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feel that I had spoilt his weekend as he seems to be a very private person.’
    ‘Hugo gave up a position in general practice down south to move to Swallowbrook when his sister’s husband died suddenly and she was in a dreadful state, unable to look after herself or her two children properly. He’s just come to the end of a gruelling eighteen months that seemed as if it might go on for ever, until Patrice met an old friend over from Canada who persuaded her to go and live there, leaving him free at last to get his own life back.
    ‘When you approached him on Saturday he had just got back from Somerset where he’d been tying up all the loose ends from when he’d lived there, and was probably looking forward to flaking out when he got back, don’t you think?’ she said laughingly as she observed Ruby’s expression.
    ‘Oh, no!’ she groaned. ‘What a pain he must have thought I was.’
    ‘Hugo can’t have thought you too much of a pain if he’s offered you the apartment to rent,’ Libby said consolingly. ‘Nathan and I were amazed because he’d intended leaving it empty as much as possible to avoid noise and interference.’
    ‘He must have seen how much I liked it and taken pity on me,’ she said with the gloom of not knowing his circumstances and being too quick to judge heavy upon her.
    Whatever the reason there was no time for further discussion. Coffee break was over, it was back to the demands of the day and in what seemed like no time at all it was early afternoon.
    The practice nurses were setting out their room to accommodate mothers-in-waiting in the various stages of their pregnancies and Ruby thought that she’d been crazy to think she could avoid Hugo Lawrence while on practice premises, but would try her best to do so when she wasn’t… once the ordeal of tonight’s party was over.
    Hugo was impressed by Ruby’s efficiency. So far she hadn’t exactly filled him with confidence outside the surgery, but there was no fault to be found with the way she was dealing with the pregnant women who had come to be examined.
    The practice nurse was taking blood-pressure readings and checking urine samples, while he and Ruby saw each woman in turn to check for problems that could be a cause for alarm with regard to the health of mother and baby.
    In one case a patient who was eight months pregnant had been for a hospital check-up the week before and been told that the baby had turned and was in a breech position, and that if it hadn’t moved back to where it should be in a fortnight’s time they might have to perform a C-section.
    She was overwrought and tearful about what was happening, and while Hugo examined her, with Ruby watching intently, she held the distressed woman’s hand and stroked her brow.
    When he’d finished feeling her swollen stomach gently Hugo told her, ‘Your next visit to the hospital will confirm whether the baby is still in the breech position, but they do have the tendency to return to their original position during the last few weeks, and if that doesn’t happen you will have all the professional help that is available for a safe birth.’
    He had stood by and watched while Ruby dealt with a couple of patients on her own and she’d been conscious of his keen gaze all the while, unaware that his scrutiny was also taking in the pallor of her face and the taut lines of her throat that indicated tension, but only she knew the reason for that and it was how she intended it to stay.
    ‘Well done,’ he said when the clinic was over. ‘I can see you being ready to do this on your own soon. When Libby finishes you’ll be the only woman doctor in the practice and our pregnant patients do prefer a female doctor to be in charge of the antenatal clinic if possible.’
    She didn’t reply to that, just smiled a pale smile as if the prospect wasn’t all that exciting, and he thought that maybe she’d been conscious of his doubts about her and now that praise was forthcoming she