Chapter Five

I t was a pleasant little town. That was Lydia’s first thought as she yawned and drove slowly down the main street. She reached for her coffee cup, draining it as she searched out a parking space.

There was a pub at the end of the road, a little police station, a cafe, what looked like a bookshop of sorts. A quaint English village. She could already imagine the kind of patients she’d get here. It’d be all wonky hips and arthritis with a bit of high blood pressure thrown in for fun.

Not the most exciting of practices, but then, since she wouldn’t have another doctor there to bounce ideas off, maybe that was no bad thing. She had to be practical about this, every opportunity brought something with it. Whitebridge was, medically speaking, likely to be quite boring. On the other hand, she’d be fully without supervision for her first time ever.

A little thrill ran through her stomach.

Spotting a space, she quickly reversed her little car into it, switched off the engine and pulled up Google Maps on her phone. There, a five minute walk should get her to the surgery.

She yawned again. It was a good thing that she wasn’t commuting from Leah’s. The early start this morning had been enough to throw off her whole routine. But she was early enough that she could find some breakfast somewhere around town.

Leaving her bags in the car, she backtracked to the little cafe she’d seen, finding it just open but empty, other than a cheery black woman behind the counter.

“What can I get you?” asked the woman, the name on her apron identifying her as Cass.

“Um, are those croissants?”

“Pain au chocolat, actually,” said the woman, pronouncing it as ‘Pain O’Chocolate’ like it was some kind of Irish delicacy.

“I’ll take one,” grinned Lydia.

“You’re not from around here,” the woman said, reaching for a pair of tongues. “What you up to in these parts?”

“I’m the new locum doctor, actually,” Lydia said politely.

“Cor, you know what’s happened to Doc Morris then?” asked Cass, eyes big and pain au chocolat paused half-way into its bag.

“Not a clue, I’m afraid,” Lydia answered. “Bit of mystery there, is there?”

“I’d say, he just didn’t show up to surgery yesterday. Cordelia was mad as a snake.” The pastry went into the bag. “That’ll be your receptionist, Cordelia, that is.”

“Right,” said Lydia unsurely. “I suppose this is the sort of small town where everyone knows everything then.”

“I’d say,” said Cass, grinning. “It’s not so bad though, you’ll get used to it. We’re a friendly lot for the most part. Come on down to the pub after work and I’ll buy you your first pint, you’ll make friends fast enough.”

“I’m not actually planning on staying here,” said Lydia. “I’m only a locum.”

“Right, right,” Cass said, still grinning. “Still, there’s loads of people that don’t plan on staying here and still manage it. Plus, you’ll need to eat and the pub grub’s lovely. We provide all their desserts and their quiches.”

Lydia couldn’t help but smile. “I’ll think about it.”

“You do that. Enjoy your breakfast.”

Lydia went back out into the morning sun and headed to her car. She should get her case and medical bag and take them to the surgery, she’d decided. Whitebridge might be a small town, but that didn’t mean it had zero crime, and the last thing she needed was to have all her possessions stolen.

???

Cordelia’s head felt like it was stuffed with socks. All that and in the end she’d only had two glasses of wine, and she hadn’t had a drop after five in the afternoon. Oh, the pleasures of being almost forty.

She groaned as she opened an eye, then saw the time and shot bolt upright. Fuck. It was quarter past eight already and the new doctor was supposed to be arriving any minute.

She practically threw herself into the shower, danced under the water for seconds, scrubbed herself dry and didn’t spare a thought as to what she’d wear. A pair of black jeans and a shirt would have to do the job.

No time for breakfast, no time to pack a lunch, barely time to find her mobile, which luckily turned out to be sitting on the coffee table in the living room. She slid her feet into shoes, picked up her handbag, grabbed a stack of old patient files that she’d been digitizing onto the system from the hallway table, and rushed out without a backward glance.

Today was really not starting well at all.

???

Pulling her suitcase with one hand and eating her pain au chocolat with the other, Lydia was drinking in the little town as she walked toward the surgery. She came to the conclusion that it was the kind of cute place that American tourists would flock to in the summer months.

Still, hardly the bustling town she saw herself living and practicing in.

She pulled her case across a road that it was hardly worth looking both ways on before crossing, up over a curb and, if Google Maps could be trusted, she just had to round the next corner and she’d be there.

???

Cordelia was practically running, she couldn’t have the locum show up and find all the doors locked. Whoever they were, they might just turn around and head back home again. There was no telling with locums, they could be a fussy bunch.

They got paid well, more than a regular doctor to make up for the inconvenience of working freelance. But Cordelia had always found them slightly suspicious. They were, in her opinion, the kind of doctors that no one wanted to work with. Because otherwise, why didn’t they have practices of their own?

Well, either that, or they were part time doctors, focusing half their attention on worrying about picking their kids up from school or learning about rare tropical diseases before departing for a research position in a rainforest.

Whichever, whoever it was that turned up today was likely to be a pain in her arse and demanding to boot. Locums could never find anything, and never went to the effort of searching things out either.

She hurried on, reminding herself to take a paracetamol as soon as she got into the surgery. Just around the corner now and she’d be able to go in through the back door and get everything unlocked and ready and hopefully, maybe even have time to brew herself a coffee.

???

Lydia crammed the last part of her pain au chocolat into her mouth, turned the corner, and ran straight into what felt very much like a brick wall. The force of the blow winded her and her eyes started to water until she coughed, swallowed, and managed to take a breath.

Only then did she realize that the wall she’d run into was actually not a wall at all and was standing there viewing her with icy blue eyes that looked like cut blue diamonds and a sharp determined chin firmed in what Lydia was sure was irritation.

“Oh God,” said Lydia.

“These are going to take forever to pick up,” groaned the woman, looking down in dismay at the papers still fluttering toward the pavement.

She had blonde hair, the kind of light blonde that caught the sun, a smattering of freckles on her nose, long eyelashes. She was wearing dark pants and a shirt that was buttoned wrongly and Lydia wondered if she should point it out but decided probably not. The woman seemed cross enough as it was.

???

“So?” Cordelia said.

The woman looked back at her, one eyebrow slightly raised.

She had dark eyes, a soft chocolatey brown, and dark hair pulled up into a bun. Her features were smooth and even, her skin slightly olive, and she wore a sensible trouser suit and sensible shoes. In fact, everything about her screamed sensible.

“Are you going to help me pick these things up or not?” said Cordelia finally.

The woman blushed slightly. “Oh God, yes, sorry,” she said, bending down.

Cordelia bent down too, their heads millimeters apart, and started collecting files.

“You should use a color-coded filing system,” said the woman, picking up a bunch of papers. “The eye recognizes color faster than letters, making color-coded more efficient.”

Just the words ‘you should’ gave Cordelia a shuddering memory of Hunter. Every other sentence with Hunter ended up starting with ‘you should.’ “Maybe you should look more carefully before turning a corner,” she said acidly.

“Hey, I was walking, you were the one practically running,” said the woman.

“You bumped into me,” said Cordelia. “Which means you should have been paying better attention. What if I’d been an old woman? Or a small child?”

“You’re neither, this…” The woman stopped.

“What?” Cordelia asked, looking up and finding herself disconcertingly close to searching brown eyes.

“Are these patient files?”

“Not that it’s any business of yours,” Cordelia said. “But yes.”

“Ah.”

“Ah what?” asked Cordelia.

The woman scooped up the rest of the files and stood, so Cordelia did the same. “Ah, I think we might have got off on the wrong foot.”

“What foot is that?” Cordelia asked suspiciously.

The woman held out a hand. “Lydia Carlisle. Doctor Lydia Carlisle.”

Cordelia’s heart sank. The new locum. Of course. For fuck’s sake. What a way to make a first impression. She should have known that those sensible shoes could only belong to a GP. “Cordelia. Cordelia Beckett, the—”

“Receptionist,” finished Lydia with a grin. “Already heard all about you from the lady at the cafe.”

“Right. Um, sorry about all this.”

“Why exactly do you have patient files? Aren’t you digitized?” asked Lydia.

“Mostly,” Cordelia said. “Just a few of the older files left, patients that don’t come in often so they slipped through the cracks. I was adding them to the system at home.”

“Mmm, there are definite legal implications there,” Lydia said briskly. “In the future, patient files shouldn’t leave the surgery. Okay?”

Cordelia opened her mouth to protest that she wasn’t exactly stealing Whitebridge’s medical secrets here, but Lydia was already walking off down the street, inexplicably dragging a suitcase behind her .

“Coming?” Lydia asked over her shoulder.

Cordelia bit her tongue and followed. Fantastic. As though she needed life to get worse. Now she had a play-by-the-rules sensible-shoe-wearing nightmare as a temporary boss. Fucking fantastic.