1
Zoe Padbury, midwife to the residents of the tiny Lake District village of Thimblebury, crossed the bedroom to open the window and let out the paint fumes. She looked back at her boyfriend, Alex, currently kneeling on the floor to start work on the skirting boards, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
Beyond the windows of his home, Hilltop Farm, the hills were wreathed in low clouds, a stiff breeze shaking the trees and flattening the grassy slopes. Christmas had been and gone, and they were currently in the darkest months of winter, but there was still beauty to be found around their village. Today, the wind played with the clouds so that the light changed with every passing minute, sometimes shadowing the hills and sometimes illuminating them. Snowdrops had started to poke through from the soil that sheltered against the walls of the farmhouse, and the bulbs of bold daffodils and cute narcissi were stirring underground nearby.
‘All right there, Grandad?’ she called across to him as he opened a new tin of paint. He hadn’t stopped smiling for a week, not since his daughter, Billie, had announced that she intended to keep her baby after all. There had been months of heartacheleading to this moment, uncertain times where it had seemed impossible to imagine that his future as a grandparent was anything but a dream. Nobody had blamed Billie for considering adoption. Her pregnancy hadn’t been planned, and the father of her child had been killed in a tragic accident in Spain before she’d even discovered it. As difficult circumstances went, poor Billie, barely in her twenties, had been dealt a tougher hand than most.
Alex looked up and grinned. ‘Well, you’re dating me, so you’re dating a grandad.’
‘Oh God, I am, aren’t I? Does that make me old too?’
‘I’m not a grandadyet, anyway. And aren’t we told all the time that forty is the new thirty or something?’
‘So they say. Not that I’d know. I’ve got a few years yet. You’ll have to let me know what that grand old age is like.’
‘Cheeky…’ With his dark eyes, thick hair, broad shoulders and toned arms, he could hardly look less like a grandad. ‘I should be offended by all this talk of old age, but how can I be in a bad mood when everything is finally coming up roses? I’ve got you, Billie, Hilltop Farm…and soon the baby will be here.’
‘Don’t forget Grizzle.’
‘Griz…as if I could forget him. The daftest dog in Britain.’
‘The cutest.’ Zoe’s smile faltered. ‘I ought to check on Billie.’
‘I thought you said she was all right,’ he replied, his smile fading too.
‘I know, and she probably is. It would have been the baby turning, getting ready, but…’ Zoe shook her head. ‘I think I’m extra paranoid about her because she’s so close to me now.’
‘You’ve always been there for her, even when she wasn’t. I don’t think it’s you being paranoid; I think it’s you caring. Maybe too much, but it’s one of the things I love about you. If you hadn’t been that way, you and I might never have got together.’
‘How do you work that out?’
‘Well, because you go above and beyond. You came marching straight up here when Billie skipped her first appointment with you, and you wouldn’t leave us alone until she was back at your clinic and on track.’
‘God, I must have been so annoying!’
‘At the time…’ Alex began but then started to laugh as Zoe raised her eyebrows.
‘You’re not meant to agree with me. You’re meant to say I wasn’t annoying at all, that you thought I was drop-dead gorgeous and you were in love with me from that moment.’
‘Oh, yeah…’ His grin spread. ‘That too. But still, if you hadn’t been such a pain in the rear…’
‘In that case, I don’t suppose we would have got together. Lucky for us both that I’m an interfering pain in the rear, isn’t it?’
Zoe resumed her work, glossing the skirting board of the smallest bedroom of Hilltop Farm. Alex had begun turning it into a nursery shortly before Christmas, though he hadn’t admitted as much to Zoe for fear his hopes would be dashed. But once Billie had announced her plans to keep her baby, they’d all got stuck in. Zoe had found herself as enthusiastic as Alex, but the project came tinged with reflections that weren’t altogether happy.
Alex had guessed, his gaze finding her in a quiet moment, poised with paintbrush mid-air, a faraway look on her face.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ he said gently. ‘I should have realised it would bring back memories of the nursery you never got to use. You should have said something, or I should have?—’
‘It’s fine. It really isn’t an issue, and I’m happy to help.’
‘But—’
‘But nothing. I’d be lying if I said having the anniversary of losing my baby just around the corner wasn’t bothering me, and of course everything we’re doing here will remind me I never gotto do any of it for my own, but life goes on. It has to, and I want it to. I want to look forward now, not back. I remember, and I always will, but that doesn’t mean I have to be stuck. I have to believe I can still be happy even if that sadness is always in the background.’
She’d been stoic throughout her speech, but her gaze had wandered to the window and the clear skies beyond. When she turned back, she saw such pity in Alex’s expression that she hardly knew how to feel about it. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘I hate the thought of everyone feeling sorry for me; it doesn’t help.’
‘They will anyway because if anyone deserves to have the things they want, it’s you.’
