Chloe by Freya North Page A

He looked, actually, perfectly gorgeous.
    â€˜At our age,’ he continued, scanning her notes, ‘it’s as important as servicing the car.’
    I don’t think I’ve ever had the Fiat serviced.
    â€˜Pardon?’
    â€˜I can’t remember when I last had my car serviced,’ mumbled Morwenna.
    â€˜Well then,’ he said grinning, ‘let’s hope we don’t find in you what undoubtedly lurks beneath your bonnet!’
    Morwenna looked at him sternly. ‘But the car’s been running fine. It splutters a bit, creaks here and there and can’t cope with cold mornings. Oh my God’ she declared as the metaphor dawned, ‘just like me!’
    â€˜And me,’ he rued quite happily.
    â€˜But why meddle if there’s no muddle?’
    He tipped back on his chair and observed her thoughtfully, tapping his fingertips together, wondering how to prolong her welcome presence in his surgery.
    â€˜Wouldn’t you prefer to know if there’s a muddle before you’re in the middle of it?’
    Morwenna contemplated the doctor through the safety of her jumper which she had kept pulled up to just beneath her nose.
    â€˜What’s involved in the once-over anyway?’ she said quickly, through her visor of wool.
    â€˜Heart, blood, weight, lungs, breasts – nothing to it really. We’ll do it before we do the jab if you like.’
    I can’t let her go – I must just see if there’s a smile in there.
    Morwenna gazed through the surgery window to the beach. An elderly couple walked a pair of dachshunds and two children were playing energetically; she could hear their delighted laughter through their abandoned movement. Her thigh throbbed and her mind whirled.
    â€˜OK,’ she said tentatively, keeping her gaze fixed where it was, ‘but I’ll just go for the jab today. And quick! Before I run away.’ She took her face quite out of her jumper and fixed a not-so-ambiguous smile on the doctor.
    Chloë has been at Skirrid End a month now, and has the saddle sores to prove it. She has also been nipped twice and trodden on often, but not by goats. She has newly defined biceps and firmer thighs as further proof of her new life, for every morning she is mucking out by seven-thirty, and twelve hours later she has bedded down eight horses and replenished twice as many water buckets twice a day. She rather likes the changes that country living has made to her body; her face has lost its pasty Islington tinge and her lungs are glad of the crystal air. Her hands are slightly thicker, her nails stubbier but she keeps them clean and trim and they are not unattractive at all. She has a healthy glow to her cheeks due in part to the crisp weather, and in part to the certain lust she has developed for Carl. Her lips, though, are a little chapped and she has convinced herself that they will be no good for kissing. Carl grows more handsome to her every day and it seems preposterous to Chloë that a man of such beauty,
    (
and humour and kindness!
)
    could ever want
    (
and intelligence and manners!
)
    to kiss her chapped lips.
    She feels a vitality each day on waking and wholesome fatigue on retiring each night. A general sense of well-being. She is healthier and happier than she can remember and often wonders whether she should even bother with the rest of the United Kingdom. She would be quite content with life ever after here in Wales. Hardly surprising, for she is cosseted and secure – an integral part of a household – and her resultant happiness defines that the household must therefore be Home. Or as near to one as she has hitherto come, remember.
    Conversation is on a very different plane to that to which Chloë had become accustomed over the preceding London-bound years. No one at Skirrid End knows Anna Recksick or whether there is much difference between a Gentleman’s Third and a First, and isn’t a 2:2 worn by ballerinas?