LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter One

      IT HAD been a mistake coming back to Bluebell Cove for Christmas, Francine Lomax thought as she stood on the snow-covered path of the house that she hadn’t set foot in for months.

      When she unlocked the door there was silence inside, no one to greet her, which wasn’t surprising as they hadn’t known she was coming. She bent and picked up a trainer left lying in the middle of the hall, putting it into a nearby cupboard. Then she gathered together the last delivery of mail before Christmas which was lying behind the door, and placed it on the hall table in a neat pile. There was a letter from Ethan’s solicitor amongst it and her insides trembled at its implications.

      A doll belonging to Kirstie was sitting upright on the bottom step of the stairs and the choking feeling that she kept getting was back. It was all so familiar, yet she felt like a stranger in her own home.

      Her baggage was still outside in the hire car that she’d picked up at the airport, and as she went to bring it in Francine was aware that there was music and laughter coming from somewhere not too far away, the sound of people enjoying themselves.

      There might be silence in the house, but there were those out there who were making the most of the festive season and she was reminded of the vow she’d made to herself not to put the blight on the children’s Christmas by arriving without warning and bringing her melancholy with her.

      When she’d carried her suitcases upstairs she put them in the spare room where she would be sleeping and then went down again to await the arrival of her husband and children.

      She’d been missing Ben and Kirstie dreadfully and their father too because it had been so much longer since she’d seen him, but she had only herself to blame for that. The last thing Ethan had wanted was for her to go stomping off to live in Paris, in contrast to being just a frequent visitor as had been the case when her parents had been alive, and as Christmas had approached she’d begun to wish she hadn’t agreed to the children coming back to Bluebell Cove so early to spend it with their father.

      Yet that was how it was going to have to be because of the rift between Ethan and herself that was getting wider all the time, so wide that the divorce she’d asked for was under way with wheels slowly turning in the background.

      Bitterness had soured a marriage that had been happy and fulfilling until she’d lost her parents tragically in a coach crash while they had been holidaying in the Balkans. As a result she had inherited her childhood home in France, and ever since had been desperate to live there.

      The marriage might have stood a better chance if tiny cracks hadn’t already been appearing in it ever since Ethan had taken over as head of The Tides Medical Practice that cared for the health and well-being of the inhabitants of Bluebell Cove. He had seemed prepared to put his commitment to his new position before everything else.

      His acceptance of the responsibility had come about because of the early retirement due to poor health of the woman who had given her life to the practice and had felt that Ethan was the only person she could trust to continue the work there to the same high standards as herself.

      But the niggles that had sometimes arisen because of that had been as nothing compared to his reaction to the heart-breaking homesickness that had overtaken her at the loss of her parents and swept her into the situation that now existed between them. So if the revellers out there were full

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