Abigail Gordon - [Willowmere Village 03] - A Summer Wedding at Willowmere p.02

That occasion was a memory that kept coming back and when it did she cringed at the thought of
what she’d been like. Did he still see her as the sort of useless creature she’d appeared then? If he
did, this was her chance to show him that she wasn’t.
‘So how’s it going?’ he asked in the lull between surgeries and house calls. ‘It must seem very
different to hospital work. Did you not have any yearnings to go back on the wards? If you had
wanted to, we have a big hospital not far from here called St Gabriel’s.’
‘I miss the bustle and thrust of hospital life,’ she told him, ‘but I’m really enjoying the change. The
job satisfaction is great because it is so friendly and rewarding to be providing health care to people
who say hello to you on the street and in the pub. It bridges the gap between doctor and patient.’
I wish I could be my natural self and bridge the gap between us, Laurel thought, but the chances of
that were remote. David had just asked her if she wanted to go back to hospital nursing and could
not be expected to know that the question had touched a very raw nerve.
‘Working here is fine for now,’ she told him, ‘and by the time Dr Bartlett’s sister comes back, I
might have some clear idea of where I’m heading.’
‘So why not join me for a drink in The Pheasant this evening to celebrate your first day in the
village practice?’
There was silence for a moment as common sense battled with the longing to be with someone who
actually wanted her company. David had already said he’d missed her at the ruins by the lake and
now he wanted to take her for a drink. Could it be that he really wanted to be with her, or was he
trying to be nice because for some reason he sensed her inner misery?
With colour rising, she said, ‘Er, yes, all right. What time shall I be there?’
‘I’ll come for you in the car,’ he said. ‘You could be feeling the effects of your first day here by
then.’
His consideration for her well-being brought a lump to her throat. Could it be that David guessed
that as well as frailty of mind she also had frailty of body?
At that moment one of the receptionists called to him from the doorway. ‘There’s a firm of builders
on the line wanting to speak to you, Dr Trelawney.’
As he took the phone from her, he said, ‘I’ll come for you about eightish, Laurel, if that’s all right.’
She nodded and left him to take the call and for the rest of the day the evening ahead beckoned like
a bright star on the horizon.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN DAVID RANG THE bell at Glenside Lodge that evening there was no answer, and his first
thought was that Laurel had changed her mind. But if that was the case he would have expected her
to let him know beforehand. Where was Elaine? Had they gone somewhere together maybe?
The door was unlatched and he pushed it open a few inches and called, ‘Hello, anyone at home?’
But there was still no sign of life and with sudden anxiety on their behalf he stepped inside and
walked slowly towards the sitting room where he had laid Laurel on the sofa on the day of their first
meeting.
It was as if the clock had been turned back. There she was again, curled up asleep with one hand
pressed against her cheek and the other lying limply by her side, but this time there was nothing
outlandish about her attire. She was wearing a long fluffy robe that covered everything except her
feet.
Of Elaine there was no sign and remembering that he’d seen cars outside the village hall as he’d
driven past he recalled her mentioning during the day that there was a meeting of the Summer Fayre
committee planned for that evening.
As he stood looking down at Laurel he thought how defenceless she looked curled up on the sofa. It
seemed as if her first day at the practice had taken it out of her and he wondered once again what it
was with her.
The rough hands and short red-gold hair had a message for anyone involved in health care and yet
she wasn’t divulging anything regarding them and why should she? he thought. They were her
affair and hers only, but he did wish she would let him share whatever the burden she carried might
be. She was a mixture of many things, amongst them strong and positive one moment and the next
frail and vulnerable.
She’d been adamant that the fractured knee was in the past and she seemed to walk normally, but
was there something else, a more serious cause for concern right here in the present? He supposed
he could ask Elaine what ailed her niece and could imagine the practice manager’s expression
chilling at what she would see as an intrusion into Laurel’s life.
He pulled up a chair, settled himself beside her, and waited for her to wake up, but she slept on and
the sun was setting on the horizon in the summer night when she sobbed in her sleep and lifted the
arm that was lying beside her in a defensive movement.
In the same moment her eyes opened wide. ‘Oh, no!’ she groaned. ‘How long have you been here,
David? I am so sorry. I’d just had a shower, lay against the cushions for a moment and…’
He was smiling down at her, concealing his dismay at her distress before she’d woken up. ‘Don’t
apologise. You are so much less complicated when you’re asleep.’
‘And also less reliable, it would seem.’ She was raising herself to a sitting position and was pulling
the robe around her more tightly as she asked drowsily, ‘Is it too late to go to the pub?’
‘Not if you want to. Or we can stay here if you don’t feel up to it. Where is Elaine, by the way?’
‘She’s at a meeting. If she’d been here she wouldn’t have let me fall asleep so soundly,’ she
informed him, with the memory of her aunt’s delight when she’d told her that she was going to The
Pheasant with David.
‘We are only having a drink together,’ she’d protested, and had thought that after Darius she’d
intended steering clear of relationships until she’d got her confidence back regarding her
appearance. But out of the blue had come David and she could not stop thinking about him.
‘Yes, well, enjoy your evening,’ Elaine had said gently.
She was sliding her feet off the edge of the sofa and once she was in a standing position said, ‘If
you don’t mind waiting a few moments while I get dressed, we’ll stick to plan A—a drink at The
Pheasant.’
It would be easy to suggest they stay where they were and to let the robe fall off her shoulders so
that the damage to the smooth pale skin was visible. It would be one way of telling David why she
wasn’t always as happy as she would like to be.
He was a doctor and would have seen things a lot worse than the state of her back and shoulders,
but not in this sort of situation would he have seen them. Once she’d done something like that it
wouldn’t be the same afterwards, no matter how he reacted. It could destroy the fine shoots of their
blossoming relationship, so a drink at the pub was the safest option.
‘Fine,’ he was saying easily. ‘I’ll pick the car up in the morning before surgery. I don’t mind what
we do and once we’ve had a drink, if you feel rested enough we could go for my usual walk to the
house of my dreams—or nightmares as the case may be. What do you say?’
‘I say yes,’ she agreed, and climbed the stairs quickly before the voice of reason said its piece.
She came down dressed in smart jeans, long boots, a pretty top and the inevitable cardigan and said,
‘Let’s go and forget about everything except that it’s a mellow summer night and we are alive to see
it!’
‘You’re on.’ He smiled at her enthusiasm. ‘I’ll drink to that when we get to The Pheasant, but a
couple of questions first.’
‘Yes?’
‘What are these things that we are going to forget? And obviously, we’re glad to be alive—why
wouldn’t we be?’
‘I was meaning such things as sick people and builder’s quotes,’ she said airily, ‘and shouldn’t we
always be glad to be alive? I know that I am.’
Some of us are more grateful for it than others, she thought with the nightmare grimly remembered
of the days and weeks after it happened when pain had been the enemy, and even as it had lessened
she’d dreaded what lay ahead, feeling that there would never be any brightness in her life again.
But that was past, she was rebuilding her life in a new place, with a new job to look forward to, and
she’d met a new man. What would he say if she told him that being alive was something to be
everlastingly grateful for when one had been so close to eternity?
By the time they arrived at the pub the moment of looking back had passed and as locals in The
Pheasant smiled across at the two most recent newcomers to the village and others eyed them with
mild curiosity, Laurel began to relax.
Maybe it was the friendliness in the atmosphere, she thought as farmers chatted to each other about
their crops and parents about their children. When the landlord called time it wouldn’t be a case of
trying to flag down a taxi or going for the tube.
For most of them it would be a leisurely walk home, with the nearest of the two rivers that met
beside Water Meetings House bustling along beside them, or taking a path alongside fields of
ripening corn. For those in the limestone cottages scattered around the main street and on the lanes
leading from it, there would be just a short stroll to the homes they held dear.
David was observing her thoughtfully and she wondered what was going on behind his steady gaze.
She hoped he wasn’t going to start asking questions that she didn’t want to answer.
He did have a question, but thankfully it was one that she could cope with.
‘So how did you enjoy your first day in the village practice, Nurse Maddox?’ he asked. ‘Was it up
to expectations?’
‘Yes, it was, Dr Trelawney,’ she said with a smile. ‘It wasn’t until today that I realised just how
much I was missing nursing.’
His next question was not so easily answered. ‘So why did you leave it?’
‘Circumstances,’ she said in a low voice as clouds appeared on her horizon. He was unwittingly
taking away the tranquillity that had wrapped itself around her while they’d been together, and
before he said anything else she told him flatly, ‘They are on the list of things that I want to forget
about, so if you don’t mind…’
‘Sure,’ he said levelly. ‘Message received and understood. Shall we move on to plan B and take the
walk to you-know-where?’
Laurel hesitated. She wanted to be out there with him, just the two of them in the warm darkness,
but then what? If David came near her she would melt and another nightmare would have been
born. This time of the senses, rather than the body that she sometimes felt was no longer hers.
She’d agreed when he first suggested it because she’d felt as if she’d needed to be near him as she
needed to breathe, but she was aware that he saw her as an oddity and it was the last thing she
wanted to be to him.
They’d known each other for only a short time, yet it was as if she’d always been waiting for him to
come into her life. But why couldn’t it have been before her world had come crashing down?
‘I think I’ll give it a miss if you don’t mind,’ she told him. ‘I am rather tired still and I want to be at
my brightest and best for my second day at the surgery.’
‘Fine,’ he agreed equably. ‘In fact, I might do the same this once. Sometimes it can be frustrating
only being able to stand and stare. The solicitor is pushing ahead with the sale and the builder I’ve
appointed is raring to get started, but until the land and the house are legally mine there is nothing
he can do. So I’ll see you safely home and we’ll call it a day, shall we?’
Laurel didn’t want to be alone with him, he thought as they walked back in silence to Glenside
Lodge. She’d been keen enough before, but the moment he’d asked why she’d left nursing she’d
clammed up. If it was always going to be like this, what was the point of trying to get to know her?
He saw that Elaine wasn’t back as they walked the last few yards to the gate and loath to let the
evening finish on such a flat note he broke the silence by asking casually, ‘Have you ever been in a
serious relationship like I was, Laurel?’
He knew he was probably going to make matters worse by asking, but they couldn’t deteriorate
much further.
‘Yes, I have,’ she replied, ‘but it is well and truly in the past, and before you ask yet another
question, it ended because the man involved had lost interest. I didn’t come up to scratch.’
He could see her face in the light of the lamp by the gate and was aghast to see her eyes bright with
tears.
He took a step towards her and with arms outstretched said softly, ‘Come here. The last thing I
intended was to make you cry. Let me hold you for a moment.’
‘No!’ she cried, pushing him away.
‘Why ever not?’ he asked as his arms fell to his sides.
‘I might get to like it and I don’t want that to happen. I changed my mind about going to your house
with you for the same reason.’ As he stared at her in amazed dismay she ran up the path and into the
house, closing the door behind her with a dismissive click.
Why couldn’t he have let well alone? David thought sombrely as he crossed the village green to
where the rented cottage stood small and compact. No wonder Laurel had wept if she’d been
dumped by some moron who couldn’t see any further than the end of his nose.
Yet it wasn’t so long ago that he’d decided that she was the last woman he would ever be attracted
to and it hadn’t changed…or had it? If the number of times he thought about her was anything to go
by, it had.
He was captivated by her mood swings, and by the frailty that was sometimes there, while at other
times, as in her nurse’s role, she was capable and energetic…
Cool it, he told himself as he stripped off and went to switch on the shower. If you hadn’t become
involved with Laurel that day at the station you wouldn’t have given her a second glance.
So she’s had an engagement that turned sour too. You can identify with that, but now leave it, get
her out of your mind. Laurel has Elaine to look after her. It isn’t as if she’s on her own, and what
you are doing borders on interference.
You have your answer now. She’s been hurt by some guy and is wary of it happening again, and an
accident where she fractured her knee badly at some time or other won’t have helped.
When she’d closed the door behind her Laurel had stood without moving. There was perspiration
on her brow and it wasn’t due to the warm night or the sprint she’d done up the path.
To have stepped into David’s arms would have been so easy, but the reasons for not doing so had
been so clear in her mind that she’d made a scene instead of tactfully sidestepping the moment,
which would then have passed off smoothly enough.
But there’d been the knowledge that they were on two different wavelengths to keep in mind. David
saw her as some sort of mixed-up nurse-cum-city type who was as prickly as a hedgehog. To her he
was like all her dreams come true and she’d nearly let him see how she was beginning to feel about
him.
He’d probably gone home feeling totally embarrassed about the way she’d responded to what had
been just a comforting gesture, but if he ever got the full picture of how she was beginning to feel
about him it would take away what little confidence she had left since being disfigured, and she
couldn’t afford to go back to how she’d been then.
She’d ignored the voice of common sense by allowing herself to be committed to being with him
every day at the surgery and if that wasn’t a prescription for heartache she didn’t know what was.
When she heard Elaine come in she pretended to be asleep because the first thing she’d want to
know would be how she’d enjoyed her evening with David. She would feel better equipped to
answer the question over breakfast when she was feeling less fraught.
As it turned out, it was a comment about David’s car still being on the drive that was the first thing
Elaine said the next morning. It had been there when she’d returned from the meeting and she’d
expected to find him inside, but he hadn’t been and Laurel had been fast asleep when she’d had a
peep into her room. So he was going to have to come and pick it up before the day got under way.
‘When did David say he was coming to get the car?’ she asked.
‘Some time before surgery,’ Laurel said disinterestedly, and waited for what was going to come
next, but Elaine felt she didn’t need to ask. There was a glumness about her that told its own tale
and maybe later in the day Laurel would feel like talking about it, but clearly not now.
As Laurel buttoned up her uniform in preparation for the day ahead, she heard his voice downstairs,
mingling with Elaine’s lighter tones, and she cringed at the thought of coming face-to-face with him
at the surgery after her exhibition of the night before.
The morning was well under way before she saw him. He was dealing with both lots of patients
because James had taken time off to go to the end-of-year concert at the village school.
Soon the twins would be on the long summer break and Helen, his housekeeper, and Jess, their
nanny, would be kept busy keeping them fed and occupied.
The children both had speaking parts in the play that their class was presenting to mothers, fathers
and other relatives, and while James had no qualms about Pollyanna’s performance, he knew that
Jolyon’s was another matter.
A more serious child than his sister, he didn’t have much to say, but when he did the words issuing
forth weren’t the usual childish chatter and his father wasn’t sure how he was going to perform on
stage.
It was at times like these that he felt inadequate. The twins missed having their mother around, but
the years came and went and he always managed to cope somehow. He didn’t think he would ever
find anyone to replace Julie but, then, he’d never tried to.
With James absent, Laurel saw David just twice during the morning when he came to the nurses’
room to discuss the requirements of patients.
The first one was elderly Sarah Wilkinson and instead of asking her to wait on the chairs in the
corridor he ushered her in personally and told the two nurses, ‘Mrs Wilkinson needs some blood
tests and I think we’d better have the full monty. I told her we would send someone to her home to
take the bloods, but she is determined to save us time and has come to the surgery.’
The sprightly octogenarian was smiling as she told them, ‘The doctor here is going to have the first
waltz with me at the party on the night before the Summer Fayre, so I want to make sure I’m fit.
I’ve told him that there’ll be a queue wanting to dance with him when it gets around that he’s going
to be there.’
‘I doubt it,’ he told her with a wry smile. ‘I’m not the flavour of the month in some quarters.’
That was one for her, Laurel thought, and how wrong he was.
An hour later he appeared again and this time she was alone, but as if the formal approach was still
the order of the day he said briskly, ‘There’s a patient waiting outside, Laurel. He’s come from a
building site where they’re doing demolition work and has an abscess on his forearm. It isn’t bad
enough to require hospital treatment, but it needs to be lanced. I’ll leave him with you.’
‘Yes, David,’ she said with a similar lack of warmth, and then, in the pleasure of being in his
company again, put to one side her decision to stay aloof and said teasingly, ‘Not your demolition
site by any chance, is it?’
‘Are you referring to the one that you turned me into last night? Or the ruins by the lake?’ he asked
dryly. ‘If it’s Water Meetings House that you are speaking of, I wish it was, but as you well know
I’m still waiting for the sale to go through.’
Leaving her feeling as if she’d been well and truly put in her place, he opened the door and called to
the man seated outside, ‘You can come through, Mr Peterson. Nurse is going to lance the abscess
and put a dressing on it, and don’t forget to take the antibiotics I’ve prescribed. Make an
appointment to see me again in a few days’ time before you leave the surgery.’ The grime-covered
building worker nodded and David went back to deal with the rest of those waiting to consult him.
How could Laurel be so flip? he thought as he waited for his next patient. A rapport had been
developing between them, but last night it had disappeared in the strangest of moments and he was
amazed at the hurt he felt at the way she’d rejected his offer of comfort.
James was back by lunchtime looking somewhat frazzled, though he was laughing as he told them
how Jolyon had altered his lines in the play to his own version and refused to budge until the
teachers had agreed he could.
‘And the joke of it was that his was better than theirs,’ he said. ‘I did get a bit hot under the collar at
the time, but Jess, who’d gone with me, was in stitches.’
While Laurel and Elaine were having a quick bite before afternoon surgery the practice manager
said, ‘You haven’t told me how you enjoyed last night. Did you have a nice time with David?’
Laurel sighed. ‘I did at first, but he asked if I’d ever had a serious relationship. I told him the basic
details about Darius and made a fool of myself at the same time by weeping.’
‘I think you could be forgiven for that,’ Elaine said consolingly.
Having no wish to tell Elaine what had happened afterwards, she said lightly, ‘I left David at the
gate and went straight to bed.’
‘He came for his car this morning while you were upstairs getting ready. Did you see him?’
Laurel shook her head. ‘No. I heard your voices but was in the middle of getting dressed. He’s been
giving me the impersonal treatment all morning, which is fine as I keep telling myself that is how I
should be with him. But it isn’t easy. After the Darius episode, and remembering my deficiencies, I
know I shouldn’t get any closer to him if I don’t want to get hurt.’
‘We are not talking about your actor friend now,’ her aunt protested. ‘David Trelawney is in a
different class. He has integrity and compassion.’
‘I didn’t say he hadn’t, but it isn’t pity I’m looking for. I had lots of that when it happened and I’m
not complaining. People were lovely, and their sympathy helped to get me through it, but when it
comes to the crunch it’s up to me now and I’m a mass of uncertainties.’
It was there that the discussion ended. The two doctors had gone on their calls, the surgery would
soon be filling up with the second session of the day, and their separate functions awaited them.
As the summer evenings passed Laurel didn’t go to the house by the lake any more. She felt that if
she did it would contradict the way she was behaving towards David at the surgery.
When it came to health care they admired each other’s application to the job, and as she absorbed
herself into the routines and demands of the practice Laurel would have been content if there wasn’t
always a reminder of past happenings to take the edge off everything.
Because of that she was anxious to avoid any more incidents like the one where he’d wanted to
offer comfort and she’d pushed him away, and it seemed as if David was only too keen to do
likewise.
Yet he hadn’t been able to resist mentioning that the sale had gone through, the stone had been
delivered, and the builder was already on the job, and he’d been so upbeat about it she’d decided
that she was flattering herself by expecting their faltering friendship to be casting any gloom in his
life.
But what he’d said had made her curious, and one night in July she weakened and went to see for
herself what was happening at the house by the lake at a much earlier time than when she’d gone
before.
It was still daylight and she gasped with pleasure at the sight before her when she arrived at the
building site. The walls were half-up, beautiful new limestone was rising out of the ruins, and she
understood how David must have felt when he’d stood in front of what was left of his mother’s old
home and known that it was going to be his.
She was experiencing a similar sensation herself and so much for that, she thought as she turned
away and began to walk slowly back to the village. It wasn’t just wishing for the moon. It was
wishing for the sun, moon and stars all rolled into one.
When she arrived back at Glenside Lodge David’s car was on the drive, and when she went inside
he was in the sitting room with Elaine.
‘I was passing, Elaine was in the garden, and she invited me in for a coffee,’ he said, as if he felt he
had to explain his presence.
‘So where did you go for your walk?’ Elaine asked as she passed her a cup of the steaming brew.
‘Oh, here and there,’ she said vaguely.
‘Not to the lake, then?’ David asked casually.
‘Yes, I went to the lake,’ she said steadily.
‘And?’
Knowing how dear the renovating of the house was to his heart she couldn’t pretend that she hadn’t
gone that little bit further to where the building site was, and she told him, ‘It’s going to look
fantastic. The stone that you’re using is beautiful, so natural looking and enduring.’
His expression softened and Laurel thought if anyone had told her a month ago that she would be
going into raptures over the rebuilding of a derelict property in the middle of a field miles from
anywhere she would have laughed in their face. But that was what she was doing and it was all
because of the man sitting opposite.
Elaine was about to leave them. ‘The last meeting to arrange the party this coming Friday and the
Summer Fayre on the Saturday is taking place tonight,’ she explained, ‘and I need to be there. So
I’m going to have to leave you.’
When she’d gone there was silence for a moment and then David asked, ‘So are we friends again,
Laurel?’ and for the life of her she couldn’t say no.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ she told him awkwardly, without meeting his glance. ‘I’ve felt such a fool after
the way I behaved that night.’
He shook his head. ‘You mustn’t. It was clear that the hurt in you that I’m always aware of comes
from your broken engagement. That it must have upset you much more than mine did me and I will
respect that, but it doesn’t need to come between us…does it?’
She was looking down at the carpet as if the pattern on it had her mesmerised. So David thought he
had her moods sussed. He wasn’t to know it was something much bigger than being dumped by
Darius that had blighted her life, even though it had been he who had delivered the final blow. But
for the moment the easy way out seemed to be to let him carry on thinking that she wasn’t over the
break-up.
‘No, it doesn’t,’ she told him, ‘and, David, I’d love to be involved in helping you build your
house…if you would let me.’
‘Of course I will,’ he assured her, his expression brightening. ‘Didn’t I say right at the beginning I
would welcome your input? And by the way, are you going to the party in the park on Friday?’
‘I wasn’t going to but Elaine is insisting that I do so, yes, I’ll be there.’
‘So once I’ve done my duty with Mrs Wilkinson perhaps we could get together, us being the two
newcomers to the village.’
‘Mmm. Why not?’ she agreed, and immediately wondered what she had in eveningwear that would
cover her shoulders. It wouldn’t have to be something skimpy and strappy like she’d always worn
before, and thank goodness her hair was growing nicely again.
At that moment she wasn’t to know that before Friday an occasion would arise requiring a united
front from them, and it would have an appeal all of its own.
On the Thursday night they were the last two out of the practice. Gillian, the other nurse, had rung
in sick and James had gone early because it was the twins’ birthday and Jess and Helen had
organised a special birthday tea.
They would be having a party for their friends on the Saturday when he was free, but the two
women who doted on them wanted to celebrate the actual day with them.
The last patient had left with the receptionists not far behind and Elaine had gone to keep a dental
appointment, which left the two of them to clear away and lock up.
It was as they were about to shut the outer door and leave the premises that a man came running out
of one of the cottages opposite in a panic. Seeing them, he shouted, ‘My wife is pregnant! The baby
wasn’t due for two weeks but it’s coming now. I can see its head!’
Even as he was speaking they were sprinting towards him. Turning, he led the way into a sitting
room where a heavily pregnant woman was lying on a couch in a state of advanced labour.
‘I can’t hang on!’ she screamed between contractions. ‘I’ve got to push.’
‘OK, Sharon,’ David said reassuringly as he examined her. ‘But I need to ask you to just hang on
for a couple of seconds. I’ll tell you when it’s the right moment.’
Laurel was holding Sharon’s hand and phoning for an ambulance at the same time, while her
husband stood by looking as if he was going to collapse.
‘Get a clean towel ready,’ she told him to keep him occupied, ‘and a bowl of warm water.’
The woman cried out again and David said in a low voice, ‘She’s been coming to the antenatal
clinic at the surgery. Her name is Sharon Simpson. It’s not her first, so that could be the reason for
the speed with which the baby is arriving. She changed her mind about having it at home, and just
after I joined the practice she transferred to the maternity clinic at St Gabriel’s, so you won’t have
seen her before.’
He bent to check on progress again and then said urgently, ‘Right, Sharon, now you can push.’ As
she obeyed with an almighty shout, they heard the first cry of the newborn as David gently eased it
into the world.
‘You have a daughter,’ he told them as the man put down the bowl he was carrying and rushed to
his wife’s side, and as David carefully lifted the child for her to see, Laurel was there with the towel
to wrap the baby in before he placed the little one in her mother’s arms.
‘Lizzie Carmichael was going to deliver my baby,’ Sharon said as she looked down at her new
daughter. ‘She’ll be disappointed when she finds out that she’s missed the birth because this young
miss was in such a hurry.’
‘Or relieved that it’s just one job less,’ the happy father commented whimsically, touching his tiny
daughter’s face reverently.
‘Not Lizzie!’ Sharon protested gently, looking up tenderly at her husband. ‘She loves what she
does.’
‘You were fantastic in there,’ Laurel told David as they stood on the pavement afterwards and
watched the ambulance drive off with mother, father and baby on board.
‘Not really,’ he protested laughingly. ‘I’ve done quite a bit of gynaecology and obstetrics in my
time, but not usually in such cramped surroundings. And what would I have done without you
there?’
‘Managed very well, I would say,’ she said dryly, not wanting him to guess how much it had meant,
the two of them being there together at such a time.
He ignored that. ‘All the excitement has given me an appetite. What about you? Do you fancy
checking to see if the tourist trade has slackened off at Hollyhocks? It is climbing up to seven
o’clock. Or will Elaine have made a meal?’
She shook her head, the red-gold of her hair catching the evening sunlight. ‘Not tonight. She’s had
quite a lot of dental work done this afternoon and as she’d thought it would be, her mouth is sore.
So either I go home and boil an egg, or take you up on your suggestion, and I’ll give you two
guesses which it’s going to be.’
‘Come on then,’ he said, tucking her arm in his. ‘Let’s see if they’ve got anything left at the Tea
Rooms.’
It so happened that they had, and as they relaxed in the cosy atmosphere of one of the most popular
places in Willowmere, Laurel thought that she was asking for more heart-searching. Yet at that
moment she didn’t care because this was the first of three days that she and David were going to be
around each other away from the surgery.
Tomorrow night was the party in the park, and on Saturday the villagers and the farming
community would be combining their efforts at the Fayre, so what more could she ask?
One thing that she certainly wasn’t going to dwell on was how she came to be getting so excited
about country matters when in the past a movie or a nightclub had always been her scene.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE band was playing in the marquee in the park and as Laurel watched David performing a sedate
waltz with Sarah Wilkinson, who was resplendent in dark blue brocade, the moment was taking
hold of her.
There were lots of people there from the village and the surrounding countryside and there was an
atmosphere of great good humour amongst them. Elaine was at the forefront of things as usual,
smartly dressed as always in a long, strappy black dress that enhanced her fair colouring, and Beth
and her husband had surfaced from the newly opened delicatessen.
Beth’s daughter Jess, James’s children’s nanny, was there too with her boyfriend, but there was no
sign of James himself, which Laurel thought was a shame. Yet she supposed that like most people
the senior partner at the practice knew his own affairs best, though it was something she couldn’t
say for herself.
David had called for her and presented her with a corsage of orchids that went with her colouring
perfectly. When she’d opened the door to him she’d seen that his glance had been on her outfit and
had known that he was taking in the fact that she was not as well concealed as usual.
Anything strapless or low cut at the back would not have been suitable, but with the anticipation of
the night ahead Laurel had chosen to wear a dress of dark green silk with cap sleeves and a short
flared skirt, and the high heels were back.
He wasn’t to know that the way she was dressed was another step towards the normality that she
longed for, the freedom to be herself instead of the stranger that she had become during the long
weeks of her recovery.
A sudden longing to tell him what it was all about had come over her as his glance had warmed at
the sight of her, but it had been fleeting.
It would take more than a moment of admiration from him to make her lay her soul bare, or her
shoulders for that matter. She sometimes dreamt that the scars had gone away, that she was whole
again. Awakening to find that it was not so was heartbreaking.
Yet she was coping, mainly because she was learning to live one day at a time and by doing so was
slowly getting some of her confidence back, the confidence that Darius had destroyed when he’d
made it clear that he didn’t want someone less than perfect.
The man who’d come to take her to the ball was playing a major role in the healing process, though
he wasn’t aware of it, and tonight she was happier than she’d been in a long time as she watched
David escort Sarah to her seat when the music stopped.
As he changed direction and began to walk towards her with a smile that was for her alone she let
the blissful moment wrap around her. As the band started to play the next number he raised her to
her feet, and without betraying by word or glance that hers were not the softest hands he’d ever held
David led her onto the dance floor.
It was a slow foxtrot, the most dreamy and romantic of ballroom dances, and this time Laurel
thought she wasn’t going to shy away from being held close in his arms. She was going to pretend
that she had nothing to hide but her pride.
‘Your perfume is like you,’ David said as they glided around the floor with the short red-gold
covering on her head resting beneath his chin. She smiled up at him, green eyes calm and
untroubled for once.
‘In what way?’
‘Elusive. Hard to describe, but mind-blowing.’
She was aware that they were attracting curious glances from some of those there, the new nurse at
the practice and the doctor who hadn’t been there long himself so engrossed in each other, but she
didn’t care. Whatever life was like in the cold light of day, tonight was magical, and for the moment
she wasn’t going to think any further than that.
In the middle of the evening there was the unexpected appearance of Lord Derringham and his wife,
who’d stopped by to make sure that all was satisfactory with the marquee that he’d provided, and as
Laurel watched them chatting with Elaine and other members of the organising committee she
thought that, wealthy though they may be, the Derringhams were very supportive of village life.
David and Laurel danced every dance and during any intervals dawdled outside with the scent of
summer flowers all around them and trees festooned with fairy-lights twinkling like jewels beneath
the night sky.
At the end of the last waltz Laurel sighed and David asked quizzically, ‘Was that an expression of
relief or regret?’
‘I think you know the answer to that,’ she said lightly. She could have said so much more that
would have left him in no doubt about how much she’d enjoyed the ball and being with him. How
the enchantment of it would stay in her heart forever.
But that would be running before she could walk. She had to move slowly in the new life that was
opening up before her. She was not the catch of the century in anybody’s eyes, far from it, and
couldn’t face the thought of being hurt again.
As they strolled home amongst the rest of the departing guests the centre of the village was full of
noise and laughter, but by the time they reached Glenside Lodge there was just the two of them in
the quiet night and as they stood at the gate once more David turned to face her and said softly, ‘Are
you going to run a mile if I kiss you?’
‘No! Yes! I don’t know!’ she faltered, taking a backward step. ‘Can’t we just stay as we are?’
‘What? In a situation where I’m never sure what you’re going to do or say next, and you are happy
for it to be that way?’
‘Is that really how you see us?’
‘How else?’
‘It’s been a lovely evening. Don’t spoil it, David.’
‘So are you still pining for the guy that you were engaged to?’
As if, she thought miserably and looked away, which brought forth a groan on his part.
‘OK,’ he said equably. ‘Hurts of the heart are not as easily forgotten as some things, so let’s change
the subject.’ Wanting to see her smiling again, he said whimsically, ‘So are you any good at
bricklaying?’
‘Would you expect me to be?’ she questioned lightly, relieved to be on safer ground.
‘No. I was teasing.’
‘My dad was in the building trade before he and my mum got hooked on travelling the world, and
he would have liked me to show an interest as he’d always wanted a son, but I didn’t want to risk
breaking my nails. Why did you ask, though?’
‘The builder I’m employing is short of bricklayers, or should I say stone-layers, but as I’m new to
the area I couldn’t help him on that, I’m afraid.’
‘Ask Elaine or James,’ she suggested. ‘They know everyone around here. What about the fellow
with the abscess that we treated? Did he ever come back for a follow-up visit? I wonder what his
skills were.’
‘I could find out, I suppose,’ he said absently, ‘but I do want the best, and it’s late, Laurel. I’d better
go.’
‘Elaine hasn’t come home yet,’ she protested, reluctant for the night to end in spite of having
behaved like a nervous virgin when he’d wanted to kiss her.
‘She’s on the committee, so will be helping with the clearing up afterwards, but that doesn’t say she
won’t arrive any moment, so I’ll say goodnight.’ Their gazes met and he murmured, ‘On second
thoughts, I’m not leaving without this…’
Taken aback at his sudden change of mind, she didn’t resist when he drew her into his arms. He
kissed her lightly on the mouth and then putting her away from him said, ‘That was merely to say
goodnight, a less enthusiastic performance than I first had in mind, but better than nothing.’
With that comment he went, striding off into the darkness, leaving her drained from the mixture of
emotions that the night had brought.
When he turned up at the Summer Fayre the next day David found Laurel serving soup and
savouries to those strolling amongst the stalls and sideshows and looking anything but comfortable.
She was dressed in a long black dress with a white apron and a white mob cap on her head, and
when he stopped in front of the table that she was serving from and observed her laughingly she
glowered at him.
‘It’s all right for you!’ she muttered. ‘Elaine talked me into this because the person who should
have been on this stall had a family emergency that has prevented her from taking part.’ She
groaned. ‘I’m supposed to be a serving wench.’
‘You look really cute,’ he told her, keeping a straight face, and she began to laugh. She’d wept after
they’d separated the night before, tears of frustration and regret, but seeing him again in the light of
another day was lifting her out of the doldrums.
‘Can I offer you a bowl of mulligatawny soup, sir?’ she asked, preening at him in the clothes of a
bygone age from behind the table. ‘It’s the very thing to warm the cockles of your heart.’
‘Yes, you can, wench,’ he told her, his eyes dancing with laughter, ‘though I can think of other
ways of doing that which would be much more satisfying.’
Laurel gasped theatrically and tried to quell the spark of excitement she’d felt at his words. The
queue for soup and savouries was growing and he said, ‘Do you have a spare apron, plastic if
possible, rather than starched white cotton?’
She pointed to a box in the corner and with ladle in hand said, ‘Have a rummage in there.’
He found what he was looking for and within minutes was beside her, serving the soup while Laurel
supplied the savouries.
There were smiles from those in the queue and one humorist shouted from the back, ‘Can we get
the flu jab while we’re here?’
When the demand had slackened off they sat on stools beneath the awning that covered the stall and
David said, ‘When will you be free?’
‘Someone is relieving me at two o’clock.’
‘I’ll circulate for a while, then,’ he said, ‘and when it’s two o’clock I’ll be waiting outside the
refreshment tent.’ She nodded, happy that they were friends again after their flat farewell of the
night before.
As David went to explore the Fayre his thoughts were returning to the same moment as he
wondered if ‘waiting’ described what lay ahead for him. Waiting for Laurel to forget the past and its
hurts, whatever they may be, and give him the chance to take care of her.
They’d stood side by side when Sarah had won first prize for her Madeira cake and a second rosette
for her jam, and then wandered around the event that everyone had turned out for in full force.
It was clear to Laurel that this was a very special weekend for them and no one was going to miss it.
Willowmere’s tribute to rural living was ‘times gone by,’ which accounted for Laurel’s attire.
As they moved amongst town criers, old-fashioned bobbies with handlebar moustaches and
peasants, Laurel was amazed to see Lord Derringham amongst them, dressed appropriately as a
country squire, and she said, ‘I thought His Lordship wasn’t seen in the village very often.’
‘Me too,’ David agreed absently, ‘but it doesn’t seem to be the case at the moment.’
He’d been trying to imagine Caroline at an event such as this and couldn’t. In fact, he was having
difficulty bringing her to mind at all since Laurel had come into his life.
Her thoughts were serious too, but very different. Soon she would have to take stock of what was
happening to her, decide if she was really falling for David or was on the rebound, and she wasn’t
expecting it to be a difficult decision.
He was smiling across at her and she wished she’d met him before the thoughtlessness of others had
made a mess of her life. Yet were she to be asked if she would do the same thing again, the answer
would have to be yes. She’d chosen a career where the saving of life was the top priority whatever
the circumstances.
David hadn’t missed the fact that for the last few moments her thoughts had been far away, and if
her expression had been anything to go by they hadn’t been happy ones.
Yet he was not going to ask any more questions, even though he was curious to know why she
dressed as she did. To keep probing was a sure means of putting the blight on their rekindling
relationship. If it ever came to anything it would be because Laurel felt she trusted him enough to
confide in him.
He’d wondered a few times if her obsession with covering herself up was because of something
unsightly, like a regretted tattoo maybe, and had even let his thoughts run along more serious lines,
such as domestic violence. Maybe she would open up to him when she was ready. He just hoped
that day would eventually come.
When the Fayre was over Laurel and David walked Sarah home. They made her a cup of tea and
settled her on the sofa with the prizes she’d won gracing a big oak sideboard, and turned their steps
homewards.
He was going to ask her out to dinner when she’d changed out of her costume, and was about to
voice the suggestion as his cottage came into sight. But the words hovered on his lips as he watched
a taxi pull up outside the surgery, and of all people that he wasn’t expecting to see, his father got out
of it with a big suitcase and the morning paper tucked under his arm.
‘I don’t believe it!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s my dad. He never said he was coming!’
‘I’ll be on my way, then,’ she said immediately. ‘Enjoy yourself with your father, David. I’ll see
you on Monday at the surgery.’
‘No, wait!’ he protested, but she was moving swiftly in the direction of Glenside Lodge and his
father was looking around him with interest as the taxi disappeared.
‘You should have let me know you were coming,’ he said delightedly as the two men hugged each
other.
Jonas laughed. ‘Why, so you could have hung the bunting out? It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I
suddenly knew I just had to see what you’re doing with the house where your mother lived. How’s
it coming along?’
‘Not as fast as I would like, I’m afraid. There seems to be a shortage of bricklayers. But let’s go
inside and I have to warn you, Dad, that my accommodation is not large. I have only the one
bedroom.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll stay at the pub. Is it still The Pheasant?’
‘Yes, it is, but are you sure? It feels rather inhospitable after you’ve come all this way.’
‘Sure I’m sure,’ he declared. ‘I’ve come for the week and if there’s anything I can do with regard to
the rebuilding you have only to say the word. I’m not a bricklayer, but I’m no mean hand at dry
stone walling.’
‘You’re on,’ David told him. ‘The walls around the site are in a dreadful state.’
‘Lead me to them, then.’
‘You won’t be able to do much in a week, though,’ he reminded him.
‘We’ll see. I can always come back again. Next time I’ll close the cottage and leave one of my
friends in charge of the boat so that I can stay longer. I can’t believe what you’re doing, rebuilding
that house up by the lake. I can remember it as if it was yesterday, your grandmother telling me to
wipe my feet before I stepped on her carpets. She always looked on me with a jaundiced eye when I
went calling on your mother because I wasn’t local.’
‘There wasn’t much of it left when I bought it,’ David warned him. ‘Just four crumbling walls in an
overgrown field.’
‘We’ll soon have it shipshape,’ Jonas promised. ‘If nothing else, I’ll be able to see to the perimeter
walls.’
Instead of taking Laurel for a meal it was his father sitting opposite him in the small dining room of
The Pheasant. The landlord had booked Jonas into a first-storey bedroom for a week and now he
was absorbing all the sights and sounds of the place that he hadn’t been near since he’d lost Rachel,
David’s mother. But the son so dear to his heart had changed all that, and here he was, back
amongst the green fields of Cheshire.
‘So are we going up to the house now?’ Jonas asked when they’d finished their meal.
‘Are you sure you want to after the long journey?’ David questioned.
‘Oh, yes, I want to.’
‘Then, yes, by all means. I’ll be keen to know what you think, but bear in mind the builder only
started a couple of weeks ago. So far it’s been a case of strengthening the foundations and laying
the first few courses of the fresh stone before the damp course goes in.’
Laurel had showered and changed, had a sandwich and a mug of tea, and with Elaine still down at
the village green supervising the clearing-up process was wondering how she was going to get the
evening over with.
She’d been with David for hours at the Fayre and instead of being satisfied with that she was aching
to see him again. But if he was going to be entertaining his unexpected guest and showing him
around the place that he hadn’t visited for thirty years or more, she could at least go and look at the
building site and dream a little. There couldn’t be any harm in that, and they wouldn’t venture so far
after his father’s twelve-hour journey.
It was quiet and very still as she stood by the gate that led to the field, and on impulse she pulled it
open and went on to the site where an assortment of window frames and door frames had already
been delivered.
She was imagining where she would arrange everything if she lived there when she heard voices out
on the lane and froze. It didn’t take two guesses regarding who they belonged to, and she thought
that David would think that he couldn’t even show his father around the place without having her at
his elbow.
‘Hi,’ he said as she turned slowly to face them, and to the man by his side he said, ‘Laurel is a nurse
at the surgery, Dad, and also my inspiration when it comes to this place.’
She was smiling as Jonas shook her hand, her composure returning as she said, ‘I don’t think David
needed inspiring. He was captivated from the start, it being his mother’s old home, and now I must
be off. I do hope that you enjoy your stay, Mr Trelawney.’
‘I intend to,’ Jonas said with a smile for the man at his side, and when she’d gone with a low-voiced
goodbye to his son, he said, ‘So what’s with Laurel of the lovely green eyes?’
David laughed. ‘Nothing, Sherlock, nothing at all. You’ve just seen her in an upbeat mood, but she
isn’t always like that. There’s a sadness about her sometimes that worries me.’
‘So she isn’t the one and only that I told you would come along one day?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘No, you didn’t, did you?’ his father said dryly. ‘Now, tell me what your plans are for Water
Meetings House.’
Elaine was sitting with a glass of wine and her feet up when Laurel returned to Glenside Lodge, and
she said, ‘I thought maybe you were out with David.’
‘No, he’s got a visitor.’
‘Who would that be?’
‘His father, a hale and hearty Cornishman with white hair and blue eyes, has turned up
unexpectedly.’
‘Really!’
‘Yes. I’ve just met him at the building site.’ Before Elaine had any questions about David and
herself, she asked, ‘Has it been a successful day?’
‘Very much so,’ she replied. ‘Those kind of things are hard work, but well worth it because the
community spirit is always there, and I kept getting glimpses of two people who seemed to
“commune” very well indeed.’
‘You mean David and I?’
‘Who else? So when are you going to tell him what it’s all about?’
‘I’m not. I can’t! I do not want him feeling sorry for me, or alternatively beating a tactful retreat.’
‘You aren’t being fair to him, Laurel.’
‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ she cried. ‘I’m allowing myself a month and then…’
‘What?’ Elaine questioned gently.
‘I don’t know. I wish I did.’
‘You’ve heard about the tangled web we weave when we practise to deceive, I take it?’
‘Yes, I have,’ she said flatly. ‘And have you seen my back and shoulders recently?’
Elaine nodded. There was no answer to that.
On Monday morning at the surgery, the two nurses were busy with the mother-and-baby clinic
when Sharon and her newborn daughter appeared.
‘She’s beautiful,’ Laurel said as big eyes looked up at her out of a smooth little face when Sharon
placed her on the scales.
‘I will never forget how you and Dr Trelawney looked after me at the birth,’ she said. ‘Is he
anywhere around?’
‘I’ll see if I can find him,’ Laurel told her. ‘If he’s with a patient I can’t disturb him. But if he’s free
I’m sure he’ll be delighted to see you both. What have you called her?’
‘Elsey. It was my mother’s name but we’ve changed the spelling.’
David had just finished a consultation and was about to buzz for the next patient when she found
him, and when she said, ‘A young lady called Elsey is here to see you,’ he observed her
questioningly. ‘You can spare a moment, can’t you?’
‘Er, yes,’ he said, coming from behind the desk. ‘Is she a patient?’
‘Yes. With big eyes and skin as soft as silk,’ she told him. She glanced down at her hands and
thought to herself, Unlike some of us.
He saw the glance but didn’t comment, and followed her down the passage to where the nurses’
room was. When he saw Sharon sitting there with the baby in her arms he gave a satisfied nod.
‘So this is Elsey!’ he exclaimed. ‘How have you both been, Sharon?’
‘Fine, Doctor,’ she told him. ‘She’s on the breast and is a very contented child considering what a
hurry she was in to be born. I’ve just been telling Laurel how grateful I am for the way you both
appeared out of nowhere and took care of me. It was as if you read each other’s minds. I don’t know
what I would have done if you hadn’t been there.’
His smile was still in place as he said, ‘Yes, there is the odd time when we are in tune, but not
always to that extent.’ He prepared to go back to his patients and said, ‘Take care, Sharon. If you let
us know when you’re having the baby christened, we’ll try and get to the service.’
‘That would be lovely,’ she said, ‘but it will be a couple of months before we can have it as my
husband’s parents are coming from New Zealand and they can’t get away until then.’
‘That won’t be a problem, will it?’ he asked Laurel.
‘No, I shouldn’t think so,’ she replied, and could hear herself telling Elaine that she was going to
allow herself another month around David and then it would be decision time.
She could feel the web of deceit that Elaine had talked about clinging around her, and as David left
them to get on with the clinic after sending a puzzled look in her direction, the day continued to take
its course.
‘What was it this morning with Sharon and the baby?’ he asked as they were leaving at the end of
the day. ‘Don’t you want to go to the christening, or was it because I spoke for both of us without
consulting you first? It didn’t occur to me that you might not want to go, and if that’s the case I’m
sorry.’
Of course she wanted to go. They’d been magical moments when they’d been there for the birth of
little Elsey. It had been one more lovely thing to remember him by, but if she kept to her resolve
she might not be in Willowmere in two months’ time and once she’d gone she wouldn’t be able to
face coming back, even for something as lovely as a christening.
She managed a smile, unable to bear the thought of David feeling guilty over something that he
wasn’t aware of. ‘No, it wasn’t anything like that,’ she assured him. ‘You just took me by surprise,
that’s all.’ Eager to change the subject, she asked, ‘How is your dad getting on with the stone
walling round the field?’
‘Great. All his life he’s vowed he would never leave Cornwall, but I’m starting to feel he might
have a rethink once the house is finished. I might add on a grandad flat, just in case the day ever
dawns when I have children. But after the Caroline fiasco I’m wary of making another error of
judgement. Do you have those kind of feelings about your broken engagement?’
She wasn’t going to get involved with any more half-truths, she decided, and told him, ‘I keep
telling myself that any errors of judgement were on his part.’
‘I’m curious. Who was he?’
‘An actor called Darius Symonds. He’s in one of the soaps.’
‘So he’s a household name?’
‘Not in my house,’ she said flippantly, and it was true. David’s was the only name she wanted to
hear, wherever she might be.
‘I’m going straight to the site,’ he announced, relieved to hear that she wasn’t moping over the
Darius fellow as much as he’d thought. ‘Dad’s meeting me there with a picnic meal from the
Hollyhocks. Would you like to join us?
‘I told him to bring enough food for three on the off chance you might agree to be our guest. I don’t
know how you feel, but I’ll be glad to get out into the fresh air for a few hours after being at the
practice all day.
‘I’m anxious to see how the work is progressing, needless to say, then I’m going to have a go at the
gardens and I use the term loosely. They are full of wild flowers, weeds and shrubs out of control.’
‘I’ll help you,’ she offered impulsively, and immediately thought she wasn’t going to get David out
of her mind by working with him on the garden of what was going to be a beautiful stone house by
the lake. But she had come to love the place almost as much as he did, and that was a straight
course to heartache if ever there was one.
‘I’d love to share the picnic,’ she told him, ‘but will need to go and change out of my uniform first
and let Elaine know I’ll be eating out.’
‘I’ve got my working clothes in the boot,’ he explained, ‘and it’s great that you’re coming, Laurel.
It doesn’t feel the same if you’re not around when I’m at the house, what there is of it!’
The walls that Jonas had been working on were rising out of the piles of fallen stone on the ground,
and when she arrived he said with a twinkle in his eye, ‘So is it the gardening you’ve come to do,
my dear?’
She laughed and he thought she was an odd-looking young woman but there was something about
her that caught the imagination, and without being told he could tell that was how it was with his
son, but whether she was going to be the one was something yet to be revealed.
‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘Though how much use I’m going to be, I don’t know.’
David had been sprawled on the grass, propped up on his elbow with a mug of tea in his hand when
she arrived, but now he was standing beside her and saying, ‘I thought of getting rid of all the
vegetation that has gone haywire and maybe leaving the rest of it half wild with a lawn here and
there, a couple of water features and a gazebo overlooking the lake. What do you think, Laurel?’
‘I think you’re making me envious,’ she said lightly, ‘but, yes, that sounds great. So lead me to the
food and then I’ll get cracking. As you can see, I’m dressed for the job in a pair of old dungarees
belonging to Elaine and a past-its-best sweater, and have borrowed some gardening gloves off her.’
‘Yes, by all means take care of your hands,’ he said, giving her the chance to explain why they were
as they were, but in keeping with the occasion it fell on stony ground and he went on to say, ‘There
will be lots of brambles out there.’
They worked until the sun was ready to set, with Jonas back on the erecting of the walls and Laurel
and David clearing the overgrown garden. It was hot work, the ground was hard from years of
neglect, and he went across to where she was pulling out brambles by the roots.
When she looked up he said, ‘That’s enough for now. It will soon be dark. Why don’t the three of
us finish the night off at the pub? I don’t know about you but I could do with a long, cold drink.’
Taking off his gardening gloves, he reached out towards her and rubbed a grimy mark off her cheek
with gentle fingers.
‘Not like this, I don’t think,’ she said softly as their glances locked. ‘I’ll have to go home, have a
shower and change into some decent clothes.’
It was a timeless sort of moment, the two of them in the garden of his mother’s home, both of them
hot and grimy, yet so aware of each other it could have gone on and on.
But they were not alone. There was a third member of the working party and he was calling from
the bottom of the field, ‘So what now? Is that it for today?’ Smiling wryly, David signalled for
Jonas to down tools.
‘We’ll drop you off at Elaine’s house, then Dad and I will go and get cleaned up at my place and
we’ll pick you up in an hour, say?’ he said as normality returned.
‘Yes, all right,’ she agreed, knowing that she should call it a day when they arrived at Glenside
Lodge, instead of spending any more time with David. Why couldn’t she be satisfied with being
near him all day at the surgery and working side by side with him in what would one day be a
beautiful garden?
CHAPTER SIX
WHEN David was dropping Laurel off at Glenside Lodge some minutes later he said, ‘Why not see
if Elaine wants to join us at The Pheasant if she’s available?’
‘Yes, of course,’ she agreed, and as soon as she was inside put the question to her aunt who had just
come in from weeding her own garden.
‘I’d love to,’ she said. ‘For one thing I’d like to meet David’s father. My dad used to have a boat
when I was small and we used to go sailing on the Norfolk Broads with him at every opportunity,
so we will have something to talk about. But like you I need to freshen up and change my clothes.
So who’s first for the shower?’
‘Huh?’ Laurel said absently. She was back at the site in her mind, helping to make David’s dream
come true, and feeling that, after those spellbound moments in the garden, if he should appear at
that moment she would be able to face up to telling him what it was that lay so heavy on her heart.
If the opportunity came later in the evening she would grasp it and clear the air between them. For
once she felt strong enough to unburden herself to him.
She knew that Elaine was of the opinion she should have done so long ago and that perhaps she was
making too big a thing of what had happened to her on a quiet night in the men’s ward.
But only she knew how ugly she felt when she saw the bright red eruptions on her back and
shoulders and the tight, unsightly skin of her hands. She was no different from any other woman in
wanting to be beautiful for the man she was falling in love with, but the pleasure was being denied
her.
They were seated at a table for four in the beer garden at the back of The Pheasant and as Elaine
and Jonas chatted nonstop about boats, Cornwall and the Norfolk Broads, David said in a low voice,
‘Those two are getting on famously, aren’t they?’ He smiled at his silent companion. ‘You are very
quiet, though. Are you all right, Laurel?’
‘Yes. I’m fine,’ she told him, and wondered what he would say if she told him she was trying to
decide how to tell him what had happened to her before she’d come to Willowmere.
The best idea was to suggest they go for a stroll and leave the others to their conversation, and she
was about to suggest it when David said, ‘I noticed Sarah Wilkinson in one of the rooms back there.
I’m just going to say hello. I won’t be long.’
When he’d gone, Laurel went into the bar to buy another round of drinks. As she was about to step
out into the garden, balancing a tray of full glasses, she paused as she overheard Jonas say, ‘I
suppose you know that David was engaged to be married to an American woman before he came to
work in Cheshire and he broke it off.’
‘Er, yes, I do,’ Elaine told him uncomfortably.
He sighed. ‘I don’t know the full story but break-ups are never easy, are they? She was very
attractive and they made a striking couple. I can’t help but worry about him. Do you really think
he’s happy with his life here?’
‘Yes, I think David seems very happy here,’ Elaine butted in quickly as Laurel arrived at the table,
knowing she’d heard and that Jonas’s casual comments would be like a slap in the face to her niece.
It seemed that she was not wrong in that assumption.
‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go. Say goodbye to David for me, will you?’ Laurel said as she put the
tray down. Elaine watched in dismay as she left the beer garden by a side gate and began to walk
along the main street at a brisk pace.
Laurel brushed away stinging tears. If she’d had any doubts about what she’d intended to do,
David’s father in all innocence had just made it very clear that it would be a mistake, and her
newfound confidence was disappearing like water down a drain.
When David came back to the table he said immediately, ‘Where’s Laurel?’
‘Oh…she left,’ Elaine said awkwardly.
‘Why?’
‘I’m not sure. She looked tired so maybe she’s decided to have an early night.’
‘Without saying goodbye?’
‘She asked us to say it for her.’
‘Right, I see,’ he said levelly, and thought nothing had changed. Laurel was still as unpredictable as
when they’d first met and he was crazy to think he was beginning to understand her.
On a sudden impulse he said, ‘Which way did she go?’
‘Down the main street,’ Elaine informed him.
‘I need to make sure she’s all right…don’t I?’ he questioned.
‘Yes, you do,’ she told him gravely.
When he’d gone striding off Jonas said wryly, ‘And then there were two.’ In a more serious manner
he went on, ‘Oh, dear. I didn’t mean Laurel to hear me talking about Caroline. You must think I’m
completely tactless. I did sense an affinity between my son and your niece.’
‘Yes, you need have no doubts about that,’ she told him flatly. ‘But don’t expect anything to come
of it as far as Laurel is concerned.’
‘Why not? She seems a sparky young lass.’
‘Yes, she is, she has to be, and that is all I’m going to say.’
‘So shall I redeem myself for spoiling the evening by walking you home before I turn in?’
‘No,’ she told him, managing a smile. ‘It’s still daylight and I’ve been doing my own thing for
years. It’s been great to meet you and hear all about life on the Cornish coast.’
Jonas flashed her a craggy smile as she departed in the opposite direction to the one that Laurel and
David had taken, and commented to no one in particular, ‘And then there was one.’
There was no sign of Laurel on the way to Glenside Lodge, which was not surprising as she’d had a
few minutes’ start on him, David thought as he drove to the old stone lodge at the end of the
interminable drive that sloped up to the moors.
When he’d rung the doorbell several times and there was no answer he had to accept that either she
didn’t want to talk to him, had gone straight to bed and was already asleep, or she wasn’t there, but
if that was the case, where was she?
It was clear that in those few moments when he’d been chatting to Sarah something had upset
Laurel and he hoped it wasn’t something his father had said as Elaine would never do anything to
cause her to leave so suddenly. With his hand on the gate latch, a thought struck him. Supposing
she’d gone to the house? Yet surely it was the last place she would want to go to if it was his dad
who had somehow put his foot in it.
One thing he knew, he had to make sure, and he drove off in the direction of the lake, relieved that
he’d gone to pick up his car that he’d parked outside the cottage after giving Laurel and Elaine a lift
to The Pheasant.
It was dark, lightless, with no moon shining in silver shafts between the willows tonight, and no
slender figure standing where he’d found her on other occasions looking out over the building site.
He turned the car round despondently and drove back to the village.
Laurel had gone home and when she’d let herself into the quiet house she’d gone straight up to her
room and stood by the window looking down blankly onto the lane below.
She’d seen David drive up and come striding quickly along the path that led to the front door and
had moved back out of sight, and each time he’d rung the doorbell she’d covered her ears with her
hands.
She knew she should go down and apologise for the way she’d rushed off while he’d been talking
to Sarah. It had been a selfish thing to do, making him suffer for her inadequacies, but she couldn’t
do it. Her legs wouldn’t support her down the stairs.
Hidden in the bedroom she’d watched him leave and seen his momentary hesitation before he’d got
back into the car and driven off in the direction of the lake, and the shame of causing him so much
anxiety brought the use back to her legs.
She dashed down the stairs to flag him down, but was too late. All that could be seen were the
taillights of the car driving off into the night.
In the absence of a war memorial in Willowmere a peace garden had been created by the locals and
it formed an attractive centrepiece in the village. It was a circular arrangement made out of local
stone and, whatever the season, was always a mass of flowers.
There was seating around it for anyone who wanted to stop and rest, and it was very popular with
ramblers and others who visited the village or were stopping off en route to other parts of the
Cheshire countryside.
It was only a short distance from where David lived and was always illuminated in the evenings
once daylight had gone. It was as he drove the last few yards to the cottage that he saw her and
relief washed over him.
Laurel was hunched on one of the benches that encircled the peace garden and when he stopped the
car she got slowly to her feet.
He wound the window down and when she drew alongside asked levelly, ‘So what’s going on? You
left the beer garden with not so much as a word. I was only chatting to Sarah for a matter of
minutes. Surely you didn’t object to that!’
‘No, of course I didn’t,’ she said quickly, wondering what excuse she could come up with to avoid
telling him that his father had made her even more aware of her shortcomings in those moments
while he’d been gone.
‘It was just that Elaine and your father were engrossed in their common interests, you had gone
elsewhere, and I felt that I might as well leave you all to it and have an early night,’ she explained
in a low voice.
‘And so why didn’t you? If that was the case, what are you doing here? I’ve been chasing around
looking for you like someone demented. You were happy enough before I went to speak to Sarah,
so what went wrong in that short time, Laurel?’
‘Nothing!’ she cried. ‘Will you please stop badgering me?’
‘If the day ever dawns when I understand the workings of your mind there will be a flag flying over
Willowmere,’ he told her, still in the driver’s seat, ‘and now if you will get in the car I’ll take you
home.’
She obeyed without speaking and he drove to Glenside Lodge once more, this time with an easier
mind because he’d found her, or more correctly she’d found him, but there was no joy in him.
Maybe he should ease off. Perhaps she felt suffocated by him. Yet she was the one who’d wanted to
help with the garden, the one who was as interested as he was in the rebuilding of Water Meetings
House.
But somewhere along the line she’d been hurt. He could sense it all the time and he didn’t think it
was just her broken engagement. She’d been in some kind of trauma that it seemed she didn’t want
to talk about and he had the choice of giving up on her or waiting until she was ready to open her
heart to him.
She knew it was the moment to tell him where her hurts and fears lay, Laurel was thinking as he
pulled up in front of the lodge, but she couldn’t face it after the way his father had described his exfiancйe.
A striking couple he’d said they were, and a tear ran down her cheek at the thought.
As he switched off the engine David turned to observe her, saw it and, dismayed, fished a clean
handkerchief out of his pocket. ‘I can’t bear to see you cry,’ he said gently, wiping it away,
‘especially when I’m responsible for your tears. Can you forgive me for being so unfeeling,
Laurel?’
‘I can forgive you anything and everything,’ she told him on a sob, ‘and in any case there’s nothing
to forgive.’ She leaned over and kissed him fleetingly on the cheek. ‘Good night, David.’
When he would have reached across for her she opened the car door, slid out of the passenger seat
and said, ‘I’ll see you at the surgery in the morning.’
As she went quickly inside and closed the door after her, he thought wryly that her words of
farewell were the only sure thing he could hold on to. He would see her tomorrow, and the day
after, and the day after that, and would be thankful because he knew deep down that there was no
way he could give up on Laurel.
Hard to understand or not, she had him enchanted and captivated, and he would just have to wait
until she was ready to tell him what it was all about.
Elaine had returned and she said, ‘I felt for you back there in the beer garden of The Pheasant. Jonas
was upset after you’d gone. He didn’t know you were there and realised he’d been rather tactless in
bringing up the subject. It seems that he’s picked up on the bond between David and yourself and
I’m sure he would never have said what he did if he’d known what happened to you.’
‘It doesn’t matter anyway,’ Laurel said flatly. ‘I shouldn’t have eavesdropped. But I was weakening
—really he’s done me a good turn.’
It wasn’t true, of course. Jonas had inadvertently diminished her returning confidence.
After a brief greeting by Reception the next morning there was no time to talk even if Laurel and
David had wanted to. The pollen count was high and quite a few asthma sufferers had arrived
seeking relief. Added to that there was an incident in the waiting room when a toddler wandering
around on wobbly legs toppled over and was knocked senseless as he hit his head on the side of a
radiator.
The mother’s horrified cries brought David forth from the middle of a consultation and Laurel
flying out of the nurses’ room to find patients crowding around mother and child and general chaos
ensuing.
‘Quiet, everyone,’ he commanded as he bent over the stricken child, who was opening his eyes
slowly and letting out a frightened wail.
‘Don’t try to move him,’ he told his mother as she bent over him, ‘not yet.’
The side of the toddler’s head was beginning to come up in a soft, spongy swelling and both doctor
and nurse were thinking the same thing—haematoma.
‘So what’s the situation?’ the first of two paramedics asked when the ambulance pulled up outside
the surgery where Laurel had gone to greet them.
‘We have a small child who has fallen against the hard edge of a radiator and knocked himself
unconscious for a few moments,’ she said as she hurried them inside. ‘There is swelling of the skull
that needs checking out in case it’s a haematoma.’
‘What’s that?’ the anxious mother asked.
‘Bleeding inside the head,’ Laurel told her gently. ‘It’s just as a precaution, that’s all.’
‘Come on then, young fella,’ the other paramedic said as they lifted the child carefully onto a
stretcher, adding to his mother, ‘They’ll soon sort him out at St Gabriel’s.’
‘I do hope so,’ she sobbed. ‘I shouldn’t have let go of him back there in the surgery. Oliver has only
just started to walk and wants to do it all on his own. He doesn’t like having to hold my hand.’
James hadn’t been present during all the commotion. He’d driven up to the moors above the village
in answer to an urgent request for a visit from one of the isolated farms up there and had arrived
back at the surgery just as the ambulance was driving off at some speed, which meant that by the
time he’d been put in the picture and helped David deal with the backlog that had arisen in the
waiting room, it was lunchtime.
The delicatessen had opened officially that morning and when Laurel went across to buy a snack of
some kind she found that David had done the same thing. When they’d been served and duly
admired the new venture they walked back together in silence until he broke into it by saying,
‘We’re getting to be quite a good double act in a crisis, aren’t we? First there was Sharon and the
baby, then today little Oliver. I wonder what will be next.’
It was the last thing she was expecting him to say and she said the first thought that came into her
head. ‘Someone else’s crisis maybe, but I’m not so good when it comes to my own.’
She’d coped with the emergency on the ward that night with speed and coolness, but the aftermath
of it had become a personal crisis that went on and on. It wasn’t going to go away, ever.
‘Are you referring to a broken engagement?’ he couldn’t help asking.
‘No, though that wasn’t pleasant. You’ve been there yourself, haven’t you? But at least you were
the one who finished it. You weren’t cast aside.’
‘Not on the face of it maybe,’ he replied. ‘As for what happened to you, sometimes there is no
accounting for the stupidity of others. After my relationship with Caroline folded I decided to steer
free of any other issues. That was until I met you, but having promised myself that nothing can be
worse than making you cry, I’m staying on the sidelines, Laurel. Let me know if anything changes,
will you?’
‘So we are just going to be friends?’ she said stiffly.
That made him smile. ‘Yes, we are, Miss Prim. And would I be stepping out of line if I told you that
your hair is looking very fetching?’
‘No, not at all, I’ll allow you that,’ she replied, ‘as long as you’re not just saying it to make me feel
better.’
He hadn’t been wrong, he thought. It hadn’t been a hairdresser who’d got carried away, and he’d
seen her hands. Those two things were nothing to do with tattoos, but until she’d thrown off the
protective clothing that she wore like a second skin he wasn’t going to get any answers, and in the
current state of their relationship that wasn’t going to happen, not in his presence anyway.
When he’d eaten the salad he’d bought at the delicatessen David called in at The Pheasant to have a
word with his father before he started his home visits, and discovered from the landlord that Jonas
had gone to the building site once again. So it was a matter of having his anxieties of the night
before brought back as he drove past the lake, though he didn’t need any reminding.
‘I don’t usually see you at this time of day,’ Jonas said when he pulled up on the overgrown drive of
the house. ‘Aren’t there any sick people in Willowmere?’
‘I’m only here for a moment,’ he explained. ‘I’ve come to ask what you said to Laurel last night
that made her get up and go.’
‘You mean Elaine hasn’t told you?’
‘So you did say something, and what has Elaine got to do with it?’
‘I didn’t know Laurel was there—she’d gone to get more drinks. But I just mentioned that Caroline
was attractive and how you’d made a striking couple. I also meant to say that she wasn’t the right
one for you, but Laurel was up and off. So I wasn’t wrong when I thought there was something
between the two of you.’
‘Yes, well, for the record Laurel and I are just friends and that isn’t going to change in the near
future.’
‘But you wish it would?’
‘Yes, but she is a woman with a secret and until she’s ready to tell me what it is, Dad, I’ll settle for
friendship.’ He turned to set off. ‘I’ll see you about half six if you haven’t already had enough.’
‘I’ll be here,’ Jonas informed him stoutly, ‘and I’m sorry for poking my nose into your affairs, lad.
You know that your happiness means a lot to me.’
‘Yes, but do please remember that I’m capable of sorting out my own life,’ he said with a smile for
the man who had been both mother and father to him for many years.
‘Aye, I know,’ Jonas replied, and ruffled his son’s dark thatch with a soil-stained hand before
turning back to his dry stone walling.
So had Laurel felt she was being found wanting in what his father had said? David wondered as he
did the calls he’d set out to do. He hoped not, but the odds were that she had, and somehow, without
actually putting it into words, he had to find a way to reassure her. It wasn’t going to be easy as
every time he tried to get closer to her she was on the defensive.
When he arrived back at the surgery she was chatting to Jess Jackson, the slender brown-haired girl
who was nanny to James’s children, and when she’d taken Pollyanna and Jolyon through to see
their father Laurel said casually, ‘Jess was asking me if I miss living in London.’
‘And do you?’
‘I did at first, but not now.’
Willowmere was casting its spell over her and so was he, but she wasn’t going to tell him that.
Instead she said, ‘I’m going there for the day in a couple of weeks so it will be interesting to see if I
have any yearnings.’
‘Are you going for anything special?’ he asked casually, breaking his promise to himself not to ask
questions.
‘I have an appointment to keep. Fortunately it’s on a Saturday so I won’t be missing from the
practice at all. It will give me the chance to collect any mail that has been delivered to my apartment
while I’m there. I’ve kept it on as it is always somewhere to go if I need a bolt-hole.’
‘That is an odd thing to say. Why would you need somewhere to hide?’ he asked quizzically. ‘You
haven’t committed a crime, have you?’
‘Not yet, and regarding it being an odd thing to say, I am an odd person, David. You’ve found that
out already, haven’t you?’
‘Not odd, different maybe, but I like a challenge,’ he told her as the thought of her running back to
London took his spirits down to zero.
When they’d both gone back to their respective functions in the practice Laurel wondered what he
would have said if she’d told David it was a hospital appointment that she had to keep with the
doctors who had done their best to repair her damaged skin.
They would decide if further grafts were necessary and if they were there might be no way of
keeping her painful secret from David, but she would meet that problem when it came. If she had to
be absent from the practice for a while maybe she could think of another reason for it, and then
there was always the dismal alternative that she’d mentioned to Elaine, leaving Willowmere and
moving back to London.
That evening she told Elaine that David knew she was going to London for the day and was curious
why.
‘And I don’t suppose you satisfied his curiosity?’ she said.
‘Er…no…I didn’t,’ Laurel replied flatly. ‘I said I had an appointment but didn’t say where. After
his father’s description of the ex-fiancйe I know I can’t compete and have accepted it.’
Elaine shook her head despairingly. ‘That doesn’t sound like the gutsy girl who is the light of my
life,’ she protested. ‘If you wanted David enough you would tell him what happened to you.’
‘Don’t you see it’s because I’m so in love with him that I can’t tell him?’ she protested. ‘When it
happened I never thought that anyone would find me so unpleasant to look at as Darius did and that
thought is going to stay with me always. In a weird kind of way I’m fortunate that all the scarring is
where I can’t see it. When I look in the mirror there is no sign of it. But that wouldn’t apply to
anyone I slept with, would it?’
There was only one answer to that, Elaine thought, and if Laurel would only give him the chance
David Trelawney might provide it. He wasn’t Darius.
Like others before it, the conversation wasn’t getting them anywhere and on a lighter note she
suggested, ‘Why don’t you go and give some help with the garden again on Saturday and when
they’ve finished for the day invite David and his father back here for a barbecue? I’m sure the men
would enjoy some freshly cooked food after their labours.’
‘I suppose I could,’ she replied with a dubious frown, ‘but you know I’m no cook.’
‘You’ll be fine. It’s just a matter of putting sausages, bacon and chicken drumsticks onto a hot grid
and turning them over every so often. David will get the equipment working for you.’
‘All right, I’ll do it,’ she said decisively. ‘It’s a nice idea just as long as it doesn’t rain and Jonas is
there to chaperon us so that I don’t send out any wrong signals.’
He won’t be there if I can help it, Elaine thought. She had plans for Jonas that would make him
absent from the building site for most of the day on Saturday, leaving David and Laurel alone for a
few hours.
There was a maritime exhibition on in the nearest town and she was going to ask him if he would
like to visit it with her. It might seem a bit pushy as she’d only just met the man, but they had a few
things in common, boats and the sea for starters, as well as the happiness of those they loved…
A big brown duck was waddling along the pavement in front of the practice when Laurel arrived the
next morning. There had been a heavy shower shortly before, and each time it came to a puddle it
stopped to drink.
As she watched it, fascinated, David came out of his cottage and on seeing what it was that had her
attention he exclaimed laughingly, ‘I don’t believe it! There are lots of them on the river and this
one must have come up the bank to investigate what lies on either side. It must be “quackers”,
drinking from puddles when it has all the river at its beak.’
As she joined in his laughter and left the duck to pursue its way, Laurel thought that only a few
weeks ago the idea of being so enchanted at the sight of a duck waddling down the street would
have seemed ludicrous, but she had to admit it, the countryside had taken her into its embrace. She
was captive to its peaceful perfection, and even more so to the charismatic man beside her.
In the last few moments before the surgery doors opened she put Elaine’s suggestion to David and
he said, ‘Are you sure? You’ve already discovered that it’s hard work getting that garden to come
out from under years of weeds and undergrowth without feeding us too.’
‘Yes. I’m sure,’ she said breezily, ‘and if you are willing to risk the results of my cooking, the
barbecue is on, as long as you’ll sort out the technicalities of it for me.’
‘Of course I will,’ he assured her, with the thought of the approaching weekend becoming more
appealing with every moment.
Clare from the picture gallery near the vicarage was one of the patients sent to the nurses’ room for
blood tests during the morning. She was still in remission from ovarian cancer and much happier for
it, but James wasn’t taking any chances, and as part of a routine check-up he’d asked for the tests to
be done.
She was a pleasant woman in her fifties, unmarried, and ready to chat as she explained that she’d
been Georgina Adams’s patient until the dark-haired doctor that Laurel had glimpsed that first day
with her baby had remarried her husband and given him another child.
‘I’m little Arran’s godmother,’ Clare informed the two nurses with a wealth of affection in her
voice. ‘The Fates have lately been most kind to me. My cancer has disappeared, I was asked to be
part of Arran’s life, and my mother, who lives with me and can be difficult, has been a changed
character since I was ill.’
When she’d gone Gillian, the other nurse, said, ‘There goes a very happy woman and a brave one
too. I’ve never once heard her complain about the cancer.’
Maybe there is a message for me somewhere in that, Laurel thought as she greeted the next person
to be summoned from the chairs in the corridor, but it isn’t ever going to stop the awful ache I feel
inside when I think about David.
When she arrived at the house by the lake on the Saturday morning she gasped at the progress that
was being made. All the walls were up and the builder and his crew were on site, getting ready to
put the slates on a new roof.
It was taking shape, she thought wistfully, and wished she could be a permanent part of it. As he
went to greet her David was observing her expression. Would Laurel ever let him get near enough
to tell her that Water Meetings House could turn out to be an empty dream without her there beside
him?
There was one thing he was sure of. He knew that he wasn’t going to be able to wait forever to
discover what it was that always reared its head every time she was weakening in her resolve to
keep him on the edge of her life. He told himself frequently that he could and would, and when they
were apart the resolve was still there, but the moment he saw her again the longing to hold her close
and tell her how much he cared was so strong he could almost taste it.
She was looking around her. ‘I don’t see your father. Isn’t he here?’
‘I thought you would know,’ he said in surprise. ‘Dad has gone to a maritime exhibition with
Elaine.’
‘No, I didn’t know,’ she said slowly, ‘but it explains why she was out early and vague about how
she was going to spend the day…and who with.’
‘So it’s just you and me,’ he said. ‘Do you think you can cope with that?’
‘I’ll have to, won’t I?’ she replied, and he gave her a long, level look and went back to his digging.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT WAS late afternoon. The workmen had gone home to relax for the rest of the weekend, and Laurel
and David, hot and grimy, were about to do the same when he asked, ‘What kind of a barbecue is
it?’
‘Gas,’ she replied. ‘One of those cylinder things has to be attached to it.’
He was laughing. ‘Spoken like a true handywoman.’
She pulled a face at him. ‘I’m a city girl, don’t forget, an expert in fashion, take-aways and theatre
tickets.’
‘So you haven’t fallen in love with Willowmere?’
She was admitting to herself frequently that she had. She’d fallen in love with everything about the
place and him in particular, but it was a moment for evasions rather than honesty and she said
casually, ‘It’s a nice place.’
His heart sank. He hadn’t forgotten that she was going back to her roots in two weeks. Would she
want to stay there when she’d renewed her acquaintance with the capital city?
They were back at Glenside Lodge, scrubbed and clean after their efforts at the building site, and it
was time for the barbecue. David had used the main bathroom to shower and Laurel the one in the
en suite in her room, and there’d been an awkward moment when he’d heard her lock the door as
he’d been crossing the landing.
‘You’re quite safe, you know,’ he’d said coolly from the other side. ‘I’m not going to suggest that
we shower together, or anything else that would be as remote from your thinking as the heavens
above.’ And when she hadn’t replied, he’d gone on his way.
She’d closed her eyes in anguish. Yet there’d been no signs of distress when she’d reappeared in
one of the inevitable high-necked tops and a long cotton skirt, and David’s moment of rebuke
seemed to have been just that because he was smiling as he said, ‘The barbecue is up and running
on the patio. I’ve connected it to the propane and the gas is lit. All we need now is the food. Are
you sure you’re up to this, though? You’ve had a strenuous day so far. I’ll do the cooking if you
like.’
‘No. I’m going to do it,’ she informed him. ‘I know you think I’m pretty useless so it’s time I
showed you that I’m not.’ She gave him a gentle push towards the garden chairs out on the lawn.
‘Go and relax and I’ll call you when it’s ready.’
‘All right,’ he agreed, ‘but be sure to adjust the flame if you think the food is cooking too quickly.’
It was all going to plan. The sausages and the chicken legs that Elaine had suggested were all
sizzling nicely on the grid. Laurel turned away to prepare the bacon for cooking, not realising in
those first few seconds that smoke was rising from fat that had dripped through. She turned around
to see flames leaping up from the barbecue.
She was back on the ward, but this time fear didn’t lend wings to her feet. She was transfixed, and
David came leaping onto the patio and dampened the flames with water from the bucket they’d put
nearby. The fire went out with a loud hissing sound, and at the same moment that he turned to
reassure her that it was all right, just a minor hiccup, Laurel was swaying on her feet.
He caught her before she crumpled and carried her into the sitting room, thinking as he did so how
limp and helpless she felt in his arms. For a few seconds no words issued from the mouth that had
refused his kisses, no bright eyes looked up at him. There had been fear in them when the flames
had appeared and now they were closed in a still, white face.
As he laid her down on the sofa, as he’d done on the day she’d arrived in the village, David was
thinking that it had been a bit worrying, but it had soon been sorted. It wasn’t as if the house had
been on fire. It was such a shame that Laurel’s intention to cook for him had been thwarted, but
more important was for her to realise that now there was nothing to be afraid of.
She opened her eyes and the panic was still there. ‘It’s all right,’ he said gently. ‘Everything is
sorted. You saw me put out the fire and I’ve turned the gas off. It was my fault. I should have
stayed beside you while you were cooking the food.’
She turned her head into the pillow and said in a muffled voice, ‘You must think I’m stupid. I just
panicked.’
He shook his head. ‘You’re not stupid, Laurel. You are bright and funny, clever and kind, but why
were you so distressed?’
‘It was probably because everything I touch is a disaster,’ she said evasively. ‘My engagement was
a catastrophe, and now I can’t even cook you a meal without almost setting the place on fire.’
He stroked her cheek gently. ‘That’s twice you’ve fainted on me. I hope you’re not going to make a
habit of it.’
‘I’ll try not to,’ she promised weakly, and raised herself up on the cushions. ‘I’m all right now,
David. It was just the shock of seeing the flames leaping up, that’s all.’
He nodded understandingly yet wasn’t convinced, but if Laurel wanted him to think that he would
go along with it for the present.
The sound of voices on the front path indicated that Elaine and Jonas were back and he sighed. So
much for time alone with Laurel. ‘Stay where you are,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and explain what’s
happened to Elaine.’
‘No,’ she protested, getting off the sofa. ‘I don’t want to worry her. I’m fine now.’
‘All right,’ he agreed doubtfully, ‘but…’
‘I’m OK, David, I promise,’ she insisted, and said with a pale smile, ‘Thanks for being there for me
once again. I’m sure you never expected to be lumbered with me in your life ever since you lifted
my cases off the train that day at the station. I’m a nuisance, aren’t I?’
He was smiling for the first time since she’d fainted. ‘If being a top-notch nurse at the surgery,
working beside me in that jungle I call a garden, and brightening my days with your presence
constitutes being a nuisance then, yes, you are. And now, if you’re sure you are up to it, I think we
should present ourselves to Dad and Elaine, who are bound to have smelt the smoke and will be
wondering where we are.’
He took her hand and as they went out into the hall together she wished that his firm, reassuring
clasp could be there for her always in darkness and in light.
Elaine and Jonas had gone straight to the garden via the kitchen and were lounging with long, cold
drinks in front of them when they appeared. Without any reference to lingering odours, her aunt
said, ‘Have you had a nice day?’
‘The barbecue seemed to be cooking too fast and some of the food got overdone, so I’m taking
David somewhere for a decent meal to make up for it,’ Laurel announced, and met Jonas’s shrewd
blue gaze with, ‘We’ll see you two later.’
‘Well done!’ David said as they drove to the village. ‘I couldn’t have done better myself.’
‘Oh, I’ll bet you could,’ she teased, happy that she had him to herself after all. ‘Let’s hope that they
have a free table somewhere.’
‘If they haven’t, we can go to my place and I’ll rustle up something to eat,’ he suggested.
He was waiting to see her reaction to that idea and wasn’t surprised when she said hurriedly, ‘That
wouldn’t be fair. I’m supposed to be entertaining you. If they can’t fit us in at the pub, Hollyhocks
might still be open.’
‘Sure,’ he said easily. ‘We’ll just play it as it comes,’ and wondered why Laurel had been keen for
them to spend the evening alone before and now she was chickening out at the thought of him
taking her to the cottage.
There wasn’t a free table at The Pheasant, and Hollyhocks Tea Rooms had closed, so because of
Laurel’s reluctance to take up his offer of eating at his place David said, ‘I think something is
telling us to call it a day, don’t you?’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ she agreed, and on a crazy impulse that she knew she might regret said,
‘But I would like to see where you live if you haven’t changed your mind.’
‘It will be my pleasure,’ he said, ‘but when I’ve made you a sandwich and you’ve sampled a glass
of Helen’s home-made elderberry wine, I am going to take you home. You did pass out earlier after
your scare and you were helping me with the garden for a long time before that, so it’s an early
night for you, Nurse Maddox.’
‘Who is Helen who makes the wine?’ she asked, turning a deaf ear to his solicitations on her behalf.
‘She is James’s elderly housekeeper, who often sends round something nice when she has baked too
much.’
As they walked up the path to the cottage David said, ‘It’s very small, compact in every detail but
small. James offered me the annexe to the surgery when I moved to Willowmere. It’s where his
sister Anna used to live, but I saw this place and liked it and here I am, though hopefully not for
long.
‘I saw Lizzie Carmichael, one of the midwives at St Gabriel’s, the other day. She’d heard about my
building project and asked if I would let her know when I’m moving out of here as she’s interested
in coming to live in Willowmere and would like to rent the cottage if possible when it comes empty.
‘She’s a great girl but a bit of a mystery. Doesn’t seem to be in a relationship of any kind, which is
surprising, but I think that Lizzie is in love with the job. She’s a born mother, so it must be a strange
feeling to be delivering other people’s babies all the time and never one of your own.’
He was turning the key in the lock and when the door swung back he stepped inside and waited for
her to pass him in a hallway that was so narrow she couldn’t help but brush against him as he
pointed towards a sitting room that was attractively furnished but also quite small.
The brief moment of contact had made her blood warm, but Laurel controlled the urge to throw
herself into his arms and looked around her. She could understand why David was rather cramped
in this place and wanted his own space. It also explained why his father was staying at The
Pheasant.
‘Take a seat while I prepare something to eat and pour the wine,’ he said, ‘and if Helen’s wine isn’t
to your liking, I’ll make tea or coffee.’
When he brought in the food and drink he said, ‘I’ll be going from one extreme to the other when I
move into Water Meetings House, leaving a tiny cottage for a large detached one. It can’t come too
soon, although I was happy enough here until I saw my mother’s old home.’ And met you, he
wanted to tell her, but the thing she didn’t want him to know lay between them as heavy as lead.
‘Will you have a housewarming?’ she wanted to know, and he shrugged the suggestion off as if it
was of no account.
‘It all depends on circumstances.’
‘Such as?’
‘Whether I want one.’
‘Why wouldn’t you?’
‘I would have expected you to know the answer to that,’ he said, stung by her casual questioning.
He’d made his feelings for her clear enough. Did he have to express them in neon lights for her to
take notice?
Laurel knew she’d upset him, and fighting an insane urge to take off her top and show him the
reason why she was always holding back she got up to go.
‘I can see myself home,’ she told him. ‘It’s still daylight and you were right about me needing an
early night, David. It has been a long day and I want to give the barbecue a quick clean before I go
to bed after my catastrophic performance on it.’
‘You’re making too much of what happened,’ he said gently, his good humour returning. ‘It wasn’t
the end of the world.’
She gave a vestige of a smile. ‘True, but one’s world can end in a matter of seconds in some
circumstances.’
‘Are we talking about your broken engagement again by any chance?’
‘Again…no.’
She was moving towards the narrow hallway. ‘Thank you for a lovely day, David,’ she said
gravely. ‘I’m sorry I’m so difficult to deal with.’ And before he could reply she was gone, walking
slowly in the direction of Glenside Lodge. Remembering how she’d made it clear that she didn’t
want him to walk her home, he didn’t go after her.
Elaine was waiting up for her when she got there and her first words were, ‘What happened with the
barbecue, Laurel?’
‘The food caught fire.’
‘Oh, no, I should never have suggested it! That has never happened before. What did you do?’
‘Froze to the spot, and while David was extinguishing the flames I fainted.’
‘How awful that you of all people should have had such a fright.’
‘Mmm, and I missed its only compensation. When I came out of the faint I was lying on the sofa, so
David must have carried me there from the patio. He must rue the day he ever set eyes on me,’ she
said with droll regret.
Elaine had to smile in spite of her consternation. ‘At least he must feel that life is never boring when
he’s around you, and so I take it that the food was spoilt?’
‘Yes, it was burnt, then soaked. Before I go to bed I’m going to give the barbecue a good clean.’
‘Too late, it’s done and put away,’ she was told.
‘Thanks for that,’ she breathed, and sinking down onto the nearest chair asked, ‘And so how was
your day with the ship’s captain?’
‘You are the cheeky one,’ Elaine said laughingly. ‘Jonas is a nice guy who loves his son the way I
love you. He says he’ll take me out in his boat if ever I’m in Cornwall.’
‘And are you going to take him up on the offer?’ Laurel asked curiously.
‘Yes, if ever I’m in Cornwall, which is hardly likely.’
With a feeling that Elaine didn’t want to pursue that topic Laurel headed off to bed. She paused on
the bottom step of the stairs and said, ‘It’s been a strange day, full of peaks and valleys. It will be a
relief to go to London to chill out when the time comes. I might even be looking forward to it if my
reason for going wasn’t my check-up.’
‘I’m sorry I can’t go with you for moral support,’ Elaine said, ‘but as you know it’s the quarterly
audit at the practice then and James and I will be bogged down with it all day Saturday.’
‘I’ll be fine on my own,’ Laurel told her. ‘If I have to have more skin grafts it won’t be so soon.’
With that she climbed the rest of the stairs and went to bed.
Sleep came fast. She was too tired to dwell on the day’s events, but on awakening the next morning
they came crowding back, and as she lay reliving them the worst thought that came to mind was
knowing that it was going to be a long time before she ceased to see incidents like yesterday’s as
moments of terror…
She’d been involved in a nightmare happening not so long ago due to the duplicity and carelessness
of others, and it was going to be etched in her mind and on her body for ever more. Now she was
nervous at the drop of a hat.
The best part of the day had been coming out of the faint to find David looking down at her with his
eyes full of concern. She didn’t deserve him, she thought dejectedly. She was continually disrupting
his life, blowing hot and cold and attracting catastrophes like a magnet.
Yet when the phone beside her bed rang and it was him, every other thought was wiped out in the
pleasure of hearing his voice.
‘Just checking that you are all right after yesterday’s trauma,’ he said.
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she told him. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Of course. I’m all right when you’re all right.’ She could tell from his voice that he was smiling.
‘But promise me that you’ll have a complete rest today. As your doctor I recommend no exertion.
Dad and I won’t be around. We’re going to spend the day at the site as he’s going home tomorrow
and wants to get another day in on the walls. He’s coming back soon, but for now he wants to make
sure that his boat, The Sea Nymph, is all right. She’s the woman in his life.’ And a lot easier to
handle than the one in mine, he thought.
Laurel’s mind was moving in a different direction. Jonas’s boat might be the love of his life, but it
would be no good for holding close in the night. What if Elaine did decide to go to Cornwall?
When Laurel arrived at the surgery on Monday morning Georgina’s husband, Ben Allardyce, and
the father of baby Arran was in Reception, reading a poster that someone had put up over the
weekend advertising a charity walk that was to take place the coming Saturday.
When she halted beside him he said, ‘Georgina and I would love to take Arran on this walk, but the
terrain gets a bit rugged out there.’
‘So couldn’t one of you go, and the other stay behind with Arran?’ she questioned.
Ben’s expression was sombre. ‘I think not. We spent years apart for reasons I won’t go into, and
now every moment together is so precious that we do everything as a family. What about you,
Laurel? Are you into walking?’
‘It would give you the chance to see more of the Cheshire countryside, should you want to,’ a voice
said from behind, and when she turned David was there. She watched as he added his name to the
list of volunteers and then, raising a questioning eyebrow, passed her the pen.
It went without saying that she was going to write her name under his, she thought. Just the mere
sight of him always sent common sense flying out of the window.
The patients were arriving and that was the end of the discussion, but when surgery was over she
caught him as he was about to set off on his calls and asked, ‘So where does the charity walk take
us? Do I need to wear walking boots and suchlike?’
‘I would say so,’ he informed her, and then he remembered the day when she’d tottered off the train
in high heels. ‘Whatever you do, don’t come in your stilettos. Part of it is over rough terrain and if
there has been much rain beforehand it can be boggy.’
‘So you haven’t forgotten the day I arrived in Willowmere?’ she teased as he opened his car door
and slid into the driver’s seat.