Christmas At Willowmere

‘And he wants to see you again for old times’ sake, is that it?’

She shrugged. ‘So it appears. Glenn has booked into The Pheasant for a few days and because I didn’t have time when we met to talk to him properly, I’ve agreed to meet him there tonight for a drink. You haven’t got anything planned, have you?’

‘No,’ he said immediately, ‘and if I had I would cancel it. Why don’t you ask him round for a meal? I’d like to meet him. Any friend of yours is a friend of mine, though I don’t recall you ever mentioning him much in the past.’

‘There was nothing to tell. He went working abroad and we kept in touch for a while and that was it. The Glenn I knew in those days was clever and caring in his approach to medicine. That was why he was so eager to help the world’s suffering.’

‘You weren’t in love with him then?’

Her reply was evasive. ‘We were close at one time but it didn’t work out.’ She glanced around her. ‘And I’m here to work, aren’t I? Though surprisingly there doesn’t seem to be anyone needing to see a nurse at this moment.’

‘There soon will be,’ James promised, and putting to one side for the moment the discussion they’d just had he went to call in his next patient.

But as the morning progressed and those who had come to consult him came and went, it kept coming back, and he thought, as he’d done a thousand times, that he owed his children’s wellbeing and his sanity to his sister.

It had been she who had been there for him during days and months of despair after he’d lost Julie, and at the same time she’d helped look after the babies that had been left without a mother, while making a slow recovery from her own injuries.

It concerned him constantly that she’d had to put her plans on hold for their father’s sake and his, yet every time he brought up the subject Anna always told him gently that she was fine and he would be the first to know when she wasn’t.

He’d been able to tell from what she’d said that the Hamilton fellow had been a close friend. He remembered Anna saying that someone from university had called some weeks after the accident, but he’d been at the practice at the time and with so much on his mind it had barely registered.

During Anna’s last year at university and when she’d come home at the end of it, he’d been so concerned over Julie’s difficult pregnancy and his father’s failing health that what had been going on in his sister’s life had passed him by.

For instance, he hadn’t known until today that she’d wanted to work abroad when she’d qualified and had given up that idea because she’d been needed back home. They’d always been a close and loving family but Anna’s devotion had gone way beyond the call of duty.

He supposed he should have married again, giving her back the freedom she’d so willingly forfeited. But the thought of replacing Julie was more than he could bear, and if he ever did meet someone who came near to her in his affections, would she want a widower with two young children for a husband? Anna adored Polly and Jolly just as much as he did, but his was the responsibility.

There had been blood tests to do during the morning, along with injections, dressings to change and other duties that went with the job for Anna and Beth Jackson, the other practice nurse, and as always the time flew past. There was no opportunity to think about the evening ahead but when three o’clock came and it was time to pick up the children, seeing Glenn again was the thought uppermost in her mind…

He is here in Willowmere, she thought incredulously as she waited for them to come out of school. I can see The Pheasant from my bedroom window just five minutes’ walk away and I may as well enjoy the thought while it lasts, as nothing will have changed by the time he is ready to leave. I just can’t blight his life. He deserves better than I can give him.

When they arrived home Pollyanna and Jolyon played in the garden in the snow until the light faded and then she brought them in for a change of clothes and a warm drink, and all the time she was wishing that the hands of the clock would move faster.

She dressed with care for the evening ahead in the colours that suited her best. Dark green trousers and a short cream jacket with a long scarf to match showed off the red-gold of her hair and the beautiful hazel eyes that once had been clear and cloudless.

She’d changed a lot over recent years but tonight she wanted Glenn to see that she was still the same woman as before. There was no need for him to ever know what she’d given up for him, or feel sorry for the life she was leading now.

It had been an act of love and if she sometimes felt she should have given him a choice, she put the thought firmly from her mind. He was the idealist and might have said it didn’t matter, which would have left her in a limbo state of always wondering if he regretted his decision. No, she had done the right thing.

Anyway, he was here now, and maybe he didn’t hate her as much as she’d thought he would. He’d seemed friendly enough towards her, and she’d even sensed compassion in him when she’d told him about her father, but whatever his life was like now, she knew there would still be bitterness in him for the way she’d treated him, and she couldn’t blame him.

But, she decided firmly, he had come to Willowmere of his own accord, so why not make the most of it for the short time he was there? Picking up her bag and keys she went out into the snowy night.

CHAPTER TWO

THE accident had happened just as Anna had been ready to let Glenn know she was flying out to join him. The babies were a month old and it had seemed as if she might be no longer needed at Bracken House with Julie back to her normal self, the problem of the high blood pressure having disappeared once she’d given birth. And with James around to keep an eye on their father, the time had seemed right.

Glenn had still been out of contact but was due back soon on the day that she’d driven Julie and the children to the hospital to have their feet checked by a paediatric consultant while James had held the fort at the surgery.

Both babies had been born with feet slightly inward turning, due to being in a cramped position in the womb, and had immediately been put into tiny boots that would correct the problem. And on an icy winter morning she and Julie had taken them for a progress check.

The report had been good. They’d told the anxious mother that it was a common enough thing and as it was being treated promptly it should soon right itself. They’d set off for home in good spirits and all had been fine until a car coming fast out of a minor road had skidded into them on the icy surface and hit the side where Julie had been sitting.

By some miracle, the babies hadn’t been hurt, but their mother had taken the full impact of a car much heavier car than theirs and by the time the emergency services had arrived she had died from severe head and spinal injuries.

Anna had been found injured in the driver’s seat, not too seriously at first glance, but in great pain in the pelvic area.

As a paramedic had bent over her she’d heard the babies crying and gasped through the pain and shock, ‘The babies!’

‘They seem all right,’ the paramedic told her. ‘They’re being lifted out of the car now.’

‘And their mother?’

‘We’re doing all we can,’ he said gently. ‘And now, before we move you, tell me where the pain is.’

‘Everywhere,’ she moaned weakly, ‘but worse around my pelvis.’ She’d drifted off into nothingness for a few moments and the next thing she knew she was being lifted carefully onto a stretcher before being put into an ambulance.

She knew she’d lost Julie as soon as she saw James’s face in A and E. On the point of being taken to X-Ray she’d told him to go back to the babies, that she would be all right, though she wasn’t as confident as she sounded.

Her life changed for ever when a gynaecologist stood by her bedside and said apologetically, ‘I’m afraid that the news isn’t good, Anna.’

She’d had severe bruising of the chest and broken ribs, but the most attention was being given to the injuries to her pelvis and uterus, and his next words explained why.

‘I’m going to have to do a hysterectomy. Your uterus is too badly damaged for me not to do so.’

‘Oh, no!’ she groaned. ‘Not that. We wanted children!’ And as the tears had slid down her cheeks she could hear Glenn’s voice in her mind saying, Our children will be born into a loving family, Anna. What would he say when he knew there wasn’t going to be any?

She cried and cried for what she and Glenn would never have and longed for him to be there to comfort her, but he was far away out of reach somewhere in Africa, and by the time he was due back she’d made her decision.

Glenn wasn’t going to be put in the position of having to choose between her and a life with children, she’d decided. He would be spared that because she wasn’t going to tell him about the surgery she’d had to undergo. She loved him too much for that. When next they spoke she was going to finish it.

When Anna appeared in the doorway of The Pheasant Glenn got to his feet immediately and came towards her, smiling his welcome, and she wondered if he’d forgiven her for what she’d done and the cold, abrupt manner with which she’d done it.

It had been the only way she could make the break at the time because she’d been hurting so much. Losing Julie and knowing that the tender trap with James and the babies was opening up before her had been painful enough, but most of all she’d been hurting because when it came to children of her own, there wouldn’t be any.

She’d often questioned if she’d been fair in not telling him what had happened to her. Glenn had been denied the opportunity to make his own decision, but it was all in the past and she’d done what she’d thought right at the time. Whatever the reason for his return, at least they could be friends, and she returned his smile with a beam of her own that made his eyes widen.

‘So tell me about it,’ she said when they were seated with drinks in front of them beside a glowing log fire.

‘What?’

‘Africa, of course.’

‘It was a fulfilling experience and one day I will go back,’ he said quietly, ‘but not yet. It was also dangerous, demoralising and exhausting, but I never had any regrets, except maybe one.’

Anna didn’t ask what that was. She had a feeling that she knew, but it seemed that he was going to tell her anyway. ‘You weren’t with me.’

‘I would have been no use to you if I had been,’ she retorted quickly. ‘My mind would have been back here all the time, with James struggling with the children without Julie and myself, his family all dead or absent.’

Glenn wasn’t smiling now, his jaw taut. ‘If you remember, I told you at the time we could have got round it. You wouldn’t have called it off for just that. There had to be another reason.’

‘I don’t want us to spend our time harking back to the past while you’re here,’ she said, shying away from the moment. ‘Can’t we be like you said, old friends renewing their acquaintance after a long time? Though I’m sur prised that you haven’t found someone else by now.’

‘Why? Have you?’

‘Er…no.’

He shrugged. ‘So there you are.’ He decided a change of subject was called for. Anna had been lit up a moment ago and he wanted her to stay that way, though he didn’t flatter himself it was anything to do with him, unless she was out to show him that she wasn’t the Cinderella figure he might be seeing her as.

After that they chatted generally. Glenn asked in detail about the surgery, said he’d never had any experience of a country practice, so she suggested he pop in and she would give him the guided tour. The evening moved along pleasantly enough until the landlord announced time.

‘I’ll walk you home,’ he said.

She shook her head. ‘No need. I can see my place from here.’ And because she was anxious to know, she asked, ‘How long are you intending staying in Willowmere?’

‘Just a few days. Why?’

‘Would you like to have dinner with us tomorrow?’

She saw his face stretch and thought surely he didn’t think she wouldn’t offer him some hospitality.

‘I’d love to, if you are sure,’ he replied. ‘I’d like to meet your brother and Pollyanna and Jolyon.’

‘Shall we say six o’clock? I always prepare the evening meal for the four of us and James comes up as soon as the late surgery is over. The children go to bed at half past seven, which gives time for their meal to settle.’

‘Six o’clock it is,’ he said trying to conceal the pleasure it was giving him in saying it.

* * *

There was a light on at Bracken House when she got back and she stopped off before going to her own place. She found James still up and told him, ‘I’ve done as you said and invited Glenn to eat with us tomorrow night.’

‘Good,’ he said, looking up from the paperwork in front of him. ‘I look forward to meeting him.’

Now that she’d extended the invitation, Anna wasn’t sure that she’d done the right thing. Was it a good idea to get so chummy when he would be leaving so soon? Yet why not make the most of every moment? The time they spent together would be something to hold onto when he’d gone.

The next morning at the surgery Beth said, ‘The bush telegraph has been buzzing. Who was the handsome guy you were with in The Pheasant last night?’

Anna smiled. It was a fact that not much went unnoticed in Willowmere. It was a close-knit community. Some of the people had lived there all their lives, as their fathers had before them.

‘It was just a friend from my university days,’ she explained as they called in the first of those waiting to be seen.

Sam Gibson had been passed on to them to have blood taken to assess sugar levels by Georgina Adams, the other full-time doctor in the practice, and he was not happy when he saw the needle.

‘It won’t take a second, Sam,’ Anna told him. ‘Look the other way.’

He was a farmer from the outskirts of the village, a big burly fellow afraid of nothing except the needle, so it seemed.

‘Don’t tell my Dorothy that I was scared of the needle, will you?’ he said sheepishly as he rolled his sleeve back down. ‘I kid her about being afraid of spiders, so she’ll never let it drop if she finds out.’

Smiling, she showed him out then ushered in her next patient, a young girl with a urine infection who James wanted a sample from. And so the morning progressed, though Anna was still gripped by the feeling of unreality that had been there ever since she’d seen Glenn outside the school.

In a spare moment between patients she wondered wryly what people would think if they knew that she’d once been going to marry the man she’d been seen with in The Pheasant. That she’d been crazy not to?

As Anna prepared the meal that evening she was acutely aware that Glenn was going to be seated across the table from her, with James and the children looking on curiously at the stranger in their midst.

She was tempted to get out the best china and then decided not to as she didn’t want him to read anything into the invitation that wasn’t there. It was a Wednesday and they always had chicken casserole for first course and sticky toffee pudding for dessert, and knowing that the children would be disappointed if those things weren’t on offer, she stayed with the usual menu and hoped that it would appeal to their guest.

When they’d met outside the school yesterday Glenn had been wearing a thick jacket over a black sweater and jeans, and she surmised that he might be feeling the cold after being in warmer climates for so long.

But when he rang the doorbell at six o’clock and she opened the door to him with the children, one on either side of her, Anna saw that he’d changed into lighter clothing in the form of a smart suit with shirt and tie.

At once she wished that she had got out the best china, that her face wasn’t flushed from the heat of the oven, and that she’d found time to dress in something that didn’t detract from her appearance of the night before. Yet did it matter? Glenn was going to be just a ship that passed in the night. It was amazing that he’d actually taken the trouble to seek her out.

‘Hello again,’ he said, and with a smile for the children as she stepped back to let him in, he added, ‘I hope I’m not too early.’

‘No, of course not,’ she told him. ‘James isn’t here yet, so can I offer you a drink before we eat?” He wasn’t looking so drawn, she thought as she showed him into the sitting room. Maybe he’d spent the day relaxing. She wasn’t to know that his less drawn expression was due more to the relief of having crossed the first hurdle in getting to know her again.

While the children played with their toys and the two adults drank a pre-dinner sherry, Glenn said, with his gaze on Pollyanna and Jolyon, ‘We’ve both moved on since we last saw each other, haven’t we, Anna?’

‘I would describe my life more as moving sideways rather than on,’ she commented whimsically. To avoid getting into deep water again, she went on, ‘What are you going to do if you don’t go back to Africa straight away?’

‘I haven’t made up my mind yet,’ he told her, and was prevented from saying more by the appearance of James.

When they’d been introduced Anna left the two men chatting while she went into the kitchen to serve the meal. The children followed and, remembering how she’d told them that the visitor was a friend of hers from when she was learning to be a nurse, Polly, who was usually the spokeswoman for the two of them, asked, ‘Is that why Dr. Hamilton has come to see us?’

‘Yes. He’s visiting people he used to know and I was one of them.’ Remembering their brief reunion outside the school the day before, when he hadn’t shown any reaction to her comment about the way they’d parted, she was wondering why he’d included her on his list.

‘Has he been where there are crocodiles?’ Jolyon wanted to know.

He was the quieter of the two, and a solemn child, considering her pet name for him, but he usually came up with something imaginative when he made the effort.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘Why don’t you ask him?’

‘Yes. I will,’ he promised.

‘You have two captivating children,’ Glenn told James as they seated themselves around the table. Jolyon had just asked his question and his eyes had widened as Glenn had explained that there had been crocodiles in some of the places where he’d worked, but as they spent a lot of time in the water he hadn’t seen much of them.

‘We think so, don’t we, Anna?’ James said with an affectionate glance at his sister. ‘When my wife died, leaving me with two young babies, Anna was a huge help, but it concerns me that she gets so little time to herself. And I’m sure that other people who know her feel the same.’

‘Don’t do this to me, James,’ Anna was begging silently. Don’t describe me as someone to be sorry for. Not in front of Glenn. He will soon be going back to where he came from and that is how it has to be.

Silence had fallen over the room and after a moment she said, ‘How many times do I have to tell you that I don’t mind, James? The children are everything to me.’

And if that isn’t telling me straight to go back to where I’ve come from, I don’t know what is, Glenn thought grimly.

But James had been observing Anna and Glenn. He sensed an awareness of each other that they were trying to conceal, and he asked casually, ‘So what are you planning to do in the near future, Glenn? Have a rest until you go back? Or look for a position over here for a while?’

‘I want to work in the UK for a change,’ he told him, ‘to recharge my batteries. I’ve no immediate plans to go back at the moment. I wouldn’t mind some general practice work. The sort of thing you do. I have been working in surgeries of a kind for the last few years. They were ill-equipped places, but surgeries nevertheless.’

James nodded but made no comment, and once the meal was over and the children were yawning he said, ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll take the children up to bed and leave you and Anna to continue getting reacquainted.’

Pollyanna and Jolyon said goodnight and silence returned once they’d gone, hanging over Anna and Glen like a cloud of uncertainty until he said, ‘James seems concerned about you.’

‘Yes, I know, but he doesn’t need to be. I’m fine,’ she said breezily. ‘I’d rather we talked about you than me. You must have lots to tell about what you’ve been doing.’

He wanted to talk about them, not Africa, and said, ‘Some other time maybe?’

‘What other time?’ she questioned. ‘You’ll be leaving soon.’

‘That is, or was, my intention,’ he said, and she wondered what that was supposed to mean. The answer was in what he said next. ‘It is a joy to come to somewhere like this, where it’s cold, crisp and clean.’

‘You mean to say that you’re thinking of extending your visit?’ she asked, not sure where this was leading. ‘The snow will be gone in a couple of days, you know, it’s very early. January to March is when we get the really heavy falls, and how will you occupy yourself in the countryside in wintertime?’

She couldn’t believe she was trying to dissuade him from staying longer when she hadn’t seen him in years. But she had something to hide and the longer Glenn was around the more likely it was that he might find out. Although the only people who knew about it were James and herself, and he would never discuss her private affairs with anyone.

‘Are you by any chance hinting that you would like to see me gone?’ he asked dryly, and she felt the colour rise in her cheeks.

‘No, of course not,’ she told him hurriedly. ‘You must do what is best for yourself.’

Was she out of her mind, she thought, trying to persuade him to leave when he was inclined to linger? She might never see him again after this, but nothing had changed, had it? If he’d come back hoping she might have changed her mind about their relationship, she still couldn’t give him a child and nothing was going to alter that.

Yet she had found a degree of contentment in her life and needed to hang onto it. Would she be able to do that with Glenn in Willowmere?

At that moment James appeared to say that the children were asleep and would Glenn like to see the surgery? He was on his feet in an instant, commenting that he would be most interested to see how a country practice functioned.

‘It functions very well,’ she told him coolly. ‘You will be amazed.’

When they came back Glenn was smiling. ‘Very impressive,’ he said with a gleam in his eye that told her he’d got the message. ‘Especially the computer centre in the basement, where the practice manager keeps her finger on the pulse. And now, if you will excuse me, I’ll head off back to The Pheasant. I know you both lead very busy lives, and I don’t think entertaining would normally be on the agenda on a weekday evening, so I’ll say goodnight.’ He turned to James and shook his hand. ‘It’s been a pleasure to meet you and your children, James.’

It was the same as the night before. Anna didn’t want them to have to separate and on the spur of the moment she said, ‘James has given you the guided tour of the surgery that I promised, but if you like I’ll show you some of the village beneath a full moon. Willowmere covered in snow in the moonlight is something to see.’

‘I’d like that,’ he said, taken aback, and when she’d grabbed a coat and put boots on they went outside. ‘Are you trying to confuse me, Anna?’ he asked as they walked down the path. ‘One moment you are hastening me on my way and the next you are dangling your beautiful village in front of me like a carrot, and considering that it’s called Willowmere, I can’t see any willow trees at a glance.’

‘You won’t,’ she told him. ‘Not here anyway, but on the edge of the village at the foot of the peaks there is a lake and they are there in profusion. From Willow Lake came Willowmere many years ago when people began to move into the area around it, and once you’ve seen the lake you will know why they came. The trees may be short of a few leaves at this time of year, but they’re never bare, and it’s a beautiful place no matter what the season.’