Chapter Fifteen

“H old him down.”

“He’s not a prisoner, I can’t just restrain him,” Cordelia said.

“Yes, but you could stop him from falling off the kitchen table,” said Lydia, struggling to unfold a nappy with one hand.

“Could we not do this where people eat?”

“There’s a changing mat down, calm down,” said Lydia as Cordelia took hold of both of Toby’s hands. She stuck the nappy into place and breathed out. “There.”

“Hold on, he needs clothes too,” said Cordelia, digging around in the bag. “Here.” She threw pants at Lydia and took the sweater herself. “That should be warm enough.”

Together they managed to dress Toby. Cordelia repeating the word ‘jumper’ at random intervals.

“You’re not going to teach him to speak fast enough that he’ll be able to tell you where Nat went,” Lydia said. “And even if you could, children’s brains don’t work that way. He won’t remember.”

“How do you know?” Cordelia snapped.

“Um, doctor? Remember?”

“Oh, yeah.” Cordelia put Toby safely down on the floor. “We need to pick up fruit from the shop. Strained apples or something, that’s the one he likes.”

“Plus more milk and something for dinner tonight,” Lydia added.

“Oh, and some breakfast cereal and a loaf of bread.”

“Right, you should write that all down,” said Lydia.

Cordelia raised an eyebrow at her.

Lydia cleared her throat. “You ought to write that all down.”

“Mmm, not really any better.”

“Fine, I’ll write it down,” Lydia said, pulling out her phone and opening the notes app. She was typing away when she noticed the email icon at the top corner. Finishing up the shopping list, she went into her email.

“Oh,” she said, a jumping starting in her stomach. “Oh.”

“Oh what?” asked Cordelia, who was struggling to get Toby into his coat. “Oh good? Oh bad? Oh you’ve just won the lottery, in which case can we please get a nanny?”

“A nanny?” Lydia asked, still reading through to the end of the email. “He won’t be staying that long.”

“It’s been three days,” Cordelia said.

“Two and a half,” said Lydia. She closed the app. “And I’ve just got a job interview.”

“Huh.” Cordelia picked up Toby. “Congrats then, I suppose. No, I mean it. Congratulations. Somewhere nice?”

“A place called Castor? About twenty minutes or so from here.”

Cordelia nodded. “Yeah, I know it. It’s a nice place. Bigger than Whitebridge. Quite bougie, lots of holiday homes and upwardly mobile young families. They opened a new clinic there a year or so ago.”

“And they’re looking to expand,” Lydia said. Her heart was still beating harder than it should. She wanted this. Not quite as much as the last job, but still, enough. Everything about the job looked perfect. Everything. From the young team down to the modern surgery. Even the location was exactly what she was looking for.

“Alright then,” said Cordelia. “I’ll dig some glad-rags out of the wardrobe. There’ll be something presentable in there.”

It took Lydia a second to understand, then she blushed and her heart, unbelievably, sped up even more. “Oh, I don’t hold you to that, I’m sure you were just speaking out of tiredness or something. It’s—”

“No, I said I’ll do it and I will.” Cordelia hitched Toby further up on her hip. “It’s a job you want, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes,” Lydia started.

“Fine then. When is it?”

“Next Saturday.”

“Let’s hope this one’s back with his mum by then,” Cordelia said, going out into the hallway to buckle Toby into his pushchair.

Lydia leaned against the kitchen table. She did want the job. She wanted it so much she could taste it. But did she want it enough that she was willing to let Cordelia come with her to help her get it?

There was a problem there. A small but quite significant one.

Just yesterday she had hugged Cordelia not once but twice. The first time had been pure instinct. It had also made her skin buzz and her heart pump and her legs feel all wobbly. As a scientist, Lydia was well aware that one set of results did not a conclusion make. So she’d done it again, just in case. And the same thing had happened again.

All of which led her to believe that there could be the small possibility that maybe, just perhaps, she might be developing some kind of crush on Cordelia.

Ridiculous and probably purely a matter of proximity.

Still, it would make pretending to be together, even just for a couple of hours, a strange and perhaps slightly risky endeavor.

She’d had crushes before, obviously. She’d had flings before, equally obviously. She wasn’t a nun. And she was fairly sure that once out of Whitebridge all this would go away and she could focus on a new job and, with more time on her hands, really settle down to the task of finding someone suitable.

In the meantime, she simply had to behave herself and try not to pine. Or look too much. And definitely not to hug. No more hugs .

Like it or not though, there was a pretty big chance that Cordelia posing as her significant other could make a difference in getting the job she wanted.

A risk that she had to be willing to take.

“Are you coming or am I walking this child myself?” Cordelia shouted through from the hall. “Though why it should count as a walk when one of us is being wheeled around, I don’t know. I’m the oldest, you two are spring chickens, I should be the one being wheeled if anyone is.”

“He can barely hold his own weight up,” Lydia said, hurrying out of the kitchen. “We’d be walking at a snail’s pace if we let him out of that chair.”

“There are advantages to having no skills of your own,” observed Cordelia. “Come on then, let’s go.”

She opened up the door and maneuvered the pushchair out of it. Lydia was about to follow when she spotted the house keys dangling from the inside lock. With a sigh, she pulled them out and stuck them in her pocket. How on earth Cordelia functioned without someone to look after her, she had no idea.

SHOPPING BAGS DANGLED from the handles of the pushchair and Lydia had to use effort to get the thing started.

“Put your back into it,” Cordelia said.

“I’m trying.” Finally, they were walking down the high street. “It’s a bit weird, isn’t it?” Lydia said.

“What?”

“All this.”

Cordelia snorted. “A week ago I was a single, divorced woman living alone. Now I’ve got a fake girlfriend and a child. Yeah, I’d say it’s a little odd.”

“None of it was planned,” said Lydia. “Mind you, I suppose it’s good practice.”

“This what you want then, is it?” asked Cordelia. “A family, a… a wife, I suppose.”

“Of course. Don’t you?” asked Lydia without really thinking. Then she cursed herself. Not a question she should have asked.

“I did,” Cordelia said. “And then, well, it didn’t work out, did it.”

“Which doesn’t mean it won’t work out in the future.”

“I’m almost forty and, frankly, I don’t think I’m cut out for family life.”

“Oh, I don’t know, I wouldn’t have been able to do this without you,” said Lydia loyally.

“Personal question,” said Cordelia. “Um, that smell…?”

Lydia sniffed and groaned. “No, it’s not me, but thank you for asking. We need to change him again.”

Cordelia sighed. “The surgery is just around the corner. We can do it there.”

Lydia changed direction and continued pushing.

Five minutes later she was rifling through the many bags hanging from the pushchair and silently berating herself for not double-checking what Cordelia was supposed to have done. “How could you come out without a nappy?”

“Well, you didn’t pack one either,” said Cordelia, who was holding Toby at arm’s length. “Go look in the office. There are spare nappies back there, I’m certain of it. There’s a cloth one that Doc Morris uses to show mums how they work if you can’t find disposable ones.”

Gritting her teeth in frustration, Lydia went into the back. A quick look through the store cupboard found nothing so she went into the office, opening drawers and cupboards at random and still coming up empty handed.

Finally, she sat down at the desk. If the doctor used a cloth nappy as an example, then he must keep it close to hand, right?

Breaking her own rule, she started going through the desk drawers.

Nothing in the top, nor in the middle, nothing on the right side, so she started on the left. She slid open the bottom left drawer as carefully as she’d opened any of the others. Then she looked inside. And closed it again.

Shit .

Being a locum was a good living, it was good experience, but it had only ever been a temporary measure. Most postings lasted a week at most. She couldn’t lie, she was enjoying this one. Whitebridge was a quaint and nice place to live.

Alright, so things weren’t exactly going to plan. But it was all temporary. All of it. Toby, Cordelia, the whole thing.

She even had an interview for a new job. One she desperately wanted.

The contents of the bottom left drawer had changed things, however. Changed things because now Lydia knew that this wasn’t necessarily going to be a short-term position. She knew damn well now where Doc Morris was. And she also knew that he wasn’t likely to be back for weeks at best.

Weeks that she couldn’t spend here. Wouldn’t spend here.

But weeks that she could, if she wanted to.

For the first time in her life, Lydia felt torn. Truly torn. Torn between the plan she had, the definiteness of it, the clarity of it, and something else. Something new and exciting and un-understandable and…

She took a breath.

It had lasted an instant. Just the quickest moment.

There was nothing here for her. The agency would just have to find a new locum once she got the new job, that was all. Someone else for Cordelia to annoy.

She stared at the drawer. She’d keep his secret. It wasn’t her job to tell the town what had happened.

But something told her that Whitebridge would be interviewing for their own new doctor sometime soon.

“Did you find something?” Cordelia yelled. “Things are getting… urgent here.”

A job that Lydia wouldn’t be applying for.

“Be right there,” she said, hurriedly going through the rest of the drawers and finally finding what she was looking for.

Besides, even if she did apply, Cordelia wasn’t interested in having her around. By her own admission she wanted Lydia out of her house and, by extension, out of her life. And Whitebridge without Cordelia wasn’t an option she was prepared to take.