A/N: Thanks for the reviews and alerts, both on LJ and here! And I´m very happy that Calendar Girls now has it´s own category here under ´movies´. I emailed about it a few weeks ago and this morning I got a little email that simply said: added!
So in celebration of a brand new category, a brand new chapter! Enjoy!

Chapter 2

´Who´s tall and handsome?´ Chris had apparently been dying to ask her this question for quite a while, because the moment after Tim Wellington had said his goodbyes and left, she took up his now vacant seat at the bar and looked at her expectantly.

Only slowly coming back to her surroundings after the rather intent conversation she´d just had, Ruth looked at her slightly dazed. ´Oh… his name his Tim… he´s from Yorkshire actually.´ Looking around her she realized all the other girls had gone up to their rooms already and it was just her and Chris left in the bar.

´It´s a small world after all,´ Chris snorted. ´You two looked rather chummy there for a moment.´

´Oh no…´ Ruth answered, blushing slightly. ´We were just talking, that´s all. He has the most interesting job… he´s been to Tanzania for Doctors without Borders and he was telling me about it…´

´I´m sure it´s more interesting than carpet,´ Chris replied, rather thoughtlessly. When she noticed the slight look of hurt that crossed over her friends´ face, she bit her lip. ´I´m sorry… I definitely seem to manage to get my foot in today.´

´No, you´re right…´ Ruth relented, resting her elbows on the bar and her chin in her hand. ´It was a great deal more interesting…´ She shot a sideways glance at Chris. ´Is Rod alright?´ she asked tentatively, having caught bits and pieces of their fall-out.

Chris shrugged. ´I don´t know and I don´t know if I care yet. He´s told the papers I haven´t been giving it to him for weeks, Ruth! You have no idea how mortifying that is.´

´I suspect as mortifying as having your husband call you ´a tart with her nipples showing´, Ruth countered drily.

Chris fully turned around on her barstool and watched her with her mouth hanging open, her expression horrified. ´He never did! That wretched idiot! When did he…?´

´I was waiting for him with the calendar, I thought I´d surprise him…´ Ruth told her softly. ´But when he got home he was furious. He barely even looked at me… he started packing right away, said he wouldn´t stay another minute… and then he said… well what he said.´

´Bloody hell…´ Chris muttered. A long silence fell between them, both women contemplating on their marriage. Finally Chris whispered barely audible: ´I think Rod was just tricked into giving that interview…´

´I think Eddy was just being a wretched idiot to begin with,´ Ruth replied equally quiet, staring ahead of her.

´Are you going to leave him?´ Chris asked tentatively.

´I don´t have to…´ Ruth replied in a small voice. ´He has already left me. I found out he was cheating on me, just before we came here.´ Her voice cracked a little. ´My marriage is over.´

Chris clenched her fists underneath the counter of the bar, torn between shock and anger. ´I´m so sorry, Ruth,´ she eventually offered genuinely. Then she groaned. ´I´m the most selfish person on the planet, aren´t I?´

Memories of Chris driving John Clarke in and out of hospital, of her buying pies so Annie had something to show at the WI function and the tears she´d shed at John´s funeral flashed before her eyes and Ruth smiled softly. ´You´re not selfish… you´re just a little determined every now and then… I sometimes envy you for it.´

´But I messed it up this time,´ Chris replied dejectedly. ´I almost got us posing stark-naked for a detergent today! If Annie hadn´t walked out on us…´

´Then I would have…´ Ruth interrupted her with a snort. ´Never underestimate the power of a good Catholic upbringing.

But the thing is…This was never meant to be your project alone – but something from all of us. For Annie to honour her husband´s memory, for Jessie to tackle as some sort of quirky school-project, for Cora as an opportunity to dive into, for you to make into a success, for me to join in fretting and objecting, for Ceilia… well, frankly I suspect Ceilia has already done something like this once…´ When Chris let out an involuntarily snort they glanced at each other and burst out in laughter.

The tension that had been there between them eased and Ruth felt herself really relax for the first time that day. Finally Chris sobered up though, her face filling with remorse again.

´Annie was so upset and I´ve been so horrible to her.´

´She´s hurting,´ Ruth said thoughtfully. ´I can´t believe how much it hurts that Eddy has left and I imagine Annie is in even more pain… Her husband died, Chris. She´s just hurting so much!´

´I can´t imagine losing Rod,´ Chris said hoarsely. ´I know I complain about him a lot, but… I can´t bear to think that something would happen to him… I just wish… why didn´t he come to me if he was feeling so neglected? Why did he have to tell a bloody reporter?´

´You´ll have to ask him,´ Ruth answered. ´At least you´ve got the chance to do so as we´re flying home tomorrow. Thank goodness.´

´Do you regret posing for the calendar… you know, all things considered?´ Chris asked thoughtfully.

´No… I don´t,´ Ruth answered after a slight pause, surprising herself somewhat with her answer. ´I`m not saying that I´d have the guts to do it again, but no, I don´t regret it… all things considered.´

´So back to our original topic,´ Chris said with a grin. ´Who was tall and handsome?´

´He was rather nice,´ Ruth admitted, blushing furiously. ´We just talked though… nothing more. But it was… nice…´

Chris knew Ruth never believe her if she told her that it hadn´t looked like two people ´just talking´ to anyone else in the bar. From the way his entire body language had been concentrated on her to the way their heads had almost touched when they were talking, trying to block out the rest of the world, it had looked like so much more. But Ruth wouldn´t believe her. Not yet, anyway. Not after the way that prick of a husband of hers had treated her and had been treating her for years. Still, she had to know that not every man would treat her a careless as Eddy had done, Chris decided.

So she told her sincerely: ´He seemed to really like you, though. That much was obvious.´

Slamming his cellphone shut and throwing it unceremoniously down on one of the armchairs, Tim Wellington stepped through the French doors unto the spacious balcony overlooking the ocean, feeling for the first time the over-priced hotel room was worth his money. The cool air and soft sea breeze managed to calm him down somewhat, though some of the anger, evoked by the text message he had just received still lingered. Even after their break-up up, Carol still managed to make his blood boil and his temper flare, perhaps now even more so than when they were still in a relationship. Had she become even more uncooperative since then or had he simply stopped trying to find excuses for her behaviour? All he knew was that her unreasonable request was just that – unreasonable.

He sighed deeply and ran his hand through his hair. He´d been feeling so much better upon returning to his room – in fact, he hadn´t felt this good since his return from Tanzania – but one message from Carol and he was winding up like an overwrought alarm-clock again.

He and Carol had had been in a stormy, on and off again relationship for a year and a half. At first there had been nothing but the thrill… she was sharp, she made every male eye turn when she entered a room and she could be very pleasing – if she wished to be. She was smart and she knew her mind and at first that had attracted him to her like nothing else would. She had a temper that matched his own and she had been so passionate in the beginning.

But as the year had gone by the cracks in their relationship had begun to appear. His work meant the world to him and he had always strived to divide his attention as fairly as he could between his practise and Carol. But no matter how hard he tried, she always felt slighted. It made him feel guilty and as a result of it he had put up with far more of her antics than he should have in retrospect. They´d broken off their relationship a few times, but somehow they had always ended up back together. Every time he had convinced himself that he was better off without her, that being with her just wasn´t worth the drama and the fights and the scenes and he finally told her so, she again became the woman he´d fallen in love with and he fell for her again.

Until eight months ago, when he finally hadn´t been able to take it anymore. They´d been fighting constantly and he´d began to feel that no matter what he did or said, it was never going to be enough, he was just never going to be able to make her happy. It had gotten to the point where he had dreaded going home, apprehensive of whatever she had find this time to nag him about. He had taken a commission with Doctors without Borders to go to Tanzania for six months, telling Carol that he needed some time away from her to clear his head to figure out if there was really a future for them, for the first time holding himself deaf for her pleas, her pouting, her fury and her manipulation. He´d been stationed at a refugee´s camp near the border and if he had expected to have time on his hands to contemplate his life, he had been sadly mistaken.

He had worked harder than he had ever worked in his life under the burning African sun. Sometimes it felt like he had been thrown into a parallel universe were nothing was the same from his sheltered, cushioned life in Britain. The endless stream of people, waiting outside the medical clinic from dawn to sunset every single day, the skeleton-like arms and legs of the children with their protruding bellies, the desperation in the eyes of their mothers as they knew they just didn´t have enough food. Delivering babies in the back of a pick-up truck with his bare hands, deprived of even the most basic medical equipment. The flies that were everywhere, the constant humidity and heat and smell of just too many people on a small surface. He´d worked for sixteen hours straight and then fell into his bed, utterly exhausted.

And even without a minute to spare to think about his relationship with Carol, somehow Tanzania had changed him and when he got back he knew within a week that they wouldn´t make it together. Somehow he was finally able to see clearly that their relationship was making neither of them happy and that he needed to end it. Breaking up with her- finally and irrevocably had been a challenge in itself, but he had persevered. He had left their house in Essex and gone off to visit his college friend Richard, who lived in California.

Once Carol had realized that this time he had ended their relationship for good all pretence of niceness and amiability were gone. So he had spent the last three weeks living through the most horrendous break-up of his life. She fought him about everything: the house, the car, the money on their joint account… as far as he was concerned, she could have everything, as long as it would mean that he would never have to deal with her again. But unfortunately, every confrontation she sought with him seemed to be designed to accomplish the opposite: throwing herself into his way again, making life as miserable for him as she could. Apart from that he was angry and frustrated with himself for letting the situation get into such a state. He really should have known better, should have never gotten involved with her in the first place.

So for the past three weeks he had mulled about. Eager to leave Essex he had tried to find a new position as a general practitioner and a place to live. Thankfully he had managed to secure both, so his professional life was taken care of. His personal life was a different matter altogether. Actually, the hour and half he had spent at the bar this evening could be considered to be the highlight of the past month in that regard. He smiled softly as he remembered the woman in the black dress with her shy smile and soft brown eyes. For a moment he forgot his anger and Carol and allowed himself to relive the conversation in his head.

He had been amazed when he had discovered her involvement in the WI calendar. And the fact that it was so obvious that she would never have done anything like this if it hadn´t been for the circumstance made him admire her actions even more. Her quiet courage and the sheer beauty of what she and her friends had accomplished with their calendar – in more than one way - was refreshing after the hell he´d witnessed in Tanzania and had experienced after his homecoming. Apart from that she had been a joy to talk to – or to talk with. Although he had to admit he had hogged up most of the conversation. After she had asked him about his time in Tanzania he had found that once he´d begun, he didn´t seem to able to stop the flood of words any longer. For some reason he´d felt it easy to tell her, not only about the small miracles, but also about the gruesome circumstances, her undivided attention and intent listening spurring him on. He realized now that it said a lot about his last relationship that he was so amazed at finding a woman who actually listened to what he had to say, but there definitely was something rather uplifting about sharing your story with a woman who asked questions intended on keeping it going as opposed to directing the conversation back to herself again.

He had felt so much better when he´d left the bar and gone up to his room. And suddenly a feeling of determination settled over him. Carol was history. And no matter how much she tried to push herself back into his life again, this time he wasn´t going to let her. Tomorrow he would fly back to Britain again and start a new chapter in his life. He would return to his beloved Yorkshire to take over a practise and settle back in a more comfortable lifestyle than the drama-filled one he had exposed himself to over the last couple of years. He would become very happy in Knapely. He was certain of it.

Looks like there will be a new doc in town! Please let me know what you think!