Their Very Special Marriage

Would they make love tonight?

Oh, now she was really getting depraved. Thinking about sex in the middle of a six-year-old’s birthday party. But it had been a while. Oliver had been too busy, Rachel had been too tired, and the weeks had slipped by. Maybe tonight she should make an effort. When Rob and Sophie were asleep, she’d put some chilling-out music on the CD player, open a bottle of wine and tempt Oliver to relax with her.

‘That’s my daddy,’ she heard Sophie lisp proudly. ‘He makes people better. So does my mummy.’

‘Come on, little one. Shall we go and tell the ladies we’re nearly ready for tea and Robin’s birthday cake?’ Oliver asked, picking up his daughter and lifting her onto his shoulders.

Rachel smiled gratefully at him. ‘Thanks, love,’ she mouthed, and started telling her son and his best friend a complicated story about pirates and dragons which soon had them forgetting their bump on the bouncy castle.

After the birthday tea—where all the healthy options of raisins, cherry tomatoes and cubes of cheese were ignored in favour of crisps and chocolate finger biscuits, and the jelly and ice cream disappeared in record time—and two rousing choruses of ‘Happy Birthday to You’, because Sophie wanted to be like her big brother and blow out the candles, too, the children dispersed, clutching a balloon, a windmill and a party bag. Rachel strapped the children into their car seats while Oliver paid for the party and brought Robin’s pile of presents back to the car.

‘Did you have a nice party, darling?’ she asked Robin.

‘It was brilliant!’ Robin’s smile was a mile wide.

‘Can we have another one next week?’ Sophie asked.

Rachel laughed. ‘We’ll have to wait until it’s your birthday, Soph.’

‘But that’s ages away,’ Robin said in dismay.

‘Never mind. We can try out your new bike when we get home,’ Rachel suggested, knowing it would distract him.

The ploy worked, because Robin started chattering about his new bike and how it had got proper gears and a really loud bell.

‘And I can go on my pink scooter,’ Sophie said. ‘Robin, you’ve got to wear your hat.’ She blew on her windmill. ‘Look, Daddy, it goes round!’

‘Mmm.’

Oliver was making the right noises but Rachel could hear that his heart definitely wasn’t in it. She shot him a sideways look and groaned inwardly. She knew that look. He was thinking about the practice.

Today was their son’s birthday. His sixth birthday. Oliver had swapped duties so he wasn’t on morning surgery or on call. He’d promised to spend the day with them as a family. To give him his due, he’d spent the day with them so far. He’d been good with the kids at the party, chatted to the other parents. But Rachel knew it just wasn’t possible for Oliver Bedingfield to go for more than four hours without thinking about the practice.

So she was prepared for her husband to check his mobile phone as soon as they got indoors, and equally prepared for the apologetic look on his face.

‘Sorry, love. There’s something I need to sort out.’

Couldn’t he put the children—and her—first, for once? But no. He was a Bedingfield, brought up to believe that his duty to the community came before everything else. ‘Rob wanted to show you how good he is on his bike,’ she reminded him. She’d taken the stabilisers off Robin’s old bike a week ago to get him prepared for his birthday present. Where she’d grown up, it was always the dads who taught their kids how to ride a bike. In the Kent village where they lived, even, it was the dads who did the bike-riding lessons.

Except for Oliver.

‘I’ll come and see him ride it later. I promise,’ Oliver said.

His eyes had grown wary, as if he was expecting a row. He damned well deserved one, Rachel thought angrily. Was one single day too much to ask?

Clearly, it was. She forced herself to smile at him, even though she wanted to shake him and tell him their kids were growing up so fast and he was missing everything—that he wouldn’t get this time back again and he was wasting it. ‘OK. We’ll be out in the front garden.’

‘I’ll be with you as soon as I can,’ Oliver said.

But he didn’t meet her eyes, and when he walked into his office in the house Rachel knew he wouldn’t come out into the front garden with them. He never did. She was always the one who watched the children when they went out to play, chatted to other parents in the street.

It wasn’t that Oliver was a snob. He was good with people and everyone in the village loved their GP. But his background was so different from Rachel’s own. He’d grown up in the big house at the far end of the village, always that little bit apart from the others; she’d grown up on an estate in Newcastle where everyone popped in and out of each other’s houses, and children went from garden to garden, playing noisy and busy games until somebody’s mum came out with a tray of orange squash and biscuits. When she’d been pregnant with Rob and they’d moved to the small modern estate on the edge of the village, she’d thought that Oliver would fit in and discover what it meant to live right in the middle of a close community. That he’d break away from the Bedingfield way of doing things.

But then Oliver’s father decided to retire, over a long enough period for Oliver to ease into taking his place as the senior partner in the practice. So Oliver didn’t get the time to join in with Rachel. And, following the Bedingfield tradition, he always kept slightly apart from everyone else.

If it hadn’t been for that clash of heads and the fact that his medical expertise had been needed, he’d have stayed remote at the party, too. On the sidelines, making all the right noises, but his mind elsewhere. Sometimes Rachel thought she was on the way to losing the man she’d fallen in love with, because Oliver was turning into his father. He even ran the practice along the same lines as Stuart Bedingfield had. But this was the twenty-first century—no body doffed their cap to the village bank manager, solicitor or doctor any more. It was time to let the old ways go, forget the social niceties that were no longer an issue.

‘Penny for them?’

Rachel jumped. She’d been lost in her thoughts, watching the children at the same time. ‘Just thinking how quickly they grow up,’ she lied. Much as she liked her neighbour, Ginny, she couldn’t talk to her about Oliver. The last thing she wanted was rumours floating round the village that all wasn’t well between Oliver and Rachel Bedingfield.

‘Don’t they just? I remember when Jack was six. It seems like yesterday—and now he’s eleven and nearly as tall as me! Did Rob enjoy his party?’

‘Loved it.’ Rachel grinned. ‘Funny, you’d think that two hours at Bounce would wear them out. But he’ll be zooming round on that bike until it’s dark.’

‘Ah, bless.’ Ginny gave her a curious look. ‘Oliver working, is he?’

So even the neighbours had noticed. Great. She shrugged. ‘Something cropped up.’

‘Your life’s not your own when you’re the village doctor,’ Ginny said. ‘You must get it, too—people coming up to you at nursery or in the playground to ask you “just a quick question”.’

Parents only did that so they didn’t have to risk facing the practice’s dragon secretary if they didn’t have the luck to get Rita, the receptionist, to ask for an appointment to see Rachel. Another sticking point, another battle that Rachel knew she’d never win. But when Prunella eventually retired, Rachel was going to make sure Oliver didn’t hire a carbon copy as her replacement. ‘Better them grab me in the street than have them worrying about the kids,’ Rachel said, and deftly changed the subject.

Oliver still hadn’t joined them by the time it was too dark for the children to play outside safely. Rachel shepherded Robin and Sophie indoors. ‘Do you want anything to eat?’

‘I’m stuffed,’ Robin said.

‘I’m stuffed, too,’ Sophie said, not to be outdone.

‘Milk, bath and bed, I think,’ Rachel said.

‘But Daddy didn’t see me on my bike,’ Robin protested.

Rachel gave him a hug. ‘He’ll see you on your bike tomorrow, love.’

‘He’ll be busy,’ Sophie said.

Hell. If even a three-year-old spotted that her father didn’t spend enough time with them—and made excuses for him—then it was time to do something.

What, Rachel wasn’t sure. She pulled her weight at the surgery, as did the other doctors and the practice nurse. Maybe she should persuade Oliver to get a practice manager to take the admin burden off him. But it had been the Bedingfield practice for so long...she had a feeling he’d resist. If he didn’t, his family would. The Bedingfields were a sensitive lot and it would be all too easy to start a full-scale family feud. She really didn’t need to give them an extra excuse to dislike her. Being forthright and Northern was more than enough for them. She had to go carefully.

As usual, bathtime meant there was more water on the floor than in the bath. Rachel dried the children and mopped up. ‘Teeth, story, bed,’ she said.

‘But it’s my birthday,’ Robin protested.

‘You know the routine. Teeth, story, bed.’

‘A princess story?’ Sophie asked, beaming.