‘Perhaps I should go too.’
But Dong shook his head, informing her that he was grown up and didn’t need to be protected all the time. When he’d left with the nurse, the doctor switched to English to say, ‘Let’s see about your injuries.’
‘Thank you. But I really don’t need much done.’
Smiling, he said gently, ‘Why don’t you let me decide that?’
‘Sorry,’ she groaned. ‘I just can’t help it. My aunt says if I’d shut up occasionally I might learn something.’
He smiled again but didn’t answer directly. Then he frowned, saying, ‘It might be worse than you think.’
Now she saw the true extent of the damage. The final slide against the bark of the tree had not merely scratched her flesh but torn the top of her sleeve so that it was barely hanging on.
‘I’m afraid I’ll need to remove your blouse,’ Dr Mitchell said. ‘The scratches seem to go further than your arm. Don’t worry, a nurse will be present.’
He went to the door and called, ‘Nurse.’ A smiling young woman entered, removed Olivia’s blouse gently and remained while he studied her abrasions. He eased her arm this way and that with movements that were as neat as they were skilful. His hands were large and comforting, both gentle and powerful together.
Disconcertingly she found herself becoming self-conscious. The blouse was high-necked and modest, even severe, as befitted a teacher, but beneath it she wore only a bra of fairly skimpy dimensions. She had breasts to be proud of, an unusual combination of dainty and luscious. Every bra she possessed had been designed to reveal them to one man, and although he was no longer part of her life she had never discarded them.
It had briefly crossed her mind to substitute underwear that was more sober and serious, but she’d rejected the thought as a kind of sacrilege. Now she wished she’d heeded it. Her generous curves were designed to be celebrated by a lover, not viewed clinically by a man who seemed not to notice that they were beautiful.
But that was as it should be, she reminded herself. The doctor was being splendidly professional, and deserved her respect for the scrupulous way he avoided touching her except when and where necessary. It was just disturbing that his restraint seemed to bring her physically alive in a way that only one man’s touch had before.
He was cleaning her arm, swabbing it gently with cotton wool anointed with a healing spirit.
‘This will sting a little,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, are you all right?’
‘Yes, I-’
‘You jumped. I guess it stings more than I thought. Don’t worry, I’ll soon be finished.’
To her own dismay she’d sounded breathless. She hoped he didn’t guess the reason, or notice the little pulse beating in her throat.
‘Your diagnosis was quite correct,’ he said after a while. ‘Just a light dressing, I think. Nurse?’
The nurse did the necessary work, then helped Olivia back on with her ruined blouse and departed. Dr Mitchell had retired behind his desk.
‘How are you going to get home?’ he asked, eyeing the tear.
‘I look a bit disreputable, don’t I?’ she said with a laugh. ‘But I’ve got this.’ She took a light scarf from her bag and draped it over the spot. ‘And I’ll take a taxi. Just as soon as I know that Dong is all right.’
‘Don’t worry about him. I never saw such a healthy child.’
‘I know,’ she said with a shaky laugh. ‘He’s a rascal, I’m glad to say. No power on earth stops him getting up to mischief. He couldn’t see the highest tree in the playground without wanting to climb it.’
‘And that can be good,’ Dr Mitchell said. ‘Except that other people have to pick up the pieces, and often it is they who get hurt. I was much the same as a boy, and always in trouble for it. But I only recall my teachers reproving me, not risking their own safety to rescue me.’
‘If he’d been seriously hurt, how could I have faced his mother?’
‘But he isn’t seriously hurt, because he had a soft landing on top of you.’
‘Something like that,’ she said ruefully. ‘But nothing hurts me. I just bounce. And I should be getting him back to school soon, or he’ll be late going home.’
‘What about when you go home?’ he asked. ‘Is there anyone there to look after you?’
‘No, I live alone, but I don’t need anyone to look after me.’
He paused a moment before saying, ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t be too confident of that.’
‘Why not?’
‘It-can sometimes be dangerous.’
She wanted to ask him what he meant. The air was singing as though two conversations were happening together. Beneath the conventional words, he was speaking silently to a part of her that had never listened before, and it was vital to know more. She drew a breath, carefully framing a question…
‘Here I am,’ came a cheerful voice.
Suddenly she was back on earth, and there was Dong, trotting into the room, accompanied by the nurse with the X-ray.
‘Excellent,’ Dr Mitchell said in a voice that didn’t sound quite natural to Olivia’s ears. But nothing was natural any more.
As predicted, the X-ray showed no injury.
‘Bring him back if he seems poorly,’ Dr Mitchell told her, his tone normal again. ‘But he won’t.’
He showed her out and stood watching as she vanished down the corridor and around the corner. Closing the door, he reached automatically for the buzzer, but stopped. He needed a moment to think before he saw another patient.
He went to stand at the window. Here, two floors high, there was a close-up view of the trees hung with cherry blossom; the promise of spring had been gloriously kept, and still lingered.
Here in China cherry blossom was a symbol of feminine beauty; seemingly delicate, yet laden with hope and promise. Now he saw that wherever he looked it was the same, as fresh new life returned after the cold, bringing hope and joy for those who were eager to embrace it.
On the surface nothing very much had happened. Olivia Daley was strong, independent, concerned not for herself but those in her care, much like the kind of woman a medical man met every day. It might only have been his imagination that beneath her composure was someone else-someone tense, vulnerable, needing help yet defiantly refusing to ask for it.
He could hear her again, insisting,
He wondered if she truly believed herself so armoured to life. For himself, he didn’t believe a word of it.
A few minutes they’d been together, that was all. Yet he’d seen deep into her, and the sad emptiness he’d found there had almost overwhelmed him. He knew too that she’d been as disconcertingly alive to him as he had been to her.
He’d smothered the thought as unprofessional, but now it demanded his attention, and he yielded. She was different from other women. He had yet to discover exactly how different, and caution warned him not to try. Already he knew that he was going to ignore caution and follow the light that had mysteriously appeared on the road ahead.
It was a soft light, flickering and uncertain, promising everything and nothing. But he could no more deny it than he could deny his own self.
‘Is everything all right?’ asked the nurse from the doorway. ‘You haven’t buzzed.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said with an effort. ‘I just-got distracted.’
She smiled, following his gaze to the blossom-laden trees. ‘The spring is beautiful, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘Beautiful.’
They arrived back at the school to find Mrs Yen, Dong’s mother, waiting with a worried look that cleared as soon as she saw him waving eagerly.
‘Perhaps you should take tomorrow off?’ Mrs Wu, the headmistress, asked when they were finally alone.
‘Thanks, but I won’t need to.’
‘Well, be sure. I don’t want to lose one of my best teachers.’
They had been friends since the day Olivia had joined the school, charged with instructing the children in English. Now Mrs Wu fussed over her kindly until she went to collect her bicycle and rode it to her apartment, ten minutes away.
She had moved in six months ago, when she’d arrived to work in Beijing. Then she had been distraught, fleeing
