Christmas At Willowmere

‘That was fantastic,’ Glenn said laughingly as he took her in his arms and danced her along the main street of the village, past the fairy lights in the windows of the cottages, past the giant Christmas tree in the square where the surgery was, and up the path of the place she called home.

As they faced each other breathlessly at her door Anna wanted to stay in his arms for ever, with everything open and truthful between them. But it was still there—the fear that he would want to marry her out of concern rather than desire if she ever told him what had happened to her.

Sensing that she was retreating behind the wariness that never seemed to go away, he kissed her just once—with a tenderness and passion that made her bones melt.

Taking the door key out of her hand, he unlocked the door of the annexe. As she stepped inside he said, ‘Thanks for a wonderful experience,’ and went striding off to where Bracken House stood in the darkness of the midnight hour.

Abigail Gordon loves to write about the fascinating combination of medicine and romance from her home in a Cheshire village. She is active in local affairs, and is even called upon to write the script for the annual village pantomime! Her eldest son is a hospital manager, and helps with all her medical research. As part of a close-knit family, she treasures having two of her sons living close by, and the third one not too far away. This also gives her the added pleasure of being able to watch her delightful grandchildren growing up.

Recent titles by the same author:

COUNTRY DOCTOR, SPRING BRIDE

A SINGLE DAD AT HEATHERMERE

A WEDDING IN THE VILLAGE

CITY DOCTOR, COUNTRY BRIDE

Dear Reader

Having been brought up happily enough in a Lancashire mill town, where fields and trees were sparse on the landscape, I now live in the countryside and find much pleasure in the privilege of doing so. It gives me the opportunity to write about village life with its caring communities and beautiful surroundings.

So, dear reader, welcome to the first of my four stories about Willowmere, a picturesque village tucked away in the Cheshire countryside. During the changing seasons you will meet the folk who live and work there, and share in their lives and loves.

In this first book, Willowmere is beneath the mantle of winter, and over their first Christmas together in years practice nurse Anna is reunited with her long-lost love Glenn, a handsome doctor. Will the gift of happiness be theirs at this special time? Read on to find out!

Abigail Gordon

The Willowmere Village Stories

Look out for Georgina and Ben’s story in the spring!

CHRISTMAS AT WILLOWMERE

BY

ABIGAIL GORDON

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Bryan Murray, a fellow writer and my brother

CHAPTER ONE

THE first snow of winter had fallen during the night and as Anna and the children walked the short distance to the village school it crunched beneath their feet, cold and dazzling beneath a pale sun.

When Pollyanna and Jolyon had awakened to find a white blanket on cottage roofs and gardens there had been cries of delight and breakfast had been a rushed affair, so eager were they to be out of doors and in the snow…and now the three of them were making slow progress. With faces rosy from the cold, the children were stopping every few yards to slide on the slippery surface of the pavement or pausing to scoop up the snow in their woolly mittens.

But at last wellies had been exchanged for trainers, mittens put on a radiator to dry in the school cloakroom, and hats and warm jackets hung on pegs, leaving Anna free to make her way to the village’s health care centre where she was a part-time practice nurse.

It was snowing again, swirling flakes resting briefly wherever they fell before turning to wetness. She smiled. It was the beginning of December, early for the first snow of winter to be transforming the village into a wonderland of white.

Not all people saw it as something enchanting. There would be no smiles from those who lived high up on the fringe of the moors, beside the proud peaks that today were snow-capped. Sheep farmers and other remote dwellers would be watching the weather forecasts uneasily and hoping that this was just a fleeting reminder that winter had arrived.

Most of the parents who had dropped their children off at the school had gone. Just a single car was still parked outside, and as she walked past the window on the driver’s side it was lowered and a man’s voice said questioningly, ‘Anna?’

She stopped, hoping that it wasn’t a patient wanting a kerbside consultation instead of going to the surgery, and waited as a pair of long legs swung out of the car.

‘Glenn!’ she breathed, taking a step backwards. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I was passing the school and saw you going in with the children,’ he said. ‘So I stayed around until you came out.’

Anna swallowed hard with legs wobbling beneath her. It was five years since she’d seen the man standing in front of her, and it had felt like an eternity. The last time she’d seen him she’d told him they had no future. That she wasn’t going to work in Africa with him because she was needed here in Willowmere. It was where she belonged.

It had been a half-truth. There’d been another reason why she had ended their relationship, a reason that she had not wanted to burden him with as it would have meant him sacrificing a cherished dream on her account.

She’d belonged where he was, but life, with its twists and turns, had shattered all her hopes and dreams on a day such as this, and instead of her future being the happy and fulfilling thing she’d wanted it to be, it had turned onto a narrow restricting path.

After what she’d said to Glenn Hamilton the last time she’d seen him, she’d thought never to see him again. Yet here he was, as large as life, and she couldn’t believe it.

They’d met at a disco organised by their respective colleges when she’d been taking a nursing degree and Glenn had been studying to be a doctor. The attraction between them had been instant. They’d spent every spare moment together from that night and as graduation day had drawn near in their last year, they’d begun to make plans for a future they intended to spend together, blissfully confident that nothing was ever going to separate them.

As they faced each other Anna’s heartbeat was like a marching army thudding in her breast. On a cold and snowy morning Glenn had appeared in Willowmere again.

He was close enough for her to see that he’d changed since she’d last seen him. He was thinner, his face almost gaunt beneath the dark thatch that lay upon his head, but as their glances held she saw that his eyes, the same deep blue as violets, were the thing about him that had changed most.

There had been enthusiasm and purpose in them once, now there was uncertainty there. The look of someone who wasn’t sure of his welcome.

As for the rest of him, he was still tall and straight-backed, and was sporting a tan which looked out of place in the snow of an English winter.

‘I just thought I’d look you up,’ he said evenly, reminding her of the question she’d gasped out at the sight of him…

‘You were that sure I would be here after such a long time?’ she said quietly.

‘I was pretty sure, yes, after you informing me the last time we met that you’d had second thoughts about us and wanted to call it off. That we’d been apart too long, and you needed to help your brother with the children after they lost their mother in an accident.’

Please, don’t remind me of that dreadful day, she thought. He would never know what it had cost her to tell him she wanted to finish with him.

‘So what has brought you back home?’ she asked, without commenting on what he’d just said.

‘I’m taking some leave from the job and thought I’d look up my old friends and acquaintances. I left London in the early hours and arrived here just before eight o’clock. Saw what looked like the local hostelry, a place called The Pheasant, and booked in there for a short stay before I did anything else just to be on the safe side, as it’s hardly the weather to have to sleep in the car.’

So she’d been delegated to his list of friends and acquaintances, Anna thought, and could she blame him after what she’d done to him? She was drowning in the joy of seeing him in the flesh again instead of in her dreams, but at the same time was hoping she would be able to disguise her delight so that Glenn wouldn’t guess that she still cared.

As if reading her thoughts, he said, ‘I haven’t come to butt into your life, Anna. I expect you’ll have settled down with someone else by now, though the young ones you were with would be your brother’s children, I imagine, as they looked the right age.’

‘Yes,’ she told him steadily, ‘Pollyanna and Jolyon started school in September and, no, I’m not with anyone else.’ Before he could comment on that she went on quickly, ‘I call them Polly and Jolly. They live with their father in the house where he and I grew up next to the surgery. My home is the annexe on the other side of the building. It’s a convenient arrangement. I’m near when needed and yet it gives James and I our own space.

‘He manages very well under the circumstances, with a busy practice to run and the children to take care of. Obviously they come first in his life and in mine too because they are so young and vulnerable.’

Glenn was staggered to hear her matter-of-fact description of what her life had become, and even more so when he asked about her father and was told, ‘Dad died not long ago. He never got over losing my mum. James is in charge of the practice now. I’m employed there from nine o’clock until three now the children are at school, and it is where I should be now. I must ask you to excuse me as we are always busier than usual in this kind of weather.’

‘Hop in, then,’ he said, turning back to the car. ‘I’ll take you.’

‘It’s only a short distance. I’ll be there in minutes,’ she protested.

‘Nevertheless, I’ll take you. For one thing, it’s bad underfoot and you’ll be no use to anyone if you fall and hurt yourself.’

‘All right,’ she agreed, and slid into the passenger seat, so aware of his nearness she had to look away. She felt her manner had been too abrupt and as she pointed the way to the surgery said, ‘I’m sorry I’m in such a rush. I wish you’d let me know you were coming.’

He raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘Would you really have wanted me to?’

She didn’t answer. Anna was content with her life up to a point as long as she didn’t dwell on the fact that she wasn’t going anywhere fast, because if she did it made her think wistfully of the full and exciting life that Glenn must be leading in Africa, yet when she looked at Pollyanna and Jolyon secure in happy childhood, there was comfort to be had.

But now she’d just discovered that Glenn wasn’t in Africa. He was here in Willowmere, near enough to touch, and it felt unreal.

As she was debating whether to invite him to call when he was passing to make up for her lack of cordiality, he forestalled her by saying, ‘Would you feel like joining me for a drink at The Pheasant this evening? It would be nice to have a chat. I’ve been wondering how things were with you.’

‘Er…yes…I suppose I could,’ she said slowly, ‘and everything is fine.’

It wasn’t, of course. The secret she’d kept from him would make sure of that, but Glenn was never going to know about the thing that lay so heavily upon her heart…

‘On weekdays the four of us have our evening meal together at Bracken House,’ she explained. ‘It will be eightish before I’ve cleared away and done a few chores.’

‘Whatever time suits you will suit me,’ he said easily.

This polite chit-chat was weird, Anna was thinking as he stopped the car in front of the surgery. Did Glenn remember how they used to be when they were at university?

When his lectures were over he would cross London to where she was based and come knocking on her study door. Once inside he would coax her away from her books and they’d go to a café or the students’ union and would be so engrossed in each other they wouldn’t notice what they were eating.

He had been the idealist, eager to use his medical knowledge to put the world to rights. Unlike her, he hadn’t had any family to consider. He’d been an only child. His parents had divorced when he’d been quite young and he’d spent his childhood being passed from one to the other. He’d lost touch with them once he’d turned eighteen and had become quite self-sufficient as a result.

They’d planned that if they got the degrees they wanted they would go to Africa to join one of the aid programmes. At some time in the future they would get married, either out there or back home, and then have children, something that Glenn saw as very important, having had no proper family life of his own.

That had been before her mother had died unexpectedly from a major heart attack, leaving her father, who had been senior partner at the surgery for many years, frail and inconsolable.

At the same time her sister-in-law, Julie, who had been expecting twins, had been having a difficult pregnancy with dangerously high blood pressure. She had been in hospital, confined to bed, and monitored all the time to check for signs of pre-eclampsia and Anna had known that she couldn’t leave the country with all that happening.

Unlike Glenn’s childhood, hers had been magical. She’d been surrounded by love and whenever she’d mentioned it he’d said, ‘That is how it’s going to be for our children. They won’t have to listen to endless rows and feel lost and bewildered all the time like I did when I was a kid.’

She’d nodded her agreement, happy and secure in their love for each other and having no idea that the fates had some ideas of their own regarding that, and now she felt like pinching herself to see if she was awake. She was meeting Glenn at The Pheasant in a few hours’ time, something that she would have thought as likely as the sun falling out of the sky.

‘You may not find the pub very exciting,’ she warned as she opened the car door. ‘It’s usually village affairs being discussed on a winter night. On a summer evening it’s a different matter. The place is full of walkers and tourists and the regulars don’t get a look-in.’

‘Whatever it is like, I shall enjoy it,’ he told her, ready to depart. ‘I’ll say goodbye until this evening, then.’

As Glenn drove towards The Pheasant to unload his belongings he was wondering if that was the worst over.

He’d spent five years in various African countries, doing what he’d set out to do, and now he was ready for a spell of normal life back home, and every time he thought of normal life he thought of Anna.

There had been no one for him since she’d told him their relationship was over. He hadn’t had the time or the inclination, though he knew deep down that he needed to move on. But before he did so he’d felt he had to see Anna one more time to make sure that there was nothing left of what they’d once had.

So now here he was in the Cheshire village that was so dear to her heart, grateful that he’d found her still there. If what she’d said was correct, just as he had never replaced her, so she had never put anyone in his place, though that didn’t have to mean anything. But it had been an uneasy moment when he’d seen her walking along in the snow with a couple of kids. His spirits had sunk to the soles of his feet but common sense had reminded him that her brother’s children would be that age.

As he’d driven up from London he’d wondered, as he had many times before, how she would greet him if he found her still there. The memory of their last meeting was still cuttingly clear, and now he had his answer. There’d been no happy reunion. Just the exchange of a few stilted sentences had told him he’d been a fool to expect anything else after the way she’d dumped him all that time ago.

When they’d got their degrees he’d ended up going to Africa without her. It had been at Anna’s suggestion because her life had been taken over by family commitments, as she’d always thought it might be.

‘As soon as Dad is on the mend and Julie has had the babies, I’ll join you,’ she’d promised, and he’d reluctantly agreed to leave her behind.

They’d kept in contact all the time and on each occasion when they’d spoken Anna had told him how much she was missing him and longing to be there beside him. When she’d phoned to say that the babies had arrived safely and her father was no worse, he’d hoped that soon they would be together.

At that time, along with other members of his team, he’d been about to do a month-long trip to remote areas where the people rarely had the chance to receive health care, and he’d hoped that by the time he returned Anna would be ready with the date of her arrival.

But there had been no messages waiting for him when he got back and every time he’d rung her there was no answer. He’d felt a sense of foreboding and after two weeks of no contact he’d taken leave and flown home, going straight to Willowmere with all speed.

When Anna had opened the door of Bracken House to him he’d thought she looked ghastly and his anxiety had increased. As she’d stepped back to let him in he’d asked, ‘What’s wrong, Anna? Why haven’t you answered my calls?’

‘I’ve been too busy,’ she said, and he observed her in disbelief.

‘Too busy to let me know when you’re coming to join me? We’ve already been apart too long. I’ve been living for the day.’

‘Glenn, look, I’m sorry but I’m not coming,’ had been the next stab to the heart. ‘Julie and I were in an accident. Mercifully the babies were unharmed and I was…hurt but survived. But Julie…she was killed. So I can’t leave the little ones now.’ She sighed and put up a hand to stop him saying anything. ‘I’m sorry to do this to you, but even before it happened I’d been giving a lot of thought to us. I was going to call it off, yet didn’t want to do it over the phone, but now that you’re here, I can at least tell you to your face.’

‘What?’ He stared at her aghast. She said it like a well-rehearsed speech. ‘The last time we spoke you said you would be joining me soon. I understand why you can’t go to Africa, but we can change our plans. I can come back to work in Britain. We can live here where your family are, so that they have you near, but it doesn’t have to affect our relationship surely. What has made you have doubts about us?’

Anna shook her head. ‘It’s no good, Glenn. I’ve fallen out of love with you. I’ve had time to step back and take a look at where I was heading and have changed my mind.’

‘Are you telling me in a roundabout way that there’s someone else?’ he asked harshly.

‘No. I’m just telling you that I want out. I’ve changed my mind.’

‘Because Julie has died?’

‘Partly, but not just because of that.’

‘So what else, then?’

‘I’ve told you, I’ve just had time to think about things.

About us. It’s not going to work. Will you please go?’

‘Yes. I will,’ he said coldly, and followed it with, ‘I’m so sorry about what has happened. Give your brother my condolences. I’ll see myself out.’

He went back to Africa the day after she’d demoralised him with her change of heart, and there had been no communication of any kind from her since the day she’d dumped him without the slightest warning. He’d thrown himself into his difficult and often dangerous work in an attempt to forget her and forced himself to move on.

So why had he come back now? Gazing through the mullioned window of a pleasant chintzy bedroom beneath the eaves of The Pheasant later that morning, he knew it was need that had brought him here.

For a long time he’d been bound by the needs of others. Now it was his own need that was driving him. He was drained mentally and physically after what he’d had to do and what he’d had to observe, and ached for Anna’s presence in his life once more, but when he recalled the way she had wiped out what they’d had together in just a few abrupt sentences he hadn’t any high hopes regarding that.

He’d been lost for words when she’d told him of the passing of her father. What kind of a life had she been living during the years they’d been apart? he wondered. He could have helped make it easier if she’d given him the chance.

Maybe the coming evening would bring a better understanding between them, but he wasn’t too hopeful. Getting to know Anna again was not going to be easy.

Physically she hadn’t changed as much as he had. The red-gold of her hair was the same, although instead of hanging long on her shoulders, as it used to, it was now in a short, smooth bob framing a face that had no special claim to beauty other than big hazel eyes with long lashes and a kind mouth.

Personality-wise it seemed a different thing, and he supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. Trying to fill the gap that their mother had left for those two children and being there for her father and brother must have left little time for her to pursue her own life.

He had never experienced family closeness such as hers. His home life had been a poor thing by comparison and it was why he longed for children of his own, so that he could give them the love that he’d never had.

After years of mayhem in war-torn lands, it had felt as if this beautiful village, which had always meant so much to Anna, had been beckoning him, and he’d decided to have one last sighting of her before he closed the pages of a book that was only half-written.

So far he’d accomplished two things. He’d found her out there on the snow-covered street and she’d agreed to meet up with him later. With regard to anything else, he was prepared to wait and see.

James was in Reception, talking to Elaine Ferguson, the practice manager, when Anna came through the main doors of the surgery, and he saw immediately that something was amiss.

When he’d finished speaking to Elaine he followed her into the smaller of the two rooms where the nurses performed their functions and asked, ‘What’s wrong? You look like you’re in shock. You didn’t have problems getting the children to school, did you?’

She managed a smile. ‘I encountered some reluctance to leave the snow behind, but once they were inside and settled they were fine.’

‘So what is it, then?’

‘I’ve just met someone I haven’t seen in years.’

‘Who?’

‘Glenn Hamilton.’

‘The guy you met at university?’

‘Yes. He’s back home for a while and looking up old friends.’

‘So what’s wrong with that?’

‘Nothing, I suppose. It was just a shock, seeing him here in Willowmere,’ she said, thinking how that was putting it mildly!

At the time she’d broken up with Glenn the only things that had been registering with James had been his wife’s death, the needs of his children and his sister’s recovery from her injuries. What had been going on in her private life had been a blur, and in any case he’d never met Anna’s boyfriend.

‘So where has he been all this time?’

‘He’s a doctor and has been working with one of the aid organisations in Africa. ‘It’s what I’ve always wanted to do but the accident put paid to that.’

‘I’ve never heard you say that before!’ he exclaimed.

‘Why would I mention it?’ she said gently. ‘It belongs to the past. Though it is something I might do in years to come.’ And the thought was there that it wouldn’t be the same without Glenn beside her.