‘Can you get that? Is it Rory?’ The zip on the side of this dress was tricky to do up. Twisting round and holding the edges together, Tasha wished she had three hands.
‘Number unknown,’ Carmel called back. ‘Want me to answer it anyway?’
‘Yes, go on. But if it’s Joe, just hang up. He promised not to do it again.’ If it was Joe messing about, she’d be furious.
‘And if he’s calling to gloat about the restaurant, I’ll tell him we put three bottles of vintage champagne on his bill.’ Pressing Answer, Carmel said, ‘Hello?’
Two seconds later, she said, ‘What the hell?’
Tasha opened the cubicle door. ‘Is it Joe?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know who it is.’ Baffled, Carmel turned on speakerphone so they could both hear what was going on. Tasha’s first thought was that the noises sounded like the cat she’d heard earlier, but the human version.
‘Could be some kids messing around,’ Carmel suggested.
Maybe it was. Tasha took hold of the phone. ‘Hello, who’s there? What’s going on?’
The muffled yells and shouts continued, interspersed with irregular crashes and scuffling sounds. Then someone bellowed, ‘For fuck’s sake, get me down, get me down. Is he OK?’
Tasha’s blood ran cold, because that was unmistakably Joe’s voice. And he was sounding frantic. Oh God, what had happened? Was he talking about Rory? Had something terr—
‘Hold him, hold on to him, don’t let him swing . . . someone call an ambulance . . .’
‘Hello? Hello!’ Grabbing the phone back from Tasha, Carmel shouted into it without success; with all the commotion going on, no one at the other end could hear them.
Nauseous and faint with terror, still half in and half out of the changing cubicle, Tasha listened to the sounds of yelling, scuffles and panic. Her overactive imagination was picturing Rory unconscious and dangling by a rope while blood poured from his head and splashed on to the rocks below. Something had clearly gone horribly wrong. He could even be dead. Oh God, this was more than she could bear . . .
Chapter 19
The pain was agonising, close to unbearable. Rory struggled to stay calm. One minute everything had been great, they’d been climbing the gorge and it was all going according to plan. Then one of the climbers above him slipped, dislodging a small piece of rock and letting out an inadvertent shout of alarm. If he hadn’t looked up, Rory now knew, he would have been fine; the rock would have bounced off his safety helmet. Instead it had landed on his cheekbone and he’d simultaneously lost his own footing, saved by the climbing ropes from plunging a couple of hundred feet to the ground but not from slipping sideways beneath the overhang and crashing into the section of rock he’d just climbed.
Dazed and dangling, he felt the pain radiating through his body and knew at once what had happened. He’d experienced it before, following a ferocious rugby tackle at school. And if it hurt like hell now, this was nothing compared with the remedy.
People were yelling, calling instructions as the rescue team swung into action around him. Within minutes Rory found himself lowered to the ground, being efficiently checked over by a medic. The ambulance, they assured him, would be here any minute now. Behind the medic, he could see Joe saying to one of the other climbers, ‘Fuck, I don’t believe it.’
The other climber, visibly shaken, said, ‘Look at his face.’
Rory knew only that there was some blood, not how much. Oh God, what had happened to his face?
The medic, crouched over him, murmured reassuringly, ‘Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it looks. You’re just bleeding like a burst balloon. Ever dislocated your shoulder before?’
‘When I was eighteen. Rugby tackle.’ He sucked in the gas and air from the mask over his face.
‘I’m going to try and put it back now. You OK with that?’
Rory took a couple of extra-deep breaths, nodded and braced himself. ‘Go ahead.’ It was going to hurt like hell, but the sooner it was done, the sooner it would be over.
‘All right, here we go. Grit your teeth.’
Rory found himself enveloped in a whole new world of pain. He let out a gut-wrenching yell as the agony intensified, only dimly aware of his surroundings for the next few seconds as every synapse in his body reached its physical limit. In the furthest recesses of his mind he was grateful that at least Tasha wasn’t here to witness the spectacle and hear him making noises like a wild animal caught in a trap.
‘There, done,’ said the medic.
And like magic, the pain was gone. Unbelievably, the ball had popped back into the socket and his shoulder was normal again. Well, sore obviously. But he was in one piece.