‘It’s only down the road to your mother’s house. Come on, you can’t leave me in suspense any longer.’ And so they tracked through pristine white streets. The snow had stopped falling, which was probably just as well, or she had a feeling that Eddie might have refused to walk back to his mother’s house with her. He could be a bit of a grumpy boots, but Liv was too happy to let that bother her. She loved him; he was her old grumpy boots and once they got married and had a family, she was quite sure, everything would be very different.

*

‘It’s…’ She was almost speechless when she looked at the gift he handed her. Her heart sank. She wondered if he couldn’t actually hear it plop to the pit of her stomach and she had to fight hard to hold back the tears of disappointment. ‘It’s great.’

It wasn’t. It was a huge coffee table book about gemstones from some small African country that Liv had never heard of.

‘I just thought, y’know, it’d look good in the flat.’ He was obviously completely oblivious to her disappointment. The only thing that might have been worse was if he presented her with an ironing board or a toilet brush. How on earth could he be so blind? she wondered, as she fought hard to hold back the tears.

‘Well, I’d better be going back to the farm now,’ she said, doing her best to keep her voice even.

‘I thought you wanted me to walk you back?’ Eddie said, not actually making to move if he could avoid the track back to the farm.

‘Ah, no, you’re grand. I’d quite like the walk on my own. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow. How’s that?’ she called over her shoulder, while she tucked the blasted, unwanted, oversized book under her arm and hoped it wasn’t enough to capsize her if she came upon a slippery patch of road.

*

Liv couldn’t remember the last time she’d been as eager to finish her shift. She was so relieved to hand her patients over to the young Libyan nurse who had arrived that she almost forgot to tell her about Mrs McDonnell in the plaster room who was waiting to be transferred up to a ward. Mind you, it wouldn’t be the first time a patient had been left there for hours on end, just because A&E was too busy and staff forgot that there was someone tucked away in the plaster room out of sight.