Christmas in Bluebell Cove Read Free Page B

you’ll excuse me…’ Moving away, she hurried towards the cloakroom before the tears she was holding back began to fall.
    When the dance was over Ethan and Kirstie went to where Ben was standing still transfixed by the food and his father asked, ‘Where’s your mother, Ben?’
    â€˜Er, I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘She was talking to Dr Balfour and then she went.’
    â€˜Went where?’
    â€˜I don’t know.’
    It added up, Ethan thought grimly. Francine talkingto sharp-tongued Barbara and then disappearing. She must have gone home.
    â€˜I won’t be long,’ he told them both. ‘I’m going to find her.’
    As he hurried out into the lamp-lit gardens his step faltered. She was standing beside an ornamental pool, looking down into it sombrely, and he sighed. Francine had been right, he thought. It would have been better if she hadn’t come.
    If he’d been there when Barbara had accosted her he wouldn’t have allowed it, but he hadn’t been and where everyone else had been pleasant enough, that wasn’t her style.
    â€˜Do you want to go home?’ he asked when he reached her side.
    She shook her head, ‘No, Ethan. I’m sure I deserved to hear what Barbara had to say. You told me not to spoil the children’s Christmas and I won’t. I just came out to get a breath of air, that’s all. Let’s go back inside.’
    For the rest of the evening she was how she used to be. Smiling and relaxed. Dancing with the children in turn and laughing when Ben said, ‘I don’t mind dancing with you, Maman , but I don’t want to do it with soppy girls.’
    â€˜What about you and Kirstie dancing all the way to the headland?’ she teased. ‘You didn’t mind that, did you?’
    â€˜No, not really, but Dad said I had to because he wanted to dance with Phoebe.’
    â€˜Oh, I see.’ And she felt she did.
    Phoebe Howard was a lovely, uncomplicated girl who, the story went, had been deserted by her partner when pregnant. It was understandable that she might beattracted to someone like Ethan, and that he should be attracted to her after what she’d done to him over the last few months.
    Yet Phoebe wasn’t there tonight and it wouldn’t be because she hadn’t been asked. Surgery staff would have been invited because the bride worked there and the district nurse would be included, but as Phoebe would still be on maternity leave and didn’t live locally, maybe she didn’t want to spend too much time away from the baby.
    On the other hand, it could be that the young single mother had seen her when she’d danced back to the square with Ethan and had gone because she’d observed that his wife had turned up.
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    It was time to leave, the wedding couple were starting their honeymoon in the morning and Ethan was having a last word with Lucas before they left regarding him being in charge of his property while they were away.
    On their return his friend would be bringing Jenna to The Old Chart House next door to theirs, which Lucas had bought and refurbished when he’d come to live in the village.
    When Ethan joined them and the four of them went to where he’d parked the car there was silence amongst them. Kirstie and Ben were tired because it had been a long and exciting day. Ethan was contemplating the misery of spending the night with Francine in the spare room, and she was envying the wedding couple for the freshness and simplicity of their love.
    Theirs had been like that for a long time, hadn’t lost the magic, until Ethan had taken charge of the practice and been so keen to make a success of it that she’dthought a few times that she and the children came second, just as Jenna and her father had come second to it during Barbara Balbour’s reign.
    She’d been twenty-eight and Ethan thirty years old when they’d had a fairy-tale wedding in