The Yuletide Child, Charlotte Lamb [best novels to read .TXT] 📗

leading to the motorway gave her very funny looks. Sheknew what she must look like. Talking to herself, a dishevelled woman in the last stages of pregnancy. They probably thought she was crazy.

Maybe she was crazy, leaving Ross. She might hate him, but she loved him, too. But she couldn’t stay, knowing he was having an affair. Her pride wouldn’t let her.

She began to weep silently, helplessly, as she drove. Luckily, the motorway was almost empty as she eventually joined it and turned south towards the Lake District, so the tears trickling down her face weren’t as much of a hazard as they might have been if she had been driving on a crowded road. However, her vision was distinctly blurred, and for a minute or two she thought she was imagining the whiteness blowing across the windscreen of her car.

When she realised it was snowing she brushed a hand across her wet eyes and switched on her windscreen wipers, but they did little to help; the snow was falling faster and more thickly every minute. This was a blizzard, not just average snow, she thought, and by now there was far more traffic on the road.

The further south they went the more cars and lorries surrounded her. Warily, she stayed in the slow lane, but that meant having a lorry in front of her and another behind.

Her back was aching again, she had a tension headache, and when her car tyres skidded on the snow her whole body was wrenched with fear. She gripped the wheel, fought to control the skid, her car sliding sideways, and finally managed to pull out of it, but vehicles around her hooted angrily, making her nerves worse.

She glared at them in her driving mirror, a sob in herthroat Stupid idiots! Did they think she’d skidded deliberately?

The incident left her shaking, sweat trickling down her back. She was relieved to see that she was almost at the Penrith exit from the motorway. She had meant to go on to the next exit, but she couldn’t stand driving in these conditions.

It was a relief to escape on to quieter country roads. She had visited Jenny half a dozen times, but coming from the south more often, before she’d married Ross. She didn’t know this approach, from the Northern Lakes. Jenny lived near Windermere, the most popular part of the country, always busy with tourists, even in winter. The landscape was beautiful, but oddly unfamiliar under a coating of white. Trees took on a tinsel look, glittering with ice, fields were sugared and sparkling when the sun came out, gilding the hills and spires of villages hidden among the folds of fields.

She was trying to follow the road signs for Windermere, but she began to have an uneasy feeling that she had taken a wrong turning somewhere.

Pulling up at the next crossroads, she peered at the road signs pointing in each direction—which way now? She hadn’t thought of bringing a map with her. She didn’t recognise any of those names, and she couldn’t see anyone to ask.

Another car came along from her left and took a turning to the right, then a second car did the same—that must be the main road, surely? Dylan followed them.

The road wound downhill steeply. Her wheels began to spin too fast. She was sliding again, the car skating across the road. Terrified, Dylan hurriedly turned the wheel sharply, only to find herself driving down a narrowlane which led off at right angles to the road she had been on at first. She couldn’t slow down or stop. Her car rushed downwards until it finally crashed into a high wall.

CHAPTER SIX

DYLAN wasn’t actually knocked out, but for a moment or two she didn’t move, so shocked that she almost lost consciousness, lying across the steering wheel.

When she sat up at last she realised she was in pain. Her seat belt had held but she had been flung forward so hard that she had seat belt burns across her chest and abdomen, and her forehead and cheek ached where she had hit her face on the steering wheel.

Releasing the seat belt with deep relief, she opened the door to heave her body out and winced as she put her foot down. Oh, no, had she broken her ankle?

Gingerly, she moved the foot again. Yes, it hurt badly. She raised her leg a little, very slowly and carefully, because at this stage of her pregnancy a movement like that was not easy, and peeled back her sock. Bending forward to feel the swollen ankle was even more of a problem. She was so sick of being pregnant! The puffy red flesh was tender, but she decided the ankle wasn’t broken, merely sprained. She must have twisted it somehow during the crash.

After pulling up her sock again she put her foot down with a sigh of relief, then slid her other foot out of the car. When she put that one on the ground it didn’t hurt at all. Gripping the handle of the car for support, she stood up straight. But was she going to be able to walk?

The car bonnet had crumpled on impact, but luckily the base of the wall was cushioned with a mound ofearth, thick grass and gorse, which had taken some of the impact. Her flower wagon wasn’t a total write-off.

Where on earth was she? Her gaze travelled around the snowy landscape in search of clues, but all she could see at first was fields and trees veiled by the swirling blizzard. It was still snowing just as hard and showed no sign of stopping.

She glanced back up the lane she had driven down but it was far too steep for her to want to walk back up there, especially as she would have to hop on her one good foot.

What was she going to do?

Ross’s mobile phone! Thank heavens she had brought it with her. Leaning back into the car, she hunted for it in