Ellen Farrell

Chloe Harrison works in a Derbyshire hospital as acting junior registrar to consultant Matthias Trevelyan.  Between them is a degree of mutual antagonism:  conscious of his watchful attention, she regards him with a distant but wary respect.

She visited by her aunt, whose daughter Rosemary had broken up Chloe’s engagement  to Hamish Warren; told that her cousin, now Rosemary Warren, is returning to the area with her husband, Chloe explains that she herself is likely to be leaving to work elsewhere.

Then a colleague collapses during a tricky operation and Chloe intervenes; expecting a reprimand from Matthias Trevelyan she is surprised when he offers her a more permanent job with the team.  She is both pleased and happy, but on learning of Rosemary's conviction that Hamish is still in love with Chloe and that Chloe is in love with him, she goes back to Matthias to withdraw her acceptance. 

Matthias is less than sympathetic.  She has accepted and must stand by her new agreement.  Dismissive, he says that all Chloe has to do is to appear to be romantically interested in someone else and that he is perfectly willing to help her with such a pretence.  Chloe can get on with her work, and her cousin will be reassured.  Confident that this will not amount to any real involvement, she agrees.

At first their pact works exactly as Matthias had implied that it would, and Chloe, lonely, warm hearted and susceptible, is increasingly impressed by his thoughtfulness; he proves to be an amusing and skilful partner in their deception, draws her into his family circle, and leads Chloe to suppose that his interest in her is genuine.

But her aunt’s original anxieties were well founded.  Hamish Warren has been appointed to a senior post locally, and Chloe, driven to confessing why she has not wished to meet either Hamish or Rosemary, is taken by Matthias on a spectacularly delightful outing, following which it is clear that their colleagues at the hospital would not be surprised to hear wedding bells.

By this time it seems to Chloe that there isn’t a single interest that she and Matthias don’t share, so that her discovery that there is someone else in his life leaves her hurt and angry.  Deciding that he is an astute judge of people and that she has been spectacularly naive, she is concerned that he may think that she is seeing her cousin's husband.  Heartbroken, she also faces the realisation that just as she has been using him, so he may be using her, but when an accident puts her surgical career seriously in doubt Matthias is immediately at her side and it is clear that they will be together for good.