Best Friend To Royal Bride / Surprise Baby For The Billionaire. Annie Claydon
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afloat financially. She’d learned how to shop and cook, and at the weekends she’d helped out by taking her brothers to the park, reading her schoolbooks while they played.
It had been hard. And lonely. After she’d left home she’d had a few relationships, but knowing exactly what it meant to be abandoned had made her cautious. She’d never found the kind of love that struck like a bolt of lightning, dispelling all doubts and fears, and the continuing need to look after her family didn’t give her too much time for regrets.
When she reached the Victorian building it looked just as ominous as she remembered it, its bricks stained with grime and three floors towering above her like a dark shadow in the evening sunshine. The high cast-iron gates creaked as Marie pulled them open, leaving flakes of paint on her hands.
‘This had better not be a joke…’
It wasn’t a joke. Alex’s practical jokes were usually a lot more imaginative than this. And when he’d called her it had sounded important. He’d made a coded reference to their kiss, saying that he wanted her to come as a professional favour to a friend, which told Marie that he’d done exactly as she’d hoped and moved past it. That was both a relief and a disappointment.
She pushed the thought of his touch to the back of her mind and made her way across the cracked asphalt in front of the building. There was a notice taped to the main door that advertised that this was the ‘Living Well Clinic’. Marie made a face at the incongruous nature of the name and pressed the buzzer, wondering if it was going to work.
The door creaked open almost immediately.
‘Hi. Thanks so much for coming.’ Alex was looking unusually tense.
‘My pleasure. What’s all this about, Alex?’
‘Come and see.’ He stood back from the doorway and Marie stepped inside, trying not to flinch as the door banged shut behind them.
‘Oh! This is a bit different from how I remember it.’
At the other end of the small lobby was an arch, which had been sandblasted back to the original brick, its colour and texture contrasting with the two glass doors that now filled the arch. As Marie approached them they swished back, allowing her into a large bright reception space, which had once been dingy cloakrooms.
And it wasn’t finished yet. Cabling hung from the ceiling and the walls had obviously been re-plastered recently, with dark spots showing where they were still drying out. One of the curved-top windows had been replaced, and the many layers of paint on the others had been sanded back, leaving the space ready for new decoration.
‘You know this place?’
‘Yes, I went to school here.’
‘Did you?’ He grinned awkwardly. ‘I wish I’d known. I would have looked for your name carved on one of the desks.’
‘You wouldn’t have found it.’
‘Too busy studying?’
‘Something like that.’
Leaving her name in this place might have signified that she would look back on her schooldays with a measure of nostalgia, when they’d been no more than a means to an end. They’d been something she’d had to do so she could move on and leave them behind. Just like she’d left that kiss behind. The one she couldn’t stop thinking about…
‘What’s going on, Alex? Are you working here now or is this something you’re involved with in your spare time?’
‘I don’t have spare time any more. I’m here full-time; I gave up working with the practice.’
Alex had always said he’d do something like this, and now he’d actually done it. The next logical step from his job as a GP in a leafy London suburb would have been to go into private practice, and Alex had the contacts and the reputation to make the transition easy. But he’d given all that up to come and work here, in a community where his expertise was most sorely needed.
‘And you’ll be seeing patients here?’
‘As soon as we don’t have to supply them with hard hats.’ He bent, picking up two safety helmets and handing her one. ‘Come and see what’s been going on.’
As he showed her around, the scale of the project became obvious. Some of the classrooms had been divided into two to make treatment rooms, with high ceilings and plenty of light from the arched windows. A state-of-the-art exercise suite was planned for the ground floor, which would be staffed by physiotherapists and personal trainers, and the old school hall was being converted into a coffee shop and communal area. Upstairs there was provision for dieticians and other health advisors, along with a counselling suite and rooms for self-help groups of all kinds.
‘We’ll have facilities for DEXA scanning in here…’ He opened the door of one of the old science labs, which had now been reduced to a shell. ‘Along with other diagnostic equipment. There’s a space for the mobile breast-screening unit to park at the side of the building, and when the clinic’s finished it’ll be part of its regular route. We’ll be able to undertake general health screening as well.’
‘It’s wonderful, Alex. Everything under one roof.’
The project was ambitious and imaginative, and would be of huge benefit to the local community.
‘That’s the idea. It’s a kind of one-stop shop, and although it’ll cater for complex medical needs it’s also going to be for people who just want a healthier lifestyle.’
‘What’s going to happen with the courtyards?’
They were walking along a corridor that looked out onto one of the two central light wells. They were one of the few things that remained unchanged, and the dingy concrete floors were a reminder of what this place had once been like.
Alex shrugged. ‘There are no plans for them just yet. Some planting might be nice.’
‘And what about the old gym?’ The annexe at the back of the school was enormous, and it seemed a waste not to use it for something.
‘We made a discovery. Come and see.’
He led the way to the large double doors that opened onto the gym and Marie gasped. The folding seats had been taken out and light from windows on three sides flooded into the space. Instead of sprung wooden floors there was a large concrete-sided hole.
‘That’s not…not a swimming pool, is it?’
He nodded. ‘When we looked at the plans we found that this annexe was built in the nineteen-thirties as a full-sized swimming pool. Later on it was made into a gym, but when we took up the floors we found that the pool had just been filled in with hardcore and the foundations were still there and solid enough to use. There’s room for a hydrotherapy pool, as well as the main pool.’
Alex seemed less excited about this than he should be. Maybe he was about to tell her that they’d run out of money, or had found some catastrophic problem with the building’s structure and it was all about to fall down.
‘This is marvellous. Are the pool and gym just for patients or are they available to the whole community?’
‘There’ll be a nominal charge, well below the usual rates. Anyone who’s referred by a doctor or one of the medical staff here won’t have to pay anything.’ Alex was suddenly still, looking at her thoughtfully. ‘What about you? Would you be interested in being part of it all?’
That sounded a bit like the stuff that fairy tales were made of. A gloomy old castle brought to life and transformed. Alex would fit in there quite nicely as the handsome Prince. But something about the quiet certainty in his manner stopped Marie from brushing the suggestion off.
‘You’d put in a good word with the boss for me?’
‘It’s more a matter of putting a good word in with you. We’d be lucky to get you.’
Excitement trickled