He’d done nothing when he’d heard that Jefferson had died. To have appeared on the scene then might have seemed like he’d been waiting in the wings and it would not have been the case. But now he’d had no choice but to come back to England because his best friend and his wife had been amongst tourists drowned on a sinking ferry somewhere abroad. The tragedy had changed his life and that of the sleeping child for ever.
As she sat hunched over the teapot Libby was thinking what a mess her life had turned into in the three years since she’d last laid eyes on Nathan. Anxious to prove to the world, but most importantly to herself, that her feelings for him were dead and buried she’d turned to Ian Jefferson, someone who had already asked her to marry him twice and been politely refused.
And so six months later, with Nathan’s never-to-be-forgotten comments at the airport still painfully remembered, she’d agreed to marry Ian at his third time of asking.
They’d been reasonably happy at first, living in Lavender Cottage, across from the surgery, but as the months had gone by she had discovered that Ian had merely wanted a wife, any wife, to give him standing in the village, and the blonde doctor from the practice had been his first choice.
Marriage hadn’t made him any less keen on spending endless hours on the golf course, sailing on the lake by Swallowbrook and, while his staff looked after the stables, riding around the countryside on various of his horses, which had left him with little time to comprehend the burden of care that Libby carried with her position at the practice, a position that left her with little time or energy to share in his constant round of pleasure.
It had been one night whilst out riding that he had been thrown from a frisky mare and suffered serious injuries that had proved fatal, leaving her to face another gap in her life that was sad and traumatic, but not as heartbreaking as being separated from Nathan.
When she’d drunk the teapot dry Libby went to bed for the second time and after tossing and turning for most of the night drifted into sleep as dawn was breaking over the fells. She was brought into wakefulness a short time later by voices down below at the bottom of the drive and when she went to the window the dairy farmer who delivered her milk was chatting to Nathan, who, judging from the amount of milk he was buying off him, was making sure that he and Toby would not have to go begging for his bedtime drink again.
Not wanting to be seen watching him, she went slowly back to bed, grateful that it was Saturday with no need to get up if she didn’t want to, and as a pale sun filtered into her bedroom she began to go over the astonishing events of the previous night.
Nathan is back in Swallowbrook, a voice in her mind was saying, but not because of you. He has a family. He has made his choice and it has to be better than the one you made.
She surfaced at lunchtime in a calmer state of mind and, dressed in slacks and a smart sweater, went to the village for food and various other things she needed from the shops after being away.
There had been no sign of anyone from next door when she’d set off, but Nathan’s car had still been in front of the cottage, so either they were inside out of sight or had ventured out for the boy to see where they had come to live, and the man to reacquaint himself with the place where he had been brought up amongst people who had been his patients and friends.
To make her way home she had to pass the park next to the school that strangely for a Saturday was empty, except for Nathan and the boy, who was moving from one amusement to another in the children’s play area.
Don’t stop, she told herself. Nathan has had all morning to see you again if he wanted to, so don’t give him the satisfaction of thinking you’ve followed him here.
The two of them looked lonely and lost in the deserted park. He was pushing Toby on one of the swings, but on seeing her passing lifted him off. Now they were coming towards her and she was getting a better look at the prodigal doctor than in her mesmerised state the night before.
His time in Africa had taken its toll of him, she observed as he drew nearer. He was leaner, giving off less of the dynamism that had so attracted her to him over the years, but his hair was the same, the dark thatch of it curling above his ears, and his eyes were still the unreadable dark hazel that they’d always been where she was concerned.
‘I can’t believe you were going to go past without speaking,’ he said as they drew level.
‘Why?’ she asked steadily. ‘What is there to say?’
‘On my part that I was sorry to hear of Jefferson’s fatal accident, and for another—’
He was interrupted by the child at his side tugging at his hand and saying, ‘Can I go on the slide, Uncle Nathan?’
‘Yes, go along,’ he replied. ‘I’ll be with you in a moment.’ As Libby observed him in a daze of non-comprehension he explained, ‘I’m in the process of adopting Toby. Both his parents are dead. They were lost when a ferry sank while they were touring Europe. Thankfully he was saved. His father was my best friend and I am the boy’s godfather.
‘I went out to bring him home when it happened and applied to adopt him as there were no other relatives to lay claim to him. The paperwork is going through at the moment and soon he will be legally mine.’
‘How do you cope?’ she asked as the heartache of thinking that Nathan had a family of his own began to recede.
‘It was difficult in the beginning because although Toby knew me well enough, naturally it was his mummy and daddy he wanted. He is adjusting slowly to the situation, yet is loath to ever let me out of his sight.’
Poor little one, she thought, poor godfather … poor me. How am I going to cope having Nathan living next door to me with the memory of what he said that day at the airport still crystal clear? He has never been back to Swallowbrook since and now, as if he hadn’t hurt me enough then, he has chosen to live in the cottage next to mine.
He was observing her questioningly in the silence that her thoughts had created, and keen to escape the scrutiny of his stare she asked, ‘How old is Toby?’
‘He’s just five, and the ferry catastrophe occurred three months ago. You might have read about it in the press or seen an account of it on television.’
That was unlikely, she thought wryly. In the mornings it was a quick breakfast, then across the way to the practice, and in the evenings the day’s events had to be assimilated and paperwork brought up to date.
‘What will you do now that you’re here?’ she asked, trying to sound normal. ‘Enrol Toby at the village school?’
‘I’ve already done so and am not sure how he is going to react to yet another change in his life. I have to tread softly with his young mind. He soon gets upset, which is to be expected, of course.’
She felt tears prick. It was all so sad that Nathan had been forced to take on such a responsibility and felt he had to return to Swallowbrook for the child’s sake if nothing else.
As they went to wait for Toby at the bottom of a small slide the man by her side was smiling, which was strange, as given what he had just told her he hadn’t got a lot to smile about.
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS a lot to take in. Only yesterday she had been flying home from two refreshing
