Page 66 of A Helpin g Hand for the Village Nurse

‘Cup of tea, I think,’ Flo said as she returned.

Ottilie was closing the back door, having tipped a sludge-filled bucket down a drain, despite the fact that the drain was as waterlogged as the rest of the garden. But she couldn’t tip it down the sink for fear of blocking it, and there didn’t seem anywhere else remotely sensible to dispose of it.

‘Let’s have a break.’

Ottilie leaned on the mop and looked around. The floor was silt-covered, and though a lot of the water had been cleared, there was still much to do. If Flo’s place looked like this after her working on it all day, Ottilie could only imagine how much it was going to take to do her own. And then she wished she hadn’t thought about it, because it was still there, waiting for her when she left here, and she wanted to cry at how overwhelming the prospect was. If someone had offered to take Wordsworth Cottage off her hands this minute, a straight swap for a nice house in a dry suburb of Manchester, like the one she’d lived in with Josh, she’d be sorely tempted to take it. Right now, Wordsworth Cottage didn’t feel like her home; it only felt like a huge mess that she could do without.

‘I think,’ Ottilie said slowly, drawing a breath and looking up at Flo, ‘that you’re on your way to being a bit straight here, and you’re right. I need to go and see what the damage is at my house. There’s no point in putting it off any longer. I can come back later if you still need me?’

‘Don’t be daft – I didn’t need you in the first place. I only let you stay because I could tell you didn’t want to go home. But you ought to.’

‘Will there be others in the village who might need help? I was thinking of getting together a little team of us to?—’

‘For once will you look to your own needs? Anyone who needs help will get it…and that includes you.’

‘I don’t need?—’

‘If you’re about to say you don’t need help, I’m going to thump you around the head with that mop you’re holding. Now go. There must be a million things to sort out at your house.’

‘Mostly where all the water is going to go.’

Flo nodded. ‘If it’s any consolation, I think the levels are going down already. If it stays dry the rest of the night and tomorrow it might go down enough. The house will still be damp but you’ll have a better idea of what needs to be ripped out and binned and what you can save.’

Flo’s tone was so practical Ottilie could hardly believe she was talking about a home. But perhaps practical was the only way anyone could be in this situation. And perhaps if Ottilie hadn’t been sent a bombshell in the form of Faith’s phone call that morning, she might have felt more practical about things too. As it was, she didn’t know how much more of this she could take.

Ottilie dried her eyes as a second knock echoed through the house. She’d have been better off staying at Flo’s because she’d been next to useless here at home. Never in her life had she looked at a situation and felt so utterly powerless to change it – except, perhaps, when she’d lost Josh, but even then it wasn’t the same, because she hadn’t been expected to do anything to change that.

She got up from the chair at the kitchen table, where she’d sat, water swirling around her boots, staring at the mess and – to her great annoyance – sobbing. It made her angry that she was crying, but it was one more thing that she was powerless to stop. It was like she was two different people – the Ottilie who could see that nothing was going to be fixed without facing her problems head-on, and the Ottilie who was wrung out like an old dishcloth, who had nothing left to give and was really past caring.

Wading to the front door, doing her best to look presentable, she noted the tidemarks along the base of the wall. There was a stripe of discoloured plaster, and that had to mean the water had receded enough to expose that, didn’t it? Surely that was a good thing? She tried to be encouraged, because that would at least help to improve her mood to face whoever had called. She supposed it might be someone from the village coming to see if she needed assistance – perhaps Victor or Fliss or even Flo.

Her mouth must have dropped open as she answered the door, because Heath frowned slightly at the sight of her.

‘Gran told me you might need some sandbags,’ he said, nodding to a van.

‘I didn’t know you had a van,’ she said, immediately feeling stupid for it.

‘Borrowed it,’ he replied, as if he thought it might not be the most obvious observation in the circumstances either. ‘Can’t get many sandbags in my car.’

‘That’s really kind of you, but I’m not sure they’re much good now. The water’s already in.’

‘True,’ he said, with more patience than Ottilie suspected he had, ‘but if we can keep it at bay outside the house, we might stand a chance of clearing inside your house. Gran says Victor has a pump. So if we stop the outside water getting in we can pump out inside. It might be better than waiting for it to clear on its own – the longer everything is submerged, the more damage there’s going to be. At least, that’s how I see it.’

‘Oh…’ Ottilie glanced at the van and then looked back at him. Was that a grain of hope, taking root in her heart? There was certainly genuine concern in his face, unlike anything she’d seen there before; even when he’d come to rescue her and Flo from the hillside that time he hadn’t looked so worried. ‘Shall I help you get them from the van then?’

‘I can do it.’

‘No, I want to?—’

‘You must be exhausted. Sit in the van if you like while I sort it. It’s dry and warm – put the radio on or something.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘I wouldn’t feel right watching you work and me sitting there. It is my house after all.’

He didn’t argue – and on another occasion Ottilie might have found the easy loss of any chivalry quite amusing. He simply nodded towards the van. ‘Come on then – let’s get them down before the light goes.’

---