Christmas At Willowmere. Abigail Gordon

to the injuries to her pelvis and uterus, and his next words explained why.

      ‘I’m going to have to do a hysterectomy. Your uterus is too badly damaged for me not to do so.’

      ‘Oh, no!’ she groaned. ‘Not that. We wanted children!’ And as the tears had slid down her cheeks she could hear Glenn’s voice in her mind saying, Our children will be born into a loving family, Anna. What would he say when he knew there wasn’t going to be any?

      She cried and cried for what she and Glenn would never have and longed for him to be there to comfort her, but he was far away out of reach somewhere in Africa, and by the time he was due back she’d made her decision.

      Glenn wasn’t going to be put in the position of having to choose between her and a life with children, she’d decided. He would be spared that because she wasn’t going to tell him about the surgery she’d had to undergo. She loved him too much for that. When next they spoke she was going to finish it.

      When Anna appeared in the doorway of The Pheasant Glenn got to his feet immediately and came towards her, smiling his welcome, and she wondered if he’d forgiven her for what she’d done and the cold, abrupt manner with which she’d done it.

      It had been the only way she could make the break at the time because she’d been hurting so much. Losing Julie and knowing that the tender trap with James and the babies was opening up before her had been painful enough, but most of all she’d been hurting because when it came to children of her own, there wouldn’t be any.

      She’d often questioned if she’d been fair in not telling him what had happened to her. Glenn had been denied the opportunity to make his own decision, but it was all in the past and she’d done what she’d thought right at the time. Whatever the reason for his return, at least they could be friends, and she returned his smile with a beam of her own that made his eyes widen.

      ‘So tell me about it,’ she said when they were seated with drinks in front of them beside a glowing log fire.

      ‘What?’

      ‘Africa, of course.’

      ‘It was a fulfilling experience and one day I will go back,’ he said quietly, ‘but not yet. It was also dangerous, demoralising and exhausting, but I never had any regrets, except maybe one.’

      Anna didn’t ask what that was. She had a feeling that she knew, but it seemed that he was going to tell her anyway. ‘You weren’t with me.’

      ‘I would have been no use to you if I had been,’ she retorted quickly. ‘My mind would have been back here all the time, with James struggling with the children without Julie and myself, his family all dead or absent.’

      Glenn wasn’t smiling now, his jaw taut. ‘If you remember, I told you at the time we could have got round it. You wouldn’t have called it off for just that. There had to be another reason.’

      ‘I don’t want us to spend our time harking back to the past while you’re here,’ she said, shying away from the moment. ‘Can’t we be like you said, old friends renewing their acquaintance after a long time? Though I’m sur prised that you haven’t found someone else by now.’

      ‘Why? Have you?’

      ‘Er…no.’

      He shrugged. ‘So there you are.’ He decided a change of subject was called for. Anna had been lit up a moment ago and he wanted her to stay that way, though he didn’t flatter himself it was anything to do with him, unless she was out to show him that she wasn’t the Cinderella figure he might be seeing her as.

      After that they chatted generally. Glenn asked in detail about the surgery, said he’d never had any experience of a country practice, so she suggested he pop in and she would give him the guided tour. The evening moved along pleasantly enough until the landlord announced time.

      ‘I’ll walk you home,’ he said.

      She shook her head. ‘No need. I can see my place from here.’ And because she was anxious to know, she asked, ‘How long are you intending staying in Willowmere?’

      ‘Just a few days. Why?’

      ‘Would you like to have dinner with us tomorrow?’

      She saw his face stretch and thought surely he didn’t think she wouldn’t offer him some hospitality.

      ‘I’d love to, if you are sure,’ he replied. ‘I’d like to meet your brother and Pollyanna and Jolyon.’

      ‘Shall we say six o’clock? I always prepare the evening meal for the four of us and James comes up as soon as the late surgery is over. The children go to bed at half past seven, which gives time for their meal to settle.’

      ‘Six o’clock it is,’ he said trying to conceal the pleasure it was giving him in saying it.

      * * *

      There was a light on at Bracken House when she got back and she stopped off before going to her own place. She found James still up and told him, ‘I’ve done as you said and invited Glenn to eat with us tomorrow night.’

      ‘Good,’ he said, looking up from the paperwork in front of him. ‘I look forward to meeting him.’

      Now that she’d extended the invitation, Anna wasn’t sure that she’d done the right thing. Was it a good idea to get so chummy when he would be leaving so soon? Yet why not make the most of every moment? The time they spent together would be something to hold onto when he’d gone.

      The next morning at the surgery Beth said, ‘The bush telegraph has been buzzing. Who was the handsome guy you were with in The Pheasant last night?’

      Anna smiled. It was a fact that not much went unnoticed in Willowmere. It was a close-knit community. Some of the people had lived there all their lives, as their fathers had before them.

      ‘It was just a friend from my university days,’ she explained as they called in the first of those waiting to be seen.

      Sam Gibson had been passed on to them to have blood taken to assess sugar levels by Georgina Adams, the other full-time doctor in the practice, and he was not happy when he saw the needle.

      ‘It won’t take a second, Sam,’ Anna told him. ‘Look the other way.’

      He was a farmer from the outskirts of the village, a big burly fellow afraid of nothing except the needle, so it seemed.

      ‘Don’t tell my Dorothy that I was scared of the needle, will you?’ he said sheepishly as he rolled his sleeve back down. ‘I kid her about being afraid of spiders, so she’ll never let it drop if she finds out.’

      Smiling, she showed him out then ushered in her next patient, a young girl with a urine infection who James wanted a sample from. And so the morning progressed, though Anna was still gripped by the feeling of unreality that had been there ever since she’d seen Glenn outside the school.

      In a spare moment between patients she wondered wryly what people would think if they knew that she’d once been going to marry the man she’d been seen with in The Pheasant. That she’d been crazy not to?

      As Anna prepared the meal that evening she was acutely aware that Glenn was going to be seated across the table from her, with James and the children looking on curiously at the stranger in their midst.

      She was tempted to get out the best china and then decided not to as she didn’t want him to read anything into the invitation that wasn’t there. It was a Wednesday and they always had chicken casserole for first course and sticky toffee pudding for dessert, and knowing that the children would be disappointed if those things weren’t on offer, she stayed with the usual menu and hoped that it would appeal to their guest.

      When they’d met outside the school yesterday Glenn had been wearing a thick jacket over a black sweater and jeans, and she surmised that he might be feeling the cold after being in warmer climates for so long.

      But