A Summer at Sea Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Katie Fforde

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Author’s Note

  Copyright

  About the Book

  On board a ‘puffer’ boat in the Western Isles of Scotland, Emily is spending an idyllic summer at sea.

  But it’s only for a summer, and Emily knows that soon she must return to her single life and her career in town as a midwife.

  But she has not counted on the new friends she is making. Or the fun she is soon having.

  Or the attraction she is starting to feel for Alasdair, the handsome local doctor . . .

  About the Author

  ‘I live in the beautiful Cotswold countryside with my family, and I’m a true country girl at heart.

  I first started writing when my mother gave me a writing kit for Christmas, and once I started I just couldn’t stop. Living Dangerously was my first novel and since then, I haven’t looked back.

  Ideas for books are everywhere, and I’m constantly inspired by the people and places around me. From watching TV (yes, it is research) to overhearing conversations, I love how my writing gives me the chance to taste other people’s lives and try all the jobs I’ve never had.

  Each of my books explores a different profession or background and my research has helped me bring these to life. I’ve been a porter in an auction house, tried my hand at pottery, refurbished furniture, delved behind the scenes of a dating website, and I’ve even been on a Ray Mears survival course.

  I love being a writer; to me there isn’t a more satisfying and pleasing thing to do. I particularly enjoy writing love stories. I believe falling in love is the best thing in the world, and I want all my characters to experience it, and my readers to share their stories.

  Step into my world at www.katiefforde.com.’

  Also by Katie Fforde

  Living Dangerously

  The Rose Revived

  Wild Designs

  Stately Pursuits

  Life Skills

  Thyme Out

  Artistic Licence

  Highland Fling

  Paradise Fields

  Restoring Grace

  Flora’s Lot

  Practically Perfect

  Going Dutch

  Wedding Season

  Love Letters

  A Perfect Proposal

  Summer of Love

  Recipe for Love

  A French Affair

  The Perfect Match

  A Vintage Wedding

  A Summer at Sea

  Katie Fforde

  To Vic 32, Clyde Puffer, built 1942,

  and Mandy the Midwife,

  I couldn’t have written this book,

  without either of you.

  Acknowledgements

  Massive thanks to Nick and Rachel Walker, custodians of the puffer, and friends of ours for over forty years. Equally massive thanks to Mandy Robotham who was generous with her time. She really helped me get under the skin of a midwife and I loved it. Extra thanks for assisting my grand-daughter into the world. I will have made mistakes in spite of your best efforts so I do apologise.

  Also thanks to Alice and Robert Walker, who also assisted in various ways, Alice for getting married in the wonderful Crinan Hotel and Robert for valuable artwork. Thanks to the Crinan Hotel for picking the most beautiful spot on earth to be and inspiring me to set my book there.

  Thank you, too, to the inspiring Jane Griffiths, who told me about Fair Isle Knitting (and who does it amazingly) but who also had such a lovely house, I had to borrow it for my book.

  I’m always very grateful to my wonderful agent Bill Hamilton but I am extra grateful this time because he suggested I put the puffer (which he had seen in full steam while he was on his way to Jura) into this book. I decided to make the puffer the star.

  Also to the wonderful team at Random House. To my editors Selina Walker, Georgina Hawtrey-Woore and Francesca Pathak – you are amazing, inspiring and reassuring, depending on what I need you to be. To the wonderful sales team, Aslan Byrne, Chris Turner, Ruth Tinham and Emily Bromfield. To Jen Doyle, Vincent Kelleher and Sarah Ridley in Marketing for forcing people to buy my book. And as always thank you to the wonderful Charlotte Bush and Rose Tremlett, never forgetting Richenda Todd, who stands in for missing bits of my brain so often.

  Prologue

  EMILY AND SUSANNA, midwife and mother-to-be, were quiet and settled in the candlelit room. Everything was going to plan; so far it was a textbook birth. Emily was confident that nothing would go wrong and, as always, she felt a frisson of excitement. She would never get bored with assisting new life into the world.

  Although her posture was relaxed as she waited for the labour to progress, every sense was alert. She heard a key being turned in the front door and arrived in the hallway at the same time as a man. She realised it must be Susanna’s husband, Ed, an army officer, who had been training overseas with his regiment. Emily was startled: neither she nor Susanna had been expecting him back so soon.

  ‘You must be Ed,’ she said. ‘How wonderful that you managed to get here in time. Susanna said you wouldn’t be able to make it.’ He looked tired – he must have been travelling for hours. He was also visibly upset. He had probably spent his entire journey home fretting over the knowledge that his wife had chosen to have a very different sort of birth from the one he thought she should have.

  ‘Where’s Susanna?’ he said curtly. ‘I must see her!’

  Emily knew she had to keep him away from his wife while he was so obviously tense as this could easily transmit itself to Susanna. She stood in front of the door of the room in which Susanna was in labour. It wasn’t usual for her to bar the door from a soon-to-be new father but this was different. She needed him to calm down first. His irate presence could upset everything.

  ‘Of course,’ said Emily, smiling, and in her most soothing tones, frantically thinking of a way to keep him away from Susannah. Then she hit on it. ‘But I must ask you to wash your hands first. And maybe have a cup of tea? After your journey? You must be shattered.’ He would never know that as a partner, he wouldn’t be asked to do anything intimate and hand-washing could be soothing.

  He was not to be placated. ‘Look, Susanna knew I wanted her to have our baby in hospital, so for you and her to conspire behind my back … I can only imagine what my father would say!’

  Emily knew about her client’s father-in-law. A consultant obstetrician, he was retired, very old-school, and violently opposed to anything remotely ‘natural’ in childbirth. Anything that didn’t involve women lying on their backs in hospital, with every medical intervention going, was unacceptable. His daughter-in-law, Susanna, had quite other ideas, and had been almost pleased when she discovered her soldier husband was unlikely to get home for the birth. Ed, on the other hand, had been fully indoctrinated with his father’s views.

 
‘Really, I promise you there’s been no conspiracy. And nothing will happen for a while yet. You’ve got plenty of time to freshen up and have some tea.’ She smiled again. ‘I’ll go and see how Susanna’s getting on.’

  But it appeared that Ed had no intention of freshening up or calming down. ‘You can’t stop me!’ he said. ‘It’s my duty to protect my wife.’

  Quite what he wanted to protect his wife from was unclear but he was very insistent. He was about to push Emily aside but stopped himself just in time.

  ‘No,’ she repeated. ‘You can’t go in until you’re—’ She stopped, wondering what she could say that would stop him blundering in like a male elephant. ‘Just have something to eat and drink and then come in.’

  She went back into the living room, hoping she hadn’t sounded too much like somebody’s nanny. One look at Susanna, though, and she realised things were not as they had been. She looked utterly miserable.

  ‘It’s not going to happen now, is it? He’ll make me go to hospital?’

  Emily opened her mouth to protest, but Ed had followed her into the room.

  ‘Susanna!’ he said. ‘What the bloody hell has got into you?’ He looked at the birthing pool, currently only half full, and kicked it. ‘For God’s sake! What’s this all about? What sort of crazy idea did you get into your head this time? I thought we’d agreed on a traditional birth!’

  Emily knew about this too. Susanna had told her everything at their first visit.

  ‘We didn’t agree, you decided. But this is what I wanted,’ said Susanna bravely. ‘Flora was going to be here with me but she’s got a sick bug. You knew how I felt. I just wanted to have my baby here, at home, with Emily and Flora.’

  ‘Well, without Flora that plan’s out of the window,’ said Ed, sounding relieved. ‘We’ll get you into hospital ASAP and everything will be all right.’

  ‘But Susanna wants a home birth,’ said Emily. She knew she wasn’t going to win this argument – not now – but she had to fight it.

  ‘I’m not prepared for Susanna or our baby to take any sort of risk. She needs full medical supervision, and that what she’s going to get.’ He turned to Susanna. ‘Let’s get you into the car.’

  Before Emily could protest further, there was a banging at the door.

  ‘That’ll be the GP,’ said Ed. ‘I’ll let him in.’

  ‘The GP?’ said Emily. ‘Why has he come?’

  ‘When I discovered on my way here what was going on, I got on to our GP. Just in case I didn’t make it in time.’

  Emily realised that Susanna, not unreasonably, had texted her husband to tell him the baby was on the way, but it had had desperate consequences. Because she knew who Susanna’s GP was: Derek Gardner, new to the area, who’d already established himself as a highly conventional practitioner when it came to childbirth.

  And indeed a few minutes later, Derek Gardner came in, Ed fast on his tail. He looked at Emily, eyebrows raised. ‘I might have known it would be you!’ His eye was caught by the knitting Emily had been engaged on before this beautifully planned birth had been interrupted. ‘So! The rumours are true! How can you concentrate on a woman in labour when you knit!’

  It was a rhetorical question so Emily didn’t bother to answer. However, she could have easily explained how her knitting actually helped her look after her birthing mothers better. When her hands were occupied (and she only ever knitted very simple things in those circumstances) her ears were more alert and she could tell in a second if anything had changed and the mother needed to be checked. But Derek Gardner would never understand these subtleties, even if she spent hours explaining it.

  ‘Come along, sweetie,’ said Ed to his wife, rather more gently now. ‘Let’s get you to hospital where you can get the pain relief you need.’

  As Susanna’s contractions had now stopped Emily wondered why Ed thought she needed pain relief, but she realised the battle was lost.

  Susanna looked up at Emily. ‘I’m so, so sorry. I thought we could do this.’

  Ed had taken hold of his wife’s arm now and was hauling her to her feet. ‘I’ll find your coat.’

  ‘She’ll also need her overnight bag,’ said Emily. ‘Do you want me to fetch it?’

  For a second her eyes met Ed’s and animosity crackled between them. Then his eyes fell away. ‘If you would.’

  When Ed and Susanna left, the GP stayed on. It wasn’t long before Emily found out why.

  ‘You’ve got to stop this, you know,’ Derek said. ‘You know the risks of having a baby at home are higher for first-time mothers.’

  ‘Really? I’d have thought you of all people would know that statistics show that actually home births are extremely safe.’

  ‘What would you do if there’s a problem? Whisper some spells and hope for the best?’

  Emily bit down on her anger. The pleasant room where Susannah had planned to have her child may have looked as unlike a delivery suite as possible, but in Emily’s boxes and bags, hidden behind the chairs and sofas, was every piece of equipment needed to ensure a safe and happy outcome.

  ‘Have I ever lost a baby?’ Emily asked him, rigid with the effort of keeping quiet after the upsetting and unnecessary interruption of what should have been a lovely birth.

  ‘There was an investigation—‘

  ‘Yes – and if you’d read it thoroughly you would know that no one could have predicted that breech birth. The baby turned at the very last minute and was and is perfectly fine.’

  Derek Gardner sighed. ‘Look, Emily—’

  Emily, usually the most informal of people, stiffened at the use of her Christian name. ‘Ms Bailey,’ she said.

  Derek had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘It’s only a matter of time before something goes dreadfully wrong.’ He paused. ‘Quite frankly I’m concerned for you – and for the whole maternity unit. You’ve upset a very influential person there. Sir Roger may be retired but he’s on every board and committee. He could make your life very hard indeed.’

  Emily almost smiled. ‘My life is already quite hard, thank you.’

  She wasn’t going to tell this man that she’d been with a mother until that morning, having supported her for over twelve hours. She’d barely had time to shower and stuff a sandwich in her mouth before Susanna had called. If Susanna’s friend, Flora, who was going to be her birthing partner, hadn’t been unable to be with her, she’d have grabbed a couple of hours’ sleep before coming. But she’d promised Susanna she wouldn’t have to be on her own in labour, so here she was.

  Derek shrugged, and Emily could see suddenly that he too was tired and under pressure. ‘All I’m asking you to do is to think carefully about the way you practise,’ he said. ‘Or even about coming back into the hospital and doing it properly. We’re desperately short of midwives there, you know.

  Emily’s moment of sympathy vanished and her anger felt like solidified lava in her stomach. But she knew that unless she was very careful she would say or do something completely irrevocable. ‘I happen to think we do do it properly! We practise in an utterly professional manner. I think that every day I go to work, and every time I deliver a baby safely.’

  ‘I’m only trying to be helpful,’ Derek said. ‘You know better than I do that the maternity unit is under threat, and getting a reputation for being uncooperative and inflexible will only make things worse. I’m telling you this for your own good, and for the good of the unit.’

  The fact that Derek was right about the unit being under threat didn’t help. Emily’s anger boiled over. ‘How dare you? What right have you—’ She kicked the rubber birthing pool so hard that quite a lot of water slopped over the side, soaking Derek’s legs in the process. He jumped backwards, swearing, and Emily clapped her hand over her mouth. There was a moment’s fraught silence, then she said, through gritted teeth: ‘I’m going to take some leave, and then I may well take a sabbatical. Now please go. I have a lot of tidying up to do.’

  ‘Emily … Ms Bailey, I’m
trying to help you.’

  Emily took a deep breath. ‘I wouldn’t accept your help if I was blind and needed guidance across a six-lane highway. Now please go away!’

  Emily did some of the breathing exercises she taught expectant mothers and then cleared up the water, put out the candles and gathered all her kit, including her knitting, before considering her options. She had gone too far with Derek Gardner, she knew that. She was in danger of blowing everything, both for herself and the unit. She would never have exploded like that had she not been so tired. No, not just tired: exhausted. It was not simply that she had had no sleep the night before; she had not had a break for far too long. She had lots of leave owing and, as she’d said to Derek, she could take a sabbatical. She didn’t have any mums due for the next couple of weeks – plenty of time for them to get to know one of the other midwives. She needn’t think she was abandoning anybody.

  Quite where she’d go or what she’d do was a minor detail she’d work out later.

  A couple of days later, she was on her computer at home looking at travel sites wondering why none of the glorious sunlit beaches really appealed when her phone went. It was her best friend from university, whom she had not seen for far too many years.

  ‘Rebecca! How lovely to hear from you!’ As there was no answering scream she paused. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Actually, Em, I’m in a spot of bother. But before I ask the biggest favour ever in my life, tell me how you are?’

  Emily kept to essentials, eager to know what Rebecca wanted of her. ‘… so basically, I’m a bit fed up and looking online for somewhere to go for a break,’ she finished. ‘So what’s this favour?’

  ‘Oh, Em! There is a God! I need someone to do some cooking on our puffer – you know, the steamboat James and I run as a hotel? And you’re the only person I can think of who I trust and won’t drive me mad.’ She paused. ‘Maybe I should explain. I’m pregnant.’

  Emily took this in. ‘How pregnant?’

  ‘About six months. I thought I’d be all right to carry on until the end of the season. But I’ve become very short-tempered recently and James has put his foot down.’