LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER ONE

      IT WAS FOUR in the morning and snow was gently falling in the darkness like tiny stars floating to the ground when Charlie Warren awoke from a nightmare that was all too familiar. Beads of perspiration trailed over his half-naked body. The nights it happened were less in number than the year before but they still came with a regularity he found strangely comforting. Feeling the pain was better than feeling nothing. Or facing the fear of letting go completely. That was something he could still not bring himself to contemplate.

      For the few hours that sleep claimed him during those nights, Charlie would relive the moments of impact. Sounds echoed in his mind, each as haunting as the one before. The buckling metal and splintering glass as his car skidded out of his control and slammed into the old oak tree. It was the crash that had claimed his wife and had come close to claiming Charlie’s sanity. He would wake and in the deafening silence lie motionless in his bed thinking over and over about the conversation they should have shared that fateful night. The one when he told his wife it was too dangerous to venture out. The one when he firmly and resolutely refused to take the risk on the treacherous road. The conversation he would regret for the rest of his life that they’d never had.

      Some nights were worse than others and on the very worst the nightmares began the moment his head hit the pillow and ended as he sat bolt upright woken by either the ringing of the telephone or his alarm clock. Both signalling he should head in to the hospital, the only place that gave him purpose.

      But this night he’d been woken from his tortured sleep by the sound of a falling branch outside his window. The weight of the snowfall had been too much for the narrow branch and it had snapped, crushing against the leadlight window. It had not broken the glass, merely scratched down the panes as it fell, making a noise not unlike a dying animal’s scream.

      Still damp with sweat, Charlie rushed to the window believing an injured deer might have roamed into his property, but he quickly saw the silhouette of the damaged tree lit by the moon. There were no streetlights as Charlie’s home was on a large estate. The seven-bedroom, seventeenth-century, run-down and previously unloved manor home was undergoing much-needed renovations so he was sleeping downstairs on the leather chesterfield in the sitting room while work was being completed on the upstairs part of the house.

      The stone slate roof had been in a state of disrepair for too long and the ceilings had been damaged in most of the upstairs rooms. The master bedroom was due to be finished within a few days. The rooms were all empty and waiting to be filled with new furniture although Charlie had no burning desire to see any of it, let alone choose it, so he had left those decisions up to the decorator. He wasn’t rushing to move back into the master bedroom. He had not shared it with anyone for two years and he had no plans of sharing it again. His wife, Alice, had begun the renovations and he was seeing them through to completion in her honour. After that he did not know what he would do with the home.

      Or himself, for that matter. Other than work, he had no plans for the future.

      As always, once Charlie had been woken he found it hard to fall back into a sound sleep again. He read for a while and then tried once again to sleep. But slumber evaded him so he slipped on his heavy winter dressing gown, tied it loosely around his hips, headed into his kitchen and made himself a coffee. While memories of the accident monopolised his dreams, it was the impending arrival of the Australian in-utero surgeon that dominated his waking thoughts, leaving him both anxious and irritated about her potential interference.

      The hospital’s decision, or more precisely Assistant Head of Obstetrics, Oliver Darrington’s decision, to fly the specialist over to consult infuriated him. In Charlie’s opinion there was nothing to be gained and everything to lose. The quadruplets were only weeks away from being big enough to deliver and, as the attending OBGYN, Charlie thought any deviation from the treatment plan should be his decision. In-utero surgery carried risks that he did not consider warranted. And he wouldn’t readily agree with the procedure without proof it was the best way forward.

      As he looked out over what many would call a joy of the Cotswolds at Christmas, the majestic sight of dawn breaking over the snow-capped hillside, Charlie barely noticed any of the landscape. With his blood pressure beginning to rise, he sat down at the large oak kitchen table, sipping the coffee that was warming his fingers.

      Dr Charlie Warren was unable to appreciate anything because

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