It's Complicated by Emma Hughes

Author:Emma Hughes [Hughes, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781529157604
Publisher: Cornerstone
Published: 2023-05-26T00:00:00+00:00

The Whittington looked like a hospital that someone had built while they were drunk-playing the Sims: glass blocks were stacked randomly on top of brick ones. As she approached the giant revolving door Dee scanned the stream of messages that Roo had sent her while she’d been having breakfast with Ines. She was wearing her spotty Zara dress; she’d already left the house when she’d realised it was the same one she’d worn at her first appointment with Kirsty the GP.

She was actually going round in the door when Roo video called her.

‘Roo? Everything OK?’ Dee tried to step out but she’d left it too late; there was a really bleak metaphor somewhere in there, she thought as she started going round for a second time.

‘Yes, fine – I just wanted to check you hadn’t got lost,’ Roo said. ‘You didn’t reply, I was worried.’ She was in the canteen at St Thomas’s, dressed in her well-ironed blue surgical scrubs. ‘Happy birthday, by the way.’

‘Thanks.’ The door spat Dee out into an overheated reception area. There was Andy with his coat over his arm, in jeans and a rainbow-striped jumper that was objectively a bit Gap Kids but which she actually didn’t hate on him. ‘Look, Roo, I’ve got to go, Andy’s here …’

‘Wait, what?’ Roo was looking at her like she’d just announced she was going bungee jumping. ‘You invited Andy along to your appointment?’

‘Well, you’re working today and Minnie …’ Dee braced herself for the first of a lifetime’s worth of half-truths. ‘Minnie’s ill. And I wasn’t feeling great about going by myself.’

Andy spotted her and waved. HI, she mouthed over the top of her screen as she closed the gap between them. SORRY.

‘Can I talk to Andy, please?’ Roo’s voice was the loudest sound on Earth; Andy stopped, frowning. ‘Why not? Minnie’s met him – I’d like to as well.’

Dee looked at Andy. Andy looked at Dee. He shrugged amiably.

‘Um, OK then …’ She turned her phone around and held it up for Andy, her heart thumping. ‘Andy, this is Roo – Roo, this is Andy.’

Andy leaned into the screen. ‘Hiya!’ he said to Roo in a cheerier voice than Dee had ever heard him use before.

Roo was regarding him coolly. ‘Hi, Andy,’ she said, folding her arms.

As Dee chewed the inside of her cheek waiting for Roo to say something else, a thought struck her. She had spent two thirds of her life deferring to Roo’s judgement. Had Roo ever actually asked herself what Dee might think about something, and changed course because of it? The second the thought had formed in her brain she felt sick with guilt. She was the one in the wrong here, she reminded herself – and she was always going to be the one in the wrong with Roo from now on, thanks to Minnie.

‘Dee was saying you’re an anaesthetist, Roo,’ Andy offered eventually. ‘That must be tough – difficult to switch off at the end of the day, I’d imagine.

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