She laughed to herself. Only George mattered as much as – no, more than – her career and, try as she knew she must to rebuild her relationship with her son, there was absolutely no reason she couldn’t have both. Work and family. It’s what millions of other women managed to combine happily, successfully, every day. George wasn’t a child any more, far from it. He had his own life. He could look after himself. All she had to do was listen, offer support, do all the things he had accused her of not doing for so long. Yes, they had argued, not been there for each other in their times of need, not that he even knew she had had a time of need. And she still had no idea what had happened in his life, his marriage, to make him so bitter, so angry, and lead them to this awful distance that hung between them, this prolonged and ridiculous silence. The mistakes she had made in the long distant past could not be altered, but if he could find it in his heart to understand, and to forgive, then she could certainly do the same. It was time to mend things, to build bridges, do whatever it took to get her son back. When she went home, they would talk. Face to face, not on the phone, and certainly not by text or email. She would tell him about the cancer, and he would tell her what had happened between him and Jessica, and if it could be fixed.

‘Baby love, my baby love. I need ya, oh how I need ya …’ the girls on the stage sang, their voices blending together, the words digging their way straight into Madi’s heart. And it was true. She did need him. So badly. He might be nearly forty, but George would always be her baby.

Chapter 29

PRUE

Seeing Joe again had not been as traumatic as she had expected it to be. It had been less than a month since that humiliating evening in the pub, but she had taken huge strides in that short time, proving to herself that she could survive, and thrive, without him, and the pain she had expected to feel just hadn’t happened. No broken heart, no pangs of loss, no desperate urge to throw herself at him and beg him to change his mind. If anything, the strongest emotion to hit her as she’d watched him walk away into the darkness was relief.

‘He really wasn’t worth it, you know.’ Sian had caught up with her on her way to the surgery. She switched on the big torch she was carrying as they turned off the road and into the narrow lane. ‘Never was.’

‘I thought you were still happily swigging the last of the coffee back at my mum’s.’

‘No, any more of that and I’d be awake all night on some sort of caffeine high, which is fine when I need to stay up for the patients, but tonight, assuming they’re okay, I am looking forward to an early night with my very own Barton boy.’