The Secret Path by Karen Swan (summer beach reads TXT) 📕

slapped him hard on the cheek, stunning them both. She could feel the gaping great hole already opening up inside her as she let his lie settle. Because it was a lie, she knew that as fact. This was everything to do with them. It was not just why he had chased her down the street that morning, but why he’d been in that very coffee shop. They hadn’t met by chance, he’d planned this from the start. He had known all along who she was, and when she hadn’t shown any signs of introducing him to her parents, he had proposed marriage to accelerate the process. His surprise over dinner when she’d finally told him who she was? A charade. His prevarication over asking her father for her hand at dinner? He needed more time alone with him to make his pitch. James MacLennan had been right. Alex was cheating his way to the pinnacle of his career ambitions by using her as a Trojan horse to get to her father.

And she knew exactly how it had all gone down. Thanks to that Forbes article – the only one that had ever carried a photograph of her – he had realized the opportunity she presented and he had ruthlessly exploited it. She thought of his hands upon her body, his lips on her skin . . . his baby in her belly . . . Oh God!

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said urgently. ‘But you don’t understand—’

She stared back at him with a contempt she had never known possible. She understood far more than he knew, her mind returning again and again to the profile he’d printed up and specifically, the faint line which her eye had snagged on, just as her father rang.

You last visited this page on 18/03/2010.

A year ago. Eight months before he’d met her. There was simply no other way to spin it – everything he’d ever said to her had been a lie.

Part Two

Chapter Nine

Ten years later

Holly set down her tray with a clatter, sinking into the chair and letting her limbs splay like a rag doll’s, her head lolling back in a moment of stolen relaxation. ‘Tell me it’s nearly over,’ she groaned, her curly red ponytail almost brushing the floor.

‘It’s nearly over,’ Tara replied, biting into her sandwich like she was a lion sinking her teeth into an antelope. She had been on her feet for ten hours and counting, and she’d yet to finish a can of Coke. Was it any wonder she was plagued with almost-permanent headaches?

Holly pulled herself back into a semi-erect form, taking in Tara’s own quiet exhaustion. ‘Remind me again why we do this?’

‘Job satisfaction, apparently.’ Tara arched an eyebrow as she chewed.

‘Oh yeah – that’s it. I’ve had so much of that today,’ Holly quipped, a glint in her eyes. ‘So far, I’ve been puked on, put in a stranglehold, called a “fucking bitch” three times and had someone threaten me with a needle.’

‘Huh. Quiet shift.’ The lowdown on Holly’s shifts as a registrar in A&E often read like horror stories. Tara watched as her friend sucked coffee through a straw, trying to avoid the ‘bad tooth’ she had been avoiding going to the dentist for.

‘Busy one for you?’ Holly asked out of the corner of her mouth, continuing to suck.

‘One sub-cranial bleed, one ruptured spleen, two resusc, and a fourth-degree burns admission. No strangleholds though.’

‘See? You’re missing out. A&E’s where the excitement is.’

‘Not to mention the glamour.’ Tara nudged her friend’s foot lightly, signalling with her eyes the regurgitated carrot remains still stuck to the top of her shoes.

‘Eewww! For God’s sake . . .’ Holly grimaced, immediately pushing her plate of spaghetti Bolognese away. She reached for the Chunky KitKat instead. It was a constant wonder to Tara that Holly wasn’t permanently shaking – she survived on caffeine and sugar and weighed about the same as Tara’s left leg. ‘It’s your big night tonight, isn’t it?’

Tara took another bite of sandwich. ‘Ugh, don’t. I hate awards things,’ she said, her mouth full.

‘I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been invited to one.’ Holly’s tone was arch, but her eyes were dancing. As she had once told Tara, she was in this game ‘for the guts, not the glory’.

‘Well, have you built any international paediatric clinics recently?’ Tara’s tone was wry.

‘Not recently, no.’ She groaned. ‘I can’t even afford to do my side return.’

Tara offered no comment. Her friend would never allow her to help out, even if she was daft enough to offer.

‘So don’t tell me, you’re already packed for the trip?’

‘You mean you’re not?’ Tara quipped.

‘We both know I’m going to be sitting on that plane in my scrubs.’

‘Mmm.’ Tara took another deep bite of sandwich. She wasn’t sure anything had ever tasted so good, but even chewing felt exhausting.

‘If I’m held up, they’ll wait for me, right?’

‘No. They’ll have filed a flight schedule.’

‘I thought that was the point of having your own plane. They work around you.’

Tara shot her a stern look.

‘What?’ she grinned. ‘Am I wrong? Tell me I’m wrong.’

‘It’s about attitude.’

Holly tutted. ‘Your fortune is wasted on you, d’you know that? God, the things I would do if I was in your shoes! Instead you build baby hospitals and vote Green and recycle the shit out of things. Why do you always have to be so good?’

‘Why do you say that like it’s a four-letter word?’

‘Technically it is a four-letter word.’

Tara grinned, letting her mind wander to the promise that the coming week was bringing – getting out of these clothes, this hospital, these shores, back to the place of her childhood dreams, the land of lush rainforests and exotic birds and pristine beaches. She planned to eat hourly and sleep in ten-hour shifts and finally look after herself. Sun, sand, sleep – it had become her mantra, especially on night shifts.

‘Doctor Tremain to ICU.’

They both tensed at the sound of the voice on the tannoy. Tara stared at the half-crescents