‘Kirstie has had some pain relief so may sleep the rest of the night once it kicks in, and you must try to do the same for both your sake and the little one’s. I’ll be around all the time if she needs either of us.’
‘All right,’ Francine agreed mechanically, and as she eased herself down onto a sofa that was for the use of visitors staying overnight she thought that however Ethan might have meant what he’d said, it was true. By cutting herself off from them for part of the time, as she had been doing, she could easily have not been there for Kirstie.
But it wouldn’t have been like that if he had let her have her dream instead of leaving her to make it come true without him, and that had been a vain hope. It hadn’t worked because without him she was nothing.
She hadn’t admitted it to herself during the long months while they’d argued about her wanting to live in France, but since she’d got her wish and found it not to be as rewarding as she’d promised herself it would be, slowly but surely she was facing up to the fact that life without Ethan was no life.
If she loved him as much as she hoped he loved her, she should be willing to live with him in an igloo at the North Pole if need be.
Daylight brought with it some reassurance for most of the injured children and their families, but for Kirstie the hearing problem still prevailed and Ethan explained to her gently that it could be a few days before they saw any change.
Jenna arrived with Ben quite early. He’d been fretting to know how Kirstie and the other injured children were and, besides, she had to be at the surgery for half past eight.
She had a message from Barbara to deliver. ‘Mum says to tell you how sorry she is to hear about the accident and hopes that Kirstie and all of those who were injured will soon be home. How is Dennis this morning, do we know?’
‘Not as yet,’ Ethan told her, ‘but I popped into Intensive Care during the night and the nurses on duty said there was a slight improvement in his condition. His arm and shoulder were shattered from the impact of the tree and he’d been in Theatre for hours.’
When she was on the point of leaving he said, ‘Put Leo in the picture, will you, Jenna? I’ve got my mobile with me in case he needs me for anything, and do tell your mother thanks for her message.’
‘She’s known Dennis for years.’ she said sombrely as she reached for her car keys.
But Dennis wasn’t out of danger yet as one of the parents who’d been to see him had just come back with the news that the injured bus driver had just had a heart attack.
Later in the morning they left Ben with Kirstie while they went for a quick bite and while they were waiting to be served Francine said, ‘I was only catnapping during the night, you know. I saw you every time you came to check on me, so now what about some sleep for you?’
He shook his head. ‘Not until the doctor has done his rounds. Leo has called from the surgery and everything is under control there. The district nurse who’s filling in for Phoebe is off with a strained back, which as we both know goes with the job, but that is the only problem at the moment and she’s hoping to be in tomorrow.’
Ethan’s dedication to the practice would always be part of their lives. He would never want to give it up in a thousand years. she thought. She must have been insane to ever think he would.
They were back on the ward, the doctor was approaching, and everything else was forgotten as they listened to what he had to say after he’d examined Kirstie.
‘I note that the hearing is no better,’ was his first comment to Francine and Ethan. ‘We must give the eardrum time to heal. It will be some weeks before the cast on the arm can be removed, but it should be as good as new. Let’s take a closer look at the head wound.’
A nurse had taken off the bandaging in readiness for his visit and as he observed it keenly he pronounced, ‘There doesn’t appear to be any infection, but there might be a scar when it has healed properly and the stitches have been removed. If there is, we can decide what to do about it then.’
‘We’ll be keeping Kirstie in for a few days,’ he told them. Glancing around the ward, he said, ‘It would seem that she won’t be short of company.’
By Thursday they were still going back and forth to the hospital to be with their daughter. But, they’d spent the night before at their respective houses at Kirstie’s insistence because she was feeling much better.
Her head didn’t hurt so much because it was healing and she’d got used to the cast on her arm. All they needed now was for her hearing to come back of its own accord.
Kirstie met them at the door of the ward, pushing a wheelchair that one of her school friends was using due to the leg fracture she’d received in the bus crash, and as they observed her cautiously Kirstie said, ‘Say something, Mum.’
‘Hello, my darling,’ Francine said slowly.
‘I heard you!’ she cried. ‘Not as loud as I’m used to, but I heard what you said. The doctor has been to see me and says I’m going to have another X-ray and if it shows that everything is all right inside my ear, I can come home!’
‘Wonderful’ Ethan said huskily. ‘I have to go to the surgery but will be back shortly so don’t go away, will you, Kirstie?’
He had to go to the surgery to keep a nine o’clock appointment with a patient who was dreading the results of tests that he’d had taken, and he wanted to be there as the man was a friend as well as a patient and had a disabled wife to cope with, who was not always the easiest of people to deal with.
Keith Balfour was already seated in the waiting room when he arrived, looking as if he was on a knife edge, and Ethan wasted no time in calling him into his consulting room.
‘Tell it to me straight, Ethan,’ Keith said when he’d settled himself at the other side of the desk.
‘Of course,’ he told him. ‘I would be doing you no favours if I didn’t, Keith. Your count has gone up from seven to nine and a half, which is not good, but we’re not panicking yet. If it had shot up to twenty there would be cause for concern, but you haven’t reached that point yet. If you had we would be thinking about prostate cancer and it would be action stations, usually a strong blast of radiotherapy in an uncomfortable place.’
‘Remember this, I’ll be keeping a close watch on you, and the hospital will be sending you regular appointments for the urology clinic. So go home and don’t let the worry of it get a stranglehold on you. Do I take it that Barbara and Jenna don’t know you have this problem?’
‘Yes, that’s correct. I don’t want Barbara to know because she relies on me so much, and I haven’t told Jenna because these are precious days for her, the first months of her marriage and a baby on the way. I don’t want to spoil them. Time enough to tell them both when and if I find I have something that has to be said, and you’ve put my mind at rest for the time being anyway.’
He’d endured a lifetime with Barbara which couldn’t have been easy, knowing her, and wouldn’t put the blight on his daughter’s happiness by burdening her with the huge worry he was carrying around with him.
Comparing Keith and Henri, his French father-in-law whom he’d loved and respected, with his own father, who moaned and grumbled all the time, was like putting silk beside sackcloth.
After a quick chat with Leo he set off for the hospital once more to join Francine and Kirstie with hope in his heart, and on arriving called first to see Dennis, the bus driver, who had survived the heart attack and was slowly recovering from his injuries.
‘Where’s your lad, Dr Lomax?’ he asked. ‘He saved my life, you know, by stopping the bus. I shudder to think what would have happened to me and those youngsters if he hadn’t.’
‘Ben is back at school Dennis,’ he told him. ‘And now that you’re feeling a little better, I know he’d love to come and see you.’
‘Does he want to be a doctor like you?’ he asked, and Ethan laughed.
‘No, not at all. Ben’s passion is for cars, and we’re fairly sure he will pursue a career in that field in some form or other.�
��
When he arrived back at the ward Francine and Kirstie had just been given the results of the tests that Kirstie had had earlier, and although her hearing wasn’t yet back to normal, the signs were there that it was returning, and she was being discharged with instructions to come back to see a consultant audiologist in a week’s time for further checks.
It was midday. Francine and a happy Kirstie were back at Thimble Cottage and Ethan was about to go to the practice. On the point of leaving he was aware of Francine’s pallor and the dark circles beneath her eyes and suggested that she go to bed for the afternoon with the assurance that he would make the evening meal.
‘It is just stress that is making me look like this,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fine now we have Kirstie home.’ When he’d gone she went upstairs and phoned the solicitor who was acting for her in the divorce to request her to stop the proceedings.
She had already decided that the French dream was over, knew that was all it had ever been, and Kirstie being hurt had been another prod to her conscience. It had reminded her of the day when the vicar’s wife had brought their son to her with the serious chest infection, and how when they’d gone she’d shuddered at the thought of not being there for a child of hers when she was needed. That could easily have been the case over the past week, but the fates had been kind.
She felt better after that and when Ethan arrived home in the evening after taking up the reins at the practice once more there was colour in her cheeks and a new sense of purpose in her expression.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS half-term at Ben and Kirstie’s school and Ethan was happier than he’d been in a long time because his daughter’s hearing had righted itself, the head injury was healing satisfactorily, and the only reminder of the accident was the cast on her arm, which most of her school friends had written on.
Added to his relief was the knowledge that Francine hadn’t been across the Channel of late. He’d made no comment, been content to watch developments with spirits rising, until on the Friday night in the middle of the two-week break she’d said, ‘Can we go back to our routine of you having the children for the weekend as you usually do when I’m away, and could you keep them with you for the rest of the week as well? It seems like a lifetime since I was in France and as they’re on holiday—’ She’d seen his expression and her voice trailed away.
He’d been crazy to think she’d given up on it, he thought grimly. When he’d accused her of having it all sorted and fitting him into her life when it suited her, he hadn’t been wrong. What a fool to think all the misery was going to go away because Francine hadn’t been to Paris of late.
‘Of course I’ll have the children,’ he’d said tightly. ‘Some of us are contented with our lot. But not you, it would seem. I should have known better than to think you might have come to your senses.’ To add to his annoyance he’d registered that she was smiling.
So she’d gone early on Saturday morning, this time not just with an overnight bag but with a sizeable suitcase, and fool that he was Ethan had taken her to the railway station to catch a London train as this time she was travelling to France by train to avoid flying in a state of advanced pregnancy, and he wanted to make sure she was safely on her way to get the London connection before he left her. But there were no fond goodbyes, just a peck on the cheek before she boarded the Paris train.
Inside the house that had been the cause of the disruption in their lives it was the same as always, the feeling of quiet emptiness as if it had been waiting for her, and she felt as if she wanted to go from room to room to tell it that it was going to have to be goodbye.
She’d come for a longer stay to arrange the inside as attractively as she could before she put it on the market, having decided that it needed to be out of her life completely if it couldn’t be totally in it.
Once it was sold she wouldn’t pine to live there any more. It would be the end of a chapter and a new beginning with Ethan.
It took all weekend to arrange it as she wanted, as well as Monday and Tuesday, and on the Wednesday she asked an estate agent in the centre of Paris to send someone give her a valuation on the assumption that if she was satisfied with it they could put it on the market.
When they’d been and gone she stood in the middle of the sitting room and wept. Yet she was at peace with herself for the first time in months, and for what was left of the week she spent the time seeing all the places that she loved especially, telling herself that she wasn’t going to disappear from the face of the earth and neither was Paris.
She hadn’t actually accepted the valuation on the spot, but once she was home and had considered it she would either consult another firm for comparison or tell the first one to go ahead. Soon it would be time to show Ethan where her loyalties lay.
That was her thought, until she arrived back in Bluebell Cove on the following Saturday morning to discover that her father-in-law had been hospitalised with a stroke and Ethan and the children were on their way to Bournemouth to see him. He’d left a note explaining the situation, and at the bottom had put:
If there is no real cause for alarm will be back before Monday morning as Ben and Kirstie are due back at school and I’ve got the practice to see to. As much as they love grumpy old grandpa, they won’t want to miss the bonfire on Sunday night.
Lastly, as an afterthought, he’d written, Hope you enjoyed France.
She groaned. Just as she’d got to the point of putting everything right between them this had happened, and it stood to reason that Ethan wouldn’t be thrilled at having to take Ben and Kirstie with him at such a worrying time, when if she’d been there he wouldn’t have had to. Was she ever going to get anything right again? she thought as she picked up the phone to ring his parents’ number in the hope that he would be there.
‘I’ve just read your message,’ she told him when he answered. ‘I’m so sorry about your father. How bad is the stroke?’
‘Not as bad as it might have been. Mum is with him now. The children and I have just got back from the hospital,’ he said in flat tones. ‘I’ve spoken to the consultant on the stroke unit and he’s anticipating partial recovery, but I can’t see Dad being a good patient! Fortunately Mum is used to him and has plenty of stamina. We’ll be leaving here Sunday lunchtime if there are no further concerns about him and hopefully will be back in time for the bonfire.’
‘I’ll have a meal ready,’ she promised.
Into the pause that followed he said, ‘No need. There’ll be lots of food at the bonfire. How are you and the baby? You never phoned while you were there.’
‘Neither did you,’ she pointed out mildly.
‘That might be because I haven’t had a minute to spare. Francine, you didn’t answer my question.’
‘Both mother and child are fine. The new year is going to bring you joy, Ethan.’
She wasn’t sure if he’d heard the last part of what she’d said as he was saying, ‘I’ll have to go. Mum has just come back from the hospital and I want to hear the latest about Dad.’
‘Give her my love,’ she said gently. Jean Lomax was a gem of a mother-in-law. They’d been good friends from the moment of meeting.
For the rest of the weekend Francine couldn’t settle. She’d come back from France ready to tell Ethan that she was home to stay, and the moment had been postponed because of his absence and the reason for it.
The three of them arrived home late Sunday afternoon, as he’d hoped they might, and after she’d held Ben and Kirstie close she turned to Ethan, not expecting any warm embraces from that source after the way they’d parted at the railway station, but when their glances met there was warmth in his as he observed her and the child she was carrying.
She was back, the wife who had become a stranger with agendas of her own that she rarely shared with him. He hated her being alone in the French house, but at least when it was just for the weekend she was home almost as soon as she’d gone, but this time it had been a long and miserable wee
k without her.
Yet thinking back to the first time she’d gone there without him and taken the children with her, a week was nothing compared to the months of separation then that had ended with her unexpected arrival in Bluebell Cove on Christmas Eve.
Soon the calendar would have gone full circle and another new year would be upon them with another child to love, and where would their relationship go from there?
‘So how is your dad today?’ she was asking, bringing his sombre thoughts back to the present.
‘Improving. Some of the use has come back into his legs, which is where the stroke had the most effect, but it is early days. They won’t be sending him home yet and I don’t want them to, for my mother’s sake.’
Ben and Kirstie were already upstairs, putting on warm clothes to keep them snug at the bonfire and anxious to be off to meet their friends, while Francine and Ethan followed at a slower pace, each with their thoughts in very different channels.
Food was on offer in the community centre just down the road, traditional fare such as parkin, hot soup, and chestnuts and potatoes roasted in the fire that was already glowing red, and all around them with its own special kind of warmth was the community feeling.
The local bobby was there, out of uniform but keeping a watchful eye on the proceedings, and a fire engine was parked not far away just in case, all part of the usual routine on Bonfire Night.
Something that wasn’t expected was the arrival of Dennis, recently out of hospital and looking pale and drawn but with a smile on his face as he asked a couple of teenage girls, ‘Is young Ben Lomax here?’
‘Yes,’ one of them told him. ‘He’s over there, kicking a ball about with his friends.’
Christmas in Bluebell Cove Page 12