‘Yes, yes, I did…’
‘Oh, that must have been really exciting.’
‘Yes, it was.’ Lindsay nodded. ‘A moment in history.’
‘A waste of money if you ask me.’ Bronwen, who clearly had been listening, looked up from the computer. ‘All that money going up in smoke all over the world. I’m sure it could have been put to much better use.’
‘Yes, Bronwen, you’re probably right,’ Lindsay agreed. ‘But I agree with Gwynneth. It was a one-off—none of us will never see the likes of it again.’
Aidan turned at that moment and Gwynneth flushed with pleasure that for once someone seemed to be agreeing with her. At the same moment the door of Henry’s consulting room opened and Henry himself walked out into Reception, putting paid to any further idle chatter. Bronwen got on with the job of shutting down the computers, Gwynneth carried on filing the last of the day’s records and Lindsay signed the final prescriptions.
It was only later when the two receptionists had left for home and Henry had said goodnight that Aidan spoke to her. He’d returned to his room after the conversation in Reception but he came out as Lindsay was about to go upstairs to her flat.
‘That was kind,’ he said abruptly.
She paused with one hand on the newel post and looked at him. ‘What was?’ she said blankly.
‘Taking Gwynneth’s part like that.’
‘I only said what I felt.’
‘Nevertheless, her opinions always seem to get crushed by Bronwen—it must have been a boost to her to have you agree with her.’
Lindsay gave a little shrug. ‘I hate to see someone continually trodden on,’ she said.
‘I’m not even sure that Bronwen is aware that she does it. I think it’s just become second nature to her to put Gwynneth down.’
‘I don’t think Bronwen can be a very happy person.’
‘You may well be right.’ He shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know.’
He’d gone then, pulling up the collar of his waxed jacket and hunching his shoulders against the rain as he set off across the car park, leaving Lindsay to lock the door.
It was only later when she was preparing a meal that she found herself reflecting on what he’d said. It was rare to get praise from Aidan in any shape or form and she still wasn’t exactly sure that had been what he’d given her when he’d commented on her taking Gwynneth’s part. But at least, for once, he’d seemingly recognised Gwynneth’s plight and that in itself couldn’t be a bad thing.
The practice had hired a four-wheel-drive Jeep for Lindsay and while at first she thought she would miss driving her sports car, after a time she found she enjoyed driving the bigger vehicle, which was certainly more suited to the roads in the area. Within a comparatively short space of time her beloved sports car was fated to spend most of its time in the garage at the rear of the surgery.
As the area grew more familiar to her Lindsay appreciated its beauty even more than she had on her arrival. Sometimes on her days off she ventured farther afield—to Caenarvon through the dramatic Llanberis pass, to Conway and Rhyl and once she even crossed the Menaii bridge to the island of Anglesea. The dramatic and sometimes wild countryside, with its soaring mountains, tumbling waterfalls, rugged passes and deep wooded valleys, seemed to act as a kind of antidote to her pain at losing Andrew, and to her surprise in a fairly short space of time she found he actually occupied very little of her thoughts.
Towards the end of Lindsay’s first month in Tregadfan the promised influx of tourists began to arrive. At first just a trickle and then a steady stream of caravans and motor homes, cyclists, hikers and climbers converged on Snowdonia.
At last Lindsay began to take surgeries on her own, even though she was required to report to Aidan on a daily basis. These surgeries were mainly made up of temporary residents and the overflow of the local surgeries. House calls she still attended with Aidan but she knew the day was rapidly approaching when she would be drawn into the on-call rota to take her turn.
One morning she’d just finished her surgery and, instead of reporting to Aidan as she usually did, he came to her consulting room. She looked up in surprise as he came into the room.
‘How did it go?’ he asked.
‘All right.’ She nodded and began leafing through the little stack of temporary resident forms which had made up the bulk of her surgery. ‘Mostly predictable. A child with earache, another with mosquito bites. A man with a badly sprained ankle. A woman who’d left her medication at home—’
‘What did she want?’ Aidan had strolled to the French doors as she’d been speaking and was staring out into the conservatory.
‘Nifedipine for high blood pressure, ranitidine for indigestion and ibuprofen for arthritic pain. I checked her blood pressure and asked her about the nature of her indigestion and how long she’d been taking the ibuprofen.’
‘Did you think the two were connected in any way?’
‘I don’t think so. I know that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for arthritis can cause stomach bleeding and abdominal discomfort, but this patient’s indigestion took the form of acidity and was intermittent, more in keeping with what she’d been eating. She admitted that since leaving home she’d been eating food she’s unfamiliar with. Her own GP had prescribed the ranitidine on several previous occasions.’
‘That’s OK.’ Aidan nodded. ‘You have to be careful because sometimes a temporary resident will try it on. We had one once who’d gone to every practice in the area, saying he’d left his diazepam at home. He’d obtained quite a substantial amount before one of the local chemists spotted what was happening and alerted us.’ He paused. ‘What else did you have?’
‘A baby with severe colic, a couple of cases of diarrhoea and vomiting and a child with a wooden splinter deeply embedded in her foot. I removed the splinter, gave a tetanus booster and sent her to Judith for a dressing.’
‘The D-and-V cases—were they from the camping site?’
‘I’m not sure. Just a minute.’ She began leafing through the forms again. ‘Yes. Yes, they were,’ she admitted after a moment.
Aidan turned round and looked at her. ‘From the same family?’
‘Yes. The grandmother and one of the grandchildren.’
‘That suggests it may have been something they’ve eaten in their own caravan. Let’s hope so, otherwise we could be looking at an epidemic. Nothing like it over a weekend. Now, tell me, I know it’s officially your afternoon off, but I have a call to go to a farm over on the far side of Capel Curig. Would you like to come with me?’
She knew he expected her to agree. ‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘It’s an interesting family,’ he went on. ‘They’ve had a rough time recently. Mother is expecting her fourth child and father had an accident a couple of months ago—a disagreement with a particularly lethal piece of farm machinery. He’s out of hospital now but life is far from easy. Her pregnancy is proving to be difficult and one of the children has severe asthma and eczema. I said I’d go over to take a look at them all.’
It was late afternoon by the time they were finally able to leave the surgery, but the early summer sun still felt warm on Lindsay’s shoulders as she took her place beside Aidan in his Land Rover. He’d already collected the dogs and they both whined an ecstatic welcome. Lindsay had got used to the two of them by this time and actually found she was as pleased to see them as they obviously were to see her.
The hedgerows on either side of the roads as they left the village were thick with the blossom of the blackthorn, while in the meadows early scarlet poppies turned their faces to the sun and white daisies gathered in clusters like drifts of snowflakes.
With a little sigh Lindsay wound down her window and rested her arm on the sill. Already since she’d come to Tregadfan the sun had touched her skin in a different way from that of the fiercer Mediterranean sun, and a light dusting of freckles covered her nose. She’d abandoned the formality of her suits and blouses, opti
ng instead for the more casual clothes she’d bought locally and which were so much more practical for the type of life she was now living. For their visit to the farm she was wearing a blue-and-white checked shirt, sleeves turned back to the elbow, tucked into a cream pair of twill trousers and secured with a leather belt. Her hair she wore loose instead of neatly secured by a scarf or slide, and as they trundled along the country roads it was caught by the wind. As it streamed behind her she closed her eyes and dreamily let her thoughts drift.
‘Did I wake you?’
She opened her eyes and looked at Aidan. ‘Sorry?’ she said.
‘I asked if I’d woken you.’
‘I wasn’t asleep,’ she replied.
‘You could have fooled me.’ He gave an unexpected chuckle. ‘On the other hand, maybe you just aren’t speaking to me.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked uncertainly.
‘Well, I’ve been talking to you for the last five minutes and you don’t appear to have heard a word I’ve been saying.’
Lindsay turned her head and looked out of the window. To her surprise she saw that they were high on a mountain road. ‘I guess I must have drifted off for a while,’ she mumbled.
‘That’s OK,’ he said easily. ‘It’s nice to know you’re so relaxed—or maybe its because we’re working you too hard and you’re simply dog-tired?’
‘No,’ she said quickly, hating the thought that he might think she couldn’t cope. ‘Of course not. I think it’s all this fresh mountain air that’s making me feel relaxed.’
‘Well, I’m glad. You seemed very uptight when you first arrived.’
‘That’s hardly surprising,’ she replied. ‘After all, nothing was what I expected.’
‘That’s true,’ he admitted. He paused then threw her a sidelong look. ‘There’s something that intrigues me,’ he said.
‘What’s that?’ she asked warily.
‘A few months ago Henry said there was some doubt about whether you would be coming—in fact, he rather seemed to think it was all off. That was before Megan’s illness, of course, and then quite suddenly it was all on again. I just wondered why, what happened so suddenly to make you change your mind.’
It was her turn to glance sideways at him. Aidan’s expression was set as he concentrated on the winding road ahead, the rugged features taut, the startling blue eyes slightly narrowed. He, too, wore an open-necked shirt with the sleeves turned back, together with his olive-green chinos. The dark, reddish-brown hair, ruffled by the breeze, curled crisply above his ears and along the collar of his shirt.
Her first reaction was not to answer him. Why should she? It was none of his business why she’d nearly cancelled her year in North Wales then had suddenly changed her mind. There was nothing in her contract that said she had to tell him every detail of her life, even if he was her trainer. Then she slumped slightly. Why shouldn’t she tell him? It didn’t matter now. None of it mattered any more.
‘I was in a relationship,’ she said quietly. ‘Then it ended.’
‘Ah,’ he replied. ‘I thought it might be something like that.’ He paused. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘No,’ she replied firmly. ‘Absolutely not.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘HIS name was Andrew. He was a solicitor and we met through mutual friends.’ They’d pulled into a lay-by, which they were now sharing with a couple of sheep. Behind them water cascaded from an outcrop of black rocks while before them the road twisted away into a deep valley, its sides covered in dense pines. In spite of Lindsay’s resolve of only moments ago to tell Aidan nothing, it now all came pouring out. While the dogs dozed in the back he listened in silence.
‘I thought it was for real,’ she admitted quietly, ‘and he seemed as smitten as I was. We’d only been dating for a short while when, quite by chance, I saw him in a restaurant. He was with a very attractive young woman and I knew he hadn’t seen me. I decided to say nothing and see if he told me. I confided in my best friend, Annabelle, who tried to make me get the whole thing in perspective—you know, maybe she was a client or a colleague, that it was a business lunch, that sort of thing, and to remember that, after all, we hadn’t made any real commitment to each other at that stage.’
‘And did he tell you?’ asked Aidan.
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘And somehow I couldn’t quite bring myself to confront him with it. I didn’t want to appear too possessive, especially at that point in the relationship, and I would have looked silly if it had simply been a client or a colleague. He also probably would have asked why I hadn’t gone over to their table…and I…I couldn’t answer that.’
They were silent for a while and Aidan simply waited without prompting her in any way. When Lindsay started to speak again Jess suddenly lifted her head and, seeing the sheep outside the Land Rover, gave a short, sharp bark. The sheep skittered away in fright, jostling and pushing each other as they went.
‘If it had been just that it would hardly have mattered,’ Lindsay went on at last as Jess settled down again. ‘We carried on dating—had a wonderful time, really—then Andrew moved in with me. We’d talked of marriage but we both felt it was a little too soon for that. I was very happy with the situation and I felt fairly certain that marriage would eventually follow, then later we’d start a family, which we’d both said we wanted.’
She fell silent again and this time Aidan did break the silence. ‘Something obviously happened to shatter this idyll,’ he said. ‘Unless, of course, you simply drifted apart or realised you’d made a mistake.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘You were right the first time…something happened. I overheard a conversation during an outpatients clinic at the hospital where I was working. A patient was being attended to in the cubicle next to the one where I was carrying out an examination. She obviously knew the nurse who was treating her and was telling her all about her new boyfriend. I didn’t take much notice at first until I heard her mention the law firm where Andrew worked. As she carried on I gradually became aware that it was Andrew she was talking about.’
She paused and swallowed then after a moment continued, ‘At first I thought I must be mistaken or that maybe there was someone else called Andrew who perhaps worked for the same firm, but the patient went on to mention other names and details which left me in no further doubt that it was my Andrew and that he was two-timing me.’
‘I couldn’t ignore it this time,’ she went on after a moment. ‘I confronted him with it. He tried to deny it and bluff his way out but I knew he was lying. I asked him to leave the flat immediately.’ To her horror, as she finished speaking Lindsay felt tears spring to her eyes.
‘Was that what affected your decision to come here?’
She nodded and the tears spilled over and rolled down her cheeks. Helplessly she dashed them away with the back of her hand. ‘I’d decided some time ago, long before I met Andrew, that I wanted to come to Henry for my GP training, but when Andrew moved in with me I put the whole idea on hold and carried on with my work at the hospital. I hadn’t decided what I would do in the long run but after Andrew moved out I went back to my original plan.’
Aidan was silent then, reaching out, he covered her hand with one of his. If anyone had prewarned her that that was what he would do she would have imagined she would snatch her hand away. But she didn’t. She allowed her hand to remain beneath his where for a moment it felt warm and safe. ‘And how do you feel now?’ he asked quietly at last. ‘Are you over him?’
‘I wasn’t when I first arrived, hence the tension that you noticed…’ she said slowly.
‘And now?’ Aidan took his hand from hers and turned slightly in his seat so that he was half facing her.
Lindsay allowed herself to meet that unswerving blue gaze. ‘I have to say I’m feeling better,’ she admitted at last. ‘Maybe not over it completely but, yes, well on the way, I think.’
‘You sound surprised.’ The hint of a smile played around his mouth
.
‘I am if I’m honest. There was a point when I thought I would never get over him—it’s terribly hard, you know, when you’ve made a commitment to someone and then they betray you—but I have to say that, since coming here into a completely different way of life, I’ve had very little time to think about any aspect of my life in London, let alone Andrew.’ She hesitated. ‘I know,’ she said after a moment, ‘that it’s hard to understand about betrayal and all that—I think only someone who has been there can truly understand.’
‘Maybe I understand better than you think,’ Aidan replied softly.
She stared at him. ‘Are you saying you’ve been there?’ she said curiously.
‘Maybe.’ He gave a slight shrug. ‘But I think one of us unburdening is quite enough for one day. Besides, we need to get on if we’re to make this visit.’
Leaning forward, he turned the key in the ignition and moments later they’d left the lay-by and were descending into the cool greenness of the valley. In places rapier-sharp rays of sunlight penetrated the darkness of the pines, illuminating the lighter green of sycamores or mountain ash and highlighting clumps of fresh green ferns amongst last year’s dead bracken.
They travelled in silence but this time it was a peaceful silence and Lindsay found herself feeling relieved that she’d told him about the problems that had beset her when she’d arrived in Tregadfan. There had been a sense of understanding about him which, together with the allusion of shared experience, led her to believe that he, too, had indeed suffered as she had.
The farm was situated in a natural fold of land tucked in against the hillside, and as they approached down a rutted track at first sight the place appeared deserted. Countless sheep dotted the hills but the pens and outbuildings around the farm had an air of neglect about them. The house itself looked shabby and rundown and badly in need of a coat of paint. A line of washing stirred gently in the breeze at one side of the house, and as Aidan brought the Land Rover to a halt a gaggle of geese appeared from the direction of the barn and waddled by, gossiping noisily to each other as they went.
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