Sarah Morgan - Brides of Penhally Bay - Vol 1

‘Ben, you didn’t let it happen. You weren’t negligent.’

‘Maybe not. But I can see where your father’s coming from, and I wouldn’t want a man I thought was responsible for the death of my wife, no matter how indirectly, being the father of my grandchild.’

‘Well, he’s going to have to get over it,’ she said firmly, ‘because you are the father—unless we just aren’t going to tell him?’

‘That’s not an option, Lucy,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘This baby may not have been planned, but it’s mine, and I fully intend to be involved in its life. And I can’t do that in secret. I can’t, and I won’t, so, come what may, your father has to know.’

But how? She had no idea, but at least now Ben was in the picture. One down, one to go, she thought.

But then he went on, ‘I know you’ll say it’s too soon, and you’re probably right, but I intend to look after you and my baby for the rest of your lives, so get used to the idea.’

She sat up straighter, absently massaging the bump. ‘Out of a misplaced sense of duty? No, Ben. It has to be more than that. I agree, I can’t stay here, but I’m not moving in with you any more than I’m moving in with my father. I don’t want to be someone’s duty. I’m sick of duty. I want love for my baby. And for me. Nothing else.’

‘It will be love.’

‘It will. From me, for a start. But we’re part of a package, the baby and I, and we’re both equally important, and I’m not going to do anything hasty. You and I haven’t seen each other for months, and that was a one-off. You weren’t even ready to carry on seeing me because things were too difficult. Well, if they were difficult before, they’re much worse now, and I’m not going to do anything until I’m sure the time is right.’

‘Right with who?’

‘With me—with you—with my father.’

His jaw tensed, the muscle working, and he turned away. ‘OK. So—you need accommodation. Somewhere we can have some privacy so I can share my baby with you without causing any of you unnecessary grief—is that what you’re suggesting? That we duck around, grabbing a few minutes together every now and then when your father and the rest of Penhally Bay aren’t looking? No. It’s my baby, Lucy, and I’m damned if I’m going to be ashamed of it. Your father can just learn to deal with it, and the rest of this flaming community can just learn to mind their own business.’

She stared at him, then with a choked laugh she turned away, picked up the tray and stood.

‘If you imagine for a moment that’s going to happen, Ben Carter, you’re in cloud cuckoo land,’ she said, and, taking the tray through to the kitchen, she dumped it down and brushed off her hands. ‘We’d better get back to the surgery.’

‘I thought Dragan was going to phone you.’

‘So did I, but he’s obviously been held up. There’s a lot we can achieve without him, so let’s get on with it.’ And without waiting for him to reply, she picked up her coat, slid her arms into it and headed for the door.

THERE was no sign of Nick, thank goodness. Ben had been in suspense, waiting for him to appear, but he noticed the silver Volvo was gone, so maybe he could relax for now. Not for ever. He knew that, but if they were going to have a confrontation, he’d rather it wasn’t in a crowded surgery in front of half of Penhally Bay’s insatiably curious residents.

There was no sign of Dragan Lovak either, and Ben wondered if Kate had sent him off on a wild-goose chase or told him that they’d gone for lunch and to take his time. If Lucy was right, that wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility.

Whatever, Lovak wasn’t there to keep them on the straight and narrow, and he had to force his attention back to the Penhally Bay surgery’s MIU and away from the smooth, firm protrusion that was his child.

‘Have you had a scan?’ he asked abruptly, and Lucy stopped talking and turned and looked at him in frustration.

‘You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?’

He opened his mouth to deny it, then shook his head. ‘Sorry. I’m finding it a bit hard to focus.’

She sighed and reached out a hand, but then thought better of it and withdrew it. ‘Look—are you busy tonight? I’ve got a surgery from five to six-thirty, but I’m not doing anything later. If you’re free, perhaps we could talk then? Deal with some of your questions?’

He nodded, a little shocked at how eager he was to have that conversation—a conversation about a child that until a very short while ago he hadn’t even known existed. ‘Of course.’

‘And for now,’ she said, her voice gently mocking, ‘do you think you could keep your eyes on my face and concentrate on what I’m saying about our minor injuries unit?’

‘Sure.’

He nodded, swallowed and tried to smile, but it was a feeble effort and he just wanted to fast-forward to the evening and get the hell out of there.

‘Come and see what we have,’ she said, and led him into the room in question. It was about twice the size of a consulting room, on the upper floor, and not ideal. He forced himself to concentrate.

‘It needs to be bigger and it could do with being on the ground floor,’ he told her without preamble.

‘We know that. We’re looking at funding for expansion.’

He nodded.

‘In the meantime, this is what we have and what we do. There’s a room next door where we do minor surgery, but it really is minor and very non-invasive—skin lesions, ingrowing toenails and the like. It’s more of a treatment room, it’s not a proper theatre, although of course we use sterile techniques, but I don’t think we can realistically create a dedicated theatre environment either in there or anywhere else in a general practice setting. It simply isn’t called for, but it’s adequate for what we do surgery-wise. And this room is where we do all our minor injury stuff that we handle at present.’

‘Such as?’

‘Oh, all sorts. If I tell you the areas that we can currently cover and where I feel the holes are in our provision, maybe you can give me some advice on what we’d need both short and long term to improve that?’

‘Sure.’

‘Good. Right. Well, in the summer, we get tourists, of course, who as well as coming for medical treatment come to the MIU with things like stings, sprains, cuts and fractures. You’d be surprised how many people travel without a first-aid kit.’

He chuckled. ‘No, I wouldn’t. We get them all the time.’

‘Of course you do. I forgot,’ she said, smiling at him and dragging his mind away from medicine and onto something entirely more interesting.

‘Then all year round but particularly in the warmer months we have surfers with all their associated injuries—scrapes on rocks, collisions with their own surfboards and with others, the odd weaver fish and all the other touristy things, and we get anyone who needs more than the basic first aid the lifeguards give on the beach, but our baseline local population is farmers and fishermen and their families, so we have a lot of work-related injuries. I’ve lost count of the number of tetanus shots I’ve given in the last year. We do a lot of needlework, obviously—cuts and tears, many of them dirty, so we have a certain amount of debriding to do. Some have to come to you because they’re too extensive and need plastics or specialist hand surgery, for example. And we have fractures, lots of simple undisplaced fractures and dislocations that with X-ray we could deal with here if we had plaster facilities. They’d still need the care of the orthopaedic team for anything more complex, of course, but there are so many little things we could sort here locally.’