- -
- 100%
- +
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
IT WAS Polly’s favourite time of day, and she curled up on the window-seat overlooking the valley and cuddled her steaming mug of coffee. Her breath was misting on the window, and she scrubbed at it with her sleeve. It was cold in the sitting-room in the mornings, but the view was so spectacular that she didn’t mind.
The little window was set in the thickness of the cob walls, and the seat tucked into the little nook was fast becoming Polly’s favourite place. Admittedly it wasn’t very comfortable, but the view was something else. In front of the tiny rented cottage ran a narrow, winding lane, hedged with hawthorn and dog-rose, with occasional wild cherries standing like sentinels along the route.
Beyond the lane was a field, dipping away into the distance, with neat lines of plough showing tiny tips of green as the winter wheat broke the surface of the soil. Beyond that, a river wound lazily along the valley floor before the land rose steeply on the other side in a heavily wooded slope. As it rose, the willows and poplars gave way to other trees, beech and oak and sycamore, with the occasional white trunk of a silver birch gleaming in the distance. The autumn colours in the old wood were at their best on this early November day, and the morning sun slanting low across the hill behind her caught the leaves and turned them to flame.
It was an isolated spot, but that didn’t worry Polly. She wasn’t afraid of her own company, and she wasn’t afraid of her fellow man, either. In her experience the vast majority of people were good and decent, and the media’s exaggeration had led a great many people to believe otherwise. Polly thought it was a tremendous shame.
Take this man, for instance, she mused. He jogged along the lane every morning—at least he had in the week Polly had been living here. Anybody could see that he was harmless, for all that he was big. He just looked reliable, honest and solid and trustworthy. It didn’t occur to Polly that she was being fanciful, or that she was making judgements based on speculation and not fact. She just knew, without any question, that she could trust him with her life.
He was earlier today, she thought. Last week it had been about eight-fifteen, and she had even passed him one morning in her car on the way to work.
Today it was barely half-past seven, and Polly was only up and dressed because she wanted to get to work early to sort out her surgery shelves and rearrange her supplies before the clinics started.
The man drew level with her cottage, jogging steadily across from left to right. The sun was shining on his back, highlighting the breadth of his shoulders and the glint of gold in his neat brown hair. The boy-next-door grown up, Polly thought, and smiled to herself as she watched him.
There was a car coming towards him now, and Polly frowned as she saw it bearing down on him with no attempt to reduce speed. She saw a greasy sheen on the windscreen, and realised in horror that the driver was momentarily blinded by the sun.
She heard the man shout, and at the last second the car swerved, sliding out of control on the wet leaves that covered the lane. With the car headed straight for him, the man threw himself out of its path, crashing into the hedge as the car slewed past him and ground into the bank on the other side.
Polly didn’t hesitate. Grabbing her coat off the peg by the door, she ran out into the lane and towards the jogger. He was picking himself up by the time she got there, and looked at her in surprise.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked anxiously.
‘Yes, I’m fine. How about the people in the car?’
‘I’ll check them.’ She turned on her heel and ran over to the car just as the passenger door opened and the driver struggled out.
‘Sorry, mate!’ he called. ‘Didn’t see you—damn sun got in my eyes. You OK?’
‘Fine,’ he repeated. ‘What about you?’
His voice was warm and deep, Polly noted with detachment. Just what she would have expected. The jogger had every right to be angry, having nearly been mown down. Many people would have been, she thought, but his first concern had been for the occupants of the car; that just reinforced her opinion of him.
Now they were shaking hands, and the driver was returning to his car and pulling away, considerably more slowly than before. She turned back to the jogger.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’
He nodded. ‘Just a bit shaken up. I’ll be OK.’ He frowned at the lane. ‘Where did you spring from?’
The cottage. I’m renting it. I’d better get on, if you’re sure——?’
He grinned. Tine—see?’ He turned to jog away from her, and his left leg collapsed under him. Making a grab for Polly, he swore softly under his breath and bent to explore his left calf.
His right hand was gripping her shoulder firmly, and Polly tucked her left arm around his waist to support him. He felt lean and solid, without an ounce of fat. He was also shaking slightly, probably with shock.
‘What’s the problem?’
He shook his head and straightened, frowning at his left hand. It was streaked with blood and he glanced down at his leg again.
‘Don’t know. It hurts, though. It didn’t a minute ago.’
‘That often happens,’ Polly hastened to reassure him. ‘Often we don’t feel an injury until it’s safe to do so. I suppose it’s a safety mechanism. Let’s get you inside and have a closer look.’
Still supporting him around his waist, she changed sides so that his injured leg was next to her and she could give him better support, and they made their way slowly into the cottage. The top of her head came up to his chin, and his arm rested comfortably across her shoulders. They fitted well together, she thought idly.
Once in the kitchen, he sank gratefully on to a chair and flexed his leg.
‘It feels as if there’s something in it,’ he muttered, and Polly stripped off her coat, turned on the kettle and washed her hands thoroughly.
‘Take off your tracksuit bottoms,’ she instructed, rummaging in the kitchen cupboard for her first-aid kit.
‘Do you say that to all the strange men you meet?’ he asked, laughter brimming in his voice.
‘Only the ones who fall in my hedge and write themselves off,’ she returned. ‘You’re quite safe, I’m a qualified nurse. I’m also going to be late for work, so if you could co-operate, please?’ When she turned back he had pulled his trousers off and was standing on one leg in his jogging shorts, craning his neck to see the back of his calf.
‘Here,’ she said, and grasping his ankle firmly, she lifted his well-muscled but lacerated lower leg and propped it across the seat of the chair. ‘Stand still. You don’t need to see, I do,’ she told him frankly, and then examined the area without touching it for a few seconds. Because he had been exercising, the blood vessels were all dilated and so the scratches were bleeding freely. However, there only seemed to be one serious wound.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, peering over his shoulder again.
‘Stop squirming around,’ she chided. ‘You’ve got hawthorns in it, and a nasty cut. I’ll clean it up and lift out the thorns with tweezers, but you really ought to have stitches in the cut, I think. You’ll have to keep still.’
‘Yes, Nurse,’ he said in a mock-submissive voice, and Polly’s mouth twitched into a smile.
She cleaned the area as gently as possible, and then after warning him, swabbed the cuts with antiseptic.
He winced and his leg muscles clenched involuntarily. Polly apologised and carried on swabbing. ‘It could have been worse.’ she told him, ‘you might have sat in the hedge.’
His choked laugh was cut off abruptly when she swabbed him again.
‘You haven’t asked if I’ve got AIDS,’ he said through gritted teeth, and Polly straightened for a second and looked him dead in the eye.
‘I should think not! I would imagine, as you’re an intelligent person, that you would have had the grace to tell me. You’re far more likely to have Hepatitis B——’
‘Sorry, all clear. I’ve had my jabs.’
‘Tetanus?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘Not recently.’
‘Well, you must. Go to the doctor today and have a booster.’ She bent her head over his leg again. ‘You don’t know what you could have picked up from these thorns. Infected animals could have brushed against them or anything.’
‘Unlikely,’ he murmured, watching with interest as she removed the tweezers from the cup of boiling water and dipped them in the antiseptic to cool them. ‘I’m probably in more danger from those things.’
‘That’s the most sterile I can get them at this sort of notice. Sorry,’ she added as he flinched again. ‘You look as if you’ve had a run-in with a porcupine. There,’ she laid the tweezers aside and swabbed the cut again, then wiped it dry. ‘I’ll put a butterfly plaster on it for now, but I really would recommend that you go to your doctor.’
Polly pressed the plaster in place, covering it with a sterile gauze dressing, and stood back to admire her handiwork. ‘You’ll do. I must get on. Can I give you a lift home?’
‘Please, if you’ve got time. Are you going through Longridge?’
‘I work there. That’s no trouble.’
She picked up her coat, and handed him his tracksuit bottoms. ‘I’m afraid they’re ruined,’ she said apologetically.
He shrugged. ‘They were ancient anyway.’ He hobbled out to the car, commenting as he went that his leg felt much better without the thorns.
She drove carefully into town, following his directions and dropping him in front of a lovely cottage, set back from the road behind a low wall in a quiet little lane just off the town centre.
‘Take care, now, and do go to the doctors’ with that. I’m sure they’d rather see you before it goes septic,’ she said cheerfully.
‘I don’t doubt it,’ he said with a laugh, leaning down through the passenger door to throw her a cheeky grin. ‘Thank you…?’
‘Polly,’ she supplied.
‘Thank you, Polly. You’re a gem.’
She blushed. ‘Rubbish. I’ll see you,’ she mumbled.
The grin widened. ‘Yes, you will. Go carefully, Pollyanna.’
She pulled away, and glancing back in her rearview mirror, she saw him give a jaunty wave before turning to hobble into his house. Nice man, she thought, even if he did call her Pollyanna. She wondered what his name was, and if she would see him again …
Polly arrived at the surgery in good time for her first clinic, but not in time to turn out her shelves. Oh, well, there was always the evening. She could stay late—goodness knew, there was precious little else for her to do as she didn’t know anybody yet.
She hung her coat in the little cloakroom and studied herself in the mirror for a moment. There was a liveliness in her gentle brown eyes that hadn’t been there earlier this morning, and a soft touch of colour on her cheekbones, the remains of the blush put there by her intriguing encounter. With a little smile, she tidied her lively nut-brown curls and added a dash of soft pink lipstick before going into Reception.
‘Morning, Angela, morning, Sue,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Anything exciting I should know about?’
‘Other than that Dr Gregory is back today? Not really,’ Angela told her. ‘Here’s your surgery list—they’re mainly inoculations and routine dressings. Mrs Major’s in for a diabetic check, and there are one or two to have stitches out. That’s this morning, then this afternoon you’re working with Dr Gregory on the ante-natal clinic. He’ll talk to you about that when he comes in. Sue’s got your notes out for this morning. Here,’ Angela handed her a pile of patients’ envelopes, and headed for the door.
‘Dr Haynes wants to dictate some letters before surgery starts. Must fly. Help yourself to coffee.’
The practice manager-cum-medical secretary ran lightly up the stairs to the senior partner’s surgery, and left Polly sorting through the notes. Sue, the receptionist, was on the phone, and Polly was alone when the surgery door was pushed open and her jogger limped in and came round to the door into Reception.
‘Hello again,’ he said, his warm toffee voice touched with humour. He was wearing a light grey suit and tortoiseshell specs, and looked even more like the boy next door.
What a nice smile, Polly thought, and returned it with interest. ‘Hello. I’m glad you decided to take my advice. If you can hang on a minute, I’ll see who can fit you in.’
‘Actually, it’s you I wanted to see——’
‘Oh, no,’ Polly replied, ‘you really ought to be seen by a doctor——’
His lips twitched. ‘Nonsense. All I need is a tetanus booster, as you so thoughtfully pointed out when you were tactfully trying to discover if I had AIDS——’
‘I did no such thing! You brought that up! I would never dream——’
‘You should, Pollyanna. You can’t be too careful.’
Polly pretended to scowl at him. ‘Don’t be absurd. Look at you! Unless you’ve had a contaminated blood transfusion——’
‘I could be a haemophiliac’
Polly shook her head firmly. ‘No. I’ve seen your legs. No haemophiliac has knees like that, with straight, strong joints—and anyway, you would have bled to death on my kitchen floor.’
‘There could be worse fates,’ he joked.
‘Not for my kitchen floor!’ Polly replied laughingly. ‘Now come on, out of here, please. If you go round to the window I’ll get the receptionist to make you an appointment with one of the doctors. Who do you usually see?’
‘I have more to do with Gregory than the others,’ he replied, still lounging in the doorway, an engaging smile playing around his nicely sculptured lips, his blue eyes behind his tortoiseshell specs twinkling merrily.
Polly was at a loss. How could she get him out of the reception area into the waiting-room? Short of picking him up—and he was much too big for that? probably a shade under six feet, but she knew from her contact with him that morning that every inch of him was solid bone and muscle, and at five feet three in her shoes she didn’t stand a snow-flake’s … sighing, she turned away to the desk.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said over her shoulder, ‘but Dr Gregory has been away on holiday and he’s rather booked up this morning.’
‘But I only want to see you, Pollyanna——’
‘The name’s Nurse Barnes, and please don’t call me Pollyanna,’ she almost snapped, turning round as she did so to find that her nose was in line with the middle of his tie, and so close that she could see the fine silk weave. She swallowed.
‘Patients really aren’t allowed in here. Please go into the waiting area, Mr—er…’
‘Ah, Polly, I see you’ve met Dr Gregory. Good, good.’ The senior partner swept in, clapped Polly’s intruder on the back and grinned at them both. ‘Good to have you back, old chap. Matt, this is our new nurse, Polly Barnes. She’s a real breath of spring.’
He smiled apologetically. ‘I know. She has the hands of an angel, as well.’ He laughed at Dr Haynes’ puzzled frown. ‘I fell in her hedge this morning, and she tended me, very sympathetically.’
Polly felt the heat rising from her toes—whether from her own humiliation or from his praise, she wasn’t sure. Scarlet, she muttered something about having to get on and excused herself hastily.
‘I’ll see you later for that tetanus jab, Polly,’ Matt called after her.
Polly smiled grimly. That could be a mistake. The way she was feeling, it could provide her with a wonderful means of revenge! ‘You do that,’ she called back, and stomped into her little room, mortified. He could have said something—anything! Rat. Low-down, sneaky, devious rat! So much for trusting him!
She was giving vent to her feelings when he stuck his head round the door and grinned. ‘Your notes,’ he said, and limped off down the corridor, whistling jauntily.
Polly wondered if he realised how close he was to having a hypodermic in the back of his neck.
The day was the usual hectic scrabble, with a mish-mash of inoculations interwoven with various other routine checks, like Mrs Major, the young diabetic who was having her three-monthly check-up.
Polly weighed her, took her blood pressure and a blood sample for the hypotest. ‘Your blood sugar’s a little on the low side, Mrs Major,’ Polly told her.
‘Oh, I’m not surprised. I couldn’t eat this morning—I tried, but—to tell you the truth, I’ve been off my food for a couple of days.’
Polly frowned. ‘I’ll get you a cup of tea and a biscuit in a minute. Your blood pressure’s down a bit, too. I don’t suppose you could be pregnant?’
Mrs Major laughed. Oh, no, Nurse. No chance. We’re always very careful—we don’t want a family yet, and James always—no, I couldn’t be.’
Polly persisted. ‘When is your next period due?’
The woman shrugged. ‘Any time now, I think. Why? You don’t seriously think I could be pregnant, do you? I’m sure—although, come to think of it——’
She flushed.
‘Yes?’ Polly prompted gently.
‘There might have been one occasion—but surely…?’
Polly smiled. ‘It only takes once, Mrs Major. Let me see if your doctor can fit you in now, just to be on the safe side. Who is your GP?’
‘Dr Gregory,’ she replied, and Polly almost ground her teeth in frustration.
‘Fine,’ she said with a forced smile, and asking Mrs Major to hang on, she went along the corridor to Dr Gregory’s room and tapped on the door, popping her head round.
He had an elderly man with him whom Polly had seen the previous week to dress an ulcer on his leg, and she smiled at him in genuine pleasure. ‘Hello, Mr Grey. How are you doing?’ she asked warmly.
Oh, not so bad, my dear. I’ll be along to see you directly,’ he told her with a twinkle.
‘Jolly good. I’ll look forward to it——’
‘Did you want something, Nurse Barnes, or is this merely a social call?’ Matt asked a trifle abruptly, and Polly straightened up like a naughty girl.
‘I’ve got a lady I’d like you to have a look at when you’ve got a minute, Dr Gregory.’
‘Fine. Hang on to her; Mr Grey and I have almost finished, I think.’
‘Fine,’ Polly gulped and shot out of his room, pulling the door to behind herself and sagging against it with a sigh. Why did he always seem to catch her at a disadvantage?
She went back into her little surgery, and continued with Mrs Major’s check-up, examining her eyes and feet for any sign of the deterioration that diabetes could cause. Everything was fine, except that she was beginning to feel a little nauseated and was probably going to go into a hypo if she didn’t have something to eat soon.
Polly gave her a glucose tablet, and went to find some biscuits from the kitchen. When she got back, Dr Gregory was in her chair, holding Mrs Major’s hands and talking soothingly to her.
‘She’s going into a hypo, Polly. I’ll have to give her some IV dextrose, I think. What’s her blood sugar?’
‘One point five.’
‘I wonder if we can get it up with food?’ Matt suggested, eyeing the biscuits, but Mrs Major by now was beyond co-operating. ‘Polly, could you draw me up ten mls of twenty-per-cent dextrose?’ he asked over his shoulder, then, scooping the nearly comatose woman up in his arms, he laid her gently on the couch and rolled up her sleeve; putting a tourniquet around her upper arm, he started looking for a vein.
‘Can’t find one. They’re all contracted down—ah, here’s one.’ Taking the syringe from Polly, he inserted the needle, pulled back to check the positioning in the vein and then flicking off the tourniquet, slowly injected the glucose solution.
The effect was remarkable. Mrs Major groaned and rolled on to her side, complaining of nausea, and Polly grabbed a kidney dish and pushed it under her chin in the nick of time.
‘Well done, Pollyanna,’ Matt murmured, withdrawing the needle and dropping the used syringe into the yellow sharps bin. Mrs Major was groaning, and Matt laid his hand over the vein and pressed firmly.
‘Hello, there. How are you feeling?’
She attempted a smile. ‘Awful. I have been for days. I think maybe Nurse Barnes is right.’
Matt raised an eyebrow at Polly.
‘There is some possibility that Mrs Major is pregnant,’ Polly explained quietly. ‘Her blood pressure’s lower than usual, and she’s been nauseated in the mornings.’
Matt nodded. ‘Let’s just have a look at you, Mrs Major,’ he suggested, and helped her undo her skirt and slide it down to her hips. He checked her eyes and throat, the glands in her neck and under her arms, and listened to her chest before moving down to palpate her abdomen gently. ‘When did your last period start?’ he asked.
‘I’ve been trying to think. The day we finished putting in the central heating,’ she decided. ‘That was the end of September—twenty-seventh, something like that?’
Polly picked up a calendar. ‘That makes you ten days overdue, Mrs Major.’
Oh,’ she said, subdued.
‘Oh, Matt echoed. ‘Would it be bad news?’
She shook her head. ‘Not really—although I don’t know what James will say.’
Matt smiled. ‘If it’s simply a case of accelerating your plunge into parenthood, he’ll probably get used to it very quickly. If not, well, he’ll come round, I’m sure. I’m much more concerned about your physical well-being at the moment. Certainly there’s nothing else obviously wrong with you. Is your diabetes normally well controlled?’
‘Yes—well, it has been. It’s only recently that I’ve been feeling off-colour, but I really have tried to eat.’
‘You must—I know that sounds impossibly trite, but you know the importance of maintaining your intake of carbohydrates. Try eating crackers and drinking cold water with ice in it. Slices of apple are supposed to be very good, too. Get James to wait on you a bit.’ He grinned. ‘Do him good. Men have it far too easy during pregnancy—always assuming that’s what’s wrong with you! I suppose it wouldn’t be a bad idea to take a sample of urine and run a pregnancy test, Polly. Can you sort that out?’
Polly nodded. Of course. Do you want Mrs Major to come back this afternoon if it’s positive?’
Matt shook his head. ‘I don’t think there’s any need. If you find you can’t eat, then we can arrange for you to go into hospital so that you can be consistently monitored and maintained. Hopefully it won’t come to that—I don’t think it will—but they may want to take over your ante-natal care.’
‘Aren’t there any pills you can give me?’
‘I’d rather not,’ he said, after a slight pause. ‘I’m never sure about them. Let’s give it a whirl without first. I’m sure you’ll be all right.’
He rose to his feet and limped to the door.
‘Oh!’ Mrs Major exclaimed ‘You’ve hurt yourself!’
He gave her a lopsided grin. ‘Polly beat me up,’ he said sorrowfully.
‘Ignore him,’ Polly advised, throwing him a black look and fighting down another blush.
He limped off down the corridor, chuckling quietly. Polly explained to the bemused patient that Matt had nearly been run off the road that morning.
‘Lucky for him you were there!’ Mrs Major said, and Polly smiled tightly. She was not a vindictive person, but this tetanus injection was beginning to sound attractive!