‘I need to go.’ He was remembering Oscar Bentley. Yes, the lamb’s needs were urgent, but a broken hip was more so.

‘Not until we have the ewe.’ She moved swiftly away, twenty, thirty yards up the slope, moving with an ease that was almost catlike. Then she disappeared behind a tree and he realised what she was doing.

He was being used as a distraction.

OK, he could do that. Obediently he held the lamb toward the ewe. The ewe stared wildly down at her lamb and took a tentative step forward.

The woman launched herself out from behind her tree in a rugby tackle that put Fergus’s efforts to shame. The ewe was big, but suddenly she was propped up on her rear legs, which prevented her from struggling, and the woman had her solidly and strongly in position.

It had been a really impressive manoeuvre. To say Fergus was impressed was an understatement.

‘Put the lamb in your truck and back it up to me,’ she told him, gasping with effort, and he blinked.

‘Um…’

‘I can’t stand here for ever.’ If she’d had a foot free, she would have stamped it. ‘Move.’

He moved.

He was about to put a sheep in the back of the hospital truck.

Fine. As of two days ago he was a country doctor. This was the sort of thing country doctors did. Wasn’t it?

It seemed it was. This country doctor had no choice.

He hauled open the back of the truck, shoved the medical equipment as far forward as it’d go and tossed a canvas over the lot. Miriam, his practice nurse, had set the truck up for emergencies and she had three canvases folded and ready at the side. For coping with sheep?

Maybe Miriam knew more about country practice than he did.

Anyone would know more about country practice than he did.

He put the lamb in the back and started closing the door, but as he did so the little creature wobbled. He hesitated.

He sighed and lifted the lamb out again. He climbed in behind the wheel and placed the lamb on his knee.