Secrets to Keep

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX




Five days later Aidy slumped down wearily in the armchair and eased her shoes off her swollen feet. Her hands were red-raw from constantly being plunged into boiling hot then freezing cold water. She hated her job. Not that she felt that washing laundry was beneath her, but it hardly stimulated her brain. She gratefully accepted the cup of tea her grandmother handed her. ‘Oh, thanks, Gran. Kids all right?’

‘They’re in their eye ’oles at the moment, love. Quite the local celebrities, having their names in the papers. Elsie is fair hanging on our Marion’s skirt, so desperate to be known as the best friend of the sister and brother whose gallant rescue by the local doctor was splashed over every front page in the country.’ Bertha pulled a face and said, tight lipped, ‘Shame the other local hero didn’t get much of a mention by the reporters, in’t it?’

Aidy said, ‘I’m just glad the kids came out of it unscathed. I dread to think what the case would have been had the three of them not happened to have landed up in the same place when that bit of floor gave way beneath them, just before the main wall came down.’ Her face filled with sadness. ‘They could have ended up like that other little boy they pulled out from under the rubble. I hope he didn’t suffer. His poor mother, though …’

Ruth came in then. ‘Oh, hello, Aidy dear.’ She looked sympathetically at her friend. ‘I won’t ask how your day went – you look exhausted. Oh, I so hope something better comes along for you soon.

‘Anyway, I was out when you came in as I have been to visit Mr Crabbet at his carpenter’s yard. I’m delighted to tell you that he has very kindly agreed to fix the shelving for us in the parlour and will hold off on payment until we have some income coming in from sales. Wasn’t that nice of him? Mind you, I did agree to give his infirm wife a bed bath twice a week, to save him paying a woman to come in. Fair exchange, though, I feel. But isn’t it exciting that in a couple of weeks we could be open for business? I hope the new potions you’re making to stock the shop are building up nicely, Bertha dear. I can give you a hand after dinner is cleared away with any you are making tonight.’

She then fell silent for a moment, looking at Aidy in concern before she said, ‘I may as well tell you as you’ll find out anyway, but I heard some gossip about Doctor Strathmore. A group of women were chattering about it when I was passing on my way back from the carpenter’s, and they dragged me in on it as they thought I might have some inside information. Anyway it seems Doctor Strathmore, according to them, is leaving or has already left. I was told he’d had a visitor three days ago. A very well-to-do man, by all accounts. The sort of car he drove has never been seen in these parts before. He was knocking on the front door of the doctor’s house. Didn’t seem very pleased he wasn’t getting any response.

‘Mabel Vickers happened to be passing and he asked her if she knew of the doctor’s whereabouts. She asked him why he wanted to know and who he was. Well, she wasn’t going to tell any Tom, Dick or Harry where the doctor was, in case he wouldn’t be happy about it. And this very posh man said, “I’ve come to take him back where he belongs, my good woman, and as soon as is physically possible.” Mabel also said that the doctor was discharged from hospital two days ago but hadn’t been seen since. There was another doctor living in the house and seeing patients so local opinion was that Doctor Strathmore had gone for good and a new man had taken over.’

It was probably for the best, thought Aidy. At least she didn’t have to suffer the pain of living close to him, knowing that she could happen across him at any time as they both went about their daily business. It would be all the harder then to bury her feelings for him and get on with her life.

There was a knock at the door. ‘I’ll get it,’ said Ruth. She went off and came back with an envelope in her hand. ‘A young boy, one of Mrs Burton’s lads, I think, gave this to me. For Mrs Nelson, he said. He skipped off before I could ask him who sent him.’

Aidy frowned at Ruth, bemused. ‘A letter? Who would be writing to me?’

‘Why don’t yer open it, love, and find out?’ urged an excited Bertha. Receiving a letter was a special occasion to them, and especially one that was hand delivered. ‘And can you hurry up? I need to get cracking on the dinner.’

Aidy looked at the envelope. It was good-quality paper. Not the cheap sort bought locally. Even more puzzled as to who could be writing to her like this, she slit the envelope open and pulled out the letter. There was the address of her former place of work on the letterhead.



Dear Mrs Nelson,

I have an opening for a receptionist and you have come highly recommended to me. Should you be interested in the post, would you please present yourself for interview at 5.30 this evening? Let yourself in at the front door. I will be waiting for you in the surgery.





The signature was just a squiggle, indecipherable.

‘Well,’ said an impatient Bertha, ‘who’s it from then?’

‘The new doctor. He’s a vacancy for a receptionist and I’ve been recommended to him.’ At least Doc had thought enough of her to recommend her to his replacement as a suitable candidate for the job. That gave Aidy some comfort. ‘It’s for five-thirty tonight.’ She flashed a look at the clock. ‘But it’s five-fifteen! I’ll never make it. I can’t go looking like this, in my laundry clothes.’

‘Would you like this job?’ Ruth asked her.

It would be hard working for another doctor when she had come to have such a high regard for his predecessor, but as long as the new man paid the same, money wouldn’t be quite so much of a worry to them. ‘Of course,’ cried Aidy.

‘Well, hurry up and change your clothes, swill your face, put a brush through your hair and give your cheeks a good pinch for some colour. Then be off,’ Ruth ordered her.

It seemed strange to Aidy to be entering the doctor’s house by the front door instead of the waiting-room entry. She wondered why the new doctor hadn’t asked her to arrive by the usual way and wait there until he was ready to see her.

Aidy was excited at the thought of landing this job, and not just so she could say goodbye to the laundry. She had actually enjoyed her work as a receptionist and was hoping that this new doctor might see fit to allow her to go out on nursing duties occasionally. She wondered what the new man was like: young, old, fat, thin … One thing she knew: he couldn’t be any worse to cope with than the last one had been. She was so consumed with all these thoughts she forgot her manners and walked straight into the surgery without announcing herself first.

‘Still haven’t got around to knocking before you barge into a room, I see, Mrs Nelson.’

She stopped short and exclaimed, ‘Oh!’ It was Ty, battered and bruised, his left arm in a sling.

‘Expecting someone else, were you? I hope I haven’t disappointed you. I did have a very tempting offer to join another practice but I find I’m not ready to leave these parts quite yet. Please take a seat, won’t you?’

Aidy walked the rest of the way over and sat down on the chair before his desk. Mixed emotions were running through her. The part of her that had fallen for Ty was delighted to look into a face she had thought never to see again, but the other part was annoyed. His staying around here was not going to help her get over him. And what about the job? She dearly wanted it, but didn’t know whether she could put up with his cold, stand-offish treatment of her any longer.

Ty was leaning back in his chair. Looking up at the ceiling, he began, ‘Well what can I tell you about the job, Mrs Nelson? Your duties would be exactly as they were before. I am going to be making a few changes, though. I am going to be hiring someone else, not only to do community nursing but also to run classes here at the surgery, educating people on hygiene and child care and possibly paying visits to people’s homes to advise them on how to make things better there for themselves.’ Now Ty wasn’t saving every spare penny to put towards escaping this place, he could afford the wage. ‘I do have a person in mind for that job. You know her … Ruth Whelham.

‘I understand you now have basic nursing skills to your credit, Mrs Nelson, so should Miss Whelham have too much to deal with on her own, maybe you’d like to go out on visits on her behalf when there are simple cases to cover?

‘And as I really feel it wouldn’t be fair of me not to offer my patients the very best treatment that’s available, for their particular illness, I’m hoping an expert on natural remedies will agree to educate me so I can make up my mind whether they have merit or not. I’ve taken on a temporary locum to help me until I’m fully recovered again. He’s doing all the house visits and emergency call outs while I take care of the surgeries. I expect people have seen him arrive and wondered who he was. His name is Andrew Hilton and I am hoping I can work something out whereby I’m able to keep him. It would certainly give me more time to myself. I’m hoping that I’m going to be needing that free time in the future, Mrs Nelson.’

Ty took his attention from the ceiling then and fixed it on Aidy. Lowering his voice to a husky tone, he said, ‘As to the man you’d be working for, Mrs Nelson, I can assure you he is not the man you previously knew, but the one you liked much more when you met him briefly on Christmas Day. A man ready to leave his past behind and take a risk on someone who’d like to have the chance of making a future with him.’ He was smiling as he looked at her. ‘So, is my offer acceptable to you, Mrs Nelson?’

He was leaving her in absolutely no doubt he wasn’t just talking about the job offer, but also his intention of seeing if they had what it took between them to be happy together! Aidy felt a tide of red creeping up her neck. So he hadn’t been in a morphine-induced sleep after all. Maybe he was dozing, but his mind had still been receptive enough to have heard every word she had said to him when she didn’t think he could.

A commotion from outside filtered through to them.

‘That’ll be the patients, anxious to be let into the waiting room and out of the cold. So, Mrs Nelson … or can I now call you Aidy? What is it to be?’

Aidy needed no time to ponder Ty’s proposal. Eyes shining, she smiled at him, a warm, soft smile full of meaning. ‘Well, Doc, I’d better go and unlock the door and start sending them in, hadn’t I?’