Christmas At Willowmere. Abigail Gordon

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      CHAPTER TWO

      THE accident had happened just as Anna had been ready to let Glenn know she was flying out to join him. The babies were a month old and it had seemed as if she might be no longer needed at Bracken House with Julie back to her normal self, the problem of the high blood pressure having disappeared once she’d given birth. And with James around to keep an eye on their father, the time had seemed right.

      Glenn had still been out of contact but was due back soon on the day that she’d driven Julie and the children to the hospital to have their feet checked by a paediatric consultant while James had held the fort at the surgery.

      Both babies had been born with feet slightly inward turning, due to being in a cramped position in the womb, and had immediately been put into tiny boots that would correct the problem. And on an icy winter morning she and Julie had taken them for a progress check.

      The report had been good. They’d told the anxious mother that it was a common enough thing and as it was being treated promptly it should soon right itself. They’d set off for home in good spirits and all had been fine until a car coming fast out of a minor road had skidded into them on the icy surface and hit the side where Julie had been sitting.

      By some miracle, the babies hadn’t been hurt, but their mother had taken the full impact of a car much heavier car than theirs and by the time the emergency services had arrived she had died from severe head and spinal injuries.

      Anna had been found injured in the driver’s seat, not too seriously at first glance, but in great pain in the pelvic area.

      As a paramedic had bent over her she’d heard the babies crying and gasped through the pain and shock, ‘The babies!’

      ‘They seem all right,’ the paramedic told her. ‘They’re being lifted out of the car now.’

      ‘And their mother?’

      ‘We’re doing all we can,’ he said gently. ‘And now, before we move you, tell me where the pain is.’

      ‘Everywhere,’ she moaned weakly, ‘but worse around my pelvis.’ She’d drifted off into nothingness for a few moments and the next thing she knew she was being lifted carefully onto a stretcher before being put into an ambulance.

      She knew she’d lost Julie as soon as she saw James’s face in A and E. On the point of being taken to X-Ray she’d told him to go back to the babies, that she would be all right, though she wasn’t as confident as she sounded.

      Her life changed for ever when a gynaecologist stood by her bedside and said apologetically, ‘I’m afraid that the news isn’t good, Anna.’

      She’d had severe bruising of the chest and broken ribs, but the most attention was being given to the injuries to her pelvis and uterus, and his next words explained why.

      ‘I’m going to have to do a hysterectomy. Your uterus is too badly damaged for me not to do so.’

      ‘Oh, no!’ she groaned. ‘Not that. We wanted children!’ And as the tears had slid down her cheeks she could hear Glenn’s voice in her mind saying, Our children will be born into a loving family, Anna. What would he say when he knew there wasn’t going to be any?

      She cried and cried for what she and Glenn would never have and longed for him to be there to comfort her, but he was far away out of reach somewhere in Africa, and by the time he was due back she’d made her decision.

      Glenn wasn’t going to be put in the position of having to choose between her and a life with children, she’d decided. He would be spared that because she wasn’t going to tell him about the surgery she’d had to undergo. She loved him too much for that. When next they spoke she was going to finish it.

      When Anna appeared in the doorway of The Pheasant Glenn got to his feet immediately and came towards her, smiling his welcome, and she wondered if he’d forgiven her for what she’d done and the cold, abrupt manner with which she’d done it.

      It had been the only way she could make the break at the time because she’d been hurting so much. Losing Julie and knowing that the tender trap with James and the babies was opening up before her had been painful enough, but most of all she’d been hurting because when it came to children of her own, there wouldn’t be any.

      She’d often questioned if she’d been fair in not telling him what had happened to her. Glenn had been denied the opportunity to make his own decision, but it was all in the past and she’d done what she’d thought right at the time. Whatever the reason for his return, at least they could be friends, and she returned his smile with a beam of her own that made his eyes widen.

      ‘So tell me about it,’ she said when they were seated with drinks in front of them beside a glowing log fire.

      ‘What?’

      ‘Africa, of course.’

      ‘It was a fulfilling experience and one day I will go back,’ he said quietly, ‘but not yet. It was also dangerous, demoralising and exhausting, but I never had any regrets, except maybe one.’

      Anna didn’t ask what that was. She had a feeling that she knew, but it seemed that he was going to tell her anyway. ‘You weren’t with me.’

      ‘I would have been no use to you if I had been,’ she retorted quickly. ‘My mind would have been back here all the time, with James struggling with the children without Julie and myself, his family all dead or absent.’

      Glenn wasn’t smiling now, his jaw taut. ‘If you remember, I told you at the time we could have got round it. You wouldn’t have called it off for just that. There had to be another reason.’

      ‘I don’t want us to spend our time harking back to the past while you’re here,’ she said, shying away from the moment. ‘Can’t we be like you said, old friends renewing their acquaintance after a long time? Though I’m sur prised that you haven’t found someone else by now.’

      ‘Why? Have you?’

      ‘Er…no.’

      He shrugged. ‘So there you are.’ He decided a change of subject was called for. Anna had been lit up a moment ago and he wanted her to stay that way, though he didn’t flatter himself it was anything to do with him, unless she was out to show him that she wasn’t the Cinderella figure he might be seeing her as.

      After that they chatted generally. Glenn asked in detail about the surgery, said he’d never had any experience of a country practice, so she suggested he pop in and she would give him the guided tour. The evening moved along pleasantly enough until the landlord announced time.

      ‘I’ll walk you home,’ he said.

      She shook her head. ‘No need. I can see my place from here.’ And because she was anxious to know, she asked, ‘How long are you intending staying in Willowmere?’

      ‘Just a few days. Why?’

      ‘Would you like to have dinner with us tomorrow?’

      She saw his face stretch and thought surely he didn’t think she wouldn’t offer СКАЧАТЬ