Page 56 of A Helpin g Hand for the Village Nurse

Ottilie had been in Thimblebury for just over a month. In some ways her new home got more familiar every day, but in others it was always changing. The weather had warmed and the tourist season had started in earnest. It didn’t impact Thimblebury directly – the village was far too small to attract holidaymakers – but it did mean that the district in general was busier, the streets of the nearby towns buzzing with visitors and the bright dots of hikers on the hills a regular sight. From time to time a group would wander through Thimblebury and stop to look around, and once or twice Ottilie had been engaged in a pleasant chat with someone from out of the area asking for recommendations.

A week of boiling-hot weather had finally broken – the first real heatwave Ottilie had experienced here, and as she walked the steep path up to Daffodil Farm, the air was heavy with rain. It was still humid, and her clothes were damp, her hair sticking to the back of her neck, and she very much hoped that Corrine and Victor’s kitchen would be cooler than the air outside.

As she reached the gate, the front door opened and Corrine emerged, beaming at her.

‘I saw you coming across the field. I said to Victor it looked like you, and it was!’

‘I hope it’s all right to call.’

‘Of course it’s all right! Come in…Have you got time for a cup of tea?’

‘Always,’ Ottilie said with a smile, glad to see that Corrine looked bright, despite getting her skin cancer diagnosis only days before.

‘We were planning to pop down to see you,’ Corrine continued as she waved Ottilie in. ‘So it’s lucky that you’re here.’

‘Oh? For anything in particular?’

‘Only to say thank you. If you hadn’t taken a look at my neck…well, all I can say is I’m glad you called up to the farm that day.’

Ottilie sat at the table.

A moment later, Victor came through from the hallway with a wrapped box in his hand. ‘Hello – we saw you come up across the field,’ he said, repeating what Corrine had told her. Then he put the box on the table in front of her. ‘It’s not much. We didn’t know what you’d like but we wanted to show our appreciation.’

Ottilie looked up at him, bemused. ‘You didn’t need to get anything at all. I was only doing my job.’

‘You hadn’t even started your job,’ Corrine chided as she put the kettle on the stove to boil. ‘Don’t come over all modest. You damn near saved my life as soon as you set foot in the village, and what a lucky day it was for me when you came.’

Ottilie unwrapped the parcel to find a huge box of chocolates inside.

‘Aww, thank you. I’ll take these to share with Dr Cheadle and Lavender, if that’s all right.’

‘No need – we got some for them too,’ Victor said. ‘You keep those to yourself.’

‘Was there something you needed to say?’ Corrine asked.

Ottilie turned to see her spooning loose tea into a pot.

‘No, I just wanted to see how you were doing. And…maybe sneak a little visit to your alpaca.’

Victor laughed. ‘Ho! That’s the real reason, I’ll bet! Nobody ever comes to see just us; they always want half an hour with the girls.’

Ottilie had really come to see them, but she didn’t want them to think she was overdoing it, so she’d seized on seeing the alpaca too as a way to put them off the scent. In reality, she’d been worried how they were coping after getting Corrine’s diagnosis and wanted to see for herself. She realised she needn’t have worried. Corrine and Victor were old school, practical and pragmatic as they came, and they’d weather any storm as long as they had each other. And, for now, Ottilie was in no doubt that Corrine, getting early treatment, would live to fight another day and they would have each other for a lot longer.

‘I’d say wait until you’ve had your tea,’ Corrine said, going to the window and looking out, ‘but I think it’s going to rain in the next hour or so and you might want to go over before the field gets too boggy.’

‘I don’t mind that,’ Ottilie said.

‘You don’t mind at the moment, but you might when the mud sucks away your favourite shoes,’ Victor said with a grin. ‘Come on, lass. Let’s go and say hello – Corrine can keep the pot warm for when we get back.’

The rain held off long enough for them to reach the stables where Victor kept his ‘girls’. As they’d done the last time, at the sight of him opening the gate they all moved as a herd towards him. It was funny, so sweet that Ottilie couldn’t help but break into a broad smile.

‘They love you,’ she said.

‘Greedy little buggers,’ Victor said, but there was real affection in his tone.

A moment later they were in the field with the gate safely closed again, Victor clicking and fussing at his girls as they crowded around him, all woolly faces and huge eyes. One or two sniffed a bit curiously at Ottilie, but mostly they only had eyes for Victor.

‘All right there, Alice…’ he said as the black-and-white one nudged her nose into the palm of his hand. ‘I know what you’re after.’

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