ze met his. For just one second she thought she felt his grip loosen into a caress, and then he let go of her wrist. ‘Here, let me.’ He snapped a surgical glove onto one hand and bent to scrub at a large blob, just below the knee, which looked suspiciously like vomit.
‘Eugh!’ It seemed that Sam’s usual sensibilities were returning. ‘Is it all off?’
‘Yeah.’ Euan got to his feet, rolling the glove off his hand and over the wipe he’d been using in one swift movement. ‘Would you like to go home?’
‘Mmm, I think so.’ The smell of the bedroom where Carrie might have died seemed to be clinging to her, and she wanted to have a shower and change her clothes. ‘Is Carrie going to be all right?’
‘I hope so. She wasn’t in very good shape when we found her, but we got to her in time.’
‘What would have happened if we hadn’t?’
He looked at her, his eyes dark in the gathering gloom. ‘Why don’t I take you back to the flat so you can get a shower and change your clothes? We can have that coffee we missed out on after we ate.’
He seemed to know that she was just itching to get out of her clothes. Sam wondered whether he felt the same way. ‘Don’t you want to get home?’
‘Nah, that’s okay. The feeling that you want to scrub your skin raw wears off.’ He grinned at her.
She couldn’t let go of this as easily as Euan appeared to have done. She needed his help. ‘In that case...yes, coffee would be good.’
* * *
Euan sat staring at the wall of David’s office. He’d left Sam to go upstairs alone, and he could hear the shower running. Now that he was by himself he was shivering, almost as if he was in shock.
Something about Carrie must have reminded him of his ex-wife. That was all it was, he’d been thinking about Marie and the old guilt had just pushed its way to the surface and slapped him in the face. Asked him whether he thought that caring about Carrie really let him off the hook for not caring enough about his own wife.
Or maybe it was Sam’s reaction. The way she’d been so determined to help, how she’d almost willed Carrie not to die. How she’d practically bundled Helen into that ambulance. The questions that he’d resolved not to ask just wouldn’t go away.
Whatever. He’d deal with it. He’d dealt with all of this before, and he would do it this time too.
A noise at the doorway jerked him out of his reverie. Sam was dressed in comfort clothes, a pair of faded jeans and an oversized cardigan wrapped around her as if there was some need to keep warm. Her hair was sleek and still damp, spilling around her shoulders like a cascade of tears.
‘Hey.’ Somehow the grinding sadness, the guilt that was so old he could hardly name it any more, lifted. Sam needed him, and Euan knew how to respond to need. He felt himself smile at her, and before he knew it, he believed in the smile.
‘Hi.’ She sat down in the chair that he’d pushed towards her with his foot.
‘Feeling better?’
‘Yes, I’m fine. Things are going to be all right, aren’t they?’
Euan had no idea whether things were going to be all right, but there were times when reassurance had to take precedence over the truth. ‘Everyone’s in one piece. And tomorrow’s another day.’
The endless redemptive properties that tomorrow seemed to hold finally made her smile back at him. She hesitated and then her grey eyes met his gaze. ‘Will you tell me what happened? With Carrie?’
‘I can’t tell you everything without breaking a confidence. Let’s just say that a friend of a friend knew that she was in bad shape.’
She nodded. ‘I meant what happened while I was there.’
She’d been so capable, so cool that Euan had almost forgotten that this was probably the first time she’d been in a situation like this. It was likely that she didn’t even know what had been wrong with Carrie, although he’d recognised her symptoms straight away.
‘Carrie had been taking cocaine. Her blood pressure was very high and her heartbeat was fast and irregular.’
‘And you gave her something to counteract the drug?’
‘No. There’s no reliable antidote for cocaine, and by itself it’s not fatal. It’s the side effects of its use that are dangerous, and we treat them as and when they present themselves. I gave her a shot of diazepam, which is a sedative.’
‘And that got her heart rate under control?’
‘Yeah.’ He smiled at her. ‘And talking to her, reassuring her, didn’t do any harm at all.’