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'Some decisions are too difficult to make without a push. You were right. Miss you. Love you. Greg'

Sophie buried her nose in the velvety dark blooms to hide her disappointment. And the fear that a safe refuge had just been denied her. Toni stroked one of the petals.

'These are gorgeous,' she breathed. 'And
so
romantic.'

'I knew it had been a memorable weekend.' Oliver's tone was almost disappointed.

'Oh, it was,' Sophie murmured. She kept her face screened by the bouquet as she fought back the prickle of threatened tears.

'How long did you say you'd been engaged?' The query came from Oliver and his tone suggested that Sophie was being watched closely.

'Five years,' she muttered. 'Since second year in med school.'

'And you met at high school,' Toni said with awe. 'Genuine childhood sweethearts. It's hard to believe it can actually happen.'

'Sure is.' Josh didn't sound the least bit impressed. 'Do you mean to say you've never even been
out
with another man, Sophie?'

'No. Only Greg.' Sophie wondered how long one could look fascinated by a bunch of flowers without raising suspicion. She glanced at Josh and smiled brightly. 'I was never interested in anyone else.'

'That's
so
romantic,' Toni sighed.

'That's
so
stupid,' Josh contradicted.

'Why?' Toni and Sophie both spoke together.

'Well, how can you possibly know he's the right person for you? How can you make a sound decision without even trying to make some sort of a comparison?'

Sophie frowned. It was precisely part of the same doubts she had harboured for so long herself but somehow, coming from Josh, it made the argument seem shallow. An excuse for playing the field without consideration of the potential effects. Toni appeared to agree. The sound she made was dismissive.

'Has it ever occurred to you, Dr Cooper, that it's possible to confuse the issue with
too
much data?'

Sophie grinned. The legion of Josh Cooper's ex-girlfriends had become part of St David's folklore. Some of the phone calls she knew Toni was obliged to field were quite enough to justify the practice manager's acerbic comment. She felt inclined to support her.

'When you meet the right person you just know,' she asserted.

'Not when you're fifteen years old,' Josh snorted.

'I was seventeen,' Sophie defended herself.

'How do you know exactly?' Oliver asked with keen interest. 'When you meet the right person?'

Sophie made the mistake of meeting his gaze and to her horror she found herself blushing. Here she was defending her inexperience and loyalty to a relationship that didn't exist any more. She was virtually lying to the man who had warned her only hours ago that honesty was far too important to compromise. A man who just needed to look at her the way he was doing right now to induce a wave of physical response enough to make her toes curl.

'I... Ah...' Completely flustered, Sophie adjusted her grip on the bunch of roses. The card slipped from her fingers and sailed onto the floor. She crouched swiftly, but not fast enough to prevent Oliver picking up the card first. The time it took for him to hand it to her was more than enough for him to register the handwritten message.

They were both crouched on the floor, their knees only an inch or two apart. Sophie's breath caught. Oliver's gaze was questioning. Almost hopeful. Sophie's heart rate increased sharply. She only hoped she didn't look as vulnerable as she felt.

'A difficult decision?' Oliver enquired softly. His gaze dropped to her left hand and then returned to her face. 'What were you right about, Sophie?'

Oh, God. Maybe if they'd been alone, Sophie could have told the truth. Could have taken the plunge into the unknown territory that Oliver Spencer represented. Unknown. Potentially dangerous. Definitely exciting. But they weren't alone and Sophie felt trapped by the web she had successfully woven about herself and had reinforced only minutes ago. The myth of the happily engaged woman. The woman who had known she had met the right person even if she had only been seventeen years old. Her voice seemed to be coming from a long way away.

'The wedding date,' she heard herself saying. 'We... I finally made a decision.'

'Really?' Toni sounded excited. 'Oh, I love weddings! When is it going to be, Sophie?'

'July.' Sophie closed her eyes briefly. Why on earth had she said that? Her runaway mouth refused to close itself. 'July twenty-fifth,' she added for good measure.

Oliver was still crouched beside her. He frowned as though puzzled but then his expression changed to one of bland neutrality. 'Congratulations,' he murmured. 'If that's
really
what you want.'

'Of course it is.' Sophie straightened, clutching the roses tightly.

'That's only three months away,' Josh observed. 'You're not planning on leaving us before you sit your Primex exams and qualify as a registered GP, are you?'

'No.' Sophie bit her lip. 'Of course not.' She had forgotten that she would be in Christchurch at least until the end of October to finish her GP training programme. Why hadn't she picked a date next year? Why had she picked a damned date at all?

'So you're going to get married and then live in separate cities?' Oliver sounded intrigued rather than critical.

'No. Well, not for long anyway.' Sophie felt a desperate need to escape. 'I'd better get going. I want to ring Greg and thank him for the flowers and I've got a lot of reading I want to get done before the workshop on Wednesday afternoon. It's the one on minor surgery.' Sophie knew she was babbling. 'I've been really looking forward to this one.'

'See you tomorrow, then.' Josh had turned his attention back to the fax he was holding. 'Just look at that serum cholesterol level. Nine-point-eight! Phew!'

Oliver said nothing. He was staring at Sophie with an expression that hinted strongly of disapproval.

Toni leaned over the counter as Sophie reached the front door.

'We'll talk tomorrow,' she said happily. 'I want to hear all about your plans. Especially your wedding dress.'

The ring had to come off. It
had
to. The roses lay abandoned on the kitchen bench as Sophie squirted a generous dollop of dishwashing liquid onto her finger. She gripped the gold band and stared at the small solitaire diamond, a poignant stab reminding her of the pride with which the ring had first been worn. It had been a symbol of a future—dreamed about, carefully planned and striven for. A future that no longer existed. Perhaps it had only 'ever been a fantasy. Sophie pulled the ring and found it slipped off far more easily than she had expected. She placed it beside the bouquet of flowers and rinsed her soapy hands. Then she reached for a tumbler and filled it from the box of wine that sat in her fridge. She didn't normally have a drink after work but she was in dire need of something tonight. She was very glad that she had carried her glass with her when she moved to answer the telephone a minute later.

'Hi, Dad.' She took a large swallow of the chilled white wine. It tasted of cardboard. She should have bought a bottle to celebrate moving to Christchurch, not a five-litre cardboard carafe. Now it even had a faint aftertaste of dishwashing liquid. 'Sorry, Dad.' Sophie tried to forget the wine. 'I didn't hear that. How are you?'

'How I am is not why I'm ringing.' As usual, her father got straight to the point. 'I was talking to Greg this morning. He informs me you've broken off your engagement.'

Sophie took a deep breath. 'That's right, Dad. I have.'

'I thought you might come to your senses after Greg took up his registrar position and decided to specialise. Surely three months of infected ears, geriatrics, overweight women and social work with people who just want to be patients has been enough to show you what general practice is all about.'

'Yes, it has.' Sophie drained her glass. Cardboard and soap weren't too bad when you got used to them. 'I love it. It's what I want to do, Dad.'

Sophie's father, a consultant surgeon in the same Auckland hospital in which Greg worked, sniffed incredulously. Then he modified his tone. 'Even so, that doesn't mean you can never come back to live in Auckland. We have general practices up here as well.' Her father managed to make the practice of family health sound like an alternative therapy. 'Just because Greg has decided that general practice isn't for him, that certainly isn't enough of a reason for you to break off your engagement.'

'That's not the only reason.' Sophie sighed, tipped her glass upside down and then looked longingly towards the fridge. She needed a cordless telephone.

'He apparently thinks it has a lot to do with it.'

'Our engagement had become a habit, Dad. We hardly saw each other during our house-surgeon rotations and now we're going in different directions. If our relationship was strong enough for marriage it would have happened years ago. We're good friends. We always will be, but it's not enough.'

'It's what your mother and I started with. It was good enough for us.'

Sophie's memories of her mother had faded in the years since her death but she had never appeared to her daughter to be a particularly happy or fulfilled person.

'It's not enough for me,' Sophie stated bravely. 'Not any more. I've got my own life to lead, Dad. I'm making my own decisions now.'

Her father snorted with exasperation. 'You always have. You're stubborn, Sophie, and I have to say I think you're making a big mistake. Your abilities and education are being wasted.'

'And I suppose they wouldn't be wasted if I married Greg?'

'They wouldn't be wasted if you came back and took up some kind of specialist training.'

'I am doing specialist training,' Sophie snapped. 'I happen to think that general practice
is
special.' She heard a beeper sound over the phone and her father sighed heavily.

'I've got to go. We'll continue this some other time, Sophie.'

Sophie had no doubts about that. She stared at the phone as she replaced the receiver. Why had it always been so impossible to win her father's approval? And why didn't it start to matter less the more often it happened?

Greg used to approve of her. Their high-school romance had flourished as Greg had supported Sophie's attempts at independence in her choice of clothing, sports and recreation. Her father had disapproved of her staying away from home. Sophie and Greg had joined a tramping club and had gone on as many weekend expeditions as possible. Her father disliked loud music. Sophie and Greg had gone to rock and roll dancing lessons and had used the conservatory at Sophie's house to practise. The years at medical school had seen an improvement in her relationship with her father, but it had been the calm before the storm. The storm being Sophie's adamant desire to work in general practice.

Even then Greg had supported her. They both shared a vision of the satisfaction and value of being part of a community and committed to good, old-fashioned, front-line medicine. It was the perfect scenario for doctors married to each other. Even Ruby Murdock recognised that. She could share the practice and cut her hours down while the children were babies. A flexible partnership. Family and community orientated. Not driven by ambition and high-powered consultancy positions. That had been the plan right from the start. It had been their wholehearted agreement on such a lifestyle choice that had cemented their relationship to the point of announcing their engagement.

The plan had remained intact as both Sophie and Greg had moved through the range of specialties appropriate to GP training, including paediatrics, general medicine, A and E, general surgery and geriatrics. It had remained intact right up until the time they had both been due to enrol in the family medicine training programme when Greg had started his run in intensive care. Greg's change in ambitions had begun gradually but had gathered momentum. The plan hadn't been abandoned exactly. Just modified. Sophie could still be a GP, could still work part time when the children came along, but Greg would stay at the hospital. He couldn't bear to give up the excitement and challenge of dealing with the critically ill.

It had been a huge disappointment for Sophie. She'd tried to adjust. She'd thought she'd been successful. She could still be happy in general practice even if she wasn't married to her professional partner. It didn't matter that Greg's ambitions didn't quite match the person she'd thought she'd known so well. It didn't matter that he wasn't exactly like...

Like Oliver Spencer. Committed to community medicine. Caring for the people who weren't critically ill. People who sometimes needed a holistic approach to their health care. Someone who recognised die importance of his position and wasn't remotely bothered by the low ranking many specialists bestowed on general practitioners.

Damn Oliver Spencer! Sophie refilled her wine glass but then set it down on the bench beside the now wilting roses. She rubbed at the empty space on her finger created by the absence of her ring. It was definitely Oliver Spencer's fault. He was exactly what Greg was supposed to be. Or at least become. The fact that he was also a very attractive person was only a secondary consideration. Wasn't it?

Sophie groaned aloud. It couldn't be any sort of consideration now. As far as Oliver Spencer was concerned, she was getting married on July twenty-fifth. Sophie had moved herself up from the status of a happily engaged woman. Now she had stepped into the blushing bride-to-be category.

A bride-to-be whose main reason to blush might be in trying to find an explanation for her missing engagement ring.

It was
no big deal.

Sophie would simply tell the truth. Well, not quite all of it. She couldn't go as far as confessing having simply invented a fictitious wedding date. She had her story in place by the time she parked outside St David's Medical Centre on Tuesday morning.

I rang Greg to discuss the wedding arrangements, she would say, and we had a long talk. Would you believe we decided that we didn't really want to get married after all?