Swallowbrook's Winter Bride

She was almost home. As Libby took the next bend in the road it was there, Swallowbrook, beautiful in the moonlight, a familiar cluster of houses built out of lakeland stone, and outside The Mallard, the local pub, there was the usual gathering of fell walkers and locals seated on wooden benches, drinking the local brew.

Down a side turning not far away was Swallowbrook Medical Practice and across the way from it Lavender Cottage, where recently she’d spent far too many lonely nights at the end of long busy days.

The cottage was semi-detached. The property next to it had been on the market for quite some time and as she turned onto her drive she was surprised to see a van belonging to one of the big furniture stores in the nearby town pulling away from in front of it.

Her eyes widened. It was almost ten o’clock, deliveries weren’t usually made so late in the evening. It seemed from the number of lights blazing out into the night from the cottage next door that she was to be blessed, or otherwise, with new neighbours.

But she had other things to think about besides that, such as the longing to be back in her own bed after a quick cup of tea. The flight home hadn’t taken long, but the airport procedures at the UK end had been slow and then there had been a thirty-miles-plus drive home after she’d collected her car from where it had been stored while she had been away, so now she was ready to flake out.

She hoped that the people who had moved into next door would be sociable and easy to get on with. Yet wasn’t she the last person who should be concerned about socialising? She could barely remember what it was like to enjoy herself in the company of others.

After losing Ian in a fatal riding accident, a lukewarm marriage had come to an end, and since then the practice had been the only thing in her life that she could rely on for comfort and stability. As long as the new neighbours didn’t intrude into that she supposed she would cope.

The surgery had been in darkness when she looked across, which was hardly surprising in the late evening, and as it was Friday would be closed all over the weekend. But as the head of the practice she would need to be there bright and early on Monday morning. Maybe during the weekend she would get the chance to meet the newcomers, but the main thing on her mind at the moment was sleep.

After the cup of tea that she’d been longing for on the last part of the journey home Libby climbed the stairs to her bedroom beneath the eaves and in moments was under the covers and ready to drift into oblivion when someone down below rang the doorbell.

She groaned softly but didn’t move. When it rang a second time she slipped a robe over her nightdress and went quickly downstairs. Before opening the door she peered into the porch and with the moon’s light filtering in saw the broad-shouldered outline of a man and beside him was a small child dressed in pyjamas.

It all looked innocent enough, she decided. The two of them must be part of the family who’d moved in next door, and without any further delay she unlocked the door.

‘Hello, Libby,’ Nathan Gallagher said easily, as if it had only been yesterday that she’d last seen him. ‘We saw your car pull up a while ago and had no intention of disturbing you, but Toby needs his bedtime drink of milk, won’t settle without it, and it’s the one thing I’ve overlooked in the provisions I bought in the store this afternoon. I noticed you had a couple of pints that someone had delivered and wonder if you could spare one?’

She could feel her legs caving in at the shock of seeing him there.

‘Come in,’ she croaked, opening the door wide, and as they stepped inside she added, ‘I’ll get you one from the fridge.’ With her glance on the tousle-haired small boy at his side she paused in the doorway of the kitchen. ‘So it’s you and your family who have moved into next door? You found yourself a wife while in Africa? It seems strange that your father never mentioned a thing!’

‘Not exactly,’ he said with a wry smile, and she wondered what that meant. Maybe the child’s mother was a partner rather than a wife and she’d been rather quick to be asking those kinds of questions in any case.

Obviously Nathan hadn’t come for a cosy chat about what he’d been doing during the last few years. Taking a pint of milk out of the fridge, she handed it to him and came up with a question of a more basic kind.

‘Are your beds made up? Tell your little boy’s mother I can lend you some bedding if you haven’t had time to get them sorted.’

‘Thanks, but everything is fine,’ was the reply. ‘We’ve been here since early this morning. As soon as Toby has had his milk he will be settling down for sleep in a small single bed next to mine. It’s been a long day so I don’t think either of us will need much rocking.’

‘How long have you been back in the UK?’ she asked as he was about to depart with the little boy clutching his hand tightly.

‘A month. We’ve been in London until now on business, but I was anxious to get away from the crowds. I want Toby to grow up in Swallowbrook like we did, and the vacant cottage next door to yours seemed to be the perfect answer.’

Answer to what? she wondered. Whatever it was it wouldn’t be anything to do with her. He’d asked her to go out to Africa with him all that time ago because they were short of doctors, not because he’d wanted her near, and at the time she’d come up with a few reasons for refusing.

It was like a knife in her heart seeing him with his small son. It meant that he’d found someone that he did want, while she’d been letting common sense fly out of the window by agreeing to marry Ian, whose interests had revolved around his horses and pleasure, and seen her career as a hindrance to his lifestyle, instead of giving it meaning.

With no wish to remind herself of how all that had ended she switched her thoughts to the mother of the child and wondered where she was. She probably had other things to do, having just moved into next door, and curious though she might be, there was no way she was going to ask Nathan why the sleeping arrangements he’d described didn’t sound as if Toby’s mother was included in them.

When Libby went back upstairs to bed the feeling of tiredness had been replaced by bleak amazement as she recalled those incredible moments with Nathan and the silent child. Wide-eyed and disbelieving, her gaze was fixed on the dividing wall between the two properties.

He would be sleeping at the other side of it, she thought. Just a short time ago she’d seen him in the flesh, heard him speak, watched him smile a strange smile when she’d asked him if he had married while out in Africa.

He’d said, ‘Not exactly,’ and she cringed at her unseemly haste in asking the question only seconds after he’d appeared at her door. It would have been the last thing she would have come up with if he hadn’t had the boy with him.

Had his father known for the last month that he was back in England and not told her? If that was the case, it would have been on Nathan’s instructions. John would never do anything like that to her.

Tomorrow she would have to prepare herself for meeting the little boy’s mother with pleasantness and a warm welcome to Swallowbrook, while hoping that she would be able to hide her true feelings, and with those kinds of thoughts to cope with she got up and put the kettle on for a second time.

Behind the dividing wall Nathan was not asleep but Toby was, curled up and content after having drunk some of the milk that Libby had provided. As the man looked down at the child the stresses and strains, the sorrow and confusion of past months seemed less dreadful because he was back home in Swallowbrook once more.

The last time he’d seen Libby Hamilton had also been from the shelter of a porch, but not the one next door. It had been in the shadowed stone porch of the village church after he’d flung himself out of the taxi that had brought him from the airport, hoping that he might get the chance to speak to her before she became the wife of Ian Jefferson.

He’d needed to know if it was because of his leaving that she was marrying the pleasure-loving owner of the local stables … on the rebound. Or if the feelings that she’d said she had for himself had been just a passing attraction that she’d soon moved on from and there was no longer any need for him to carry the burden of guilt that his leaving her had created.

A delayed flight had denied him the chance to clear the air between them and he’d arrived at the church just as the vicar had pronounced them man and wife. As he’d watched Libby smile up at her new husband he’d turned and departed as quickly as he’d come, deciding in that moment he had his answer. Her feelings for him had been a passing fancy and a prize fool he would have appeared if anyone had seen him hovering in the church porch for a glimpse of her.

When he’d reached the lych gate in the churchyard a bus had pulled up beside him on the pavement and he’d boarded it, uncaring where it was bound in his haste to get away before he was seen.

As he’d waited for a flight to take him back to where he’d come from he’d thought sombrely that his arrogance all that time ago when in her despair at the thought of him going away Libby had confessed her love for him and been told he wasn’t interested, had only been exceeded by him expecting her to want to talk to him of all people on her wedding day.

She had turned up at the airport on the morning he had left for Africa and been the only one there. He’d said his farewells to his father the night before and told everyone else he didn’t want any send-offs, so it had been a surprise, and he’d had to admit a pleasant one, to see her there.

They had been due to call his flight any time and during those last few moments in the UK Libby had begged him not to go. ‘I love you, Nathan,’ she’d pleaded. ‘I always have. Until I awoke this morning I had accepted that you were going out of my life. Then suddenly I knew I had to see you just one more time.

‘I know the importance of the work you are going to do in Africa, but there would still be time for that when we’d had our time, some life together in happiness and contentment and maybe brought up a family.’

She had chosen the most inopportune moment to make her plea, with only minutes to spare before he boarded the plane, and with the memory tugging at him of a failed engagement not so long ago that had done neither he nor his fiancée any credit.

There had been tears in her eyes but instead of making him want to comfort her he’d reacted in the opposite way and been brusque and offhand as he’d told her, ‘How can you face me with something like this at such a time, Libby? I’m due to leave in a matter of minutes. Just forget me. Don’t wait around. Relationships aren’t on my agenda at present.’

Then, ashamed of his churlishness, he’d bent to give her a peck on the cheek. Instead their lips had met and within seconds it had all changed.

He’d been kissing her as if he’d just walked into light out of darkness and it would have gone on for ever if a voice hadn’t been announcing that his flight was ready for boarding.

As common sense had returned he’d said it again. ‘Don’t wait around for me, Libby.’ And almost before he’d finished speaking she’d been rushing towards the exit as if she couldn’t get away from him fast enough.

Aware that his behaviour had left a lot to be desired, and cursing himself for trampling on what was left of her schoolgirl crush, he’d vowed that he would phone her when he arrived at his destination and apologise for his flippancy, but in the chaos he’d found when he’d got there his private life had become non-existent, until he’d received his father’s phone call some months later to say Libby was getting married on the coming Saturday.

Then it had all come flooding back—her tears, the loveliness of her, and his own arrogance in brushing to one side her feelings for him by telling her not to wait for him, indicating in the most presumptuous way that he wasn’t interested in her.

But, of course, by then it had been too late. How could he ever forget how happy she had looked when the vicar had made his pronouncement to say Libby and Ian were man and wife? And he’d thought how wrong he’d been in considering that she might be marrying Jefferson on the rebound.

Now, as he looked down at Toby, young and defenceless beneath the covers, he knew that there would be barriers to break down in coming months and bridges to build, not just in one part of his life but in the whole structure of it, because his contract in Africa was up. He was home for good, and coming back to Swallowbrook was his first step towards normality.

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.