Ruth was getting up, moaning, wincing. Maybe at last she would get rid of Fred? Life around here would be much easier if she did. Not so interesting, perhaps.
The phone in the kitchen began to ring and Ruth limped past to answer it, pushing her tousled brown hair back from her flushed, scratched face. Cleo heard her say, ‘Oh, hello, Henry, how are you?’
The local doctor grunted. ‘Who cares how I am? I’m only here to look after everybody else. I don’t expect tender loving care, or even sympathy from anyone.
Ruth recognised his mood. Poor Henry, he was probably being rushed off his feet at the moment. Cold weather always meant a packed surgery.
Drily, Ruth said, ‘Glad you’re okay. I’m fine, too.’
‘Don’t you be sarcastic with me, Ruth!’ he growled. ‘Can’t stop. Just ringing to let you know tonight’s village meeting has been cancelled. Lucy Prescott is agitated because she thinks it will snow before nightfall.’
‘Well, she does have a point. It’s freezing today, and if it snows and there’s black ice on the road tonight she’ll have a devil of a problem getting back up Slip Hill. It hasn’t got that name for nothing! I don’t blame Lucy for taking precautions, especially as it’s Christmas Eve tomorrow...’ Ruth stopped speaking, suddenly noticing her chicken salad no longer contained any chicken. ‘That damned cat!’
‘What did you say?’ The man at the other end of the line sounded incredulous. ‘Do you mean Lucy?’
Ruth laughed. ‘Of course not. Lucy can be difficult, but I wouldn’t call her a cat. No, I just realised that cat of mine has stolen my lunch. While I was making it Fred started trying to knock the shed down.’
‘Real demolition expert, that goat of yours!’
‘I wouldn’t mind, but I only locked him in to save him dying of exposure if the snow came, but the ungrateful creature refused to stay shut up and began crashing his horns into the wall. I rushed off to deal with him and while I was gone Cleo ate my chicken and scattered the salad all over the table. I shall have to get myself something else.’
‘Pets are just a nuisance. I don’t know why you keep them! They give you a lot of work and cost a lot of money At least Gwen took that stupid pink poodle of hers when she went.’
Ruth was startled to hear him mention his ex-wife. For months after Gwen ran off with a golf instructor of twenty-six her name had not passed Henry’s lips. He had been bitterly humiliated. Fifty years old himself, it must have been a traumatic shock for him to be deserted for a man only half his age.
Gwen had only been thirty-eight, but she’d looked much younger, with bright red hair, although Ruth suspected she kept grey out of it by dying it from time to time, and she wore far too much make-up. She had the enamelled look of a doll. Ruth had never liked her. They had had nothing in common.
Gwen cared only about herself: her looks, her clothes, her jewellery, her red sports car. She had never seemed to care much about poor Henry, and she’d positively disliked all his patients, spoke sharply on the phone if you rang up, gave people indifferent nods when they greeted her in the village and never got involved in any of the busy social life everyone else enjoyed.
Ruth had had to ring Henry far too often during her mother’s long illness and Gwen had made it unpleasantly clear that she resented Ruth’s constant pleas for help. Once she had even accused Ruth of being obsessed with Henry.
‘It doesn’t bother me, Miss Nicholls, lots of middle-aged spinsters have crushes on their doctor, or their vicar,’ she had drawled. ‘But you’re embarrassing my husband, although he’s far too polite and kind-hearted to tell you so.’
Ruth had gone dark red, shaking with rage and shame. ‘It isn’t me who needs your husband, Mrs Trafford!’ she’d furiously ground out. ‘It’s my mother. She is in great pain today and she needs an emergency injection. But never mind, if Dr Trafford doesn’t want to come to see her I’ll call another doctor.’
She had hung up and stood there, trembling, muttering words she had not even realised she knew and had certainly never used before. It was a cathartic experience. Afterwards, though, she had felt empty and cold, and she remembered it with self-disgust. It was sickening to lose control like that.
Of course Henry had come as soon as his wife passed on the message. His face had been pale and grimly set. Neither of them had mentioned Gwen, for which Ruth had been deeply grateful, hoping that he had no idea what his wife had said to her. They had gone up to see Ruth’s mother, Henry had given her a pain-killing injection, and in short, merciful time she had been peacefully asleep.
Henry had left, saying with a pat on her shoulder, ‘Not long now. You know that, don’t you? Ring me whenever you need me, Ruth.’
Ruth hadn’t pointed out that his wife wouldn’t like it. She would have been too embarrassed. Gwen’s accusation had hurt her, not least because there was some truth in it. Ruth did need Henry; he was all that kept her sane now, towards the end of her mother’s illness. She was always so tired, so sad, and she felt so useless. There was so little she could do except try to make her mother’s last weeks more comfortable.
But in another sense Gwen was a million miles from the truth. Ruth was not a fool. She knew she was getting old; old and ugly. Her face was thin and angular, her only asset a pair of wide hazel eyes; she had a skinny, lanky body, short, dull brown hair, showing traces of silvery grey. She was not going to make a fool of herself over any man.
She had no close friends in the village, either, because the last five years of her life had been spent looking after her widowed mother. Ruth had rarely left her alone. Crippled by a stroke shortly after the death of her husband, Mrs Nicholls had needed constant nursing until her death a year ago, and Ruth and Dr Trafford had been thrown together by a mutual desire to make her life bearable.
Ruth owed Henry Trafford a good deal. She had felt very sorry for him when his wife ran away with her young boyfriend; she knew how badly Henry had taken it. He had hidden it as well as he could, but Ruth knew him very well. She had seen the lines of pain and humiliation bitten deep into his skin. He knew everyone was talking about him behind his back; some of them laughed, some pitied him. He hated both reactions. Ruth paid him the compliment of never mentioning the subject. She behaved exactly the same when they met. It was all she could do for him.
The divorce had come through in the summer. If Henry was able to mention Gwen without wincing maybe he was coming to terms with what she had done to him.
‘Fish,’ he said. ‘Fish are the only sensible pets to have. Silent and practically trouble-free, and their food is very cheap.’
Ruth laughed. ‘Boring, too! Fish are no fun. And Cleo would eat them if I got some.’
She looked over her shoulder as Cleo began caterwauling outside the closed kitchen door, and saw white flakes whirling past. ‘Oh ... the snow’s started, Henry! I’d better go. Cleo is screaming to come back indoors; she hates getting her fur wet.’
‘Get a fish!’ he advised again. ‘Bye, Ruth.’
Dylan didn’t even notice the first flakes of snow. She was too busy crying. Anger had given her adrenalin for the first half-hour after leaving home; as she drove she had muttered furiously to herself. She wanted to kill Ross. She hated him. And that woman. Why couldn’t she leave other people’s husbands alone? She had a husband of her own. She should think about him for a change. Dylan hated her. Hated Ross.
People she drove past on the narrow country roads leading to the motorway gave her very funny looks. She knew what she must look like. Talking to herself, a dishevelled woman in the last stages of pregnancy. They probably thought she was crazy.
Maybe she was crazy, leaving Ross. She might hate him, but she loved him, too. But she couldn’t stay, knowing he was having an affair. Her pride wouldn’t let her.
She began to weep silently, helplessly, as she drove. Luckily, the motorway was almost empty as she eventually joined it and turned south towards the Lake District, so the tears trickling down her face weren’t as much of a
hazard as they might have been if she had been driving on a crowded road. However, her vision was distinctly blurred, and for a minute or two she thought she was imagining the whiteness blowing across the windscreen of her car.
When she realised it was snowing she brushed a hand across her wet eyes and switched on her windscreen wipers, but they did little to help; the snow was falling faster and more thickly every minute. This was a blizzard, not just average snow, she thought, and by now there was far more traffic on the road.
The further south they went the more cars and lorries surrounded her. Warily, she stayed in the slow lane, but that meant having a lorry in front of her and another behind.
Her back was aching again, she had a tension headache, and when her car tyres skidded on the snow her whole body was wrenched with fear. She gripped the wheel, fought to control the skid, her car sliding sideways, and finally managed to pull out of it, but vehicles around her hooted angrily, making her nerves worse.
She glared at them in her driving mirror, a sob in her throat Stupid idiots! Did they think she’d skidded deliberately?
The incident left her shaking, sweat trickling down her back. She was relieved to see that she was almost at the Penrith exit from the motorway. She had meant to go on to the next exit, but she couldn’t stand driving in these conditions.
It was a relief to escape on to quieter country roads. She had visited Jenny half a dozen times, but coming from the south more often, before she’d married Ross. She didn’t know this approach, from the Northern Lakes. Jenny lived near Windermere, the most popular part of the country, always busy with tourists, even in winter. The landscape was beautiful, but oddly unfamiliar under a coating of white. Trees took on a tinsel look, glittering with ice, fields were sugared and sparkling when the sun came out, gilding the hills and spires of villages hidden among the folds of fields.
She was trying to follow the road signs for Windermere, but she began to have an uneasy feeling that she had taken a wrong turning somewhere.
Pulling up at the next crossroads, she peered at the road signs pointing in each direction—which way now? She hadn’t thought of bringing a map with her. She didn’t recognise any of those names, and she couldn’t see anyone to ask.
Another car came along from her left and took a turning to the right, then a second car did the same—that must be the main road, surely? Dylan followed them.
The road wound downhill steeply. Her wheels began to spin too fast. She was sliding again, the car skating across the road. Terrified, Dylan hurriedly turned the wheel sharply, only to find herself driving down a narrow lane which led off at right angles to the road she had been on at first. She couldn’t slow down or stop. Her car rushed downwards until it finally crashed into a high wall.
CHAPTER SIX
DYLAN wasn’t actually knocked out, but for a moment or two she didn’t move, so shocked that she almost lost consciousness, lying across the steering wheel.
When she sat up at last she realised she was in pain. Her seat belt had held but she had been flung forward so hard that she had seat belt burns across her chest and abdomen, and her forehead and cheek ached where she had hit her face on the steering wheel.
Releasing the seat belt with deep relief, she opened the door to heave her body out and winced as she put her foot down. Oh, no, had she broken her ankle?
Gingerly, she moved the foot again. Yes, it hurt badly. She raised her leg a little, very slowly and carefully, because at this stage of her pregnancy a movement like that was not easy, and peeled back her sock. Bending forward to feel the swollen ankle was even more of a problem. She was so sick of being pregnant! The puffy red flesh was tender, but she decided the ankle wasn’t broken, merely sprained. She must have twisted it somehow during the crash.
After pulling up her sock again she put her foot down with a sigh of relief, then slid her other foot out of the car. When she put that one on the ground it didn’t hurt at all. Gripping the handle of the car for support, she stood up straight. But was she going to be able to walk?
The car bonnet had crumpled on impact, but luckily the base of the wall was cushioned with a mound of earth, thick grass and gorse, which had taken some of the impact. Her flower wagon wasn’t a total write-off.
Where on earth was she? Her gaze travelled around the snowy landscape in search of clues, but all she could see at first was fields and trees veiled by the swirling blizzard. It was still snowing just as hard and showed no sign of stopping.
She glanced back up the lane she had driven down but it was far too steep for her to want to walk back up there, especially as she would have to hop on her one good foot.
What was she going to do?
Ross’s mobile phone! Thank heavens she had brought it with her. Leaning back into the car, she hunted for it in her bag. At least she would be able to ring for a taxi. She could only be a few miles away from her sister’s house. Her fingers skidded over the keys to tap in the code—but when she tried to ring her sister, meaning to ask Jenny to look up a local taxi firm for her, she got the ‘No Service’ signal. Frantically she tried again. ‘No Service’. She closed her eyes, groaning. Oh, no! Ross was always complaining about that. This could be a blind spot, or the weather might be breaking up the radio waves or something. She didn’t quite understand how mobile phones worked; they were a bit of a mystery to her.
She leaned on the car, considering her options. Well, she could get back into the car and wait for another vehicle to come along, but what if no other car went past? She would freeze to death out here.
She could force herself to walk back up to the busier road she had driven along a few minutes ago. The hill looked steeper than ever as she stared up to the top.
Surely there must be a farm or a cottage somewhere around here? Her desperate eyes hunted over the countryside again and stopped as she saw a gleam of light across the other side of a field. A house! And somebody was living there because she saw, too, a faint wisp of grey smoke curling up from a chimney.
Somehow she was going to have to make it to that house, and the sooner the better. She was getting colder every minute. Dropping the phone into her bag, she shut the car door, locked it, and set off.
It was very hard going with only one good foot. It was going to be painful, and slow, getting across that field. She leaned on the stone wall for a second and suddenly realised there was a tree growing a few feet ahead. Dylan had no idea what sort of tree it was, except that as it was leafless at the moment it must be deciduous, but to her delight one of the lower branches had half broken off, hung loosely downwards from the torn edge where it joined the trunk.
That would make a very useful walking stick to lean on. Gripping it firmly, she pulled and the branch came off in her hand. It was almost as tall as Dylan herself, thicker than she had expected, and pretty strong.
Leaning on it, she limped to the gate, but had a tussle to force it open because so much snow had built up behind it. At last she managed to get through, but closing the gate was almost as much of a problem. When she had managed that she leaned there for half a minute, breathing roughly while she peered through the blizzard.
Were there cows in this field? Under the coverlet of snow it was impossible to guess if a crop was being grown in there, or if this was a meadow where animals grazed, but she couldn’t see any animals, so she started off again. She was halfway across the field when she found herself sinking into a snowdrift.
Close to tears, she leaned on her stick and tried shouting. ‘Help! Hello? Hello, can you hear me?’
The wind took her voice away; nobody answered at first, and then suddenly something moved a few feet from her. Dylan gave a startled cry.
What was that? A cow? No, too small. A sheep? Could be. The shape moved again, came closer. She saw small bright eyes staring back at her. And horns.
Horns? Did sheep have horns? She kept very still, waiting to see if this creature was dangerous. In her condition she couldn’t run away. A second later she realise
d what it was—a goat! Wearing a leather collar and trailing a long chain. Obviously it had been tethered somewhere, but had escaped.
Dylan knew nothing about goats. Warily, she tried to assess this one—was it likely to attack her?
The animal bleated at her, curling back a long, mobile lip. The yellow-blue eyes were a little alarming, there was a wildness in them which worried her, but she risked patting it. The goat bleated again and leaned against her legs. Having company, even that of a mad-looking goat, was better than being alone in this wilderness of snow.
‘Hello, goat,’ she said chattily. ‘Are you as cold as I am?’
The goat stared up at her. She had the distinct impression it was looking at her bump.
‘Yes, I’m going to have a baby,’ she told it, feeling feverish. It was beginning to get dark now; night would soon fall. She had to find help soon; she would die of exposure if she didn’t.
The goat must come from that house over there. Turning the animal back in the direction from which it had appeared, Dylan leaned on it, taking hold of the thick, curly coat which, despite the covering of snow, was warm to touch.
‘Nice goat,’ she flattered. ‘Lovely goat. Come on, show me the way to your home.’
The goat began to move and she clung on to it, but the pace it set made her sprained ankle hurt more. ‘Don’t trot so fast. I can’t keep up!’ she gasped, as if it could understand every word she said. She didn’t care if she was being ridiculous. She was too terrified that she might give birth out here in this snowy field with only a goat for a midwife.
Ruth had been doing housework for two hours, and was dying for a cup of tea. As she stood at the kitchen sink filling the kettle she gazed gloomily at the blizzard still raging. She had meant to do last-minute shopping tomorrow—the local shops would be shut for three days over Christmas. Of course you might find some of them open in tourist spots like Windermere, but that was quite a drive from here, and parking was difficult there even in winter. She would have preferred to make sure she had everything she needed without having to make any emergency dashes to hunt for things she had forgotten, but this snow was going to make life difficult, if not impossible. Even if it stopped later, temperatures would probably fall after dark; then they would get ice, turning the roads into skating rinks. Ruth didn’t fancy the idea of driving into the village tomorrow now.
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