Free Neurosurgeon...and Mum! by Kate Hardy Page A

him.
    ‘So is Amy your dad’s girlfriend?’ Alexis asked.
    Amy froze. Had Alexis heard some kind of gossip in the town, or was she just asking a child’s direct question?
    But Perdy didn’t seem in the least bit fazed. ‘No, she’s our friend. We met her last week. Her aunt and uncle ownthe house and she’s come to stay for a bit to help us look after Buster.’
    ‘That’s cool,’ Alexis said, stooping to rub the dog’s tummy. ‘I wish I had a dog.’
    ‘We couldn’t in London because our garden was too tiny,’ Perdy confided. ‘But Buster’s brilliant. Did you know he does proper tricks? Amy showed me.’
    Amy relaxed, glad that the conversation was back onto less difficult topics, and went out to ask if the girls wanted a drink, pretending that she hadn’t overheard a thing.
    Later that evening, when Perdy was in bed, she told Tom what she’d overheard, while being careful not to cross the boundaries and offer him sympathy on the loss of Eloise—or to make a comment about Eloise’s parenting skills. She had a feeling that Tom had had more than enough of sympathy—just as she had, after Colin.
    ‘Ouch. So you were right about the grapevine.’
    ‘No, I think it was just an obvious question for a little girl wondering who I was and where I fitted into things,’ she said. ‘But that wasn’t why I told you. I thought you’d like to know that Perdy’s clearly very proud of you. So even if you don’t think you’re doing a good job, she thinks you are.’
    ‘Thank you for that,’ Tom said. And she could see in his eyes how much it warmed him.
    Over the next few days, Amy and Tom fell into a routine of talking in the conservatory over a glass of wine in the evenings, watching the sky darken and the stars come out. Tom was careful not to ask her anything more about her job, though he did tell her that Mrs Cooper was feeling a lot more reassured. Instead they discussed medicine as it had been in Joseph’s time.
    ‘Can you imagine?’ Amy asked. ‘No anaesthetics, no antiseptics—the pain those poor patients must have gonethrough. And the only way you could operate on them was to get them completely drunk.’
    ‘Meaning they would’ve woken up afterwards with the most horrible hangover as well as the pain from the operation,’Tom said. ‘I’m glad we don’t have to do that nowadays.’ He paused. ‘So was Joseph a family doctor or a surgeon?’
    ‘A surgeon,’ Amy confirmed. ‘There’s a bit in one of his earlier diaries about how he learned from one of the surgeons who’d been involved with the Resurrection men.’
    Tom blinked. ‘The body snatchers, you mean?’
    She nodded. ‘I know it’s shocking, but I can understand it. Before the Anatomy Act of 1832, students could only dissect bodies of convicted criminals—and obviously as medicine grew as a discipline, demand outstripped supply. Joseph studied under Sir Astley Cooper. I think that’s how he met my great-great-great-great-grandmother, actually, because Astley Cooper came from around here. She’d been invited to one of his parties in London in her debutante year.’
    ‘Small world,’ Tom said. ‘It sounds fascinating. So what are you going to do with his casebooks? Get them published?’
    ‘Transcribe them, for now, then talk to Dad and Joe and see what they think we should do. Though bits of me would love to write his biography. The way he talks about trying to learn more, wanting to find new ways of helping people…it’s inspiring.’ And it had reminded her, too, of how much she’d wanted to be a doctor.
    Until the operation that had gone so badly wrong and wiped out her confidence.
    ‘So has there always been a doctor in your family ever since Joseph?’ Tom asked.
    ‘Every generation,’ Amy confirmed. ‘Most of us have been surgeons, too; Joe bucked the trend by becoming a family doctor.’ She ignored the fact that she would havebucked the trend, too, if she’d continued with her original studies.