Miracles in the Village

Which was just as well with the amount of money they’d sunk into that and the new cheese-making equipment, not to mention last year’s investment in the ice-cream venture that her sister-in-law, Sarah, was running, but the result was that there weren’t enough hours in the day.

So she needed to clean the kitchen, which was pointless since it was raining and Brodie coming in and out didn’t help in the least, even if Mike wiped the dog’s feet on an old towel, and she needed to clean the bathroom and their bedroom and change Sophie’s sheets. That pretty much was it, because they hadn’t had time to make the rest dirty.

Except for the sitting-room floor, of course, which now had crumbs, dog hair and bits of broken plate all over it.

She got the vacuum out and started in there.

‘Hello, my lovely,’ Mike murmured, wiping down Marigold’s teats with a paper towel before attaching the cups to them. He rested his head against her flank for a moment, feeling the warmth of her side and the gentle movement of her breathing. She smelt safe and familiar. Nothing unexpected there, no emotional minefield, just a cow doing her job, as he was doing his.

He pulled the cluster down and slipped the cups over her teats, one at a time, the suction tugging them rhythmically, and watched in satisfaction as the milk started to flow in a steady, creamy stream.

Beautiful. He loved his Guernseys. Their milk was fantastic, the cheese and ice cream and clotted cream they made from it a lifesaver in the current dairy-farming climate. ‘Clever girl,’ he murmured, running his hand over her rump and patting it before moving on. Clever, uncomplicated, undemanding, a lovely old girl who still, after six calvings, delivered the goods better than any other cow. If only his own life were as straightforward.

Her daughter Mirabelle was next to her, her head in the trough, and he ran his hand over her udder and frowned. There was heat in the right front quarter, and when he tugged the teat down gently, she raised her head and lowed in protest.

She had mastitis. Damn. As if he didn’t have enough to do.

‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ he murmured, and he wiped her other teats, attached the cluster to the three which were OK and then, taking advantage of the let-down reflex which the routine of the milking parlour always stimulated, with gentle, rhythmic movements he stripped out the infected quarter, discarding the milk. After dodging her disgruntled kick, he carefully inserted the nozzle of an intermammary tube of antibiotic ointment into the teat canal, squirted it into the udder and left her to finish.

The others were waiting patiently, the sound of their gentle mooing and soft, warm breath endlessly relaxing.

Funny. Most people who came to watch him milk, and it could be hundreds over the course of the summer, were fascinated from a distance, but thought it was smelly and dirty and couldn’t understand why anybody in their right mind would want to get up at four-thirty in the morning and work right through till seven at night.

Including his ex-wife.

Kirsten had thought he was insane, but he loved it, and couldn’t imagine doing anything else in the world. He could have been a vet, and he’d thought about it long and hard. He was clever enough, his school exam grades more than adequate for the entry requirements, but he’d gone instead to agricultural college because the farm was in his blood.

OK, it was hard work, but he was young and fit and it didn’t hurt him. You had to do something with your waking hours, and the warmth of the animals and the relationship he had with them was all the reward he needed.

It was servicing the investment in the ice cream, clotted cream and cheese-making equipment and expanding the farm shop that made him tired and brought him stress, but that was only the other side of the coin, and he could deal with it.

Or he would be able to, if only Fran wasn’t so stressed out herself.

He let the first batch of cows out and let the next ten in. It never ceased to amaze him the way they came in, all bar the odd one or two, in the same order, to the same places every time. It made his job that much easier.

Too easy, really. So easy that he had far too much time to think, and all he could think about was the look in Fran’s eyes every time she saw him with Sophie. Which, when she was with them, was always. Sophie was his shadow, trailing him, helping with the calves and the chickens and the milking, asking endless questions, nagging him about having a pony, tasting the ice cream and chattering about the cheese, wanting to stir it and cut it and sieve it.

She was too small to reach right across the vat so he had to lift her and hold her, and she’d been known to drop the spoon into the vat. Not that it mattered if the paddles weren’t turning, but if they were still at the mixing stage, he had to strip off to the waist, scrub his arm and plunge it nearly to the armpit in warm milk to fetch the spoon out so it didn’t foul on the paddles.

Yes, she was a hazard, but he missed her now she was gone, and he knew Fran missed her too, although her presence just rubbed salt into the wound.

He sighed and let the last ten cows in. They were nearly all pregnant now. The last three had calved in the past six weeks, and it would soon be time to artificially inseminate them.

He was trying to build the herd on really strong genetic lines, and he’d got a young bull growing on his brother’s farm which had excellent breeding and was showing promise. When he was mature, they’d see about using him, but until then they did it the clinical way, in the crush, with a syringe of frozen semen.

He gave a hollow laugh.

Not quite the same, not for the bull or the cows. He could empathise. He’d done his share of producing semen for his and Fran’s fertility investigations and treatment, and it was the pits.

It was all the pits, the whole damn process. So many questions, so much personal intervention that in the end they’d felt like lab rats. He couldn’t remember the last time he and Frankie had made love for the hell of it.

Not had sex, not timed it to coincide with her ovulation, or gone at it hammer and tongs for a fortnight in an attempt at quantity rather than quality, or done it out of duty and guilt because it had been months since they had, which was the current state of affairs, but made love in the real sense of the words, slowly, tenderly, just for the sheer joy of touching each other.

Or, come to that, clawed each other’s clothes off in desperate haste to get at each other! There hadn’t been any of that for ages.

Years. Two years? Three? Damn, so long he couldn’t even remember what it had felt like. Certainly he hadn’t touched her at all since the miscarriage in April.

He propped his head against Amber’s flank and rubbed her side absently. The calf shifted under his hand, and he swallowed the sadness that welled in his throat. Would he ever feel his own baby like that, moving inside Fran, stretching and kicking and getting comfortable?

‘You’re getting a bit close, aren’t you, girl? Last milking tonight, and tomorrow you can go and munch your head off in the meadow till you have your baby.’

She mooed, a soft, low sound of agreement, and he laughed and let them out.

He still wasn’t finished. He’d milked them, but he had to flush the lines through and hose down the yard before he could go in for supper.

Not that he minded. The longer the better, really, because Fran would be in a foul mood and they’d eat their supper in an awkward, tense silence.

It was always the same after Sophie had been to stay.

‘Mirabelle’s got mastitis.’

‘Oh. Badly?’

‘No, just one quarter. I’ve given her a tube of antibiotic. It might be enough. I’ll watch her.’

‘Mmm.’ Fran poked the cake crumbs around on the plate and pushed it away.

‘Don’t you want that?’ he asked, and she shook her head.

‘No. I’ve had too much cake.’ Which was a lie. She’d hardly had any, but he wouldn’t know that. She pushed the plate towards him. ‘Here, finish it off. I know you’re always starving.’

He picked up the almost untouched slice of cake and bit into it in silence while she cleared her plate away and put it in the dishwasher, then she heard the scrape of his chair against the tiles as he stood. ‘That was lovely. Thanks.’

She took the plate from him. ‘Don’t lie,’ she said with a pang of guilt for giving him such a scratch supper on his birthday. ‘It was just a slice of cake, not a romantic candlelit dinner.’

The sort of dinner most wives would give their husbands on their birthdays. Shortly before they went to bed and made love …

A puzzled frown flickered across his face and was gone, leaving his eyes troubled. ‘Fran, what’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, shutting down her runaway thoughts in case he could read them.

‘That’s not true. You didn’t eat your cake just now, you hardly had anything this afternoon—And don’t argue,’ he added, as she opened her mouth. ‘I saw you give that sandwich to the dog. And except for the time this morning when I was having my lie-in, you spent the whole weekend sending me off with Sophie and keeping out of the way. What the hell is it, love? Talk to me.’

She looked away, her conscience pricking. Had it been so obvious? She didn’t want to hurt Sophie, but having her there …

‘Frankie?’

She couldn’t. It was a real Pandora’s box and there was no way she was opening it now. ‘I’m fine. Just preoccupied. I’ve got a lot to do before tomorrow morning. You know what the end of the summer term is like—so many things to finish off.’

He just looked at her for a long moment, then turned away with a sigh. She watched him out of the corner of her eye, her peripheral vision picking up the moment he gave up. Damn her, then, she could almost hear him thinking. Damn her, if she wants to be like that.

‘I’ll be in the farm office,’ he said. ‘Don’t wait up.’

And he went out, the dog at his heels, the door banging shut behind them. She felt the tears threaten, but swallowed them down, straightened her shoulders and got her class’s project work out, spreading it out on the dining-room table and forcing herself to concentrate. The last thing she could afford to do was neglect her job and end up losing it. At the moment, with the farm overstretched because of the expansion, her income was the only thing keeping them afloat.

She gave a ragged little laugh. Perhaps it was just as well she wasn’t pregnant.

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS obviously going to be one of those weeks.

Mirabelle’s mastitis had cleared up overnight, but Betsy had gone down with milk fever and needed IV calcium. Guernseys were prone to milk fever, and Betsy had had it before. And Mike should have been on the alert for it as she’d just calved, but his mind had been elsewhere.

Still, he’d caught her in time and given her the injection, so she’d made a rapid recovery. And he’d turned Amber out that morning to await the arrival of her calf. Her milk had dwindled to a halt, and it was time for her to rest and gather her strength. He’d have to take a walk up there later and check on them. They were near Ben and Lucy Carter’s, grazing on the field by Tregorran House, the one with the barn where Lucy had had her baby at Christmas.

He could go with Fran when she got back from school—or perhaps not. It was a gorgeous day today, unlike yesterday, and no doubt Lucy would be out in the garden with the baby and would want to say hello.

He didn’t think either of them needed that at the moment.

Fran had been moody for the past week, short with him for no particular reason. And every time he tried to talk to her, she changed the subject. Whatever it was.

He went into the farm office and put a mug under the spout of the coffee-machine. It was one of those new pod ones, which meant he could have real coffee without fiddling around too much, and when reps from the wholesalers and farm shop outlets came to visit, he could give them decent coffee quickly that hadn’t been stewing for hours. It also meant they didn’t have to go into the house.

And recently, for some reason, he just didn’t want to go into the house if Fran was around. She was always busy making something for school, and it was simpler to keep out of her way.

Not that that was going to sort anything out, but if he left her alone, she’d get over it. She always did, but usually quicker than this.

He was just taking the milk jug out of the little fridge when there was a tap on the door. Since it wasn’t closed, knocking was a bit of a formality, but nevertheless he was surprised to see Nick Tremayne there.

‘Hello, Nick,’ he said, summoning up a smile. ‘Come on in. Coffee?’

‘Oh—yes, why not. Thanks.’ He propped his hips against the battered old desk and Mike could feel the searching stare of those dark brown eyes burning into his back. They’d seen enough of their GP in the previous three years to know that Nick Tremayne never did anything without a reason, and Mike had no idea what it could be. Not unless Nick knew something that he didn’t.

‘So—what can I do for you?’ he asked, turning round with the coffee in his hand and holding it out to Nick.

‘Oh, nothing. I’ve just finished my visits and I was just passing, thought I’d have a look in the farm shop, pick something up for Ben and Lucy. You’ve got some interesting things now.’

‘We try. The ice cream’s going well, and the blue cheese is a runaway success. We can’t keep up with the demand—but I’m damn sure you aren’t here to talk about that.’

Nick’s smile was wry. ‘Am I so transparent?’

Mike just grunted, and Nick smiled again. ‘OK. Point taken—but I really was just passing!’ He hefted the farm-shop paper carrier in evidence. ‘Ben’s got a few days off and my daughter’s invited me for lunch, and I didn’t want to go empty-handed. And as I was here, I thought I’d just see if you were around. We haven’t seen you recently—I wondered if you were both OK.’

Mike snorted softly and stared down into his coffee-cup, swirling the dark brew while he tried to work out how to reply. Honestly, he decided, and put the cup down.

‘Not really. We haven’t been since the miscarriage. Fran’s preoccupied, her temper’s short, she’s lost all her sparkle—I don’t know, she doesn’t have anything to say to me any more, and I think it’s pretty mutual. Frankly, Nick, I’m beginning to wonder if the strain of all this isn’t going to be too much for our marriage.’

‘Do you still love her?’

He hesitated, his eyes locked with Nick’s, and then he looked away, scrubbing his hand through his hair and letting his breath out on a harsh sigh. ‘Yes. Yes, I still love her. I just don’t know if she still loves me.’

He swallowed hard, emotion suddenly choking him, and Nick tutted softly and put his cup down as well. ‘Time for a stroll?’

‘Yeah. You going to Tregorran now?’ Mike asked.

‘I am.’

‘I’ll come with you. If you give me a lift there, I’ve got some stock to check and I’ll walk back. It only takes five minutes across the fields.’

They pulled up on the drive at Tregorran House, and while Mike stood waiting by the car, Nick handed over the bag of shopping to Ben. ‘There’s some strawberry ice cream in there that needs to go in the freezer,’ he said. ‘Back in a minute. Mike’s just going to show me something.’

A likely story, Mike thought with a mental snort, but he raised his hand and dredged up a smile for Ben. He liked his neighbours, and he was delighted they’d bought Nick’s old family home, but it would have been easier if Ben hadn’t come to the door with baby Annabel gurgling on his hip and rubbing salt into the wound.

‘Mike, I’m glad I’ve seen you,’ Ben said now, coming out onto the drive. ‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something. Any chance we could have a chat some time?’

He nodded. ‘Sure. Give me a call when you’re not busy, or drop round. I’m usually about.’ Mike gave him his mobile number and Ben keyed it into his own phone, then slipped it back into his pocket and smiled.

‘Cheers. I’ll call you.’

Ben waved, lifting the baby’s chubby little hand as Mike himself had done with Sophie so many times, and Mike waved back to them both, his breath jamming in his throat as Annabel’s face split into a cherubic smile, and he turned away.

Nick fell in beside him, and they went down the track at the side of the house and to the field at the side. It wasn’t right on the cliff top, because that field had a footpath through it, part of the Cornish Coastal Path, and he didn’t want his dry cows disturbed in their last few weeks of pregnancy by all the walkers.

‘Here we are—my ladies-in-waiting,’ he said to Nick, his eyes scanning the field to check that the six cows in there were all looking well. Amber came over to him, her gorgeous coat, fox-red splashed with white, gleaming with health in the summer sun, and he rubbed her poll and spoke softly to her for a moment.

‘You love your farm, don’t you?’ Nick murmured, and Mike nodded.

‘Can’t imagine doing anything else, but it’s a constant reminder of our own failure. With a dairy herd, all you do all the time is monitor their pregnancies and deliver their calves and manage their lactation. And it’s impossible not to draw parallels.’ He smiled, but he could feel it was off kilter. ‘If we were livestock, Fran and I would be shot. It seems we’re useless together. Giant pandas have more success.’

‘That’s not true. Fran’s been pregnant before, and you achieved a pregnancy on your first cycle of IVF.’

‘Yeah—which we also lost. We can’t afford another cycle at the moment, and we’ve run out of NHS funding, so where do we go from here? It wouldn’t be so damned frustrating if they could find anything wrong with us! But they can’t, Nick. We’re both well, there are no physical problems, we just can’t seem to get it right. And right now I’m not sure I even want to, the way we are. Well, the way Fran is, anyway. I just can’t get through to her at all.’

‘But that’s probably just a reaction to the miscarriage. Perhaps she needs to talk it through. Will she come to see me?’

Mike snorted again and shook his head. ‘Not a chance. She might talk to Kate—woman to woman and all that.’

Nick’s mouth tightened, and then he nodded. ‘That could work. She knows Kate. It’s an idea.’

One that was growing on Mike by the second. Kate was working as a midwife again now, and Fran had known her for years because of her son, Jem, who was at the school. Maybe she’d be able to get through to her. ‘She could catch her at school,’ he suggested, but Nick shook his head.

‘Not really the place. But she could call in—maybe one day after school? On her way to see Ben and Lucy? Kate does drop by from time to time to cuddle the baby. I could make sure she doesn’t have Jeremiah with her, and maybe you could make yourself unavailable?’

He laughed shortly. ‘That won’t be hard. I don’t have a lot of time to hang around. By the time Fran’s home, I’m usually milking so Kate should be able to talk to her undisturbed between four-thirty and six, and if I know she’s going to be here, I can always drag it out.’

‘Sure. Give me your mobile number. I’ll let you know what she’s planning so you’re forewarned.’

He pulled out his phone and they swapped numbers, and then Mike turned his back on the cattle and stared out over the sea, which was flat and smooth and sparkling, the lazy swell scarcely visible. The surfers wouldn’t be happy today, but the families with little children would be having a great time, just as they themselves had had with Sophie last weekend—just as they might one day be doing with another child of their own. His chest tightened with longing and he hauled in a breath and turned back to the GP.

‘Thanks, Nick,’ he said gruffly. ‘I don’t know if it’ll do any good, but thanks for trying.’

‘You’re welcome. And you can call me whenever you want a chat, you know. Any time.’

Mike nodded, and they strolled back to the house in thoughtful silence. Nick went in, lifting his hand in farewell, and Mike nodded and set off back across the fields to the farm.

Fran would kill him for interfering, but he couldn’t watch her falling apart any longer. He just hoped that Kate was able to reach her, because frankly he was at a loss, and if something didn’t happen soon, the remains of their marriage would be unsalvageable.

He tried a little salvage that night.

They’d had supper, and for once they were sitting down together in front of the television. There was nothing on that either of them really seemed to want to watch, though, so he turned it off, found an easy-listening CD, soft and lazy and romantic, and instead of going back to his chair he went over to the sofa and sat down beside her, giving her shoulder an affectionate little rub.

‘You OK, my love?’

She nodded, but she didn’t meet his eyes and there wasn’t a trace of a smile. ‘Just tired. I’ll be glad when the holidays come.’

‘So will I. You can give me a hand—we’ll try that new fresh curd cheese you’ve been talking about.’

Beneath his hand her shoulder drooped a little, then she straightened up. ‘Yes, we can do that. I might give Sarah a hand with the ice cream as well. See if we can get the raspberry one smoother. It’s a bit too juicy and it tends to get ice crystals.’

‘It’s gorgeous. Maybe it just needs stirring for longer as it cools, and agitating more often. You’ve got it cracked with the strawberry, doing that. Maybe it just needs more of the same.’

‘Maybe. We’ll try a few things, see how we do.’

She stood up, moving away from him, and went out, coming back a moment later with a book. So much for cuddling up together on the sofa. He peered at the cover.

‘Anything interesting?’ he asked, and she lifted the book so he could see it.

‘CBT—cognitive behaviour therapy. One of my pupils is having it, so I thought I’d read up a bit.’

And she curled up in the corner of the sofa again, opened the book and shut him out as effectively as if she’d left the room.

So he did.

He went upstairs, had a shower for the second time that day and came back down in a clean pair of jeans. He hadn’t bothered with a T-shirt. It was still hot and, anyway, she’d never been able to keep her hands off him when he took his shirt off. All that rippling muscle, she’d say with a smoky laugh, and grab him.

But she didn’t even look up.

The CD had finished, so he put the television back on and settled down to watch a repeat of something he hadn’t enjoyed a lot the first time round.

Anything rather than be ignored.

What was happening to them?

She raised her eyes slightly from the book and let them dwell on his body. Long, lean and rangy, his muscles sleek and strong, not the muscles of a weightlifter but of a man who worked hard with his body, and it showed.

Lord, it showed, and there’d been a time not so very long ago when she would have got up and gone over to him and run her hand over that bare, deep chest with its scattering of dark hair, teasing the flat copper coins of his nipples until they were tight and pebbled under her fingertips. Then she’d run her hands down his ribcage, feeling the bones, the muscles, the heat of his body radiating out, warming her to her heart.

He would have pulled her onto his lap, his eyes laughing, and then the laughter would fade, and he’d kiss her, his hands exploring her body, searching out its secret places, driving her crazy with his sure, gentle touch.

What was that song about a lover with a slow hand? That was Mike—or it had been. Just lately he didn’t seem to be interested, and if he had been, she wouldn’t have. Just the thought of him touching her so intimately made her shrink away. She didn’t think she could cope with the intimacy, baring her soul to him as well as her body. Not when her soul was hurting so much and her body had become public property with all the investigations. Even the idea of being touched there …