‘Fuuuuuuuck,’ Joe exhaled.
‘Yep.’ Weak with relief that the worst of it was over, Rory nodded. Fuck indeed. The sound of an ambulance siren grew louder and he closed his eyes.
Twenty minutes later, Rory had been checked over by the paramedics and was being helped into the ambulance. ‘We need to let the girls know we’ll be late picking them up. Can you call Tash?’
‘OK.’ Joe pulled his mobile out of the back pocket of his jeans.
‘Don’t scare her. When she answers, don’t say straight away that I’ve had an accident. Tell her I’m fine but I just need to go to the hospital for a check-up.’
‘Right.’ But Joe was frowning at his phone, evidently puzzled by something. As a faint noise emerged from it, he jumped and put it cautiously to his ear. ‘Hello? Who’s that?’
He was greeted by the sound of faint tinny shrieking.
‘What? But I didn’t call you. How long have you been listening? Well it’s not my fault, my phone must have done it. Calm down, for crying out loud. Of course he’s all right. Pass me over to Tasha.’ Pulling a face at Rory, he said, ‘God, that girl drives me nuts. You’d think I’d done it on purpose.’
‘You’re telling me they heard everything?’ Rory winced at the thought of it.
‘Yeah.’ Now that the adrenalin-inducing panic was over, Joe broke into a grin. ‘Including you screaming like a girl.’
It was midnight by the time they arrived home, marking the end of one of the most fraught days of Tasha’s life. Joe had driven them back to London, dropping Carmel off first, then Rory and herself.
In the bathroom of her flat, Rory studied his reflection in the mirror.
‘Does it hurt?’ Next to him, Tasha surveyed the damage. If it had looked bad before, it was worse now. Over the last few hours, the side of his face had ballooned, the bruises already livid cranberry and purple. His left eye was swollen shut, the stitches holding together the cut on his cheekbone looked tight and spiky, and the collar of his shirt on that side was soaked in dried blood. His popped-back left shoulder was in a sling to make sure it stayed that way.
‘No.’ Rory shook his head.
‘That’s not true.’ Did he think she was stupid?
‘It hurts a bit. Compared with getting the shoulder sorted, this is nothing.’
She gave him a look. ‘So at least you’ll never go rock climbing again. That’s something.’
‘I might. I probably will.’ Rory’s gaze met hers in the mirror. ‘Until this happened, it was brilliant. I was loving every minute.’
‘Seriously?’ Tasha didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Having to listen in on the phone to the yelling and panic surrounding the accident had almost finished her off; at one stage in the clothes shop, the terror and sense of helplessness had caused her legs to give way.
‘It was a one-off accident. There’s no reason why anything like that would ever happen again.’ His tone reassuring, Rory put his good arm around her waist. ‘You’re only upset because Joe’s mobile called you by mistake.’
The irony of the situation hadn’t escaped Tasha. Last time, she’d given him grief because he hadn’t bothered to keep in touch. This time, she’d been kept too much in touch.
Either way, it seemed, her overactive imagination was destined to keep her in a state of terror.
‘You still could have died,’ she pointed out.
‘Hey. We were out doing something. I could have stayed at home and not got out of bed all day. It’d be safer.’ He shrugged. ‘But that’s not what living’s about, is it?’
‘You’re an adrenalin junkie.’
Rory nodded. ‘I am.’
‘And you’re never going to give up doing all this . . . stuff.’
‘True.’ He searched her face. ‘Can you handle that?’
Tasha quaked inwardly, because this was what it was all about, wasn’t it? Basically, she had two choices. Either stop seeing Rory and consequently stop worrying about him, or carry on seeing him and accept the associated terms and conditions.
‘I’m not going to stop seeing you,’ she told him. She saw the relief on the undamaged side of his face. ‘I can’t.’
‘Good.’ His expression softened. ‘Well, thank God for that.’
‘Wouldn’t it be just the height of irony, though, if worrying myself sick about you caused me to have some kind of stress-related stroke or heart attack?’
Rory kissed her. ‘It would, but it’s never going to happen.’
‘It had better not.’ Forcing herself to relax, Tasha smiled and kissed him on the mouth. ‘Because I’m telling you now, if it does happen and I end up dead, I’ll be so cross.’