Caroline Anderson, Sara Morgan, Josie Metcalfe, Jennifer Taylor

by Brides of Penhally Bay Vol. 01 (lit)

Neither Marco nor Dragan had come, both electing to hold the fort to make sure Nick had no plausible excuses, she was sure, but apart from Sue who was manning the reception desk and Alison Myers who had a baby clinic, the rest of the staff were there, and Ben’s colleagues, and after them, it seemed, came the whole of Penhally, so many of them, come to wish her and Ben well.

  And get plastered on the doctor’s slate.

  There wouldn’t be a lot of work done in Penhally that afternoon, she thought, and wondered how many more people were going to hug and kiss her before she could go and sit down…

  Nick hated speeches, and this was one he’d never intended to make, so it was short and to the point.

  ‘I’ve never seen my daughter look so radiant,’ he said. ‘And her mother, who should have been here, would have been so, so proud of her. And on her behalf, I’d like to wish you every happiness. Ben, take care of her. Love her well. And may you be as happy as we were. Ladies and gentlemen, the bride and groom.’

  And he drained his glass, sat down and took a deep, steadying breath. He didn’t like Ben, and he didn’t intend to spend time in his company, but Lucy apparently loved him, and after all he didn’t have to live with the man. And today, on their wedding day, he wasn’t going to fight with him.

  Nick reached for the bottle of champagne and refilled his glass. He only lived at the bottom of the hill. He could walk home. It was his daughter’s wedding day, and everybody was having too much to drink. He was damned if he wasn’t going to join them…

  ‘Ben, why are we here?’

  ‘Just humour me,’ he said. ‘Stay there.’

  Lucy paused, her dress caught up in her hand so it didn’t trail in the dirt, and Ben disappeared round the side of the house, came back a moment later, scooped her up in his arms and carried her, laughing, round to the other side of the house and in through the front door.

  ‘You’re crazy. What are you doing?’ she said breathlessly, then realised, and her heart lodged in her throat. He was carrying her over the threshold.

  ‘There,’ he said, sliding her carefully to her feet. ‘You wouldn’t let me do it before we were married, but there’s no excuse now. Welcome home, Mrs Carter.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She went up on tiptoe and kissed him, still laughing, then looked around and gasped. She hadn’t been allowed in the house for days, and she’d spent last night at her flat, getting ready this morning with Chloe and Lauren to help her.

  But now…

  ‘It’s furnished!’ she exclaimed. ‘How? When?’

  ‘Today. The removal men had strict instructions, and hopefully they’ve done everything right. I’m sure they won’t have done, and we’ll have to move all sorts of stuff, but I wanted to bring my bride home—to our real home.’

  ‘Oh, Ben,’ she said, lost for words. Taking him by the hand, she went from room to room. ‘Oh, it’s lovely. Oh! The nursery! Oh, Ben, you’ve had it painted in just the right colours.’

  ‘I painted it,’ he said, following her into the room she’d used as a child. ‘I wanted to do it myself. For the baby.’

  ‘Oh, Ben,’ she said again, and then she couldn’t talk any more. She just threw herself into his arms and hugged him so hard she thought she could hear his ribs creak.

  ‘Is it OK? Do you like it?’

  But she could only nod, because the tears were clogging her throat and she just couldn’t believe how much he’d achieved in so short a time.

  ‘I take it that’s a yes,’ he said with a laugh, and hugged her back, rather more gently. ‘Come on, you haven’t see our bedroom yet.’

  And he led her up the corridor and opened the door. A beautiful old French sleigh bed took pride of place opposite the window, positioned just where she’d be able to sit up in bed and look at the sea. It was made up with fresh, crisp white linen, the duvet a cloud of goosedown, and piled with pillows just right for propping herself up to take advantage of the view.

  It also looked hugely inviting.

  She was tired. It had been a long day and was hard on the heels of a night when she hadn’t slept a wink.

  ‘How do you fancy trying it out?’ he asked, drawing her back against him. ‘I missed you last night, and I didn’t sleep at all.’

  ‘Neither did I.’ She turned in his arms and smiled. ‘I think trying it out sounds wonderful. Take me to bed, Mr Carter—please?’

  He chuckled. ‘Since you ask so nicely,’ he said.

  They couldn’t take any time off.

  Because it was so close to Christmas, they both had to go back to work on Tuesday morning, and it was a real effort to drag themselves out of the blissfully comfortable embrace of their new bed.

  Ben had to leave earlier than Lucy, and after he’d gone she wandered around the house, touching it, remembering. ‘I wonder what you’d make of it, Grannie?’ she murmured. ‘I hope you’re happy that we’re here. We’ll look after it, and love it, and love each other and our children just as you did. You can rest now.’

  Gosh, such sentimental nonsense. She blinked hard and went into the kitchen to make herself another cup of tea before she had to leave. The old Aga was still there, and there was a six-week wait for a new one, but she didn’t mind. There was something curiously comforting about the sight of it, and Ben had promised her he’d try and get it going for Christmas. In the meantime there was a rather elderly electric stove standing next to the fridge, but it would do.

  She drank her tea, washed up the mug—a novelty, that, not having a dishwasher, she’d got rather used to Ben’s—and went to work.

  Wow. Christmas Eve.

  She’d done her Christmas shopping on Saturday, with Ben, and the presents were wrapped and under the tree in the sitting room—all except for the fire dogs she’d bought him from the salvage yard to put in the big granite fireplace in the sitting room. They’d been hiding in the boot of her car under a blanket until she’d struggled to heave them out that morning after Ben had gone, but they were a bit heavy for her to lift and she’d had to tuck them round the corner of the little stone barn beside the house. Her father had been hard to buy for. What could you give a man who didn’t seem to connect with life any more?

  Not at any real level. Even after the wedding, he’d still been distant, and any hopes she might have cherished that they were back to normal had been dashed when she’d asked him to join them at the house for Christmas Day, the following Tuesday.

  ‘I’m going to Kate’s,’ he’d said. ‘Sorry. Can’t let her down. But I’m sure you’ll have a lovely day.’

  ‘Can’t you come for some of it? Bring Kate and Jem—come for a drink, or tea, or something.’

  ‘Sorry, Lucy.’

  And that had been that. So she’d bought him a bottle of a fine single malt whiskey and a Christmas cake and a pot of Stilton, and put them in a wicker basket, and it was under her desk at the moment waiting for a chance to give it to him. Dull, boring but safe, she thought, and wondered if he’d be disappointed. No more than he was disappointed in her, she was sure.

  Oh, well. She didn’t have time to worry about it.She had a surgery until ten, and then two minor ops booked in, one the removal of a sebaceous cyst on the back of a man’s neck, the other a seborrhoeic keratosis, harmless but irritating and looking troubling like a melanoma to the uninitiated.

  She was examining it, reassuring herself about her initial diagnosis, when she noticed Ben’s car pull up in the car park.

  What was he doing here?

  She forced herself to concentrate, and infiltrated the area in the man’s armpit with local anaesthetic, listening to his stream of inconsequential chatter and putting in the odd remark from time.

  ‘Oh, I’ve got a message for you from Mrs Pearce, Mrs Jones’sneighbour. She says to tell you Edith’s doing really well and hopes to be home in a week or two.’

  ‘Oh, good. I’ll go and see her when I’m next at St Piran. Right, is that numb now?’

  ‘Yes—can’t feel a thing.’

  ‘
OK.’ She curetted it off, cauterised the wound and dressed it with antibiotic cream and a non-adherent dressing. ‘Right, keep it dry if you can, put the cream on twice a day, leave it uncovered once it stops being sore and in two to three weeks it should be gone. It’ll just look and feel like a burn, and that’s what it is, really, because I’ve singed the blood vessels to seal them. OK?’

  ‘What about that thing?’ He pointed at the flat brown blob of tissue she’d removed and put in a specimen tube.

  ‘I’ll send it for analysis, just to be on the safe side, but I’m absolutely confident that it’s harmless.’

  ‘So you’re sending it off so I can’t sue you?’

  She chuckled. ‘No, I’m sending it off because I want to know that I’ve done everything I should have for you. I’m only a doctor, I don’t have all the answers. And I don’t want to let you down.’

  He nodded. ‘Fair enough. Thank you very much.’

  He left, and she thought about it. Would she send the sample off just so she didn’t get sued if it later turned out to be a melanoma? Or was it belt and braces?

  The latter. Being sued would be horrible, but the chances were it would happen in her working lifetime. Being responsible for someone’s death because she hadn’t taken enough care—that was quite different. It would destroy you, unless you simply didn’t have a conscience.

  She felt a twinge—nothing much, just another of those wretched Braxton Hicks contractions that she’d been plagued with for ages. Still, she was finished now, and she wasn’t due back to work until Thursday. And Ben was here. He must have popped in to see her, but she had to get the sample off.

  She was just coming out of her consulting room with the histology sample in her hand when she overheard his voice coming through her father’s open consulting-room door.

  ‘Please, come—not for me, but for Lucy. Even if it’s just for a drink. She’s so disappointed that we won’t see you.’

  ‘Well, that’s her fault, not mine. She knows where I’ll be, and it won’t be with you. Just because I was at the wedding doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you or changed my mind about you. I only went to the wedding for Lucy, and for Annabel. I gave her away because I couldn’t break her heart, but I don’t have to like it, or you, and if you’ve got any ideas about cosy little suppers and so forth you can just forget it, because frankly even one minute in your company is one minute too long. You’ve taken my family home, taken my daughter, taken my wife—’

  ‘No!’ Ben cut in, his voice firm, and Lucy sagged against her open door, wondering if this was ever going to stop. ‘I didn’t take the house, I bought the house at a fair market price at an open auction because I thought it would make your daughter happy, and I didn’t take Lucy, she came to me because she loves me and knows l love her and I didn’t take your wife, Tremayne. On the contrary, I did everything I could to save her once she came to my attention.’

  ‘That’s a lie!’ Nick said furiously. ‘You gave up on her! I saw you!’

  ‘I know. And you shouldn’t have done. But we didn’t give up. We stopped, simply because she was already dead. Her pupils were blown, her heart had stopped beating thirty minutes before. She was dead, Nick. She was dead, and if I could have changed that, for you, for her, for Lucy, don’t you think I would have done so? But I never, ever gave up on her while there was the slightest chance of saving her.’

  ‘She should have gone to Theatre.’

  ‘There wasn’t one free—and there wasn’t time. So we did what we could, and we failed. And I’m sorry. But it’s not my fault. If you want someone to blame, I suggest you look a little closer to home!’

  ‘Just what the hell are you implying?’

  ‘I’m not implying anything. I’m telling you that if it was anyone’s fault she died, it was yours, because you were too busy building your empire to notice that the woman you supposedly loved was so sick she was overdosing on painkillers because she didn’t want to trouble you! And that is why she died.’

  Lucy gasped, and behind Reception Hazel and Kate stood transfixed.

  The door slammed back against the wall and Ben stormed out, his face taut with anger. The noise of the door seemed to free them, and Lucy sagged against the doorframe, utterly shocked at the terrible things that had been said. Kate hurried towards her. ‘Lucy—oh, my dear, I’m so sorry. Come and sit down.’

  ‘No. I have to talk to him. He can’t…’

  She walked through her father’s door on legs of jelly, and found him throwing books out of his bookcase, searching through them and discarding them furiously.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘I’m going to sue him. I’m sorry, I know he’s your husband now, but I can’t let him get away with that.’

  ‘What if he’s right?’

  He froze, then glared at her, his eyes suddenly ice cold. ‘Get out,’ he said flatly. ‘If that’s what you think, get out, and go home to him. I don’t want to see you again!’

  ‘Nick, really, this is ridiculous—’ Kate interjected.

  ‘Fine, I’ll go,’ Lucy sobbed. Turning, she ran back past Kate to her consulting room and grabbed her handbag. The histology bottle was still in her hand, and she gave it to Hazel on the way out. ‘Um, could you send that for histology, please? Thank you. And—happy Christmas,’ she added, before, blinded by tears, she ran out to the car, climbed awkwardly behind the wheel and drove out.

  The roads were slick with rain, and as she drove towards Tregorran House and Ben, the rain turned to sleet and then snow, swirling, blinding snow of the sort they rarely saw in Cornwall. It would be gone in a moment, but for now it was blinding her, mingling with the tears until she couldn’t see.

  She felt the jolt, felt the car slide, and then judder and tilt alarmingly before coming to rest, the engine still running.

  Oh, God, no, she thought. Phone. Where’s the phone? Got to call Ben. Bag. Where is it?

  In the footwell. Her bag was in the passenger footwell, right over on the far side and she suddenly understood the meaning of the expression heavily pregnant. She was hanging in her seat belt, leaning towards the passenger side, and she just couldn’t quite—Got it!

  And it was wet. Very wet, and as she watched the water rose further, and the car shifted and settled lower into the ditch. She had to get out, but how?

  Turn off the engine, she remembered. Turn off the engine. Creaks, hissing, bubbling—it was like something out of a horror movie. She wasn’t even sure where she was, but she couldn’t be far from home. A hundred yards? Two hundred?

  She pushed the door with all her strength, and it lifted, then dropped back. Ben, she thought, and phoned him, but he was out of range.

  Nine nine nine?

  Or her father?

  No. She wasn’t hurt, she was just stuck. She sent Ben a text, and told him where she was, then took her seat belt off, manoeuvred herself round so she was kneeling on the seat with her feet braced on the handbrake and her head by the window, and she heaved the door up and out of the way, pushing it until it held on the stay.

  Would it remain there? The car was only tilted, not on its side, so it might stay there long enough for her to scramble out. Especially if she wedged it with something. Something like her handbag, always too full of things but on this occasion usefully so. She jammed it under the bottom of the door, so at least it wouldn’t slam on her, and then clambered awkwardly out into the swirling snow.

  Why was it snowing? She slipped on the road surface and grabbed the door to save herself, then remembered her bag. It was squashed now, but nothing in there was important.

  Except her phone.

  Fingers trembling, she pulled it out and saw with horror that it was cracked. She tried to use it, but it didn’t work.

  As if it could get any worse, she thought a little hysterically, and then she felt another of those annoying contractions, but it wasn’t just annoying, it was huge, painful, and very significant.

  And then there was a warm, wet, rushing sensation down
her legs.

  ‘Oh, no. Ben, please come,’ she mouthed silently. ‘I can’t do this on my own.’

  She looked around her frantically, desperately searching for anything she could recognise, and then she spotted the barn, and her heart sank. She was at least half a mile from home, and she couldn’t possibly walk that distance. She’d have to get back in the car, she thought, and wait for Ben, but then there was a creak, and a groan of tortured metal, and the car tilted further and slid down into the ditch.

  So that took care of that.

  It’s a good job I took the fire dogs out, she thought, and then wondered how on earth she could worry about something so trivial when she was about to give birth on the roadside in a blizzard!

  Another contraction hit her, and she sagged against the car, let it pass and then straightened up. She could get to the barn. It was only a few yards away—fifty at the most. It wouldn’t be warm, but at least she’d be out of the snow and sleet, and she could sit down and wait for Ben.

  Wherever he was. What if he didn’t get the message? What if he didn’t come?

  She wrote, ‘IN THE BARN’ on the side of the car in the dirty snow, and hoped someone would come. Anyone.

  And soon…

  ‘“Had crash near home. Please come. L xxxx”. Oh, my God.’ Ben felt cold all over, sick and scared and useless. He’d been shopping—shopping, of all things!—and she’d had a car accident and been unable to reach him!

  He dialled her mobile number, but it went straight to voicemail. She might be calling someone else, he reasoned, so he left a message. ‘I’m coming, sweetheart. Stay there. Don’t move, and call an ambulance if you need to.’

  And then, after a second’s hesitation, he phoned the practice. Kate answered, sounding distracted and upset, and he wondered if it was a good idea, but it was better than leaving Lucy without help.

  ‘Kate, it’s Ben. I’ve had a text from Lucy to say she’s had a car accident on her way back to the house. Have you heard from her?’

  ‘No, but she was really upset. Ben, she heard the row.’