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Connor nodded and stood up, folding his arms judiciously. ‘I completely agree—no good pussyfooting around here.’ He looked at the old man and his wife. ‘Your chest is bad, and I can only see it getting worse, whatever we give you here. I think Dr Curtis has no alternative but to get you to St Hilda’s immediately.’ He added gently, to take the sting from his words, ‘You’ll feel so much better when you’ve had some treatment, believe me.’
Dan looked from one doctor to the other, then gave a sigh. ‘Well, nowt for it, then. If you both think I should go, I’ll have to do it. Mother, you’ll have to get our Barry down from his place to give us a hand with the milking.’
‘I’ll do that,’ promised his wife, ‘when I’ve got you to the hospital.’
‘I’m sending for an ambulance, Mrs Wetherby,’ said Victoria. ‘I want him to be started on oxygen as soon as possible, and the paramedics will give him that. Perhaps you’d like to follow him in your car.’ She picked up the phone. ‘I’ll also speak to the registrar on the chest ward—we want things to get moving as soon as possible.’
Suddenly the Wetherbys looked very vulnerable and bewildered—events had moved too quickly for them and they were in shock, gazing blankly at each other. Connor started to explain to them what was likely to happen in the hospital, his voice a low reassuring murmur. The phone calls over, Victoria looked at the trio for a minute. Connor was bending forward as he talked earnestly to them, encouraging them to ask any questions and giving them time to adjust to the situation. Quite an eye-opener, she thought. Connor had matured into the doctor with the perfect bedside manner!
‘The ambulance is on its way,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and meet them and fill in the paramedics on your condition, Mr Wetherby.’
In ten minutes the patient was on his way to St Hilda’s. Susan started crying as he was taken out to the ambulance and turned to the two doctors waiting by her side.
‘He’s very ill, isn’t he?’ she said softly. ‘I’ve known it for some time now—and I think he has, too—but we were both too frightened of the truth to do anything about it. How stupid we’ve been.’
‘No, you haven’t,’ soothed Victoria. ‘Lots of people find it hard to admit they need help. Look,’ she added, ‘let me give you a lift to the hospital—I don’t think you should be driving after a shock like this.’
Susan shook her head and dried her eyes. ‘No, no. I’ll be all right. I’ll go round by my son’s place and he can come with me—he works from home so I know he’ll be there.’
She got in the car and then wound down the window, looking up at Victoria and Connor. ‘Thank you, you’ve both been very kind and I’m so grateful.’ She smiled at them. ‘You know it’s like seeing a young Dr Sorensen and Dr Saunders when I look at the two of you—you’re both so like your parents. They were lovely doctors in the community, and it’s so comforting to know that you’re carrying on now they’ve retired.’
They watched as she drove out of the car park and Victoria murmured, ‘A nice woman… She must have been so worried about her husband. It’s amazing how some people have the capacity to carry on and ignore what’s happening to them. He must have felt terrible for a long time.’ She turned towards Connor and said with an effort at courtesy, ‘Thanks for backing me up there—he’s quite a stubborn old boy.’
‘No question about it—he needs immediate treatment.’
They turned and went back towards the surgery, the autumn sun warm on their backs. Connor stopped for a moment and looked back at the valley in front of the house, the ploughed fields reflecting the shadows of the clouds as they drifted across the sky.
‘It’s a beautiful part of the world,’ he said. ‘I’d forgotten how lovely it was. My father was right about the surgery being in such an idyllic place.’
‘Yes, and it all looks much the same as it did before I left some years ago. The stable block of Mum’s house had just been converted into the medical centre then…’ Almost absently Victoria added, ‘Hard to believe such a lot has happened since.’
He looked at her with raised brows. ‘Such as?’
She gave a short dismissive laugh. ‘Oh, it’s water under the bridge now.’
‘Quite right, Freckles. Look forward.’
She frowned. ‘I’ve told you, don’t call me that.’
‘Sorry…can’t get out of the habit somehow.’ He kicked a stone away from under his foot and glanced at her with a wry smile. ‘Funny that we should end up together in this practice, isn’t it? There was always a bit of rivalry between us in the old days—you probably never dreamt that our paths would cross again.’
‘No,’ agreed Victoria shortly. ‘It certainly wasn’t in my life plan.’
‘We’ll have to learn to work in harness together now.’
‘I suppose so…’
‘Perhaps,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘we could put on an act.’
‘What do you mean, an act?’
He gave a short laugh. ‘It’s obvious, my dear Victoria, that you’re not too keen about working with me.’ He looked at her steadily. ‘Perhaps you’ve good reason… I know I was a brat at school.’
Victoria was startled—he’d actually admitted he’d treated her badly! That was something, she supposed—a kind of apology.
‘It was a long time ago,’ she murmured.
‘What I mean is that if we pretend that we rub along OK, we might actually find we do! After all, we could have quite a nice life here. We each have good homes to live in that our parents have vacated, even if it is short term—it just needs a bit of give and take on both sides, I reckon.’
His clear blue eyes held hers questioningly and Victoria suddenly felt rather flustered, as if a switch had been thrown to register a mixture of excitement and danger. She looked at him in confusion. For so long she’d thought of him with dislike, the memory of that dance assuming more importance than it warranted, she supposed. Now he’d acknowledged that incident, shown that he’d matured, and it seemed silly to hark back to how he’d treated her then. She looked at his strong, intelligent face and firm uncompromising lips and swallowed hard. How extraordinary was that? She was beginning to admit to herself that she found Connor Saunders just as sexy now as she had when she’d been a schoolgirl!
She stepped hastily away from him. She must be going mad or perhaps she was sex starved, but how could Connor Saunders, whom she’d vowed to put out of her mind, kick-start feelings she thought had vanished for ever? He looked at her enquiringly, obviously expecting some reaction to his remarks.
With an effort she collected her thoughts. ‘I’m perfectly willing to work amicably with you, Connor, but it’s got to be a two-way thing. For instance, your remarks this morning weren’t very helpful.’
He held his hands up in submission. ‘OK, so I’ll try not to shoot my mouth off in future—and perhaps in return you can loosen up a bit.’ Then he grinned and put his hand under her chin, lifting her face towards his as he inspected her face. ‘How about it, Freckles? Think you can put on an act?’
She pulled her face away from his hand and said loftily, ‘I shall act in a dignified way, Connor. We’re both mature people—I’m sure we can manage to work together without bickering the whole time.’
‘Hallelujah to that!’ he remarked.
Karen, the practice nurse, ran towards them. ‘Oh, Victoria, you wouldn’t see one last patient this morning, would you? She’s only about ten and has come in by herself—I don’t think she’s even registered with the practice, but she looks really poorly. Connor’s still got another patient so he can’t see her.’
Connor had started to walk back towards the surgery, his feet making a scrunching noise on the path. Victoria watched him go before she went with Karen to see the patient and sighed. Would Connor and she ever be able to get on normally with each other? Having to ‘put on an act’might get rather wearing!
* * *
The young girl looked down at the floor, twisting her hands together.
‘What’s your name?’ Victoria asked her gently.
‘Evie Gelevska,’ was the whispered reply after a long pause. ‘I’m eighteen.’
‘Can you tell me what’s wrong, Evie?’ Victoria probed, while doing a quick visual assessment of the young patient, a thin pale little figure dressed in a ragtag collection of old pullovers with holes in them and a skimpy skirt. There was an unkempt air about her, as if she hadn’t bathed or washed for some time.
Evie looked up at Victoria timidly. ‘My throat’s sore. I thought you could give me something to make it better.’
There was just the hint of an accent in the girl’s voice, a trace of a European inflection perhaps. She smiled kindly at her. ‘I’m sure I can, Evie. Let me have a look at it. Open your mouth, pet, and I’ll shine this torch on it to let me see better.’ Victoria bent down and peered into her mouth. No wonder the poor girl was in pain: both tonsils were inflamed and there were white spots of pus on the periphery. She looked up at Evie’s scared face.
‘Poor you,’ she said. ‘It does look painful—but I can give you some medicine that will make it feel a lot better in a few days. Now I’ll have to take some details about you first—you aren’t registered with us, are you?’
She went round to her desk and opened up a new file on the computer for Evie Gelevska. ‘What’s your address?’
‘I live at the bottom of Smithy Lane in one of the cottages there.’
Victoria nodded; she knew it well as the lane was behind her house. ‘Right—and where’s your mum? Couldn’t she come with you?’
There was silence for a second, then the girl muttered, ‘She’s not well herself…but she’s sort of used to it.’
Victoria looked puzzled. ‘Has she got a sore throat, too?’
Evie hesitated, then said slowly, ‘No—it’s not that sort of illness. I mean she’s OK really. Just finds it hard to get about.’
‘I see. Have you just come to this area then?’
‘Yes. We’ve only been here a little while.’
‘Well, I do need your mum to come in because we’ll have to ask her some questions about you and your general health—and she will need to register with us, too. Will you ask her to come when she feels up to it?’
Victoria printed off a prescription for antibiotics and handed it to Evie. ‘Now, it’s very important that you take this medicine properly—the instructions will be printed on the side by the chemist and you must finish them all. What school do you go to, Evie?’
‘Braithwaite Comprehensive.’
‘Well, I should take today and tomorrow off—after that, if you feel well enough, go back to school. And one more thing. I’d like to see you next week and just check that everything’s all right. Make an appointment at Reception. Perhaps your mum would come with you next time—really it’s better if I see her as well.’
The girl nodded, unsmiling. ‘I’ll come.’
‘You know, if your mother’s not well enough to come here, perhaps I could see her on a home visit…’
Evie’s head jerked up and she said sharply, ‘No! No, she wouldn’t like that—I mean, she’s not all that ill.’
Victoria frowned and looked gravely at Evie. ‘She does know you’ve come to see me, doesn’t she?’
A slight flush spread over Evie’s cheeks, and there was a moment’s hesitation before she spoke. ‘Yes…yes, of course… but she trusts me to do things myself.’ Then she added abruptly, ‘Thank you for seeing me,’ and almost ran from the room.
Victoria followed her and then went into the office to look out of the window as she retrieved her bike and disappeared down the road. There was something odd about this situation, something that didn’t add up, she thought uneasily. Why hadn’t the mother rung the surgery to say that her daughter was coming in, especially as they weren’t registered or known to the practice?
She started to pour herself a coffee from the percolator, then looked again through the window—she could just see Evie cycling down the hill to the village. Connor came into the room behind her.
‘That coffee smells good,’ he said, joining her at the window. ‘What are you looking at?’
‘Can you see that girl on the bike?’ she asked. ‘I feel worried about her… She came by herself and I’m sure the mother’s unaware that she’s been here.’
‘What’s the matter with her?’
‘She’s got a badly infected throat,’ Victoria replied as she handed a cup of coffee to him, then added pensively, ‘And she wasn’t very forthcoming with information about her mother—didn’t want me to contact her.’
‘Why should she want to come secretly?’
Victoria shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea—but I think I ought to pay the mother a visit—make sure things are OK.’
He nodded and sipped his coffee. ‘Good idea. When in doubt, best to find out. By the way, don’t forget we’ve a meeting at the pub tonight—about seven o’clock?’
‘I haven’t forgotten.’ She sighed, her eyes following the vanishing figure of Evie Gelevska.
CHAPTER THREE
THE sunny weather of the morning had changed and now rain was lashing down. By the time Victoria had dashed across the road from where she’d parked her car to the Swinging Gate, she was soaked, her hair lying in bedraggled rats’ tails against her collar. She stepped into the dark cosy bar of the pub and looked across the room, dabbing her neck dry with her scarf.
Connor was standing by the bar, talking to the landlord, but at that moment he turned round and saw her, surprised again when he looked across the room at the tall slender girl with the damp russet hair dripping onto her collar—nothing like the rather plump, bookish-looking schoolgirl he had known. The years had changed Victoria into a stunning, stylish woman.
He pushed his way through a knot of people and looked at her with concern. ‘You look a bit wet… Go and get a table by the fire and dry out. What are you having, before we get started?’
‘White wine, please.’
Victoria subsided into a chair and took off her coat, hanging it on the back of the chair. She watched as Connor made his way back with the drinks and sighed. He had a tough, no-nonsense look about him as he shouldered his large frame through the crowded bar, and she guessed he wouldn’t give way if there were any contentious issues to be discussed that night. She pressed her lips together—she could be just as stubborn as he could if she wanted, but she did so hope they could get through the evening without bickering.
He sat down, passing a glass to Victoria and having a slow sip of wine from his. ‘God, that feels good,’ he remarked. ‘I seem to have dealt with half the patients in the practice today. How was your first day?’
‘Interesting, but I feel exhausted.’
‘That’s natural in a new job.’
It wasn’t just the work, thought Victoria bleakly. The letter she’d received that morning had been hard to put out of her mind all day—her emotions felt as if they’d been through a shredder. She glanced at herself in dismay in the murky mirror on the wall opposite—her eyes had dark circles under them and her hair was wet through.
‘Heaven’s, what do I look like?’ She sighed. ‘I’m a complete wreck—I look as if I’ve just dived into a swimming pool.’
He looked at her damp hair clinging to her head as sleek as a seal’s, and her glowing, flushed cheeks and said shortly after a second’s perusal, ‘You look OK to me. Have some wine—that’ll make you feel better.’
‘I could do with it,’ Victoria admitted. ‘It took me ages to do the visits, even with an A - Z. I haven’t been back long.’
‘Perhaps you could do with a satnav,’ Connor suggested. He leant back in his chair and regarded her through narrowed eyes. ‘You know, you’ve changed quite a bit since we were at school. I hardly recognised you.’
‘Well, I don’t have braces on my teeth or glasses now, but if it comes to that, you’ve changed physically as well,’ she retorted.
His mouth twitched, eyes amused. ‘What are you trying to say?’
‘Just that…you’ve filled out, you’re not so skinny. Still pretty opinionated, though,’ she added boldly.
‘I’d say you have a mind of your own, too. Your freckles are still there, of course—and your hair’s the same auburn.’ His gaze flickered over her and he took another sip from his glass. ‘I suppose you got your tan in Australia. What happened to bring you back from there?’
Victoria said tersely, ‘I got married, but it didn’t work out. Enough said.’
He raised his brows slightly. ‘Snap! I’m afraid my marriage has come to grief, too.’ There was a flippancy in his tone, as if he thought the whole thing was of no account. No doubt he was a tough nut and someone who wouldn’t give his heart easily, she thought. He probably thought of his collapsed marriage as a blip in his life, a setback rather than a disaster. If only she could be as detached as that, Victoria reflected. She wasn’t really over Andy and perhaps never would be. She’d been desperately hurt over his betrayal, coupled with a cold anger that she had wasted five years of her life.
Her throat constricted suddenly. She’d tried not to think about Andy over the past few days, but today, of course, it had been impossible to block him out of her mind. For a second his handsome face danced in front of her and she was back in Australia, enjoying the thrill of surfing on the white rollers, laughing across at him as he crashed into the water with his board flying. They’d had such fun together, she thought, been so happy decorating their little house. And yet all the time she’d been completely blind as to what had been happening, stupid girl that she was… And now it was all over, and she had been left feeling destroyed, every confidence in her ability to attract a man shattered.
A sudden cackle of laughter in the pub brought her back to the present and she realised that Connor was looking at her with a quizzical expression.
‘You were miles away, weren’t you?’ he observed.
‘Sorry, just thought about something. I…I’m sorry about your marriage.’
He shrugged. ‘Don’t be—it was for the best. Carol and I had completely different outlooks on life.’
‘So did my husband and I,’ remarked Victoria.
‘Then perhaps we have something in common after all,’ observed Connor lightly, although perhaps there was something in his eyes that belied his flippant tone.
‘I’m sure that the reasons for your splitting up and mine couldn’t have been more different,’ Victoria said stiffly. She wasn’t about to open her heart about her past to a man like Connor Saunders. She got up and looked down at him. ‘Another one before we get onto the subject of the practice?’
Connor’s eyes followed her as she went to the bar, noticing how the men gazed at her in admiration. There were a few people in the room who remembered Victoria and came up to say hello and he noticed how the rather wistful expression on her face lit up in a warm sparkling smile when she greeted them. He could still hardly believe that the schoolgirl he’d called Freckles had turned into such a swan—she’d always had an attractive face, but the round National Health glasses and steel braces on her teeth had disguised her looks.
He remembered how he’d enjoyed competing with Victoria, but how stubborn she could be when they’d argued, always convinced that she was right! Oh, yes, sometimes she’d seemed the most annoying and irritating female on the planet! Had she changed her character as well as her looks? If she hadn’t, he thought glumly, then she’d be damned difficult to work with.
He sighed to himself. It was going to be a terrific gamble, the two of them working together—he hoped it wouldn’t be a hideous disaster. If there was one thing he’d learned from the wreckage of his marriage it was that he would never kowtow to a woman again. Years of having to placate a spoilt and demanding wife had taught him the folly of losing the upper hand, he thought grimly. No way would he take a back seat in any working partnership, and he would certainly make Victoria aware that he would do the leading in the practice. She was probably a good enough doctor, but when it came to decisions he would be the one to make them.
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