so easily. And today had proved to her beyond any doubt that she wasn’t ready to lose him. Not in any way. There was nothing like staring that dreadful possibility in the face to bring it home to her, so, yes, today justified a delay in the start of the diet, because at the moment whether or not they had a child was way down the list of her priorities.

      And Mike—her beloved, darling, infuriating, broken Mike—was right at the top.

      ‘Mind if I join you?’ Ben was saying. ‘I was just about to make a drink when I called him, and I still haven’t

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