Jess's Promise. Lynne Graham

tribe of dogs she had personally rescued in recent years were a motley group, each of which was either older, maimed or suffering from behavioural problems. Few people were willing to take a chance on such dogs.

      When Jess had embarked on her first job in the village of Charlbury St Helens, she had lived above the vet’s surgery where she worked. But she’d had to find other accommodation when the practice’s senior partner had decided to expand the business and turned the small flat into an office suite instead. Jess had been lucky enough to find a run-down cottage with a collection of old sheds to rent just outside the village. Although her home was not much to look at and offered only basic comforts, it came with two fields and the landlord had agreed to her opening a small animal sanctuary there. Even though she earned a good salary she was always broke, because every penny she could spare went towards animal feed and medical supplies. Even so, in doing what she loved, she was happier than she had ever been in her life. But then she would be the first to admit that she had long preferred animals to people. Shy, socially awkward and uneasy with men after a traumatic experience at university that had left her with both physical and mental scars, Jess struggled to fit in with human beings but was totally at home with four-legged beasts.

      The sound of a car pulling up outside sent Kylie to the door of the shed. ‘It’s your dad, Jess.’

      Jess glanced up in surprise; Robert Martin rarely called in on her at weekends. Recently, in fact, she had seen less than usual of her father and, when she had, he had seemed abnormally preoccupied with work. As a rule, though, he was a regular visitor, who often helped out by repairing the animal housing and the fences. A quiet man in his fifties, he was a good husband and an even better dad, for, while other family members had believed that Jess had been aiming too high in dreaming of becoming a veterinary surgeon, Robert had encouraged his daughter’s dream every step of the way. His love and support meant all the more to Jess when she reflected that while Robert was the only father she had ever known he had had nothing whatsoever to do with her conception. That, however, was a secret known to few outside the family circle.

      ‘I’ll get on with the feeding,’ Kylie proffered, as the stocky grey-haired older man nodded to her and entered the shed.

      ‘I’ll be with you in a minute, Dad,’ Jess promised, bending over the prone dog to attend to his wounds with antiseptic ointment. ‘It’s not like you to call in on a Sunday morning…’

      ‘I need to talk to you. You’ll be at church later and you’re often on duty in the evening at weekends,’ he said gruffly, and something odd in his voice made her lift her head, her unusually light grey eyes questioning.

      She frowned because the older man looked pale and strained and every year of his age and more. ‘What’s happened?’ she prompted in dismay. She had not seen him look that frightened since her mother’s diagnosis of cancer the previous year.

      ‘Finish up with your patient first.’

      With difficulty Jess mastered the spasm of fear that had immediately rippled through her. Goodness, had her mother’s cancer returned? That was her first panicky thought and her hands shook slightly as she finished her task. As far as she was aware, though, her mother had not had a check-up scheduled and she told herself off for being so quick to expect bad news. ‘Go into the house and wait for me. I won’t be long,’ she told him briskly, suppressing her apprehension.

      She put the dog into a pen where food was already waiting for him and briefly watched the animal tuck into what was obviously his first proper meal in weeks. After pausing in the bathroom to scrub her hands clean, she hurried on into the house and then the kitchen where Robert Martin had already seated himself at the worn pine table.

      ‘What’s wrong?’ she prompted tautly, too anxious where her mother was concerned even to put her fear into words.

      Her father looked up, his brown eyes full of guilt and anxiety. ‘I’ve done something stupid, really really stupid. I’m sorry to bring it to your doorstep but I can’t face telling your mother yet,’ he confided tightly. ‘She’s been through so much lately but I’m afraid that this business will break her…’

      ‘Just spit it out…tell me what’s happened,’ Jess pressed gently, sitting down opposite him, convinced he had to be innocently exaggerating his predicament because she just could not imagine him doing anything seriously wrong. He was a plain-spoken man of moderate habits, well liked and respected in the neighbourhood. ‘What did you do that was so stupid?’

      Robert Martin shook his greying head heavily. ‘Well, to start with, I borrowed a lot of money and from the wrong people…’

      His daughter’s eyes opened very wide, for his explanation had taken her aback. ‘Money is the problem? You’ve got into debt?’

      The older man gave a weary sigh. ‘That was only the beginning. Do you remember that holiday I took your mother on after her treatment? ‘

      Jess nodded slowly. Her father had swept her mother off on a cruise that had been the holiday of a lifetime for a couple who had never earned enough to take such breaks away from home before. ‘I was surprised that you could afford it, but you said that the money came from your savings.’

      Shamed by that reminder, Robert shook his head dully ‘I lied. There were never any savings. I never managed to put any money aside in the way I’d hoped when I was younger. Things have always been tight for us as a family.’

      ‘So you must have borrowed the money for that cruise—who did you borrow from?’

      ‘Your mother’s brother, Sam Welch,’ Robert admitted reluctantly, watching his daughter’s face tighten in consternation.

      ‘But Sam’s a loan shark—you know he is! Mum’s family are a bad lot and I’ve even heard you warn other people not to get mixed up with them,’ Jess reminded him feelingly. ‘Knowing what you do about Sam, how on earth could you have borrowed from him?’

      ‘The bank turned me down flat when I approached them. Your uncle Sam was my only option and, because he was sorry your mother had been ill, he said he’d wait for the loan to be repaid. He was very nice, very reasonable. But now his sons have taken over his business, and Jason and Mark have a very different attitude to the people who owe them money.’

      Jess groaned out loud and she was already wondering frantically how she could possibly help when she had no savings of her own. That realisation made her feel very guilty, since she earned more than either her parents or her two younger brothers, yet she was still not in a position to offer assistance. But, perhaps, she thought frantically, she might be able to take out a loan.

      ‘The original amount I borrowed has grown and grown with the interest charges. And Jason and Mark have been at me almost every day for months now,’ the older man told her heavily. ‘Coming after me in the car when I was out working, phoning me at all times of the day and night, constantly reminding me how much I owe them. It’s been a nightmare keeping this wretched business from your mother. Jason and Mark wore me down—I was desperate to get them off my back! I had no hope of paying that money back any time soon, so when they offered me a deal—’

      Jess gave him a bewildered look and cut in, ‘A deal? What kind of a deal?’

      ‘I was a bloody fool, but they said they’d write off what I owed if I helped them out.’

      The look of overwhelming fear and regret in her father’s face was making Jess so tense that she felt nauseous. ‘What on earth did you help them to do?’

      ‘They told me they wanted to take pictures of the inside of Halston Hall and sell them to one of those celebrity magazines…you know, the sort of thing your mother reads,’ Robert extended with all the vagueness of a man who had never even bothered to look through such a publication. ‘You know how Jason has always boasted that he’s a really good photographer and Mark said the photos would be worth a small fortune. I didn’t see any real harm in it.’

      ‘You didn’t see any harm in it?’ Jess repeated incredulously. ‘Letting strangers go into your employer’s