Page 7 of The One Day You Were My Husband
“Oh! I assumed you were…”
“One of his very rich friends? Sadly not. That’s why I came to donate some money at this table rather than paying twenty-five grand at auction to go and see the Stones play in Tennessee.”
“So what do you do?” I asked. “Are you his butler? Smuggled in to keep him on brand?”
“I am not.”
“I saw you tucking in his shirt.”
He laughed. “Andrew can’t be wandering around with his shirt hanging out. He wasn’t listening to a word I was saying.”
I told him this was something I often experienced with my patients.
He looked right at me for a few moments as though trying to make a decision, and the energy changed between us.
“Can I—ah, can I get you a drink?” he asked, suddenly shy. “I’d love to hear more about your work.”
“Thank you, but no.” I smiled. “I’ve had to do a hard stop. I drank far too much during the auction.”
The man nodded. “I relate.” He asked a waiter for a glass of champagne for him and some water for me. “Anyway—I’m a philanthropic adviser. In answer to your question.”
I sat back in my chair. “You tell Heynes how to spend his excess billions?”
“Essentially.”
“What a job! Tell me more.”
“Well, I made him come here tonight and fill the table with his wealthy friends. And I made him buy that painting. It’s not all black-tie dinners, of course, but I enjoy my work.”
A few minutes later, one of my fellow organizers turned up to take over on the card machine.
“Lovely to meet you, Carrie,” the man said. “And for what it’s worth, having listened to you talk to the punters about surgery for the past fifteen minutes, I’d choose you over this robot any day. You sound like the real deal.”
It was only when he’d gone that I realized I’d never even asked his name.
And that I very much wished I had.
—
He sent me a letter the next week, asking if he could take me out to dinner. His name was Robin Carghill.
I loved the old-fashioned straightforwardness of putting pen to paper. Dell, who had watched our entire exchange, imagined Robin to be the sort of person who would book an iconic London restaurant and then roll us into a dive bar later on. She was spot on. Our first date was at Quo Vadis, followed by a disgusting Soho bar, the name and location of which neither of us can remember.
He had ordered—and demolished—a giant steak, laughed sympathetically at my “weedy” cod cheek salad and asked me endless questions about my work.
“Are you joking?” he asked, genuinely appalled, when I paused tocheck he wasn’t bored. “Everyonewants to know what it’s like to be a surgeon! You cut people open and chop things out and then go off and have lunch as if you’ve spent the morning bumming about on the internet like the rest of us. It’s witchcraft.”
I smiled.
“Did you not watchERwhen you were a teenager?” he went on. “Peter Benton and Elizabeth Corday were my heroes. Their storylines trumped all the others.”
“I did watch it. I’m afraid I often took notes.”
“Of course. How did you rate their surgical practice, out of interest?”
“Well, questionable, at times.”
Robin started laughing. “You had feedback! Oh, but this is wonderful. What age were you?”
