up in front of him with its tubs of summer flowers at the entrance and a long wooden bench for those who preferred to wait their turn outside—weather permitting.
When he’d been discharged from the hospital where he’d been employed ever since qualifying and had ended up as a patient after an incident that had almost cost him his life, he had been persuaded by his friend Ethan Lomax to move into community health care work for a while in a coastal suburb of Devon that was blessed with golden sands and backed on to fertile countryside.
On doing so, he had rented a property called The Old Chart House just a few doors away from the surgery and it was there that he was heading with his expression just as sombre as it had been earlier when he’d seen the girl that he’d surmised might be the Balfours’ daughter.
Just as that family were going through a sticky patch, so was he, and the only person who knew about that was Ethan, who had taken over as senior partner in the local practice when the redoubtable Barbara had been forced to let someone else take the reins.
His friend had visited him in hospital a few times after the incident that had nearly killed him and had made him feel like turning his back on medicine for ever. He’d been performing a routine operation, serious enough but not normally life threatening, when the patient, a woman in her thirties, had gone into shock and died almost immediately on the operating table. There had been no response to resuscitation and he’d had the unpleasant task of telling her husband the tragic news.
The man had gone crazy, his outrage outweighing his grief, and as Lucas was turning away he’d lunged at him with a knife that he’d produced from somewhere and slashed him across the chest. The thin hospital gown he had been wearing had been no protection and the wound was life threatening.
Afterwards, on several of his visits, Ethan had mentioned casually that there could be a place for him here in Bluebell Cove if he so desired, in quieter, less stressful surroundings than those of a big hospital.
At the time he hadn’t been even remotely interested. The future had loomed like a black abyss with no sense or reason in it. But as his body had slowly healed he had accepted grimly that surgeons at the hospital where he saved lives had given him back his, and he was going to have to drag himself up out of the black void.
In the end he’d listened to what Ethan had to say with regard to life in a place like Bluebell Cove being lived at a slower pace, and his friend’s comment that surgeons of his standing were few and far between when he’d said he was thinking of giving up medicine.
He’d taken indefinite leave from the hospital in the nearby town where he’d been the top cardiovascular surgeon for the past five years and so far it was working out all right because he had fallen completely under the spell of Bluebell Cove. So much so that he was in the process of buying The Old Chart House and turning part of it into a private heart clinic which would fill the time when he wasn’t helping out at the surgery. But the nightmare that had brought him there still tormented him in the long hours of the night and on awakening.
On the outside he still gave off an aura of cool competence, but underneath there was hurt and disillusion and the fear that he would never again be the man who had always taken life by the horns, had known where he was going, what he was aiming for—that sort of confidence was now in short supply.
The one thing that his friend hadn’t taken it upon himself to offer advice on was Lucas’s broken engagement to Philippa Carswell, who had worked with him in the cardiac unit at Hunters Hill Hospital.
It had occurred just before the attack on him and he’d never mentioned it since, but there’d been a drawn, pinched look about him afterwards. At the time it had been thought by some that the broken engagement had affected his work and had led to the death of the patient on the operating table which had triggered off the savage attack on the hospital’s top heart man.
But while Lucas had been fighting for his life enquiries had shown that as usual his work had been faultless, and that the demise of the woman undergoing heart surgery had been due to a massive embolism that had blocked the main pulmonary artery and caused sudden death.
Jenna was framed in the open doorway as her father helped her mother slowly and painfully out of the car. She wanted to run to her and hold her close, but caution was holding her back. They’d parted on bad terms, for one thing, and for another it was rare for her mother to be at a disadvantage in a situation. She doubted she would take kindly to this one—a gentle approach was called for.
When Barbara straightened up on the drive supported by the two sticks that Jenna’s father had mentioned, she looked up and saw her, and Jenna felt her throat go dry as the moment took hold of the three of them.
Her mother’s face was slack with surprise and the colour was draining from it as she said, ‘Jenna! Where have you come from?’
‘Just across the Channel, Mum,’ she said softly as she walked towards her.
‘Why didn’t you let me know what was happening to you, for goodness’ sake? I would never have gone if I’d known.’
Barbara’s smile was wintry. ‘I’m not used to pleading. I couldn’t use my fast-approaching immobility as a means of tying you to me.’ She turned to her husband, who so far hadn’t spoken. ‘You are behind this, I suppose, Keith?’
‘Yes,’ he said stoutly, ‘and don’t tell me that you’re not pleased.’
There was no reply forthcoming to that. Instead she asked Jenna, ‘So how long are you here for?’
‘As long as you need me. I’m home for good.’
Her mother’s face was crumpling. ‘Even though I’m still a bossy and cantankerous woman? I don’t deserve you both.’
‘We’ll say hear, hear, to that, won’t we, Jenna?’ Keith joked, gazing at the two women in his life and smiling his relief.
One day he would tell Jenna what it was that had driven her mother through all the years when they and the practice had been in two very separate compartments of her life, theirs being the smaller. But in the meantime Barbara needed to be inside and resting after their drive across the downs on the cliff tops and into the countryside.
The sun was setting like crimson fire on the horizon as Jenna gazed down onto the beach later that evening. Her mother was asleep and her father contentedly watching television.
She had helped Barbara to undress and assisted with her toiletries, and when she had finally settled against the pillows her mother had taken her hand into her own swollen one and without any words of endearment had said simply, ‘I will sleep better tonight not having to wonder where you are and if you’re safe.’
Knowing that such a comment coming from her was the nearest she might ever get to ‘I love you’, Jenna had kissed her gently on the brow and said, ‘Don’t disturb Dad if you need help in the night. Call me, yes?’
‘Yes,’ her mother had replied obediently and they’d both dissolved into laughter at the reversal of their roles, and the moment of shared amusement was another first.
And now the night was still young and there were lots of folk on the beach and in the sea, out to enjoy every moment of the waning day. Ronnie must have been right, she decided. Their absence in the afternoon had been because there had been something special on.
‘I’m going for a stroll,’ she told her father on returning to
