Page 27 of A Helpin g Hand for the Village Nurse

‘I was wondering if Dr Cheadle has any slots spare this afternoon. I’m up at Daffodil Farm just taking a look at Corrine and I could do with Doctor’s help.’

‘You do realise you haven’t started working for us yet,’ Lavender said in a dry tone. ‘But you seem to be finding plenty to do anyway.’

‘And making plenty of work for you, yes, I know. I’m sorry about that. But if you could do something just this once I’d be really grateful.’

Lavender was silent for a moment. Ottilie imagined she was looking at the appointment schedule or something. ‘What should I tell Doctor is the problem? Just to give her a bit to go on before she sees Corrine.’

‘It’s probably nothing…’ Ottilie glanced back at the house and lowered her voice. ‘There’s a little lesion that I don’t like the look of. I can’t be certain, but I wonder if it ought to be biopsied.’

‘In that case, I’m sure she’d want me to force an appointment into the clinic schedule whether we have space or not. Tell Corrine to come down at five. She can have the overtime slot.’

‘There’s an overtime slot on the clinic?’

‘No, I just invented it. But I know Fliss wouldn’t want to leave this.’

‘Thanks, Lavender – I owe you one.’

‘Two, if you count Flo.’

‘Two.’ Ottilie smiled. ‘I’ll try not to make a habit of it.’

‘Please do,’ Lavender said with that tone of vague humour again, and then ended the call.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Ottilie was beginning to think she ought to have forgone the week of leave she’d given herself before she started her new job and just jumped right in. Since she’d arrived in Thimblebury she’d more or less been doing it anyway, even if it was in a very informal and ad hoc way. But then, she wondered if she’d have ever been told about Corrine’s worrying lesion, or seen Florence have one of her funny turns if she hadn’t been out and about, talking to them socially. She felt both women were the sort of people who’d ignore symptoms, file them under something to worry about another day and get on with the demands of their lives. Ottilie had seen plenty of patients during her career who were like that, who’d left something that should have been an early warning until it was too late, simply because they’d felt to bring attention to it was to cause an unnecessary fuss. And if that was the case with Corrine or Flo, she was glad that she’d been there to help.

Flo was very much on her mind as she walked the path down the hill from Daffodil Farm. Victor had wanted to give her a lift back, but beside the fact that she didn’t think her bones would stand any more rattling in his mad old Land Rover, Ottilie decided that they had things to talk about and that she’d enjoy the walk. So she left them to it.

Outside on the hillside there was a stiff breeze, but the sun was bright and warm when the wind dropped. Set out before her, like an emerald quilt, were the hills and valleys of her new home, the ribbon of the river shining in the distance as it cut through the land. From here she could just pick out a sliver of blue that must have belonged to Lake Windermere, though she wasn’t entirely sure. She hadn’t yet got the lie of the land, but that was something she was keen to rectify. At least she knew where Flo’s house was, sort of. Once she was back in the village proper, she was sure it wouldn’t take long to locate it.

Ottilie’s hand went to her pocket. Corrine had insisted that she wrap the last slice of fruit cake and sent her away with it – ‘in case you get hungry on the walk down’. Ottilie had to smile as her fingers traced the outline of the carefully wrapped package. It was so endearingly old-fashioned, the notion that she’d need to eat something simply because she’d walked down a hill. It was the sort of thing her great-grandma would have done – a woman who’d died when Ottilie had been in her early teens but a woman who’d had a profound impact on Ottilie nonetheless.

It had been her great-grandma Matilda who had first made Ottilie think about nursing as a career. She’d tell stories of her own exploits, during and after the war where she’d cared for soldiers injured in battle, and Ottilie had been transfixed by them, in awe of her bravery and compassion. Though she’d never consciously acknowledged it at the time, those stories would come to shape Ottilie’s own life, her choices, her desire to do good.

A sudden gust swept across the hillside, rustling through the long grasses, rattling the trees and whipping Ottilie’s hair around her face. She gathered it into her hand to hold it as she walked, at least until the wind had died down again. How different a place could look in the bright light of day. Looking around now, she could barely believe she’d been so afraid the night before. There was nothing to fear here. Nobody was coming to find her, and the hills and grass and sky held such beauty that surely this was heaven? It didn’t change just because darkness fell over it – the same hills and grass and sky were still there, even when she couldn’t see them.

With a faint smile, she shook her head, inwardly scolding herself. These random moments of panic and anxiety – they weren’t her. They had to stop; she couldn’t go on being afraid of everything.

The fact that Magnus’s directions had been very precise, coupled with the fact that you could walk the entire length of Thimblebury in about ten minutes, meant it didn’t take long for Ottilie to find Florence’s house. It was exactly as Ottilie would have imagined if you’d asked her: a house full of contradictions, from the outside at least.

It was built in the traditional stone of many others around these parts, but Flo had painted it a pastel green, which made it stick out. Ottilie could imagine that most of her neighbours hated it, but perhaps nobody said anything because she was such a longstanding and valued member of the community. There were plenty of other places where she would have been told in no uncertain terms what everyone thought of her decor and asked to change it. The garden was filled with trees and shrubs and there was a scarecrow wearing an incongruous studded leather jacket and hat. It looked so strange with straw sticking out of the sleeves and a cloth face poking out from beneath the cap that Ottilie almost burst out laughing at the sight of it. And there were other little oddities – a water feature made from a child’s plastic paddling pool and a bird bath made from bits of an old car – that spoke of Florence being someone who did things her own way and had slightly unexpected tastes for a woman of her age.

Ottilie took it all in as she made her way up the path to the front door and then knocked.

‘Oh…’

The door flew open almost immediately, and Ottilie had to wonder if Florence had been waiting behind it.

‘Is it about my tests?’

‘I thought I’d pop by,’ Ottilie said with a smile, deciding not to point out that Florence hadn’t even had her tests yet. ‘We never really got to finish our chat, did we?’

‘I thought we had. Was there something else you needed to say?’

‘Nothing in particular. General stuff. But it seemed as if we were cut off.’

‘Didn’t seem that way to me.’

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