Previously: Martin, as well as Al and Pauline, have each had their moment to look back at the traumatic events surrounding the Crazy Jonathan hostage situation, now it's Louisa's turn to think about how she remembers it all and how it affected her.

Chapter 53: Louisa Thinks Back

Saturday Morning and Evening

With morning sunlight pouring through the window, Louisa sat at her laptop on the kitchen table and read through the news on the Cornish Chronicle website. A robbery in Wadebridge, a traffic accident in Camelford, she was relieved to see there was nothing much for Portwenn after all the excitement lately.

She checked her email. Nothing. She checked her mobile. No messages, no voice mail. Surely things had settled down now and Martin could have contacted her today.

Hard to believe that just a few short weeks ago he had drunkenly professed his love for her, then the next day in a hung over haze accused her of having a fixation on him, and then the day after that followed her to the fishmonger's to give her a birthday card and ask her to dinner.

She recalled how he came up behind her at the fishmonger's.

"Ah, Louisa."

She was startled to see him. "Are you following me?'

"No. I wasn't… I've, I've been to see Mrs. Tishell." He definitely sounded like he was fumbling for an explanation.

"Well, I'd hate to accuse you of stalking, for I know what it's like to be accused of being something that you're not. Like, I don't know, a certain doctor claiming that I suffered from delusional romantic attachments."

"Perhaps when I said that I was being…."

"Rude?"

"I hadn't thought through the diagnosis."

"And that's your apology?"

"I didn't apologize."

So like him, so aggravating, she thought. Then she noticed he had something in his hand. "What's this?"

"It's a card."

She felt herself softening toward him in spite of herself. "Martin."

"Happy birthday."

"Joan put you up to this, did she."

"It's a birthday card," he said, stating the obvious.

"Oh I see, thank you." She opened the envelope. It was indeed a card, with a stern-looking Elizabethan portrait on the front. Inside it read "Birthday Greetings, from Martin." So plain, so unromantic, and yet coming from him it was an extraordinary gesture.

Shyly looking down at his feet, he said, "And I was wondering, perhaps if you weren't doing anything later, you might have, um, dinner with me?"

Sitting at her kitchen table, Louisa realized now that she had ignored Martin's lovely request, completely distracted at that moment by a very unexpected sight.

"Dad! I don't believe it. What are you doing here? You should have called."

"Wouldn't have been a surprise then would it. Oh you look beautiful. Yes, you do, just like your mother."

She introduced the man in her life to the other man in her life. "Terry, this is Dr. Ellingham. My Dad."

"I thought he was dead," Martin said, with his usual bluntness.

"I never said that."

"Oh, I must have dreamt it." Martin seemed genuinely surprised by this turn of events.

"What happened to old Doc Sim then?" Dad inquired.

"Oh, he is dead," Martin replied.

"Tosser!" A passing woman shouted.

"Ah don't worry, that was meant for me. Local dialect for welcome back," Dad said. Louisa wondered if she should have taken that as a sign.

"Oh. Ah, I have to go," Martin said, and abruptly left.

"I bet he's the life and soul of the party," Dad said wryly.

"Oh, Martin's all right. He's just different," Louisa said.

Now in the present she thought, yes he's just different. Maybe it was time they had that birthday dinner. No point in moping about, or expecting that shy, endearing, and frustrating man to make the first move. She went to his number at the top of her contacts and rang it.

"Ellingham!" His usual gruff greeting.

"Martin, it's…"

"Louisa!" he exclaimed before she could say her name. His voice completely changed. Even though it had been only a few hours since they had spoken, she felt a thrill hearing his low, warm tones again.

"You asked if I wanted to have dinner with you. A few weeks ago when it was my birthday, I mean."

"Er, yes."

"Is the offer still open?"

"Yes, of course…. Er, are you free tonight?" He was stuttering and bashful, which she found charming in a man who was outwardly so dignified and confident.

"Oh wait, sorry, tonight's not good. Some of the teachers and staff are meeting at the Crab for a few drinks, you know, before the new school term starts Monday. I was thinking Sunday. I do have some things I need to take care of for school then but I think I can spare a little while."

"Right. I mean… er, good. Sunday would be good. You could come here. Say, 6 o'clock?"

"Yes, I'll be there at 6."

ooOOOOOoo

Down at the Crab Saturday evening, Louisa sat with her friends and colleagues, amid the sounds of clinking glasses, happy chatter, and the squawking of the parrot.

Though she had been in the pub many times before, it seemed full of recent memories now. She couldn't help thinking of the last time she had been here, just a few weeks ago, with her father remarking how the place hadn't changed in the long years since he had last been there.

Yeah, she though, same old faces, same old gossips, same old décor, same old squawking bird. Except for her time at university, and a few years in London afterward, she had lived her whole life in this village. And yet everything seemed fresh and new in the past year, ever since a certain tall doctor had moved into the stone cottage up Roscarrock Hill.

So much had happened since then it was hard to make sense of it all. Even with her recent time away from Portwenn she felt like she hadn't really processed the events that made her want to get away from the village in the first place.

Now she sat on the balcony, sipping a glass of wine, only half listening to the conversation around her. Everyone was buzzing about the recent events, but her mind was elsewhere, and all the while she was surreptitiously glancing up at the stone cottage, hoping for some sign of him, even just a light coming on in a window.

The last time she was in the pub was with Dad and his strange friend. They were sitting on this very balcony, talking and trying to ignore the local gossipers eyeing them, as Jonathan obsessed about the parrot and babbled about surveillance. His behaviour that day should have been a warning sign for what came… later.

She had defended her father to the gossipers that day, telling them they should be ashamed of themselves. But now, she was the one who was ashamed of herself, for having deceived herself about him for so long.

Later that evening, when it was just her and Dad alone, having dinner at her home, she couldn't ignore the humiliating truth any longer.

"Dad, I need to know. Did you take that money?"

"No, I didn't. I might be many things but I'm not a thief." He sounded dead serious. She still felt that little girl inside her who so desperately wanted to believe him, but she pushed on.

"When one person tells you that you're wrong you can ignore them but when it's a whole village… it's hard. You know every day I have to ask myself - am I being a fool still believing in you? I… I know how hard it must have been for you bringing us up after Mum left."

He continued to deny it. "That money was for the lifeboats. Do you really think that I'd stoop that low?"

"So Joan… Joan never caught you, she never saw you take it? She's lying as well?"

Dad got up to put his dish in the sink, avoiding her glance and muttering, "Joan. Meddling cow."

Louisa was tearful by now. "How could you?"

"I had gambling debts, big debts. There was this horse, a sure thing. When it won I was gonna pay the money back. Of course…" He trailed off.

"I meant how could you lie to me all these years? How could you let me make a fool of myself in front of my friends? In front of the whole village?"

"I'm sorry," was all he said.

"I think… I think you should leave in the morning, Dad."

It was so hard to say that to him but it had to be said.

Louisa could now see her father for what he was, but was she delusional about the other man in her life? Could he really be the one to make her happy? The events of That Day kept running through her mind in a jumble of thoughts.

She thought of how disappointing and inadequate Martin was when they were being threatened by Jonathan, when Jonathan pulled a knife on her to get her to call Dad back to the village. Martin just seemed so incapable of handling the situation.

When Martin was trying to placate Jonathan, he might have succeeded but he just came right out and said he wanted to sedate the nutter and call the police. She bitterly suggested Pauline get a gag for Martin, a thoughtless joke she now regretted.

She thought of how when Martin attempted to distract Jonathan, telling him "Things seem muddled for you now but… uh, you're amongst friends," he could only manage to lunge and toss a lamp ineffectually at the dangerous man.

She even thought about how when Jonathan said she should take the boat out to meet the Spanish trawler, and she was forced to admit she probably wasn't strong enough to handle the boat, she could have said she and Pauline together could have done it if they had to. And then the absurdity of her and Martin bickering over the proper Spanish phrase Al should use when he met the trawler - was it Terry mi mando a por el paquete, or Terry mi mando a por la paquete? Really, when she looked back it seemed more like a farce than anything.

But then she thought about how Martin took a genuine interest in Jonathan's complaints about his headaches, trying to find a correlation between migraines and bipolar disorder, always putting his duty to a patient even ahead of his own safety. He was so caught up in trying to find a diagnosis he almost missed Louisa and Pauline frantically signalling that Jonathan had put the knife down. Their urging him to attack Jonathan, even though he was partially tied up, almost got him stabbed. And then when Dad burst in and took the brunt of Jonathan's violent knife attack, Martin was the one to tend to him.

Martin wasn't exactly a man of action but he really was a good man to have around in a crisis, she realized.

Her jumbled thoughts drifted into a clear memory of what had happened after Jonathan made them all leave the surgery and drive to the cliffs.

To be continued…