it’s a woman. Actually, someone you know.’
‘That I know?’
‘Yes, it’s Melissa from next door. She has a degree in paediatrics and she joins us tomorrow. What do you think of that?’
‘I’m amazed, but what a good thing for both of you that she has found employment so quickly and that your stresses will be lighter. It’s as if her coming to live in Heatherdale was meant to be.’
Ryan smiled. ‘Don’t get too carried away, Mollie. I only found out about her qualifications last night and offered her the job on condition that she fits the bill, so it will be probationary to begin with.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Mollie agreed, thankful that something was going right for him for once.
The blood tests and lumbar puncture had shown that little Georgia had indeed got bacterial meningitis and he’d explained to her distraught parents that she was going to be given large doses of antibiotics that he’d arranged for her to have intravenously in the hope of preventing the dreaded illness increasing its hold on her.
When he’d eventually left the hospital it had been with the determination to ring the ward later for a report on her progress as the next few hours would be crucial.
The answer was what he’d hoped for when he did. His small patient was regaining consciousness and her horrendously high temperature was coming down, so with Mollie having returned home and Rhianna and Martha asleep, Ryan decided to spend the rest of the evening with a medical journal that had been languishing on the back seat of his car for a few days.
When he went out to get it he saw that the house next door was in darkness and he observed it thoughtfully. What was the bet that Melissa was having an early night so that she would be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tomorrow?
He supposed it could be said that it hadn’t been a good idea to offer her a job working with him most of the time, but discovering that she was in paediatrics had been too good a chance to miss in his busy working life. He went back into the house in a thoughtful mood and with the feeling that maybe he needed to cool it where she was concerned.
It was an eight o’clock start for day staff on the wards and the next morning Melissa watched as Ryan kissed his children goodbye with Mollie in attendance, and drove off.
As the taillights of his car disappeared she followed him at a distance, having no wish to be on the last minute on her first day at the hospital.
Today could or could not be the beginning of a new life. A life on a lower level than before maybe, when the envious had called her ‘golden girl’, but at least she would have some dignity, wouldn’t be an object of pity or sly smirks.
In the short time that she’d been in the house she had been aware that something strange was happening. The children next door had said it was haunted and she wasn’t going to go along with that, but one thing she did feel was that the grandmother she had never really known was somewhere near, content that the one person she had always wanted to live in her house had arrived.
Miserable and lonely she may be, but she was there in the house that had been bequeathed to her all those years ago because the old lady had foreseen what the future might hold for her pleasure-loving son’s child. Today Melissa was about to take the first step towards becoming a working member of the community.
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