Practice Makes Perfect. Caroline Anderson

      He ignored her outraged gasp and swung himself behind the wheel of his car, a new BMW.

      ‘I might have known he’d have a flash set of wheels,’ she grumbled to herself, and marched back to the house, head held high, back ramrod-straight.

      He roared round behind her, and tooted the horn just as he pulled level with her, making her jump nearly out of her skin.

      His laugh rippled back down the drive as he roared away, and it just served to fuel the temper that had been building all day.

      “I’ll fix you!’ she muttered, and, going round to the back garden, she found the old wheelbarrow and filled it with bricks from the crumbling shed at the end.

      Slowly, systematically, she constructed a barrier that divided her half of the in-and-out drive from his, so that it was no longer possible for him to drive across the front of the house. Then she found some whitewash and slopped it on the makeshift wall so that he would see it, and stood back to examine her efforts. A bit crooked, but it would serve its purpose.

      ‘Well, if it’s not young Lydia!’ she heard from behind her, and, turning, she recognised Mrs Pritchard from the village shop.

      Oh! Hello, Mrs P. Just building a wall,’ she said lamely. Suddenly feeling rather foolish, she rubbed her hands down the sides of her jeans and attempted to explain that, since the surgery was no longer part of the house, it was sensible to separate it completely to avoid any problems over maintenance of the drive.

      ‘Seem a bit daft to me, dear. Never mind, I expect you young things know best, but I hope that nice Dr Davenport doesn’t mind.’

      ‘Hmm,’ she mumbled. She was actually hoping that he would mind very much indeed—in fact, she was counting on it!

      She eventually excused herself on the grounds that the phone was ringing and, having gone in, despite her refusal to Sam, she felt obliged to answer it.

      The caller was a young woman whom Lydia remembered from her childhood, who was going frantic because her baby wouldn’t stop crying.

      ‘Lydia, I don’t know what to do! He just won’t stop—it’s been going on for six hours! I must be doing something awfully wrong——’

      ‘How old is he?’ she asked, and established through careful questioning that the baby was four weeks old, had no history of colic, was apparently quite well, not suffering from constipation or diarrhoea, and had a normal temperature.

      ‘Where are you, Lucy?’ she asked, and when she found out that the woman was only three or four hundred yards down the road she suggested that Lucy put the baby in the pram and bring him up to the surgery. ‘Dr Davenport’s out at the moment, and I can’t leave the house because I’m waiting for the plumber, but if you like I can have a look at the baby just to make sure there’s nothing drastically wrong, and the break will probably do you good—me too. It’ll be nice to see you again. I’ll put the kettle on,’ she added, and it was only after she had hung up that she remembered she had no water.

      Shrugging, she ran up to Sam’s flat with her kettle and filled it from his tap, then took it back to her kitchen through the communicating door in the hall and put it on to heat while she changed her clothes and dragged a comb through her hair.

      Lucy arrived a short time later, with baby Michael still screaming lustily in his pram. After tracking down her grandfather’s medical bag Lydia examined Michael carefully, checking his ears and throat particularly for any sign of infection, and taking his temperature and listening to his chest.

      ‘He seems fine. Lucy, I think it’s one of two things. Either he’s eaten something which has disagreed with him, in which case he’ll probably get diarrhoea very shortly, or else he’s just having a paddy! Let’s see if we can distract him.’

      Picking up the screaming child, she tucked him in the crook of her left arm and rocked him against her, crooning softly.

      Almost immediately his eyes fell shut and he dropped off to sleep, much to Lucy’s evident relief. However, he woke screaming again as soon as Lydia tried to put him down, so she laughingly picked him up again and carried him through to the kitchen.

      Tea?’ she asked over her shoulder, and made a pot one-handed while Lucy slumped down at the table and nodded.

      ‘Please. I feel exhausted! I had no idea babies were so tiring.’

      Lydia smiled. ‘You’re at the worst stage. The euphoria has worn off, he’s not sleeping through the night yet, and the lack of unbroken sleep is just getting to you. It’s nothing to worry about. Provided you can get through it, you’ll be fine. Thank your lucky stars you aren’t out planting rice every day with him tied to your back!’

      They chatted over tea, catching up on the years since they had last seen each other, and Michael slept through it all without a murmur.

      ‘You see, I told you it was just a paddy!’ Lydia joked. ‘I should think you were all wound up and communicating your tension to him. Babies arc usually very tough little things, you know. They’re awfully good at getting their own way—look at this! He’s been cuddled for nearly an hour, and he’s had a terrific time! You ought to buy a baby-sling and carry him next to you. That way you can get on, and he can be near you all the time. Where did you have him?’

      Lucy pulled a face. ‘Hospital. Daniel insisted. I would have liked to have him at home, but perhaps it isn’t really sensible for the first one. What do you think?’

      Lydia thought of the little Indian babies she had delivered in appallingly primitive conditions in some of the villages they had visited, and stifled a laugh. ‘If the facilities exist it would seem to make sense to use them,’ she said cautiously. God forbid that she should be seen to be giving Lucy medical advice!

      ‘What would you do?’ Lucy persisted.

      ‘Me?’ Lydia laughed. ‘It’s unlikely to affect me as I’m not about to have any children.’

      ‘But if you did?’ Lucy persisted.

      ‘I’d go for a home delivery—but hopefully I’d be married to a doctor!’ A sudden image of Sam sprang to mind, and she dismissed it hastily. ‘Anyway, I’m the wrong person to ask because I hate hospitals—that’s why I’m a GP!’

      Just then the plumber arrived, and so Lucy left, with the now calm Michael sleeping peacefully in his pram.

      After the tap was repaired the plumber departed, amid dire threats about the use of brute force and the unlikelihood of the system surviving another winter. Lydia really didn’t think she wanted to know.

      The phone was quiet, there was no sign of Sam and so she decided to go for a walk through the fields down by the old gravel pits, to stretch her legs and get away from the house.

      Her grief, still very fresh, was catching up with her and hour by hour was sinking further in. Always a bit of a loner, she suddenly felt the need to be miles away from everyone so that she could come to terms with all the sudden and drastic changes in her life. Regretting her petty gesture with the wall but lacking the energy to take it down, and unable to face another confrontation with Sam today, she dug out her old waxed cotton jacket and wellies from the boot-room and bundled herself up in them.

      There was a lane that ran behind the house, and she followed it for half a mile before branching off across the fields towards the copse. Stark against the skyline there was an old wind-pump which had been used in times gone by to pump water from the bottom of the gravel pit, but it was long abandoned and the rusty old sails now creaked forbiddingly in the gusting winds.

      Lydia snuggled further down in her coat and tried to ignore the shiver of apprehension that ran down her spine at the eerie noise. There were some children running around near the edge of the copse, and she could hear their shrieks as they played. She hoped they would have the good sense to be careful.

      Then she noticed the pitch of their screams, and she started to run, feet slipping and sliding on the wet