Once More, With Feeling. Caroline Anderson
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was small, but she was on her own, so it didn’t matter. Anyway, it had a distant view of the sea down the valley and across the rooftops of Biddlecombe, and the sun would wake her every morning.
They arrived at the cottage to a warm welcome from Mrs Bradley, and within a very short time Jamie was settled in his bed, his teddy under his arm, his thumb tucked in his mouth, and Emily was sitting down with Mrs Bradley going over the arrangements for the beginning of the next week when Emily started work and Jamie would join the village school. She had managed to get a place for him, and the headmaster was looking forward to meeting the boy on Monday.
The only thing left to concern her was David, and the prospect of working with him made the ergonomics of her accommodation and Jamie’s schooling pale into insignificance.
In fact her first morning at the surgery was much easier than she had expected, because he greeted her with a friendly smile, gave her a cup of coffee and took himself off, leaving it to Laurence to make her feel at home and show her where everything was kept.
Her first patients were genuinely in need, but she had no doubt that after a few days word would get round and she would be inundated with people giving their noses a treat.
Her clinics, she noticed, were already booked some way ahead, especially the family planning and antenatal.
They like a woman for a woman’s domain,’ Sue said with a smile. ‘I have to agree—but if you feel you’ve got too many I can shift some back to David, although he won’t like it. Some of them flirt with him, but you can’t blame them. He’s just such a sexy beast—Oh, lord, I’m sorry!’ Her hand flew over her mouth, and Emily smiled at her discomfort.
‘Sue, forget it. It was ages ago, and I’m over him,’ she lied. ‘Don’t feel you have to walk on eggshells, please. One thing, though—I’d rather the patients didn’t know we’d been married.’
‘Oh, of course not,’ Sue agreed. ‘It’s nobody’s business but your own, and I’m sorry I said what I did.’
Emily smiled again. ‘You’re right, though—he is a sexy beast.’
‘You couldn’t be talking about me, could you?’
David’s voice behind made her jump, and she turned towards him with a cool smile. ‘Your ego’s still intact, I see. No, we were talking about Robert de Niro, actually. Excuse me.’
She slipped past him and retreated to her office, closing the door behind her.
It opened almost immediately.
‘Can I have a word?’
She shrugged. She couldn’t shut him out of her life completely; they had to work together.
‘Of course.’
She waved to a seat and positioned herself safely behind her desk. ‘What can I do for you?’
He sighed thoughtfully. ‘Oh, Emily, there’s a question and a half.’
‘David …’ Her voice contained a warning, and he grinned, melting her insides.
She almost groaned aloud. Sue was right—he was a sexy beast.
‘This afternoon,’ he said, the grin replaced by a businesslike expression that wasn’t nearly so heart-melting—thank God, she thought. He went on, ‘Mr and Mrs Blake are coming to see you. They’re my patients, and I don’t know what they want—perhaps it’s family planning or something. Anyway, they specifically requested an appointment with the new lady doctor when she arrived, and the appointment’s been booked for over a week.’
‘I’ll tell you what it’s about,’ she promised.
He nodded. ‘OK. I’ll be around if you want to refer to me—perhaps sneak out to get a form from reception or some such excuse.’
She eyed him curiously. ‘Do you really think that’ll be necessary?’
He shrugged. ‘Probably not. I just get a feeling about them. I don’t think they’re all that happy together, and a joint appointment with a stranger—’ He shrugged again. ‘Could be nothing, of course, but I just thought I’d prime you. Right.’
He unfolded his legs and stretched his hands over his head, yawning widely. ‘Oh, God, I hate weekends on duty. I’m going home to walk the dogs—I’ll be back before two for my clinic. What are you doing about lunch?’
She opened her drawer and pulled out some sandwiches.
‘You don’t want to come with me and grab a snack at home and a quick stroll over the hill?’
It sounded lovely, just the way they had spent their honeymoon, but she forced herself to shake her head. This was hardly the way to start, and working with him would be hard enough without encouraging little intimate walks over the hills.
‘I think not,’ she said as firmly as she could manage, and with a rueful grin he left her alone, wondering if she’d lost her marbles completely or if it just seemed that way.
She should have known to trust his instincts, she thought as she studied the couple opposite her.
They were in their thirties, a very average professional couple, but the way the consultation was going was far from average.
‘Of course,’ Mr Blake was saying, ‘we’d probably stand more chance of having another child if the first one wasn’t always in our bed.’
Mrs Blake’s eyes slid away, and Emily’s own instincts prickled. Her attention switched to the woman.
‘How old is your child?’
‘Four—and she has terrible nightmares. If we don’t have her in bed with us, she wakes screaming and it takes ages to settle her down again.’
‘Not that long,’ her husband argued.
‘No, well, it isn’t you that ends up doing it,’ she returned bitterly. ‘You just lie there on your back snoring your head off and complain that I’ve woken you with the creaky boards—though if you’d ever put them down again properly after you fixed that pipe they wouldn’t creak—’
‘I think we’re rather getting off the point,’ Emily interjected gently but firmly. ‘I have a son of six, and when his father died recently he was very upset. He started getting into bed with me at night, and I could see this becoming a pattern, so what I did was when he woke I got into his bed for a little while and gave him a cuddle, then slipped out again when he’d gone off. If he came to me, I’d carry him back once he’d settled.’
She regarded the couple in front of her. ‘It worked for us—it might work for you. I certainly don’t think you can leave a child upset in the middle of the night, but to allow her presence to affect your relationship to this extent I think is probably not healthy either for the child or for you—’
‘Not healthy?’ Mr Blake bristled. ‘Are you accusing us of abusing her or something?’
‘No, of course not,’ Emily soothed. ‘I’m simply suggesting that a better sleep-pattern, undisturbed by a frightened child, or more opportunities to concentrate on the physical aspect of your relationship might be emotionally and physically healthier for all of you.’
‘Well, it wasn’t my idea to have her in bed with us in the first place, and she’s much worse now than she used to be.’
‘And I suppose that’s my fault!’ Mrs Blake said defensively—too defensively.
Clearly, Emily thought, she wasn’t going to get anywhere until she split these two up—and perhaps a word with the intuitive Dr Trevellyan might be in order.
‘I don’t seem to have all your notes here,’ she said blandly to them. ‘If you’ll excuse me a moment, I’ll just go and see what I can find in the office.’
She nipped out of the door and down the corridor. Sue was