The Doctors' Christmas Reunion. Meredith Webber

his heart when he even thought her name reminded him that the love he felt for his wife had never gone away.

      Yes, they’d parted—pushed apart by the pain of loss—but the love he felt for her was as strong as ever.

      Or was it longing more than love...?

      ‘I won’t be able to operate until later,’ he told Tim. ‘If you’ve other things to do in town, Jonah will be quite safe here. In fact, he’ll probably be thoroughly spoilt by the nurses.

      Ellie was about to tackle her first patient of the day when her cellphone rang.

      Her heart leapt when she saw it was Andy.

      ‘Sorry, El, love, but could you grab a half-hour later in the day to do a mild anaesthetic for me? Kid with infection just above the right groin. X-ray shows foreign object in there. He’s had breakfast so I’m happy to wait a few hours. How’s your day looking?’

      Ellie switched back to her patient list.

      ‘I could do eleven-thirty,’ she said. ‘That would run into my lunch break so there’d be no rush.’

      ‘Grand!’

      And he was gone, so suddenly that Ellie found herself peering at her cellphone as if it, rather than Andy, had caused the abrupt farewell.

       Grand?

      How could their love have grown so cold that ‘grand’ had become ‘goodbye’?

      She was being silly, of course. It had been months since a telephone conversation had finished with ‘love you’.

      Although he had called her ‘love’, the way he always had done...

      That was just habit, she told herself firmly and hauled her mind back to work.

      For all their separate lives at home, their professional lives had barely changed, their work lives remaining stable as they followed their usual routine, assisting each other when needed, discussing patients they shared.

      They were even enjoying the togetherness of that side of things—well, Ellie did and she thought Andy seemed to...

      Although that would stop—and soon—if she went ahead and moved.

      Even thinking about it caused her pain.

      Putting the mail aside for later, she powered up her computer, checked test results that had come in, then switched to her appointments list.

      Back in work mode, she speed-read down the appointments, putting asterisks against the patients who’d be coming in for test results so she could be sure she’d re-read the results before the patient arrived.

      Busy with the list, she barely heard the outer door open, but Maureen was greeting the first arrival, no doubt handing her the patient information forms to fill in.

      She pressed the buzzer, and heard Maureen tell Chelsea to go on through.

      It was a pregnant young woman who came in. A very young, not very pregnant woman, slight and blonde, who seemed strangely familiar.

      ‘Don’t I know you?’ she asked, smiling at the obviously nervous young woman.

      A nod in response.

      Ellie smiled again as she asked, ‘Do I have to guess how, or will you tell me?’

      Another nod, then Chelsea drew in a deep breath.

      ‘I thought Andy might be here,’ she said, ‘although Aunty Meg always worked here and Uncle Doug at the hospital.’

      Aunty Meg, Uncle Doug: Andy’s parents?

      Light dawned.

      ‘Of course I know you! You’re Chelsea Fraser. I’m so sorry I didn’t recognise you, but you’ve kind of grown since you were flower-girl at our wedding. Did you come here to see Andy?’

      Chelsea frowned.

      ‘Well, I came to see both of you really. I’m pregnant, you see, and I wondered whether I could stay with you until I have the baby, because you probably heard Mum and Dad split up and Mum’s gone off to find herself, whatever that means. She’s in India, or maybe Nepal, and Dad’s gone to Antarctica again, and Harry—you remember my older brother Harry?—well, he’s supposed to be looking after me but he’s at uni most of the time or out partying so he’s never there.’

      ‘You’re all on your own?’ Ellie asked.

      ‘Well, Alex—that’s my boyfriend—he comes over...’

      Tears began to stream down Chelsea’s face, and Ellie left her chair to walk around and wrap her arms around the unhappy, lonely child. Ellie held her tightly and let her cry out her tension, handing her the box of tissues when the sobs became hiccups as the tears dried up.

      ‘I didn’t mean for this to happen,’ Chelsea whispered, patting the bump. ‘But I was so lonely and Alex loves me, and I was on the Pill but must have forgotten to take it or something and then I wasn’t sure, you see... But of course I was pregnant and Alex wanted to tell his parents and have me come and live with them, but then they might think Mum and Dad are really awful parents, and they’re not, you know, they’ve just kind of lost their way.’

      Tell me about it! Ellie thought, but didn’t say, although she did think Chelsea’s mother could have waited a little longer to find herself. She shook the thought away and pressed Maureen’s buzzer twice to warn her the next appointment would be late.

      ‘They brought us up to be independent,’ Chelsea explained, ‘and to think for ourselves, but I didn’t want everyone at school to know about this, or the cousins and all, so I thought if you and Andy let me stay here until the baby’s born, then I can go back to school and no one would know.’

      Except there’d be a baby somewhere, Ellie thought, but didn’t say.

      ‘No one back home knows because it’s been cold and I’ve been able to wear baggy jumpers back at home. I told my friends my uncle needed me out at his place in the bush and here I am.’

      She’d so obviously practised what she was going to say that it came out in a slightly garbled rush, and Ellie had to be careful not to smile.

      ‘Does anyone know where you are?’

      Chelsea nodded.

      ‘I told Harry and he thought it was a good idea. He said there wasn’t anything Mum or Dad could do to help at the moment and at least I’d be safe with you and Andy.’

      ‘Of course you will be,’ Ellie assured her, then, after a niggle of doubt, added, ‘I’ll have to talk to Andy, but I’m sure he’d be happy to have you. It’s not as if there aren’t plenty of bedrooms in the old house.’

      ‘And there’s the little flat downstairs. We often stayed in it when we came for Christmas.’

       My little flat.

      And with Chelsea here how long would it take for word to travel along the family grapevine and Andy’s parents to realise things had gone wrong between her and Andy? They’d kept it from them while Meg had been going through chemo for breast cancer and they hadn’t wanted to heap more worries on her head.

      Meg had become more of a friend than a mother-in-law for Ellie, who’d known from the first time she’d met Andy’s family that she’d love to be one of their warm, happy household. Her own father was dead, and her mother drifted from one country to another, one man to another, much as Chelsea’s mother appeared to be doing. Family had been a big gap in Ellie’s life.

      So upsetting Meg with the story of their split had never even been a consideration.

      And now here was Chelsea, and there was no getting away from it, despite