Page 109 of A Helpin g Hand for the Village Nurse

‘I’m beginning to make my peace with it. It feels like yesterday since it happened, and yet so much has gone on in the space between then and now it also feels like a lifetime ago. But I’m all right, I think.’

‘I’m glad.’ He nudged his hat back from his face and gave a lopsided grin and she burst out laughing.

‘Oh my God, that was more Indiana Jones than Harrison Ford is! Now I know why you wore that outfit! You’re not secretly his stunt double, are you?’

‘If only I were that cool.’

‘I don’t know about that, but I think you’re pretty cool.’

‘I think you are too.’

Ottilie blushed, and to his credit he looked away, pretending not to notice.

‘Want another drink?’ he asked, going to the table and running a hand over the cloth.

Ottilie suddenly recognised it as the cloth that had dressed the table when Magnus and Geoff had set them up on their cinema date. He looked up at her and she could see he recognised it too. Was he recalling that night with regret? With fondness? With a combination of both as she was doing?

‘What are you having? Some of Geoff’s rocket-fuel wine?’

‘I suppose it might be safe enough to have some of that tonight.’ Ottilie joined him at the table, holding out her glass.

Any further private conversation was cut short by more arrivals and Lavender grilling Heath over his choice of outfit. Ottilie felt a bit sorry for her husband, who was clearly feeling overlooked in favour of the man who bore a remarkable resemblance to her ‘free pass’.

Magnus put Boney M’s ‘Rasputin’ on the turntable and Chloe rolled her eyes as half the garden started to sing along. Ottilie had to feel sorry for her too. She could see why Chloe got frustrated with life in Thimblebury when the height of the social calendar was a party for a middle-aged man and his mostly middle-aged guests. She was surprised, in all honestly, to see Chloe there at all. Stacey had probably nagged her, and perhaps Chloe had decided it might be the last party she could go to for a while with the baby’s arrival imminent, naff or not.

By ten, the party was in full swing. Magnus and Geoff had been doing duets on a microphone that had come from nowhere, Charles had been sick in his top hat after phoning Fliss at least half a dozen times to tell her he loved her, while Lavender and Gary were dancing on a table. All was as it should be, Ottilie thought. She’d spent some time chatting to Heath, but then he’d been sidetracked by a trio of village ladies who seemed quite enamoured by his whip. Ottilie caught his eye and laughed at his look of helplessness.

‘Rescue me!’ he mouthed, but she only shook her head, laughing harder still. This, right here, as she gazed on the scene, was what she’d come to Thimblebury for. She was happier than she’d been since she’d lost Josh, and she liked to think that if he could see her now, he’d be pleased for her.

She was getting another drink when there was a tap on her shoulder. She spun round to see Stacey.

‘Oh, hey, I wondered where you’d got to,’ she said.

Stacey slurred her reply, but even then, Ottilie could see that she was worried. ‘Have you seen Chloe?’

‘Not for a while, no.’

‘Oh. Only I can’t find her. She’s not answering her phone, and nobody else has seen her in a while.’

‘She might have had enough and decided to go home? She did look a bit bored.’

‘I thought that, but she didn’t say anything to me.’

‘Maybe she didn’t want you to have to go with her.’

‘I suppose so. I probably should go and look.’

‘Want me to come with you?’

‘No, it’s?—’

‘I’m coming with you,’ Ottilie decided.

Stacey didn’t argue this time.

As they pushed their way through the crowd towards the exit, Heath called over. ‘Ottilie…where are you going? You’re not leaving already?’

‘We have to…’ Ottilie put out a hand to halt Stacey. ‘Have you seen Chloe?’

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