Betty Neels - Marrying a Doctor - The Doctor's Girl - new / A Special Kind Of Woman

He took her to a small café near the park, plied her with cream cakes and called her dear girl, and when they parted outside the consulting rooms he begged her to see him again. He touched the tip of her nose very gently as he spoke and his smile was such that she agreed at once.

‘But I’m only free on Saturday afternoons and Sundays.’

‘Sunday it shall be. We will drive into the country and walk and talk and eat at some village pub.’ He turned away. ‘Ten o’clock?’

‘He didn’t wait for her reply, which just for a moment she found disturbing, but she brushed that aside. A day out in his company would be lovely.

Dr Fforde, coming back just before five o’clock, wondered what had given Loveday a kind of inner glow; she was no longer insignificant, and her ordinary face was alight with happiness.

He asked, ‘You enjoyed your afternoon?’

‘Yes, thank you, Doctor.’ Her beaming smile included him in her happiness, and for some reason that made him uneasy.

At breakfast on Sunday morning, Loveday explained to Sam that she would be away for the day. ‘Well, most of it, I hope.’ She added, ‘But I won’t be late home.’ She kissed his elderly head. ‘Be a good boy.’

Charles had said a drive into the country and a village pub. Her jacket and a skirt would be quite suitable; she would wear her good shoes and the pale blue sweater…

She was ready and waiting when she heard the silence of the quiet street disturbed by the prolonged blowing of his car’s horn. She reached his car just as he was about to blow it again. ‘Oh, hush,’ she begged him. ‘It’s Sunday morning.’

He had looked faintly impatient, but now he laughed. ‘So it is and we have the whole day before us.’ He leaned across and opened the car door. ‘Jump in.’

His car was a sports model, scarlet and flashy. She suppressed the instant thought that Dr Fforde’s car was more to her liking and settled down beside Charles.

‘It’s a lovely morning,’ she began.

‘Marvellous, darling, but don’t chatter until we are out of London.’

So she sat quietly, happy just to be there, sitting beside him, leaving the streets and rows of houses behind for a few hours.

He drove south, through Sevenoaks, and she wondered where they were going. They were well clear of London by now, but he had nothing much to say until he asked suddenly, ‘Have you any idea where we’re going?’

‘No, except that it’s south—towards the coast.’

‘Brighton, darling. Plenty to do and see there.’

She had expected a day in the country—he had mentioned a country pub. Surely Brighton wasn’t much different from London? But what did it matter where they went? She was happy in his company and he made her laugh…

He parked at the seafront and they had coffee and then walked, first by the sea and then through the town, stopping to look at the shop windows in the Lanes. Charles promised her that the next time they came he would take her to the Pavilion. They had lunch in a fashionable pub and then walked again, and if it wasn’t quite what she had expected it didn’t really matter. She was having a lovely day out and Charles was a delightful companion, teasing her a little, letting her see that he liked her, and telling her that he had never met a girl quite like her before. Loveday, hopelessly ignorant of the fashionable world, believed every word of it.

They drove back to London after a splendid tea in one of the seafront hotels.

‘Do you come here often?’ Loveday wanted to know.

Charles gave her his charming smile. ‘Never with such a delightful companion.’ He might have added, And only because here I’m most unlikely to meet anyone I know. He wasn’t doing any harm, he told himself. Loveday led a dull life; what could be kinder than to give her a taste of romance? And it would keep him amused for the next few weeks…

She was a dear little thing, he reflected as they drove back, but too quiet and dull for him. It amused him to see how she blossomed under his attention.

‘We must do this again,’ he told her. ‘I’ll be away next weekend, but there’s a good film we might go to see one evening. Wednesday. I’ll come for you about half past seven.’

‘I’d like that, thank you,’ she said. And, Loveday being Loveday, she added, ‘I won’t need to dress up? I haven’t anything smart to wear.’

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