* * *
“Please tell me you won’t go to events like that again,” Billy said when she confessed, taking her hand and looking intently into her eyes.
“Well, I’ll certainly try not to. It wasn’t much fun and it wasn’t very edifying, to say the least.”
“You could have been seriously hurt.”
“Yes, but I wasn’t, Billy, and I’m sorry I’ve worried you, but I’m a big girl now and it’s not like I could have taken you with me for protection.”
“I could have been there with the anti-fascist bunch. Ready to wade in and fetch you out if there was any trouble.”
She smiled at the thought.
“If I’d known they were going to turn up, I would have definitely suggested it, but you would have to have borrowed someone’s toddler to do that, or take your granny along to fit in.”
“Never!” he laughed. “My Granny could incite a riot in a nunnery.”
He looked at her seriously again.
“It wasn’t a very good idea, though was it? I mean, what if someone saw you there, or worse, you are in one of the press photos? It’s not going to look good, is it? Local GP, and police doctor attends FNM rally?”
And he was right, she knew it. She just hoped that that there weren’t any pictures out there. She could only imagine how angry Hugh Grantham, senior partner at her surgery, would be. Not to mention DI Miller. Or the Superintendent. She really ought to have thought it through. Losing her job, both jobs, was a very real possibility. She would check all the pictures on a variety of internet news sites later, she decided, although there was no way she could check them all, but at least she could reassure herself about the main ones.
“I promise I won’t go to anything like that again,” she agreed, and she meant it. It wasn’t as if she had learned anything useful there, anyway.
Chapter 10
Monday morning, on her way to work, Callie bought a copy of the local paper and also a selection of the nationals. So far, there had been little coverage of the FNM rally in any of the major papers or the BBC and she sincerely hoped it would stay that way. Perhaps they had learned that it was best not to give divisive groups like them the publicity they craved, but she thought it was more likely to be because no one was that interested. There had been no deaths or serious injuries to report and not even a decent riot.
The local paper, however, was full of it, as you would expect, and when she had a moment, she quickly scanned all the pictures before breathing a sigh of relief. She couldn’t be seen anywhere, not even in the wide-angle crowd shots.
There was a knock on the door and she quickly stuffed the paper in her bin as the practice nurse, Judy, poked her head around the door.
“Morning,” she said. “Have you got a moment?”
Judy explained that it was her asthma clinic morning and that Anna Thompson had come in for review.
“She swears blind that she’s using her preventers regularly and her peak flow is really quite good.”
“But?”
“She’s using an awful lot of salbutamol.”
“Which she shouldn’t need to if her preventer is working.”
“Exactly.”
“So, what do you think is going on? Do we need to try something different?” Callie asked her.
“No idea yet, but is it okay if I loan her a peak flow meter and ask her to keep a diary of her readings four times a day? I can get her back next week for review then.”
“Of course, that sounds perfect,” Callie answered, wondering why the nurse was asking her permission.
“Of course, she isn’t keen to do it and she says she needs some more salbutamol to be going on with.”
“Of course, she does.” Callie sighed. “And what exactly happened to the last ones I prescribed?”
“She lost them, apparently.”
Callie followed the nurse into the treatment room she used for her asthma clinics.
“Hi, Anna,” Callie said to the young woman sitting in the patient’s chair by the desk. “I hear you need some more salbutamol.”
She was pretty underneath a thick layer of make-up, but even the pale pink lipstick couldn’t conceal the resentful set of her mouth.
“That’s right,” the girl responded. “You have to give me more; else I’ll have an attack. It’s not my fault I lost the last one.”
“Yes, of course. We wouldn’t want you to have an attack, and I will give a prescription, but I just wanted to talk to you about it first.”
Anna didn’t look exactly thrilled at the thought of being on the receiving end of a lecture.
“We need to know why you are using so much because it might mean the type of preventer spray, the dark red one you are using, isn’t strong enough.”
“What do you mean? You’re not going to change my meds, are you?” She looked anxious.
“Not if we can help it, but if it’s not working, we may need to. That’s why we are asking you to fill out the diary and come back to see the nurse next week. Then we can get a better picture of what’s going on and if you need something stronger.”
“Like what?”
“A course of tablets maybe.” Callie turned to the computer and logged in to the girl’s medication section. She did a prescription, despite the system warning her that Anna had already had several months’ worth of treatment prescribed in the last few weeks.
“There,” she said handing over the prescription. “But make sure you come back and see the nurse next week with your diary all filled out, and if you have a bad attack, or are
