Page 19 of A Helpin g Hand for the Village Nurse

‘When I can. Like you, it forces me to stop thinking about work and read more, and that can’t be a bad thing.’

‘Sounds brilliant. Loads to do already! Maybe too much, but I don’t mind that – it’s what I was after.’

‘Make sure to leave enough time for your actual job,’ Fliss said.

‘Yes. I must warn you, I haven’t done community work since my nurse training. I’ve mostly worked on hospital wards since then.’

‘If that’s the case, I think you’ve chosen the perfect place to start. It’s rather lovely that we have such a small community here, so you’ll become well acquainted with your patients. I know in big cities that almost never happens. Makes your job a lot easier as you get used to what everyone needs and already know their medical history when they walk in the door. I’m sure you’ll pick it up in no time.’

‘I hope so.’

‘So, how are you finding Thimblebury so far?’

‘I love it.’

‘Good…’ Fliss lifted her glass in a toast. ‘I was hoping you’d say that. To a long and fruitful partnership.’

Ottilie clinked her glass against Fliss’s and smiled. It was exactly what she’d been hoping for too.

CHAPTER SIX

It was early summer and the weather was still unpredictable at times. Today had started out fine, but as Ottilie had sat in Fliss’s kitchen, the weather had taken a sudden turn. By the time she got back to Wordsworth Cottage, darkness had fallen, bringing with it heavy rain and violent gusts. Fliss had informed Ottilie that there was no taxi service in Thimblebury and that the nearest taxi company was two villages away, so nobody ever bothered to order one just to get from A to B within Thimblebury itself, and she apologised that she’d had too much to drink to drive Ottilie home. She’d offered to get her husband from his house to do it, but Ottilie had insisted that she was perfectly happy to walk. It wasn’t so far, after all, and seemed like a waste of petrol – not to mention the inconvenience.

Some of the lanes of Thimblebury were narrow, and what was quaint and pretty during the day seemed more foreboding at night. Perhaps it was the rain lashing her face as she marched towards home, or the wind trying to blow her hood off, or the fact that the streets were poorly lit and she lost her way more than once, or any combination of these things, but Ottilie had left her relaxing, cordial evening with Fliss behind and was now on edge. Almost as soon as she’d left the GP’s house she’d sobered – which was perhaps a good thing in the circumstances. Her walk would eventually take her close to the river, and on a night like this even the most sedate body of water was a potential deathtrap.

Or perhaps the danger was all in her imagination. It wouldn’t be the first time since Josh’s death that she’d heard footsteps close behind only to turn and find nobody there, or to sense a breath on her neck, or to jump at the shadow of someone passing by the glass front door of her old house.

Before she’d decided to move away from Manchester she’d had a state-of-the-art security system installed and she’d virtually stopped leaving the house after dark. Josh’s colleagues had done their best to reassure her, had told her they’d be on constant lookout for her well-being, that they’d bring Josh’s attackers to justice soon enough, but it wasn’t enough for her to feel safe. And she felt stupid for not feeling safe, and she wondered if they all secretly thought she was stupid too. Stupid, and a burden, because didn’t they all have enough to do without watching over a neurotic widow with an overactive imagination? Of course nobody was coming to get Ottilie because, in the scheme of things, she was unimportant – in her more pragmatic moments she knew this – but that didn’t help when the fear took hold.

As she’d looked forward to the move to Thimblebury, she’d imagined – or perhaps hoped was a better word for it – that she’d feel safe in the countryside. In a tiny village with the cutest houses she’d ever seen and a sweeping landscape that was full of poetry and magic she couldn’t feel anything else, surely? But tonight, in the rain and the wind, with the wrong turns, she was seized again by a vague sense of panic that she couldn’t quite name. There was no reason for it, and yet she felt it.

More than once she turned, convinced someone was following her, to find nobody there. Even the welcoming glow of lights at windows did nothing to make it better. She considered, for the wildest moment, knocking at one of them and asking to be let in until the dawn came and everything looked safe and cute again, but she reminded herself that she was the new nurse here, and if anyone was going to take a single thing she said or did seriously then that was a very bad idea. At the very least she’d look like a wuss, and at worst she’d seem completely mad. It wasn’t the first impression she was keen to give, either way. So she put her head down and hurried on, almost crying out with relief when, finally, the gabled roof of Wordsworth Cottage, slick with rain, came into view.

She went through the gate and hurried to the door, opening up with a shove and tumbling over the threshold to slam it shut behind her again. Resting her head against it as she tried to get her breathing under control, she closed her eyes and took a lungful of that air, with its unfamiliar scents that – she hoped – would soon smell like home. Right now, the best she could hope for was a sanctuary, away from the night, where she could lock the door and lock out the things that would make her scared, even if they didn’t really exist and it was only the action of locking the door that made her feel safe.

After a moment she shrugged off her dripping jacket and hung it on the balustrade at the bottom of the stairs to dry. Her shoes followed, landing in a heap by the door where she kicked them off, and then she went through to the kitchen to put the kettle on, the room flooded with light when she located the switch. Before she did anything else she went to the window to close the curtains. It wouldn’t stop anything out there getting to her, but perhaps she’d rather not know it was coming.

Above the gurgle of the kettle boiling she could hear the trees creaking in the garden as the wind pushed them from side to side, and the door of the summerhouse rattling in its frame, and a plant pot that must have been blown over rolling around on the patio. She wasn’t about to go outside for any of them, and as she massaged her temples, trying to convince herself that she was a total idiot, she wished it would all stop. More than that, more than anything, she wished Josh were here. She’d go to sleep tonight, dreaming of his arms around her, keeping her safe, and she’d wake in the morning and he wouldn’t be there, just like all the other times she’d dreamed of him since his death, and her world would come crashing down around her, as always, at the awful realisation that she would never lie in his arms again.

He’d never tickle under her chin and tell her not to be daft, or push his fingers through her hair and tell her how he hated to see her cry, or hold her hand, or curl that reassuring arm at the small of her back, just close enough so she felt he’d catch her if she ever fell, or grin that silly grin they’d share when they were both thinking the same thing about a person or situation that was unkind to say out loud but still funny to both of them, or leave her little notes in the tea caddy before he went to work on an early shift, knowing she’d find it when she came downstairs for her breakfast. There would be no more flowers to say sorry for finishing later than he’d promised, no more uniform strewn across the floor when she’d woken to find he’d crawled into bed beside her at some point during the night… No more any of the many things she’d loved about their lives together.

No more Josh.

The sound of the kettle turning itself off snapped her out of the spiral of misery she was being dragged into. At least getting dry and warmed again would give her something to do to take her mind off how wretched she was feeling, so she busied herself making a hot drink and then went to find her hairdryer and a warm sweatshirt. She considered for a moment lighting a fire, but it was summer and it seemed a bit wasteful, and besides, she wasn’t entirely sure where all the things she’d need to light a fire were, only that the previous owner had left some for her, and so decided it would wait for another day.

It was gone eleven by the time she’d started to feel human again, and thoughts had turned to bed. Despite how it had ended, the day had been a good one. It had been productive and she’d learned a lot about her new home already. Her phone sat on the dressing table next to her as she took off her make-up and moisturised, and she almost jumped out of her chair when it began to ring with an unknown number. For a moment she thought about ignoring it, but the notion of it being someone in need was too much to shrug off. It might well be nothing at all – a scam, a poorly timed sales call from a foreign call centre, a wrong number – but it might also be someone who wanted her help.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi…’ The voice at the other end of the line was brisk. ‘Is that the nurse?’

Ottilie frowned. ‘Who is this? I haven’t actually started…Has something happened to someone?’

‘I’m Heath Reynolds. You’ve been treating my grandmother, Florence. She said I could ring you; she said if I had any questions about her condition, I could speak to you.’

Not only did he sound brisk, he sounded stressed. Still, it was a hell of a time to phone somebody just to ask about his grandmother’s funny turn, and Ottilie quickly decided that it was quite inconsiderate.

‘I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a condition but…’ Ottilie held back a sigh of impatience. ‘What do you need to know?’

---