Page 100 of A Helpin g Hand for the Village Nurse

‘I wish him luck – he’s going to need it. He’s going to need deep pockets too.’

Ottilie frowned, but she didn’t follow the last bit of his statement up. If he wanted to elaborate then he would. He’d given her space to tell her story, so she had to do the same for him.

‘Do you miss her? I know you say she did awful things but you also said you’d loved her.’

‘I wonder now whether I was just infatuated rather than in love. How could I love someone who did stuff like she did? It’s crazy though – until a few months ago I’d have probably taken her back if she’d tried hard enough to convince me. I ought to thank the new guy – he saved my bacon. Makes me a mug, doesn’t it?’

‘I don’t think so. Love is love – you can’t help it.’

‘But you can choose to get out of its way when it’s bad for you.’

‘I’m not sure love is that simple either.’

‘Listen to me…’ He shook his head. ‘At least I have a choice; I should be thankful.’

‘It doesn’t work like that.’

They needed more light, and Ottilie got up to flick a lamp on. The new sofa and armchairs she’d ordered to replace the water-damaged ones still hadn’t arrived, so they were sitting on dining chairs. It was hardly comfortable and relaxed, and a good therapist would always choose a chaise longue, but what they were doing felt like therapy all the same. If they could help each other here tonight, then everything until this point would have been worth it, despite the missed opportunities and crossed wires. Finally, she knew this man, and finally, he was someone she wanted in her life, no matter how. If they were to remain friends, then that would be enough. If they were to become something more…well, she wouldn’t – couldn’t – push it, but she was content to trust in the future.

‘I think I’ve kept you long enough,’ he said as she sat back down.

Ottilie looked at her watch and was shocked to see it was gone eleven. ‘Where did that go?’ she asked with a little laugh. ‘Must have been intense.’

‘I think it must have been,’ he said, smiling too. ‘I hope in some small way it helped.’

‘I could say the same to you.’

‘It did,’ he said. ‘If you ever retrain as a psychiatrist, put me down for a session or two.’

Ottilie’s laughter grew. Her eyes were still swollen and nose still hot and bunged up from her sobbing, but her thoughts were clearer than they had been in some time and she felt lighter. She had Heath to thank for that, there at the right place and the right time, like a knight on a horse coming to rescue her.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

He nodded, his eyes warmer than his cautious smile. ‘I’ll see you around, maybe?’

‘You’d better. We’re friends now, right?’

‘I thought we were already.’

‘Proper friends now.’

‘Right.’

They stood facing each other for a moment. Ottilie wondered whether she ought to reach for a hug. It was funny, they’d held on to one another for some time during the evening, but now she felt shy and uncertain, and she suspected he did too. They were leaving the evening as friends, but was that all they were? What level of friends? Because there was always more than one.

In the end, he broke the deadlock by giving a good-natured nod. ‘Goodnight. I hope you manage to get some sleep.’

‘Yeah. Drive safe… please.’

And then he was gone, and Ottilie was alone with her thoughts again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Two months since she’d first been asked to check in on a young patient at Hilltop Farm her visits were now a near daily occurrence. To save eating into clinic time, she’d made a habit of driving up there before work, just to pop her head around the door and make certain Darryl – her patient – was keeping up with his medication and his mum, Ann, was coping.

Ottilie had learned that Darryl could be challenging and sometimes didn’t understand what was being asked of him, and poor Ann was alone trying to manage him and to stop the farm being repossessed by the bank. Ann’s husband had died two years previously and left her trying to run everything. She was struggling with that and, as a consequence, wasn’t making enough money to keep everything ticking along, and with her son’s demands on top of that, Ottilie was worried she might go under. In some ways, Ann needed more help than Darryl, but Ottilie had learned that she’d never admit it. It was funny, but Ottilie could see a lot of herself in Ann in that respect. Her own battle with anxiety and badly timed panic attacks felt like one she’d started to win, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t sometimes still crippled by doubts on a regular basis. But life was settling and so was she.

As she pulled the handbrake on outside the farmhouse, she was struck – not for the first time – by how bleak it was compared to Daffodil Farm where Victor and Corrine lived. One of the downstairs windows was still boarded up, even though it had been broken since Ottilie’s first visit. Ann had told her she didn’t know how it had been smashed, but it was obvious to Ottilie that Darryl had done it. She’d seen his frustrated temper tantrums for herself, and he was a big twenty-year-old and certainly capable. The garden was overgrown and the gate missing a few screws so that it swung crazily on its hinges. Ann’s old yellow-eyed tabby was sitting on the step staring at Ottilie’s car as a November sun struggled through low clouds.

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