Swallowbrook's Winter Bride by Abigail Gordon Page B

when he was playing at hiding in the bushes and I had to find him, so it would have to be then that he found the berries. I feel dreadful that it should have happened while he was in my care, or that it should have happened at all.’
    ‘ You must not feel like that,’ she told him firmly. ‘These things can happen without any blame attached to anyone. How were you to know there was deadly nightshade nearby and that he would mistake the berries for grapes? It is typical of a child to eat what they shouldn’t.’
    About to set off for the hospital he paused and asked, ‘Nathan—how is he coping? These are times when a child needs a mother. I have the feeling that somewhere in the past he took the wrong turning with regard to that. I don’t suppose he’s ever said anything to you to that effect, has he?’
    As if, she thought grimly, and told him, ‘No, John, he’s never said anything like that to me.’
    ‘I thought not,’ he said with a sigh, and drove off to see his adoptive grandson.
    There were still a few stragglers in the surgery waiting room and when Libby called the first of them in she was confronted by middle-aged Thomas Miller, leaning heavily on a stick.
    He owned the outdoor equipment store in the centre of the village, patronised by many of the walkers and climbers who were attracted to the lakes and fells.
    Once a keen climber himself, he was no longer able to enjoy their delights due to a serious leg fracture that he’d sustained while up on the tops. He had been missing for days until the mountain rescue team had found him at the bottom of a gully.
    The delay in getting him to hospital for the surgery needed on the injured leg had left him only partly mobile on it, so now he was doing the next best thing to climbing the fells by providing those who still could with everything they might need to keep them safe, dry, and fed.
    He was a likeable man with a wife and two teenage sons who had no yearnings to become involved in the sport that had once been their father’s favourite pastime.
    As well as the store Thomas was chairman of the community centre in the village and almost always had something interesting to pass on when he saw her about what was being planned by his committee.
    Before she had time to ask what had brought him to the surgery he was asking for information, rather than giving it, in the form of wanting to know, ‘What’s wrong with the laddie that Nathan’s bringing up, Libby? I’ve just seen John setting off for the hospital looking very downcast, said he hadn’t time to chat as the young’un was very poorly.’
    ‘Yes, he is,’ she agreed. ‘We had to take him there this morning as we weren’t sure what was wrong with Toby. Nathan is there with him now and I’ve just got back. When something like this happens and the adoptive parent knows nothing about the child’s previous medical history it’s very worrying.
    ‘Maybe you’d like to pass the word around for the benefit of other children and their parents that it seems as if he has been poisoned by eating the berries of the belladonna plant and at the moment the situation is serious.
    ‘And now what about you, Thomas? What brings you here on this chilly winter morning?’
    ‘I’ve got a swollen foot on my good leg and thought I’d better come and see you.’
    When she’d examined his foot Libby said, ‘It looks like an infection of some sort. Have you had a sore or a cut on it recently?’
    ‘I bought some new shoes a few weeks back and they rubbed the skin off one of my toes. It healed up all right, but still felt tender and then the swelling appeared.’
    ‘Hmm, the infection could have originated from that and lain dormant for a while,’ she told him as she felt the swollen fleshy part of the top of his foot. ‘I’m going to give you a course of amoxicillin. Are you all right with that? You’re not allergic to it?’
    ‘No,’ he said easily. ‘I’ve had it before without any side effects.’ He