Читать книгу A Baby For The Village Doctor - Abigail Gordon - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS a bright spring morning but as Georgina Adams drove along the rough track that led to the gamekeeper’s cottage on the Derringham Estate she was oblivious to what was going on around her.

April was just around the corner and daffodils and narcissi were making bright splashes of colour in cottage gardens. Fresh green shoots were appearing in hedgerows and fields where lambs covered in pale wool tottered on straight little legs beside their mothers.

On a normal day she would have been entranced by the sights around her but today the beauty of the countryside in spring wasn’t registering.

The only new life that Georgina was aware of was the one she was carrying inside her. She was pregnant and though there was joy in knowing that she was going to have a child, there were clouds in her sky.

Ben had never replied to the letter she’d sent, explaining that they needed to talk, and that she would travel to London to see him if he would let her know when it would be convenient. The weeks were going by and he didn’t know about the baby.

She’d only written the once, and it had been very difficult, agonising over what to say and how to say it, because she wanted to tell him that he was going to be a father again face to face. He was entitled to know that he’d made her pregnant, and she needed to be there to see his reaction.

In the end she’d written just a few bald sentences, sealed the envelope before she changed her mind, and gone straight away to post it to an address that she knew as well as she knew her own name. He hadn’t replied, and it was now beginning to look as if that was the end of it.

The fact that the baby’s father didn’t know she was pregnant was the biggest cloud in her sky, but the hurt and loss from over three years ago had never gone away. Remembering how Ben had been then, it wasn’t altogether surprising that he hadn’t been in touch, but she did wish he had.

Half of the time she was gearing herself up for the role of single parent and for the rest she was battling with the longing to have Ben beside her as she awaited the birth of their second child.

At almost eight months pregnant there was no way of concealing it and she was conscious all the time of the curious stares of those she came into contact with. She’d lived alone since she’d joined the village medical practice three years ago as its only woman doctor and had kept her private life strictly under wraps.

To her colleagues at the practice, her patients and the friends she’d made since settling in the Cheshire village of Willowmere, Georgina was pleasant and caring, but that was as far as it went.

The only person locally who knew anything about what was going on in her life was James Bartlett, who was in charge of village health care and lived next door to the surgery with his two children.

He had told her that if she ever needed a friend, she could rely on him, and had left it at that. James hadn’t asked who the father of her baby was, but she knew he would have seen her around the village with Nicholas during the weeks leading up to Christmas and it would have registered that he’d not been on the scene since the New Year.

Soon she and James would have to discuss her future role in the practice, but before that happened, replacements were required for two staff members who had recently gone to work in Africa.

When she stopped the car outside the grace-and-favour cottage of the woman she’d come to visit, the husband came striding out, dressed in a waterproof jacket with boots on his feet, a cap on his head and to complete the outfit he had a gun tucked under his arm.

Dennis Quarmby was gamekeeper for Lord Derringham, who owned Kestrel Court, the biggest residence in the area, and with it miles of the surrounding countryside. But at that moment the main concern of the man approaching was not grouse or pheasants, or those who came to poach them on his employer’s estate.

His wife was far from well and on seeing that the lady doctor from the practice had arrived in answer to an urgent request, he waited for her to get out of the car before going on his way.

‘Our eldest girl is with the missus,’ he told her, his anxiety revealed in his expression. ‘I wanted to be here when you came but Lord Derringham has just been on the phone to me because someone has been breaking down the fences up on the estate and he wants me there right away. He rang off before I could tell him I was waiting for a doctor to visit Christine. Her eyes and mouth are so dry she’s in real distress, and with the rheumatoid arthritis, as well, she’s feeling very low.’

Georgina nodded. She’d seen Christine Quarmby a few times recently and on one occasion had had to tell her that she was suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. Now there was this and there could be a connection that had serious implications.

When she went inside the cottage, the gamekeeper’s wife said, ‘Has my husband been telling you my tale of woe, Doctor? He does worry about me, though I have to admit I’m struggling at the moment. I’m having trouble swallowing, as well as everything else that is wrong with me.’

It was clear that the glands that produce tears and saliva weren’t working, Georgina thought, in keeping with some sort of autoimmune disorder. But it required the opinion of a neurologist before she prescribed any medication and she told Christine, ‘I’m going to make you an appointment to see a neurologist and the rheumatologist that you saw when we were trying to sort out the rheumatoid arthritis. We’ll see what they come up with.’

‘I know someone who has the lupus thing,’ Christine said. ‘You don’t think it’s that, do you, Doctor?’

‘I wouldn’t like to make a guess at this stage,’ she told her, surprised that her patient had been thinking along the same lines. ‘I’ll ask for an urgent appointment and we’ll take it from there.’

As she was leaving, Dennis returned and announced that as soon as he’d informed his employer that his wife was ill, he’d told him to forget the fences and come home.

‘Christine will tell you what we’ve discussed, Mr Quarmby,’ Georgina told him, ‘and in the meantime send for me again if she gets any worse.’

‘I’ll do that, all right,’ he promised. ‘She plays everything down, having been made to suffer in silence when there was anything wrong with her when she was a kid, and thinks she shouldn’t complain, which is not the case when there’s anything wrong with me. I do that much moaning, everybody knows.’

‘Yes, well, look after her. She needs some tender loving care,’ she told him. ‘I’m sending Christine to see two of the consultants at St Gabriel’s and hopefully we’ll have a clearer picture of what is wrong when she’s been seen by them.’

When she returned to the practice in the main street of the village, it felt strange, as it had done for days with Anna and Glenn no longer there. Anna Bartlett was James’s sister and had been one of the practice nurses.

On a snowy day in January she had married Glenn Hamilton, who’d been working at the surgery as a temporary locum, and in early March the newlyweds had gone to Africa to work with one of the aid programmes out there, before returning to Willowmere to settle down permanently.

They needed to be replaced and soon, or she and James would be overwhelmed by the demand for their services, and though she intended working until the baby was due, she would need time off afterwards. So some new faces were going to be needed around the surgery without delay.

It was lunchtime and James was having a quick bite when she appeared. ‘The kettle has just boiled,’ he told her. ‘How did you find Christine Quarmby?’

Her expression was grave. ‘Not too good, I’m afraid. There is something very worrying about her symptoms. Christine thinks she might have lupus, which as we know has connections with rheumatoid arthritis, and she could be right, though I do hope not. I’m referring her back to the rheumatologist she saw before and am going to arrange for her to see a neurologist, as well.’

‘Hmm, there isn’t much else you can do at this point,’ he agreed. ‘By the way, Georgina, I’m interviewing this evening for another doctor and a practice nurse. Beth Jackson is struggling single-handed in the nurses’ room, and we haven’t yet had anyone come in as another partner since the gap that was left when my father died.

‘I would have liked Glenn to become permanent. He was an excellent doctor, like yourself, but it didn’t work out that way. Do you want to sit in on the interviews, or will you have had enough by the end of afternoon surgery?’

‘I’ll give it a miss, if you don’t mind,’ she told him, ‘unless you especially want me to be there.’ She gave a wry smile, ‘I’ll be the next one to cause staffing problems, but not until after the baby is born.’

‘Don’t you worry about that,’ he said. ‘Just take care of yourself, Georgina. With regard to the interviews, I’ll bring you up to date with what’s gone on in the morning, so go and put your feet up when the surgery closes. It’s only a fortnight to Easter. Why don’t you go away for a few days?’

‘I’ll think about it,’ she promised, and made a pot of tea to have with the sandwich she’d bought at the bakery across the road.

‘How many applicants have you had for the two vacancies?’ she questioned as he prepared to go back to his duties.

‘There have been quite a few. I’ve sifted out the ones that sounded suitable and once the children are asleep, I’ll be coming back for the interviews. Their daytime nanny finishes at half past six, which coincides with the end of my time here under normal circumstances, but Helen, my housekeeper, has offered to be there for Pollyanna and Jolyon tonight.’

When Georgina let herself into the cottage on a quiet lane at the far end of the village, it still felt empty without the lively presence of Nicholas. It had been nice to have her ex-husband’s brother around for a while.

He’d been based in the United States since just after she and Ben had divorced. The offer of a job in aerodynamics that he’d long coveted had come up and he’d been torn between taking it and staying to help them sort out their lives. Both of them had insisted that his future mattered more than theirs and he’d gone, though reluctantly.

Nick had been back a few times and stayed with them both alternately. He’d done the same this last time when he’d come over to Manchester to arrange the U.K. side of the firm that employed him in Texas, staying with her during the week and spending his weekends with his brother in London as part of a situation where she and Ben never made any contact.

If she had ever felt the necessity to get in touch, as was now the case, Georgina knew where Ben could be found. It was she who had moved out of the house in a leafy London square all that time ago. A house where, in that other life, the two of them had lived blissfully with Jamie, their six-year-old son.

Jamie. It had been losing him that had taken the backbone out of their marriage and, like other loving parents before them, tragedy hadn’t brought them closer, it had driven them apart.

She knew that Nicholas hated the situation he found himself in with the two people he cared for most in the world, yet he wasn’t a go-between. Georgina had made him promise that he would never divulge her whereabouts to Ben without her permission. Even though she knew Ben was the last person who would come looking for her after all they had been through.

As she made a meal of sorts, Georgina was remembering how Nicholas had taken her to Willowmere’s Mistletoe Ball in the marquee on the school sports ground, and he’d gone with her to the gathering at James’s house on Christmas Eve when Anna and Glenn had announced their engagement. So she supposed the senior partner at the practice could be forgiven if he had Nicholas down as the father of her baby.

It had been August when something she’d not been prepared for had happened. She’d been at Jamie’s graveside, taking the wrapping off the white roses that she always brought with her, when a voice had said from behind, ‘Hello, Georgina.’

She’d turned slowly and he’d been there, Ben Allardyce, her ex-husband, the father of the cherished child they’d lost.

He’d looked older, greying at the temples, and the emptiness that had never left his eyes after Jamie had been taken from them had still been there in the gaze meeting hers. As she’d faced him, like a criminal caught in the act, she’d known that no other man would ever hold her heart as Ben had.

Nicholas had told her that Ben knew she visited the grave, but during all the time they’d been apart she’d never come across him until that day which had also been Jamie’s birthday.

She’d turned back to the labour of love that had brought her there and was arranging the flowers with careful hands on the white marble of their memorial to their son.

When it was done and she’d straightened up and faced him again, he’d said, ‘Nicholas tells me he’s coming to the U.K. in October and is going to be here three months. It will be good to see something of him.’

‘Yes, it will,’ she answered awkwardly, like a schoolgirl in front of the head teacher.

‘Do you want to come back to the house for a drink before you drive back to wherever you’ve come from?’ he asked in the same flat tone as when he’d greeted her. She observed him warily. ‘It was just a thought,’ he explained, and she wanted to weep because of the great divide that separated them.

‘Yes, all right,’ she heard a voice say, and couldn’t believe it was hers. She turned back to the grave once more and dropped a kiss on the headstone, as she always did when leaving, and when she lifted her head, he was striding towards his car.

‘You know the way, of course,’ he said as she approached her own vehicle. She nodded, and without further comment from either of them they drove to the house that had once been their family home.

As she stepped inside, the sadness of what it had become hit her like a sledgehammer. The room began to spin and he caught her in his arms as she slumped towards him.

She rallied almost as soon as he’d reached out for her, but Ben didn’t relax his hold. They were so close she felt his breath on her face as he said, ‘You need to rest a while.’ Picking her up in his arms, he carried her to the sofa in the sitting room and laid her on it.

When she tried to raise herself into a sitting position he told her, ‘Stay where you are. I’ll make some tea. A brandy would be the ideal thing but as you’re driving…’

After he’d gone into the kitchen she looked around her and saw that nothing had changed in the place that had once been her home. Furniture, carpets, ornaments were all the same as she’d left them, and she thought numbly that it was them who had changed, Ben and herself, heartbreakingly and irrevocably.

Jamie had been taken from them in a tragic accident, and with his going their ways of grieving had not been the same. Hers had taken the form of a great sadness that she’d borne in silence, while Ben had been filled with anger at what he saw as the injustice of it, and it had turned him into someone she didn’t recognise.

Instead of comforting each other, they had become suffering strangers and in the end, unable to bear it any longer, she’d asked for a divorce. Still fighting his despair, he’d agreed.

He’d offered her the house but she’d said no as it wasn’t a home to her any more. She’d packed her bags and gone to take up a position as a GP in a pretty Cheshire village that was far away from the horror of those months after Jamie had drowned.

When Ben came back with the tea he put the cup and saucer down and, with his arm around her shoulders, bent to raise her upright. ‘I never expected to see you actually here in the house again when I set off for the cemetery.’

‘Neither did I,’ she murmured, and as she looked up at him their gazes met and held, mirroring sadness, pain, confusion…and something else.

There was no sense or reason in what happened next. He bent and kissed her and after the first amazed moment she kissed him back, and then it became urgent, a tidal wave of emotion sweeping them along, and they made love on the sofa on a surreal August afternoon.

When it was over, he watched without speaking as she flung on her clothes, and when she rushed out of the house and into her car, he made no attempt to follow her.

It wasn’t until after Nicholas had come to stay that Georgina had realised she was pregnant. She’d been feeling off colour for a while, nauseous and light-headed, but busy as ever at the practice hadn’t thought much of missing her monthly cycle as she had always been irregular, initially putting it down to stress.

All the signs had been there—tender breasts, tiredness, morning sickness—and she’d faced up to it with a mixture of dawning wonder and dismay while carefully concealing it from her house guest. It hadn’t been too difficult as, although she’d been five months along by the time he’d returned to America in the New Year, she’d barely shown at the time. Even James hadn’t realised until she’d told him. Now, however, at eight months, her bump was there for all to see.

Knowing Nicholas, he would have felt he had to tell Ben if he’d found out about the baby, she’d thought, and she’d needed time to adjust to the situation that had come upon her so suddenly. Every time she thought about the wild, senseless passion that they’d given in to on that August afternoon, she wanted to weep. They’d lost a child born in love and gentleness. Under what circumstances had this one been conceived— loneliness, opportunism?

As the weeks had passed, the knowledge that she wasn’t being fair to Ben had pressed down on her like a leaden weight until the night she’d written the letter. After that she’d felt better, and had begun the ritual of watching out for the postman every morning, but there’d been no reply.

She could have called him. It might have been easier. But she was afraid that she might give herself away on the phone, and she just had to tell him face to face. No matter how they’d parted after losing Jamie.

It had been Jamie’s attachment to his football that had sent him careering over the edge of the riverbank. The ball had started to roll down the slope where she’d parked the car for the two of them to have a picnic.

She’d turned away to lift a folding chair out of the boot, and as she’d been erecting it had seen him, oblivious to danger and ignoring her warning to keep away from the edge, running towards the swollen river.

It had all happened in a matter of seconds and as she’d flung herself down the slope after him and shrieked for him to stop, he hadn’t heard her above the noise of the fast-flowing water.

She’d nearly lost her life trying to save their son and when she’d been dragged half-dead from the river to discover that she was going to have to carry on living without him, she’d wished that she’d died, too.

Ben gazed at the letter in his hand. Each time Nicholas had visited since that August afternoon, he had asked him where he could find Georgina, but he’d reluctantly refused to tell, explaining that she’d made him promise never to pass on that information.

It hadn’t been hard to believe when Ben recalled how she’d never come near the house apart from that one time when he’d found her at Jamie’s grave. Whenever he’d seen fresh white roses on it he’d known that she’d been just a stone’s throw away from the home they’d shared together, and the despair that had become more of a dull ache than the raw wound it had been during those first awful months would wash over him.

He’d thought bleakly that what had happened between them on the day he’d caught her unawares in the cemetery hadn’t seemed to have made Georgina relent at all, and if Nicholas wasn’t prepared to break his word to her, it was going to be stalemate.

On his last night in London his young brother had asked, ‘Why are you so keen to find Georgina afer all this time?’ And because there had been no way he was going to tell him what had happened, Ben had fobbed him off by telling him that some insurance in both their names had matured.

That had been in early January, and when Nicholas had flown back home Ben had gone to work in Scandinavia for a short while. He’d always been somewhat of a workaholic, even before their marriage had broken up, getting a lot of satisfaction out of helping sick children and being able to give Georgina and Jamie some of the good things in life at the same time.

When their life together had foundered after losing their son he’d immersed himself in his work more and more, and had spent less and less time at home. Without Jamie it wasn’t a home any more.

When Georgina had asked for a divorce he’d agreed, because he’d felt their life together was over. They’d had no comfort to offer each other—he, because of the terrible bitterness inside him, and she because she felt responsible for what had happened.

But that day in August he’d discovered that their feelings weren’t dead. There was still a spark there. It had been sweet anguish making love to the only woman he’d ever wanted, and he wasn’t going to rest until he saw her again.

He’d gone to Scandinavia with less than his usual enthusiasm, because he was frustrated and miserable to think that she’d come back into his life and given him hope and then disappeared into the unknown once more.

Now he was home again, and amongst the mail that had accumulated during his absence was the envelope with Georgina’s handwriting on it. With heartbeat quickening, he opened the letter.

The brief communication inside said that she needed to talk to him as soon as possible, and it went on to say that she would come to London if he wished. No way, he thought. He’d waited a long time to find out where she’d gone, and now the opportunity was here.

She hadn’t used the word urgent, but there was something about the wording of the letter that conveyed it to him, and as the postmark on it was from weeks ago he immediately began planning how quickly he could get to this Willowmere place in Cheshire.

Ben was freelance, and not attached to any particular hospital, so there were no arrangements to make at his end. After a quick snack, and a phone call to arrange overnight accommodation at a place in Willowmere called the Pheasant, he was ready for the off, warning the landlord that he would be arriving in the early hours.

As she did on most evenings when she’d eaten, Georgina set off for a short stroll beside the river. A heron, king of the birdlife, familiar to all the village folk, was perched motionless on its favourite stone in the middle of the water when she got there, and she remembered how when she’d first moved to Willowmere she’d had to steel herself to look at the Goyt as it skipped along its stony bed.

As the last rays of the sun turned the skyline to gold she felt the child inside her move and wondered if it was going to be a son to follow the one they’d lost or a baby girl with the same dark hair and eyes as her parents.

She knew that under normal circumstances Ben would be over the moon at the thought of another child, but normal would have been as a brother or sister for Jamie and he was no longer with them.

They’d created a new life in those moments of wild abandon and it should be a source of joy for them both, but as it stood now he knew nothing about it.

She saw that the lights were on in the surgery as she walked back to the cottage and brought her thoughts back to the situation there. Would James find suitable replacements tonight for Anna and Glenn?

After a bath and a hot drink, she was tucked up in bed half an hour later and thinking drowsily that for half the population the night would only just be beginning, but tomorrow would be another busy day for her and James.

She awoke in the early hours to the noise of a car pulling up on the quiet lane below, but didn’t get up to investigate. Instead she snuggled lower under the bed-covers with her eyes closed. The doors were locked, the burglar alarm on. Whoever it might be, she was too sleepy to check them out.

As he’d driven through the Cheshire countryside, Ben had thought wryly that Georgina had certainly intended to put some distance between them by coming here, and she’d also chosen a beautiful place to come to.

He’d seen a lake glinting through trees in the light of a full moon as he’d approached the village, and as he’d drawn nearer had seen that the main street was made up of cottages built from limestone next to quaint shops that made the present-day supermarket seem an uninteresting place by comparison.

He’d arrived earlier than expected, and had stopped briefly outside Georgina’s cottage on a lane at the end of the village after receiving directions from an elderly man.

The curtains were drawn, for which he’d been thankful, as it was hardly the hour to be calling. After choking back the overwhelming feeling of regret for all the wasted years they’d spent, he’d driven off into the night to find his accommodation.

Knowing as he did so that ever since he’d found Georgina in the cemetery and persuaded her to go back to the house, then made love to her like some madman, he’d been aching to see her again. Desperate to tell her how he regretted the way he’d behaved when they’d lost Jamie.

He’d been like someone demented and had vented his desolation on to her, as if she hadn’t been suffering, too. If he’d been in charge, the tragedy would never have happened, he’d told her at times when he’d been at his lowest ebb, and it had been as if the love they’d shared had also died.

It hadn’t been until in bitter despair she’d asked for a divorce and left because she’d been unable to stand it any more that he’d faced up to what he’d done to her.

He’d given her the divorce, couldn’t for shame not to after the way he’d behaved, and ever since then had longed to have her back in his life. He wanted to tell her how sorry he was for forsaking her when she’d needed him, for being so selfishly wrapped up in his own grief without a thought for hers, and to explain how meeting her that day had brought all his longing to the surface in an enormous wave of passion.

There’d always been amazing sexual chemistry between them, but after losing Jamie they’d never made love, so estranged had they become. Now he was going to try to rebuild the marriage that had crumbled, and maybe Georgina wanting to talk was a step in the right direction.