she’d switched from working in a big London hospital to this small general practice in the country. ‘You never wanted to go back to London after your grandmother died?’
She shook her head. ‘I love the pace of emergency medicine and knowing that you can make such a huge difference to people’s lives, and I always thought I’d go back to it after Gran died. But then I discovered that actually I like working in the practice more than I do at a hospital. It’s cradle to grave medicine. You know your patients, you can watch the little ones grow up and blossom, and because you know their family history you’ve got a lot more chance of working out what your patient feels too awkward to tell you in a consultation. Plus my family is here—and I really missed Stacey when I was in London.’
There was a slight shadow in her eyes; or maybe he’d misread it, because it was gone again within an instant. He had a feeling that there was another reason why she hadn’t gone back to London after her grandmother’s death, but he wasn’t going to pry. It was none of his business. Plus asking her would leave himself open to questions, and he didn’t want to talk about Karen and Patrick.
‘That’s why I chose to be a GP rather work in a hospital,’ Ben said. ‘I like working in a community.’
‘Where were you before here?’ she asked.
‘London. Chalk Farm. We lived not far from Primrose Hill, so I was lucky enough to be able to do my morning run in the park there—the view of the city is amazing.’
‘It sounds as if you miss it.’
‘I do.’ But he didn’t miss the misery that had dragged through the last few months of his marriage, or the two years of loneliness since. He’d put it down to pregnancy hormones and he’d tried his best to be supportive and understanding. And then, just before the twenty-week scan, Karen had dropped the final bombshell; and he’d realised that the reason they hadn’t been getting on was nothing to do with hormones and everything to do with guilt...
‘There are good places to run, here. And if it’s low tide you really can’t beat running by the edge of the sea. If you’re lucky, you might even see some seals,’ she said. ‘Why did you move here from London?’
The question he’d dreaded: though it was the obvious one and he should’ve found an anodyne answer for it by now. Except there wasn’t one.
Because my wife fell in love with my best friend and broke my heart along with our marriage. Not that he wanted to discuss that. It had taken him nearly two years to get past it, and he didn’t want to dwell on it now.
‘Do you have family in the area?’ she asked.
‘No. Sometimes you just need a change,’ he said. ‘This seemed like a nice place to live.’
And the best way to distract Toni from asking anything else, he thought, would be to switch the conversation back to her dog. ‘So what made you decide to train Archie as a therapy dog?’
‘When Gran went into the nursing home, one of the other residents used to be visited by her dog, and seeing the dog always made Gran’s day brighter. After she went into the home, I got Archie to keep me company. The manager at the care home suggested training him as a therapy dog and bringing him to The Beeches. I looked into it, and I think we both enjoy it.’
‘That’s good.’ He kept the conversation neutral until pudding.
‘Oh, now this is sublime. Thank you so much.’ She ate the lemon tart with relish. ‘Lemony puddings are the best—and it’s the perfect pairing with raspberries.’
‘Agreed.’ He couldn’t help smiling. ‘So you’re a foodie?’
‘Guilty as charged,’ she said, smiling back. ‘I’m really interested in nutrition, and because I’m in charge of the diabetic patients I was thinking about trying to do something to teach them to tweak their favourite dishes to make them diabetic-friendly. And I’d quite like to do the same for our cardiac patients. So maybe I could run a cookery class or maybe develop a section on the practice website to help with meal plans and recipes.’
‘That sounds good. The diet and exercise routines that work best are the ones you enjoy, because you stick to them,’ he said.
‘I’ve already gathered that you’re a foodie, too; do I take it from the brownies that you’re a cook as well?’ she asked.
‘I’m reasonable,’ he said. Karen had left all the cooking to him, and he’d enjoyed it, finding it relaxing. Though he hadn’t bothered much since she’d left him for Patrick. Cooking for one felt too lonely, and the brownies were the first cakes he’d made in months.
‘Maybe we can work together on the project?’ she suggested.
The previous day, Ben had disliked Toni and he hadn’t been able to work out why everyone else seem to adore her. Now, he could see exactly why they did. Her warmth, her bright ideas, the way she tried to include everyone.
If he was honest with himself, he was attracted to her as well as liking her. But he had no intention of acting on that attraction. He wasn’t setting himself up for things to go wrong again.
But colleagues and friends—he could do that. With pleasure.
‘I’d like that,’ he said. ‘Do we have regular clinics for our diabetic and cardiac patients?’
‘Diabetics, yes—that’s me on Thursday mornings,’ she said.
‘It might be worth asking them for suggestions of dishes they’d like us to help them tweak. And maybe we could look at regular clinics for our cardiac patients and do the same with them.’
‘Great idea.’ She smiled at him. ‘I’ll work up a proposal, we can fine-tune it together, and then we can talk Ranjit into it.’
‘Deal.’
Shaking her hand was a mistake. Awareness of her prickled all the way through him. He was going to have to be very careful to keep things professional.
Part of him knew he ought to make an excuse when she offered him coffee. But he was really enjoying her company and it was too hard to resist.
He liked her living room, too. The large window looked out over the salt marshes, and there were watercolours of what he guessed were local scenes on the walls—a stripy lighthouse, bluebell woods, and a sunset over the sea. She had a small TV in one corner, a large bookcase with an eclectic mix of novels and medical textbooks, and a speaker dock for her phone. And there were lots of framed photographs on the mantelpiece: with another woman who looked so much like her that she had to be Toni’s sister, with a couple he assumed were her parents, and with an elderly woman he guessed was her grandmother.
Archie trotted into the room behind them; when Toni sat down, the dog sat with his chin on her knee, looking imploringly up at her.
‘All right, then.’ She lifted her hands and the dog hopped up lightly, settling himself on her lap. She gave Ben a rueful smile. ‘He’s too big to be a lapdog, really, but he’s sat on my lap like this ever since he was tiny.’
Just to prove the point, the dog closed his eyes and started snoring softly.
Ben was shocked by how at home he felt here, how relaxed. His own—rented—accommodation
