WHEN Kate went into her own room she undressed slowly and lay on top of the bed covers, gazing blankly up at the ceiling, but as the warmth of the room began to wrap itself around her she found her eyelids drooping and thought that at this rate she was going to be asleep before Alex.
A couple of hours went by and it was the ringing of the phone beside the bed that brought her back to wakefulness.
‘Kate?’ Daniel’s voice said in her ear.
‘Yes, what is it?’ she answered drowsily.
‘You were asleep! I’m sorry to have disturbed you.’
She was raising herself up on to the pillows. Was there something wrong with Alex?
‘Is it Alex?’ she asked.
‘No. He’s fast asleep. I’ve just been onto room service and ordered hot chocolate for two in the hope that you might still be awake. Do you feel like joining me, or shall I leave you to go back to sleep?’
She was on her feet and reaching for the white towelling robe that the hotel provided for its guests. ‘I’ll be right with you,’ she told him, and padded into the room next door.
Her cheeks were flushed from sleep, her eye make-up smudged, and as she closed the door behind her Kate gave a big yawn. When she saw Daniel smile, she glanced in the mirror and grimaced.
‘I look a mess,’ she moaned, and now he was laughing.
‘You’ll have to console yourself with the thought that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she agreed doubtfully, and moved across the room to look down at Alex, sleeping the sleep of the innocent in pyjamas with a superhero design on the front.
‘Life is so uncomplicated at their age, isn’t it?’ she said softly.
He had come to stand beside her. ‘It should be, but I’m not so sure in Alex’s case. For one thing, I can’t see Tom ever being able to work again. He will probably gain some degree of mobility eventually but it will take time, and even then just coping with the basics will be difficult.’
‘What exactly happened to him?’ she asked. ‘I know he had a fall, but not how, or why.’
‘He fell off scaffolding and landed with his full weight on his knees, causing multiple fractures. I just wish my house was finished so that I could bring him and Alex to the village to live. That way I would always be on hand if they needed me.’
‘Yes, but I have offered you a solution with regard to the immediate future, haven’t I?’ she said, looking up at him with her smudged eyes. ‘And if you are still concerned about what my mother will say, when we get back we’ll ask her. Just in case we have to put plan Jasmine Cottage into action.’
They were almost touching in their borrowed dressing-gowns and Kate was wishing she didn’t look such a sight as he said in a low voice, ‘You are too kind to me.’
A knock on the door announcing room service interrupted them, and they went to sit on the sofa and composed themselves. When they’d drunk the hot chocolate Kate got up to go. ‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ she told him softly.
He was smiling across at her. ‘Don’t go yet, Kate.’
Framed in the doorway, she became still. ‘Make up your mind. A couple of hours ago you couldn’t wait to get rid of me. Now you’ve invited me to join you and when I’m ready to leave, you don’t want me to go. What is it with you, Daniel?’
The smile had gone. ‘I’m sorry. Forget I said that, and for the record the last thing I fancied doing earlier was spending the evening reading a book when you were only yards away. But apart from the fact that I knew that neither of us would want Alex to wake up and find us in bed together, I didn’t want to send out any false signals that I mightn’t be able to live up to.’
‘And so what has changed since then?’
‘Nothing,’ he said flatly. ‘I asked you to come and join me because I wouldn’t leave Alex in here on his own, and I wanted to see you one more time before the day was over.’
‘And now that you’ve seen me?’
‘I’ll be able to do what you told me to do.’
‘What was that?’
‘Sleep well, and I hope you do too.’
I doubt it she thought as she shut the door quietly behind her and went back to her own room. The man she’d just left had said that he didn’t want to send out any false signals. Had Daniel meant that he wouldn’t want her to confuse desire with real love?
It was still daylight when they returned to the village the following afternoon after a more subdued journey than the one going and Daniel said, ‘Do you mind if we stop off at the building site, Kate? Some of the men were going to work yesterday and I’m keen to see what progress they’ve made.’
‘Yes. It’s fine by me,’ she told him.
‘And me,’ Alex chirped, suddenly coming to life.
He had shed a few tears when it had been time to leave his father, and as the two doctors had stood by helplessly Kate had vowed to herself that father and son were going to be reunited at the first opportunity at Jasmine Cottage if Tom would accept the offer.
Alex was perking up now. To him the building site meant the river, and on a grey Sunday afternoon in early November it was the only thing moving when they got there. Yet Daniel was nodding approvingly as he looked around him. Progress had been made over the weekend. His new home was really taking shape at last.
But after all the months of waiting there wasn’t the same sort of excitement that he’d felt when he’d first started the project because once he’d moved into the house he wouldn’t see as much of Kate. They would meet up at the surgery, of course, but she wouldn’t be sitting across the table from him at breakfast or there last thing at night when they went to their separate rooms.
As he watched Alex eagerly pulling her towards the riverbank he thought that she wasn’t showing much interest in his new property and decided it was because she knew that if Alex was still around he would be taking him with him when he moved in.
As he wandered around what he’d intended to be his dream home, for once it wasn’t Lucy that he was wishing could be there to share it with him. Kate’s face kept getting in the way.
The winter dusk was wrapping itself around the building site as he joined them at the water’s edge and when he asked, ‘Have you seen any big fish today?’ Alex shook his head.
‘Tell Daniel what we have just seen,’ Kate said.
‘A water vole,’ he said excitedly. ‘It looked like Ratty in The Wind In The Willows.’
‘Really!’ Daniel exclaimed. ‘Where was it?’
‘On the other bank,’ Kate told him. ‘I’ve just been telling Alex that Ratty might have been a water vole. They are very like a rat, but have a more bushy tail.’
He smiled. ‘So speaks the country woman.’
‘This part of the riverbank was our favourite place for my friends and I when we were kids,’ she told him. ‘I never thought then that I would one day meet the man who was going to build a house here.’
As they walked back to the car Daniel said, ‘Is that why you have nothing to say about my future home, because I’m trespassing on your memories?’
‘No! Of course not,’ she protested, knowing that if she wanted to keep it light she couldn’t tell him that she wanted to live there with him in what to her was the village’s heartland. But with Lucy’s ghost ever present, as far as Daniel was concerned, she knew it was an impossible dream.
Monday morning at the practice brought the usual ills for the time of year in the form of coughs and colds, with the occasional patient suffering from a more serious complaint. Frances Tennant, a friend of Kate’s mother, unfortunately seemed to have fallen into the latter category. She was normally a very active member of the community. A force to be reckoned with in the Women’s Institute. A leading light in church activities. Responsible for fresh flowers in the church on Sundays and the distribution of them to the sick afterwards. Plus the organising of a yearly coach trip to the seaside. All functions that she performed with relish. But when Frances seated herself opposite her in the middle of the morning Kate saw immediately that her usual drive was missing.
‘I’ve got a lump under my arm, Kate,’ she said, ‘and I don’t feel at all well. I’m tired all the time and, no matter how cold the night is, when I’m in bed I’m sweating a lot.’
When she removed her jumper Kate saw that there was indeed a swelling in one armpit.
‘It could be something to do with your lymph nodes,’ she told her, ‘which would cause you to feel generally unwell. I’m going to arrange for you to have a biopsy taken from the tissue of the swelling and we’ll take it from there. In the meantime, rest as much as you can, drink plenty of fluids, and the hospital will ring you as soon as they have an appointment date.’
Frances was looking more relaxed with the thought of prompt attention to her problem. Action was what the elderly human dynamo thrived on. There had to be no loose ends for the woman sitting opposite Kate, and in keeping with that she asked in what was more like her usual brisk tone, ‘Are there any signs of your mother coming back yet?’
‘Not at the moment,’ Kate told her, ‘though my gran is much improved.’
‘Does she know that you and Dr Dreyfus are alone at Jasmine Cottage? I would have thought he might have moved out when you came home to stay.’
Kate turned away to hide a smile. This was Frances in her role of busybody, she thought, and was tempted to tell her that if there was one man who wasn’t going to take advantage of her it was Daniel, and that she almost wished he would.
Instead she said breezily, ‘We aren’t alone, Frances. We have an eight-year-old boy staying with us that we are looking after for a friend of Daniel’s who is in hospital, and that gives us no time for anything other than playing the roles of landlady’s daughter, paying guest and childminders.’
‘Really!’ the woman sitting opposite exclaimed. ‘So there’s a child in the house! I wasn’t aware of that.’
‘No? Well, now you are,’ Kate said with a smile, thinking that was a first. Frances not knowing something that was going on in the village.
But when she’d gone, Kate was in a solemn mood. A couple of worrying illnesses had come to mind when she’d seen the swelling in Frances’s armpit. Both connected with the lymph nodes, and both serious. Yet there was no point in speculating until the results of the biopsy were available.
It was the only drawback to rural health care, having to tell a patient who was either friend or acquaintance that they had a life-threatening illness. It was difficult enough passing on those sorts of tidings to a complete stranger, but twice as hard when one knew the person.
When it was time for house calls Daniel said, ‘I’m going to see Billy, the boy with Sydenham’s chorea. Do you want to come along?’
‘Yes. I do,’ she said immediately, and after a quick teabreak, they drove to the Gileses’ property in its elevated position.
Going inside the cluttered, dilapidated house, Kate thought that where talking to Frances had been like dealing with the over-organised, this was an example of the opposite. Personally she preferred the happy medium.
Daniel was relieved to see there were no signs of the repetitive neck movements when he examined Billy, signifying an improvement, but the two doctors knew that it didn’t mean they wouldn’t come back.
‘Our Billy’s fed up of being in bed,’ Linda Giles said. ‘When can he get up?’
‘When are you due to see the neurologist again?’ Daniel asked.
‘Next week in Outpatients.’
‘Have you got transport?’
‘No. Not really. All we have is the farm truck that his dad uses, and it’s a smelly old thing.’
‘I’ll ask one of my staff to arrange an ambulance,’ he told her. ‘It’s clear to see that Billy is much better, but these things can’t be rushed. It isn’t easy to tell if the improvement is the result of the mild sedation that the neurologist has put him on or the bed rest.’
He turned to Kate. ‘If the illness had remained untreated the constant movement could have eventually affected his heart. Billy, could you hold out your hands like I showed you for the new doctor,’ he said, and as Kate observed keenly it was there, the backward splaying of the fingers.
‘Very interesting,’ she commented thoughtfully as they drove away.
He nodded. ‘The next time I call I’m going to mention getting them rehoused by the council if Billy’s parents will agree to it.’
‘So who does the house belong to?’ she’d asked. ‘Very often it is rented from the farmer who employs the man.’
‘Yes. That’s how it is with them and you’ve seen what it’s like. If the council would put them into one of their properties for health reasons it could only benefit them all.’
‘Those children could do with better living conditions, that’s for sure,’ she agreed.
‘I can’t argue with that,’ he told her, ‘and as for young Billy, he is a very interesting case, don’t you think?’
‘Yes. I do. A lot of our patients have problems that give food for thought. But so far there are none as rare as his. I had a consultation this morning with someone who may have trouble ahead.’
‘Who was it?’
‘A friend of my mother’s.’
‘And what did you suspect?’
‘Hodgkin’s disease or some sort of leukaemia.’
‘So you’ve arranged for a biopsy.’
‘Yes. Frances is very involved in the life of the village and won’t take it kindly if she’s ill.’
‘She’ll only be like a lot more patients, then,’ he said dryly. ‘What is it with her? Does she think she’s invincible?’
‘Something like that. But she was in a chastened state this morning. Though not so much so that she didn’t make known her feelings about you and I living on our own at Jasmine Cottage.’
‘What?’ he exclaimed angrily. ‘The nerve of her!’
‘Frances is like that. Don’t let it get to you.’
He was not to be placated. ‘And so what did you tell her? That you are quite safe with me? That I am living a life of self-imposed celibacy?’
Kate frowned. ‘No. I did not. I would never discuss you with anyone else, but if I had said that it would have been true, wouldn’t it?’
It seemed that the discussion was at an end. ‘I’ll take you back to the surgery to pick up your car so that you can carry on with your own calls,’ he said flatly.
‘Fine,’ she said coolly, taken aback that they were so suddenly out of tune, and after that there was silence in the car until Daniel dropped her off outside the practice and went on his way.
As she was about to transfer to her own car, Richard Thompson, the builder whose son had befriended Alex at school, came hobbling onto the forecourt and said, ‘Could you spare me a minute, Doc? I’ve just wrenched my ankle, jumping down off a ladder on the site, and would be obliged if you would take a look at it. I don’t think I’ve broken anything, but it’s very painful.’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘Come inside.’ When he’d eased himself onto a chair in her consulting room, she said, ‘OK, take off your boots and your sock.’
When he’d done as she asked Kate saw that the foot was already swelling and when she felt it gently he grimaced.
‘I think it’s a bad sprain,’ she told him. ‘Your foot would swell with a sprain just as much as with a fracture. We’ll get the nurse to put a cold compress on it, or maybe witch hazel, and then go home and rest it for the remainder of the day. If it is no better tomorrow, I suggest that you go to A and E to have it X-rayed.’
As he put his footwear back on, Richard said, ‘So how’s the youngster settling in at school?’
‘He seems fine,’ she told him.
He nodded. ‘My Scott’s been getting on well with young Alex, and of course they’re in the same class, which is nice. He tells me they have a kick-around with a ball in the schoolyard during the break.’
Kate smiled, ‘Yes, and we’re so pleased that Alex has made friends with your son. He talks about Scott quite a lot, so thanks ever so much for your help there.’
‘Not at all,’ he said, and on the point of hobbling off in search of the nurse he added, ‘I hope that the doc hasn’t seem me coming here. He’s panting for us to get his house finished.’
‘Yes, I know he is,’ she told him, and thought that she wasn’t.
Why had he been so tetchy with Kate? Daniel was thinking as he drove up to one of the hill farms where an elderly patient with arthritis would be looking forward to his visit.
Maybe it was the strain of trying to stay immune from her appeal that was getting to him. It was ridiculous to pretend that he wasn’t affected by her. She was never out of his mind. When she was near he was so conscious of her presence he couldn’t think straight. Kate was part of his life now. He couldn’t imagine it without her.
But he’d carried his love for Lucy around with him for a long time. It had been like a protective shield against leaving himself open to a repeat of the pain he’d suffered when he’d lost her.
Last night in the hotel he had realised that the pain was gone, though the memory lived on, and now, when there was light in his darkness, he was still hesitating. Why was it that everything else in his life was clear and uncomplicated except this? His commitment to Alex and Tom caused him no grief. His career was fulfilling. The place where he had chosen to live was delightful, and soon he would have a beautiful house to live in.
Tom had warned him not to turn his love for Lucy into a shrine, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself, and that situation could have gone on for ever if he hadn’t met Kate of the blithe spirit and loving heart who had already been treated badly by another man. God forbid that he should bring her more hurt.
Kate was still out seeing her patients when Daniel got back, but Miriam had returned and he found her in her room, having a quick lunch.
‘How do you think the new arrangement is working, Miriam?’ he asked.
‘Good,’ she said with a smile. ‘It goes without saying, Daniel. Three doctors instead of two and our new member is Kate Barrington. She was an asset when she was here before and will prove to be the same again.’ As he listened in amazement to Miriam actually approving of something he’d done, she went on to say, ‘I know I haven’t exactly been a ray of sunshine since you took over, but I’ve got health problems of my own, and where it should be a case of “physician, heal thyself” I’ve been too busy with this place to get down to sorting them. But now that is happening, thanks to you.’
‘Are they anything I can help with?’ he asked in immediate concern. ‘I have been worried about you, you know. But I didn’t like to interfere in your private life.’
The smile was there again. ‘Thanks, Daniel, but, no, I can sort them myself, and if I find that I can’t, I will ask your advice.’
‘Sure,’ he said easily, and went to have his own lunch, glad that at least Miriam was now happy and content.
As Kate had passed the charity shop window on her way to her first call of the day she’d seen that the wedding dress had gone and the gloom that had descended after leaving Daniel deepened.
Yet she told herself as she drove on that it was what she wanted, an end to her relationship with Craig, and now she’d got it. Who had bought the dress? she wondered, and hoped that she wasn’t going to be present if the purchaser was planning on walking down the aisle of the village church in it.
It was almost as if the mischievous fates had tuned into her thoughts as when she arrived back at the surgery Jenny on Reception beckoned her over and said in a low voice, ‘Our Sarah has made an appointment to see you this afternoon. She’s not at all well and is getting married in three weeks’ time.
‘She’s only eighteen and her dad and I think it’s a bit young, but they’re so much in love and have been going out together since they were at school, so we’ve given them our blessing. It won’t be a big affair. Money is tight. But would you believe it? She’s found herself a lovely wedding dress in the charity shop, of all places.’
She could believe it all right, Kate thought as the implications of what Jenny was saying sank in. She hoped they wouldn’t invite her to the wedding. Dredging up a smile, she asked, ‘So what date is the wedding and where is the ceremony taking place?’
‘It’s the last Saturday in November and she’s getting married in the village church, of course. There will be just a few relatives there and the staff from the practice, as I look upon everyone here as my friends. You’ll be getting an invitation shortly.’
Covering up her confused emotions with a bright smile, Kate went into her room and closed the door. The idea of seeing Sarah in what had been her wedding dress was extremely daunting, but she couldn’t disappoint Jenny. However, there was also the fact that if Tom hadn’t been discharged from hospital by then, they couldn’t miss visiting him on the Saturday. Seeing Alex was the only thing keeping him sane in the present circumstances, and they couldn’t deny him that. Maybe they could visit Tom on the Sunday.
Into the midst of the mental chaos that Jenny had created came Daniel to apologise, but when he saw her expression he halted in his tracks and said, ‘Surely I’m not responsible for making you look like that.’
She shook her head. ‘No. Jenny is the cause of it, I’m afraid.’
‘Jenny? Why? What has she done?’
‘Her daughter is getting married in three weeks and we are invited.’
‘So what’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing. Except that Sarah has bought my wedding dress.’
‘Oh, dear!’ There was concern in the dark hazel eyes looking into hers. ‘Didn’t I tell you that it was a crazy idea, sending it to that place so soon?’
‘Yes, you did. I don’t need reminding, though. And what about Tom? If he is still in hospital, we can’t miss visiting him.’
‘That can be sorted. But, Kate, the one person who matters most in this situation is you. We could make an excuse not to go, I suppose.’
‘We can’t do that to Jenny,’ she said sombrely. ‘She’s known me since I was so high, and you’re her employer. If we’re invited, we should be there.’
‘I came to apologise for what I said earlier,’ he said wryly. ‘But it would seem that since then you have had more to be unhappy about. Will you forgive me?’
She sighed. ‘Yes, of course. Frances is enough to make anyone edgy, and with regard to the dress, it was all that young Sarah could afford, according to her mother, so at least I know it has been bought by someone who will be happy to wear it.’
He went across to where she was hunched in the chair behind the desk. Taking her hands in his, he raised her gently to her feet. As their glances met he said softly, ‘You are as charitable as you are enchanting.’ As his hold tightened. ‘Don’t ever change, Kate.’
A tap on the door broke into the special moment and Kate held back a sigh as one of the practice nurses appeared with a query about blood tests that Daniel had asked to be done for one of his patients. Leaving them to sort it out, she went to the bakery across the street for a sandwich and thought that it was turning out to be a strange day.
There’d been Frances who didn’t know how to mind her own business. Then, still on the down side, the short, sharp, exchange of words with Daniel when unthinkingly she’d told him what Frances had said, followed by an uplift when Richard Thompson had provided the cheering news about Alex and his son.
But that had been followed by another downward curve when she’d seen that the wedding dress had gone from the window of the charity shop, and no sooner had it registered than Jenny had been there with the news that young Sarah was going to be married in it.
It was all very mind-blowing, but what stood out like a jewel in a crown were the tender moments she’d just spent with Daniel. Was he coming round to her way of thinking? she wondered. Or had it just been an emotional moment that he was now regretting?