Nathan and Gabriel chatting, Laura took him through the practice building to the office where she worked amongst the computers, and on observing that there were no staff to be seen on the premises he commented on the fact.
‘The surgery is closed this afternoon,’ she told him, ‘so that our staff could attend the opening of the clinic. Most of them are over there now, enjoying the refreshments that have been provided.’
When they rejoined her husband and Nathan, who was head of the practice, Aaron asked, ‘How soon do you want me on the job, Nathan?’
‘As soon as possible,’ he was told, ‘but take a couple of days to settle in first. Swallowbrook will no doubt seem strange to you after such a long absence from these parts, even though it is changeless in many ways.’
The taxi had gone and he said, ‘I’ll take you to the cottage as I’m sure you must be keen to see it, and by the way, Aaron, my wife, Libby, says if you would like to dine with us tonight, you are very welcome.’
Seated at a table by a window in the restaurant of the new clinic with the other two nurses from the surgery, Julianne Marshall had seen the taxi arrive outside the practice building and was watching its occupant emerge.
Why had he come back? she wondered with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. The last words she’d heard Aaron Somerton speak before he’d disappeared five years ago had been to declare that he never wanted to set eyes on the Lakeland valley where he’d lived, or the people in it, ever again, and he’d meant it. No doubt about that!
When Laura Armitage’s husband, the dishy Gabriel, had appeared on the scene she’d thought that he was going to fill the vacancy at the practice that had arisen when Nathan’s wife, Libby, also a doctor, had left to become a full-time mother.
Keen to know if she was right in her surmise, she’d questioned Nathan and been told that a guy called Aaron Somerton, who had been working in Africa for the last five years, was coming to fill the gap, and Julianne had thought she was going to collapse.
Now he was here, only yards away, and she was hoping desperately that he wouldn’t recognise her. She’d watched Laura take him into the practice building and thought if it hadn’t been for the opening of the clinic today she would have been a sitting duck, unable to avoid meeting him on his unexpected return to the area where it had all happened in what seemed like a lifetime ago. A lifetime that had been like serving a sentence for something she hadn’t done.
Yet if she didn’t meet him today, it was going to happen tomorrow. There was no way she could escape it, unless she rang in sick or disappeared off the face of the earth, like Aaron had done.
She watched Nathan drive off with him in his car and assumed that the head of the practice would be taking the new arrival to the cottage that had been rented for him by the side of the waterfall that, fed by streams and rainwater from the fells, surged endlessly downwards into the lake.
It would be a far more atmospheric residence than her apartment above the village bakery on the main street, but did that really matter? If Aaron Somerton recognised her, he wasn’t likely to be coming round for tea.
The cottage was exactly how Aaron had expected it to be.
Like almost every property in the area, it was built from Lakeland stone, which was charming in itself, but added to that was the fact that it was actually at the lake edge, only feet away from where the waterfall came dancing down from the fells.
It was described as a cottage, which brought to mind something small and cosy, but was far from that. The rooms were spacious and attractive, with huge windows looking out onto impressive views of the area, and thankfully the church didn’t appear in any of them. He would have had to draw the curtains if it had.
When he’d rung Nathan that night for a chat and his friend had suggested that he fill the vacancy at the Swallowbrook practice if he was intending to come back to the UK, nothing had been further from his mind, yet recklessly he’d taken him up on the offer, and ever since had been looking forward to returning to his roots, with all the bad memories firmly buttoned down at the back of his mind.
Both of his parents had died while he’d been at medical college so there had been no one close to him to share the most humiliating moment of his life, and the job in Africa had been heaven-sent as a means of escaping the notoriety that had been the result of him being jilted at the altar.
When sugar-sweet golden-haired Nadine Marshall had wanted to marry him, he had seen a future of heavenly bliss beckoning with the woman he loved and their children in time to come, and had had no idea that she’d been seeing someone else while the wedding preparations had been in progress.
On meeting up with Nathan in Africa there had been no mention about what had happened on his wedding day, so either the other man knew nothing about it or didn’t connect his caring, clever colleague with the time when Aaron had been hurt beyond belief by Nadine and had gone to work at the other side of the world to try to forget.
Now he was back in the land of his birth, amongst the lakes and fells that were as familiar to him as his own face, hoping that his rash decision to come back to Swallowbrook and the surrounding areas wasn’t going to turn out to be a step too far.
He needed food, he decided when he’d finished unpacking—bread, milk, cereals, butter, bacon and anything else that caught his attention in the village shops, which were near enough for him to reach on foot.
The bakery was his last stopping place and as he opened the door and stepped inside he saw a neat pair of ankles and legs that were long and shapely in sheer tights disappearing fast up a flight of stairs at the back of the shop. Someone was in a hurry and he wondered if the flash of a dark blue hemline belonged to a nurse.
As she hovered on an upstairs landing after her quick departure from the shop down below on seeing Aaron about to enter, Julianne was thinking dismally that it would have to come sooner or later, meeting him face-to-face.
If he didn’t recognise the woman she had become, Aaron would certainly remember her second name, if not the first, as she’d been a background figure during the time he had courted her elder sister, Nadine, with eyes only for her beauty.
But she was the one who was going to have to face him day after day, week after week from now on. Not the despicable Nadine, who had broken his heart and his pride, but the bridesmaid who since then hadn’t wanted to be anyone’s bride.
Because if her sister hadn’t loved Aaron Somerton, she had adored him from afar and had ended up as the whipping girl for his betrayal because he had decided that she’d been in cahoots with the woman who had left him standing before a church full of people, and his anger and disgust had remained like a festering sore on her life ever since.
Yet her dismay at Aaron’s return was not absolute. In a small corner of her heart there was warmth because whatever the cost in days to come, Aaron was where she could see him, observe him from a distance, and maybe in time he might come to feel that she wasn’t as bad as she’d been made to look.
She heard the shop door close down below and when she looked out of the window from the landing where she had taken refuge he was striding along the pavement below with his provisions, and as people passing observed him with interest she thought he was still an eye-turner like he had been in the past, but did he notice, did he care?
At that moment a horrible thought struck her. Supposing he had recovered from being jilted at the altar by a greedy and uncaring bride and had found himself a replacement
