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'Elevenish. Why?'

'Did her mother come for her? Or did she get a taxi?'

'I don't think she did either,' Will told him. 'She set off in the direction of the hill road.'

Max was out of the shower room like a rocket. 'You mean she was walking home along that lonely road in the dark?'

'There
is
a full moon,' Will said awkwardly.

'Full moon be blowed!' he cried. 'Someone may have been murdered up on the hillside tonight.'

He should have gone into The Moorhen instead of driving off in stupid pride, he was thinking. Then
he
would have been there to take her home. If anything happened to Fenella it would be his fault and his alone. He was the one who'd persuaded her to go to the meeting.

The first time he rang the weaver's cottage on the road that led to the moors there was no answer and Max's anxiety increased. Where was she for heaven's sake? he wondered grimly. He would get the car out and go and look for her, he decided, if she still hadn't arrived home in the next few minutes.

As Fenella walked home along the quiet road in the moonlight she wondered what Max was doing. She admired the zeal with which he carried out his police surgeon's duties even more than most people would, as she'd been at the receiving end of it herself. But it had been a disappointing evening and she hoped that whatever he had been called out to it hadn't been too dreadful.

When she got in the answering-machine was flashing, and there was a message to say that her mother would be late. After visiting Simon in hospital she'd gone round to his house to make preparations for his homecoming and would ring her when she was on her way home.

Fenella was in the kitchen, filling the kettle to make a drink, when the phone rang. When she picked it up she was expecting it to be her mother ringing as promised, but instead the voice speaking in her ear belonged to Max. Without any form of greeting he was enquiring urgently, 'Where have you been?'

'What do you mean?' she asked, taken aback. 'You know where I've been. I went to the meeting and you weren't there. Afterwards I waited in The Moorhen for a while and then gave up and came home.'

'I'm not talking about what you did earlier. You've walked home on your own, haven't you?'

'Er...yes.'

'Are you crazy? Why didn't you get your mother to come for you?'

'She's been out all evening and isn't back yet.'

'You could have got a taxi.'

'What is all this about?' she cried. 'I'm quite old enough to look after myself. I carry an alarm in my bag.'

'It doesn't alter the fact that you walked home alone along a lonely road at past midnight.'

'I'm sorry if I've caused you any anxiety,' she said stiffly, 'but since when have I been answerable to you regarding my movements? I toe the line at the practice, but you don't own me, Max. And now, if it's all right with you, I'm going to bed!' And before he could chastise her further she put the phone down.

It rang again immediately.

'Are all the doors and windows locked?' he wanted to know.

'Er...yes. I think so.'

'Go and make sure.'

'All right,' she told him wearily, and when she reported that they were it was his turn to ring off.

He would have been concerned about anyone on the lonely hill road in the dark after what he'd been called out to earlier, Max thought when he'd replaced the receiver, but the possibility of Fenella being in danger had brought him out in a cold sweat of fear.

Will had been listening to what he'd had to say and when Max came off the phone he said, 'Fenella wouldn't know there'd been a suspected murder.'

'Exactly,' Max said grimly.

'So why didn't you tell her?'

Why indeed? he thought. He'd been so relieved to hear her voice his sanity had deserted him. And then she'd told him tartly, 'You don't own me.' He wished he did. Not own her, but he'd wished that she belonged to him. He wanted to protect her, cherish her, make love to her.

With the feeling that he'd let the tenderness that she aroused in him cause him to make a fool of himself, he left Will watching a late night film and went to bed.

Fenella didn't go straight upstairs. She was too rattled by Max's phone call to sleep. When her mother arrived home she was sitting by the kitchen window, gazing mutely out into the night.

'I wasn't expecting you to still be up,' Ann said, moving swiftly across the room to close the curtains. 'I've locked the front door. Are all the other doors and windows locked?'

'Yes,' Fenella told her flatly. 'But why all the fuss? Why is everyone suddenly so security-conscious? I've just had Max on the phone reading me the Riot Act because I walked home alone.'

'I think I know why,' Ann told her. 'The police stopped me as I was driving up the hill. They have a murder on their hands and are looking for the person responsible. They're checking all vehicles in the area.'

'So that was it!' she exclaimed. 'Why didn't he tell me?'

'Am I to take it that you hadn't spent the evening together? That he was called out to this incident in the woods?'

'Right first time,' Fenella told her dolefully.

'I'm afraid that Max is Max,' her mother said gently. 'He cares about people. That would be why he was so uptight when he knew you'd walked home.'

'Yes. I suppose you're right,' Fenella said, and wondered why she'd thought that to him
she
was special. It was as her mother had just said. He cared about people, no matter who they were.

The three of them arrived at the surgery at the same time the next morning. After Ann had tactfully left Fenella and Max together, Fenella said, 'I'm sorry about last night, Max. I was ungrateful and stroppy. My only excuse is that it had been a disappointing evening.'

His glance was cool and inscrutable as he said blandly, 'You seemed happy enough with Will and his mates in The Moorhen.'

He watched her face stretch and an angry tide of colour stain her cheeks. 'You saw me and yet you never came to join me!' she choked. 'Oh, yes, I was having a lovely time with those lads. They are great guys but, having listened to the music until my ears were bursting and fending off their light-hearted advances for over an hour, I would have been delighted to see that you were back. In future, don't jump to conclusions about me. You might be wrong.'

Observing the angry set of her shoulders as she whizzed across the forecourt of the surgery and into the building, Max knew that he'd been jealous of Will and his friends. Or maybe peeved would be a better word, because they'd spent most of the evening with Fenella, while he'd been grubbing around in the mud.

But would he have done differently in any other circumstances? No, he wouldn't. He was employed to look after the helpless whether they be alive or dead, and that poor woman they'd found in the wood had been long past helping herself. Fenella would have understood that if he'd explained, instead of making his pointed comment about her being with Will and his friends.

If Max had seen her in the pub it was understandable that she'd appeared to be enjoying herself, Fenella was thinking. She hadn't wanted those she had been with to know that she had merely been killing time until the main act appeared. Max could at least have put in an appearance. The whole evening had been a fiasco, and his angry phone call had been the last straw.

By the time she'd finished seeing her patients he had gone on his home visits and she was about to do the same when the woman who'd walked out of the meeting the night before appeared in Reception.

'Is Max around?' she asked without any formalities.

'I'm afraid that Dr Hollister has just gone out on his calls,' she told her. 'Do you have an appointment?'

'I don't need an appointment,' she was told. 'Just tell him that Sonya called and that I'll be in touch.' And on that note she went.'

Fenella was beginning to see the light. When her mother had told her that someone from Max's past had come back to live in the village and registered with the practice, she'd checked to see who had signed on with them. There had only been one person in recent weeks, Sonya Milhench, and that had to be her.

She'd left the meeting the night before when it had been announced that he wouldn't be there and that, along with her attitude today, was proof enough, and it was doing nothing to brighten up an already dreary day.

To reach the little stone cottage of elderly Alice Crabtree, who had asked for a visit that morning, Fenella knew she would have to pass the Old Manor House, the address given by Sonya Milhench when she'd joined the practice.

When the residence that was set in spacious grounds came into view, she stopped the car and observed it keenly. There was scaffolding up against the walls and builders' vans parked nearby, indicating that renovations were in progress. It would be the finest house in the neighbourhood once they were completed.

For an awful moment she had a vision of Max living in this place with the smart, auburn-haired woman. He would fit in a treat, she thought. He had the style and presence for the role of lord of the manor.

She could see it in years to come. Him swanning around the village in plus-fours and a soft felt hat with dogs at his heels, and she herself an old maid, running the practice on her own and going home each night to her knitting. Because she was beginning to realise that if she couldn't have Max Hollister there would never be any other man she wanted.

Alice Crabtree was often called Alice Crabby as she was a crotchety old woman, and today she was no different. Her first words when she opened the door to her were, 'Where's the organ-grinder? I didn't ask for the monkey.'

'Yes, I'm sure that it must be disappointing to find a trainee doctor on your doorstep, Mrs Crabtree,' Fenella said coolly. 'But when Dr Hollister sorts out the calls each morning, he passes on to me those that he thinks will give me the experience I need, along with the ones that do not sound life-threatening. If you would rather I didn't treat you, feel free to say so, and I'll be on my way.'

There was the glimmer of a smile on the creased old face. 'You might be needing the experience,' she said, 'but you're not short on impudence. You'd better come in.'

Fenella breathed a sigh of relief. She didn't think Max would be too pleased if he'd heard what she'd just said to Alice Crabtree, but if nobody ever stood up to the old battleaxe, she was always going to think she could ride roughshod over those she met.

'So what's the problem, Mrs Crabtree?' she asked in a milder tone once she was inside the cottage.

It seemed as if the brief mellowing on Alice's part was over as she snapped, 'The same as it always is. You wouldn't need to ask if you'd read my notes.'

'I
have
read your notes,' Fenella told her. 'But until I got here I wasn't to know if you'd asked for a visit for some other reason.'

'No. It's the same old thing,' she said with sudden weariness. 'With loneliness and poverty added on for good measure.'

'So it's your rheumatism that is bothering you again?' Fenella said, now feeling sorry for Alice.

'Yes. It cripples me. The pain never goes away. That's why I'm so short-tempered, and don't ask me if I take painkillers. I do.'

'Has Dr Hollister ever suggested you seeing a rheumatologist?' she asked gently.

'Aye, he has.'

'And?'

'I've kept putting it off. I'm afraid of hospitals and those clinic places.'

'Have you a relative or friend who could go with you?'

'No,' was the morose answer.

'Would you go if I went with you?'

'What?' Alice exclaimed. 'I would have thought you'd have something better to do with your time than fussing round an old woman like me.'

'I wouldn't be fussing,' Fenella told her patiently. 'I would be merely helping a patient.'

'I don't want an ambulance pulling up at my door,' Alice said, 'or folks will be saying I'm getting what I deserve.'

If it hadn't been so sad Fenella might have been amused.

'I can borrow my mother's car. We won't need an ambulance,' she told her.

Still not to be persuaded, Alice said, 'He won't like it. Dr Hollister won't like you being missing from the practice.'

'Don't worry. I'll sort that out.
Are
you going to let me make you an appointment, Mrs Crabtree?'

'You're a persuasive young woman. I'll grant you that. Aye, go on, make me the appointment. I can't end up feeling any worse than I do now.'

'Good!' Fenella enthused. 'I'll check your heart and your blood pressure while I'm here. When I get back to the surgery I'll make the appointment and will ring to let you know when it is.'

'Would you like a cup of tea while you're here?' Alice asked abruptly, moving towards a spotless kitchen.

Remembering what she'd said about being lonely, Fenella told her, 'I'd love one.'

When she returned to the practice Max was back, and when she'd written up her notes from the morning's visits Fenella went into his room.

'Yes?' he said coolly when she appeared. 'What can I do for you?'

'It's what I can do for you,' she told him, unfazed by his manner.

'Oh?'

'I have two things to report.'

'What? That you've got a date with one of Will's friends, and that you're leaving the practice because I'm such a misery to work for?'

As she opened her mouth to protest she saw that he was laughing.

'Just testing,' he said. 'And hoping I'm wrong.'

'You are,' she assured him as her world righted itself. 'So are we friends again?'

'Yes. If you want us to be.'

'I do,' she said simply.

'I'm glad to hear it. I'm sorry for being so over the top last night. It was just that—'

'I know,' she interrupted. 'There'd been a murder.'

'Yes, it would appear so, and now what is it that you have to tell me?'

'What would you say if I told you that Alice Crabtree has agreed to see a rheumatologist?'