him with a rather jaundiced attitude to the opposite sex, his only regret was that he’d made an error of judgement and would be wary of repeating it.
Yet it wasn’t stopping him from house hunting. He didn’t want to rent for long, but so far he hadn’t made any definite decision about where he was going to put down his roots in the village that had taken him to its heart. He told himself wryly that he’d made a mistake in his choice of a wife and wasn’t going to do the same thing when it came to choosing a house.
He’d spent his growing years in a Cornish fishing village where his father had brought him up single-handed after losing his wife to cancer when David had been quite small, and once when Caroline had flown over to see him he’d taken her to meet him.
‘Are you sure that she is the right one for you, David?’ Jonas Trelawney had said afterwards. ‘She’s smart and attractive, seems like the kind of woman who knows what she wants and goes out to get it, but I know how you love kids and somehow I can’t see her breast feeding or changing nappies. Have you discussed it at all?’
‘Yes,’ he’d said easily, putting from his mind the number of times the word ‘nanny’ had cropped up in the conversation.
He’d met her on a visit to London. She’d been staying in the same hotel with a group of friendly Texans who, on discovering that he had been on his own, had invited him to join them as they saw the sights.
She’d made a play for him, he’d responded to her advances, and the attraction between them had escalated into marriage plans, though he’d had his doubts about how she would react to the prospect of living in a town in Cheshire, as at that time he’d been based at St Gabriel’s Hospital.
It was going to be so different to the glitzy life that he’d discovered she led when he’d visited her in Texas. Yet she hadn’t raised any objections when he’d said that he had no plans to leave the UK while his father was alive. But he was to discover that the novelty of the idea was to be short-lived as far as Caroline was concerned.
His uneasiness had become a definite thing when he’d been expecting to go over there to sort out wedding arrangements and she’d put him off, saying that she had the chance to purchase a boutique that she’d had her eye on for some time and didn’t want any diversions until the deal was settled.
‘I would hardly have thought our wedding would be described as a diversion,’ he’d said coolly, and she’d told him that she was a businesswoman first and foremost and he would have to get used to that.
‘I see, and how are you going to run a boutique in Texas if you are living over here?’ he’d asked, his anger rising.
There was silence at the other end of the line and then the dialling tone.
She phoned him again that same day at midnight Texas time. It sounded as if she was at some sort of social gathering if the noise in the background was anything to go by, and as if wine had loosened her tongue Caroline told him the truth, that she didn’t want to be a doctor’s wife any more in some crummy place in Britain and wanted to call off the engagement.
As anger came surging back he told her that it was fine by him and coldly wished her every success in her business dealings.
He discovered afterwards that there’d been more to it than she’d admitted that night on the phone. A certain senator had appeared on her horizon and she’d used the boutique story as a get-out.
In his disillusionment David decided to make a fresh start. His father had once told him that his mother had come from a village in Cheshire called Willowmere, and shortly after his engagement to Caroline had ended he met James Bartlett’s sister Anna in the company of a doctor from the village practice. They’d been involved in a near drowning incident in a village called Willowmere and the way they described the place made him keen to find where the other part of his roots belonged.
When he’d found his mother’s childhood home the discovery of it pulled at his heartstrings so much that he decided he wanted to live in Willowmere, and as if it was meant he was offered a position in the village practice.
What was left of the house stood in the centre of a field on the way to Willow Lake, a local beauty spot, and as he’d stood beside it he’d felt that this was where he wanted to be, where he wanted to bring up his children if he ever married, and at the same time contribute to the health care of those who lived there.
All that remained of it was four stone walls, the roof having long since fallen in, and he remembered his father telling him how his mother had left it as a bride and gone to live with him in Cornwall where his home had been.
David found no reason to regret his decision to move to the Cheshire countryside. He was totally happy there, but supposed it might not be everyone’s choice. For instance, there was the girl he’d met at the station, he thought as the day took its course. She’d taken a dim view of the place.
So far he hadn’t found a property that appealed to him and knew it was because every time he went back to the ruins of his mother’s home the idea of restoring it was there.
Laurel and Elaine had had an omelette for their evening meal with chips and fresh green runner beans out of the garden, and when she’d placed the food in front of her niece she’d said, ‘I know it’s not exactly the fatted calf but it’s something that I know you like.’
‘I love your omelettes,’ Laurel told her. ‘I used to dream about them when I was in hospital.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you did,’ Elaine said laughingly. ‘You must have had better things to think about than my cooking.’
‘It was the only thing that cheered me up,’ Laurel insisted. ‘Darius was in the process of ditching me slowly, the skin grafts weren’t a bundle of joy, and neither was my leg that they’d had to pin all over the place.’
‘I know, my dear,’ Elaine said soothingly. ‘I tisn’t surprising that you’re feeling low with all that has happened to you but, Laurel, it could have been so much worse.’
‘Yes, I know,’ she said flatly, ‘and I really do want to like it here and get fit again. I look such a sight.’
‘Not to me you don’t.’
‘Maybe, but your Dr Trelawney kept looking at me as if I was some peculiar specimen under the microscope. I wish my hair would grow more quickly.’
‘Have patience, Laurel,’ she was told. ‘What has grown so far is still the same beautiful colour.’
‘Yes, the colour of fire,’ she said with a shudder as she ate the food beneath the watchful gaze of her hostess.
‘I think an early night would be a good idea,’ Elaine suggested when they’d tidied up after the meal, ‘but how about a breath of good country air first? Perhaps a short walk through the village, past the surgery where David and I spend our working lives, and where you might be joining us when you feel like going to see James.’
‘Yes, sure,’ she agreed, ‘and if that is where he works, where does he live?’
‘David lives in a small cottage nearby. He’s staying there until he finds a property to buy. I know that he’s house hunting quite seriously but hasn’t mentioned finding anything suitable so far.’
‘And
