Page 1 of A Helpin g Hand for the Village Nurse

CHAPTER ONE

Lunch was rushed. Lunch was always a rush; Ottilie was used to that. After bolting the last of her tuna salad, she snapped the lid on the sandwich box shut and was about to hurry back to the ward when her phone started to ring. Breaking into a smile as her gaze fell on the photo of a dark-haired, handsome man in a police uniform wearing a cheeky smile that she knew only too well, she swiped to answer.

‘I’ve got thirty seconds,’ she said, trying to sound stern but still smiling, ‘so this had better be good.’

‘It is. How do you feel about trying that new Thai restaurant later?’

‘I thought it was all booked up?’

‘It was, but I had to call there to give the premises the once-over after their alarm went off and I may have told them it was my tenth wedding anniversary and that we didn’t have plans. As you can imagine, they were horrified.’

‘And so they found you a table? Without you even having to ask?’

‘OK, I may have asked. And I may have played a little on the fact that I’d just saved their business.’

‘Had anyone actually broken in?’

‘Well, no, but…’

Ottilie’s smile spread further still. ‘Some might see this as very dodgy behaviour, Constable Oakcroft.’

‘They might. Or they might see a man who adores his beautiful wife so much that he’ll move heaven and earth to give her a lovely night out at a restaurant he knows she’s been dying to try for her anniversary. Especially as he feels so guilty for not having time to get anything else.’

‘I told you I didn’t need a gift.’

‘You might not need one, but you deserve one. You deserve to be showered with gifts, but will a night at the Thai restaurant do for now?’

‘I suppose I could eat some tom yum soup. And maybe some pad thai. Or a panang curry. Or?—’

‘We’ll order the whole bloody menu if you want it.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t order the whole menu, because being too full is no good for any kind of physical exertion…’

‘So salad it is then.’

Ottilie giggled. ‘I could manage a bit more than that. It sounds amazing. Yes please. And then you can have your present when we get home.’

‘Can’t wait. I know sometimes it’s hard living with me and sometimes I bring my work home, and sometimes I’m a pain in the arse, but I do love you more than life itself, Mrs Oakcroft, and can’t tell you how grateful I am that you agreed to take me on. I’m a work in progress after all, and possibly a lifelong one at that.’

‘Ditto to all that, Mr Oakcroft,’ Ottilie replied, laughing again. ‘I’ll see you later for our hot date.’

‘I’ll be thinking of nothing else for the rest of the day.’

‘Me too.’

Ottilie ended the call and went to the mirror in the staffroom to tidy her bun. She was still smiling as she smoothed a caramel strand of hair into a grip. Her thoughts went to the new restaurant she’d been desperate to try, to a well-deserved romantic dinner and to what might follow, and her tummy did a cartwheel. Already she was planning what she might wear. The black dress she’d picked up the previous week in a sale? Was it too much for a weeknight at quite a casual restaurant? But it showed her curves off in the most delicious way, which had been very apparent to her from Josh’s face as she’d modelled it for him.

She’d never been what she’d class as slim; certainly she’d always been more solidly built than most of her friends growing up, but she’d always been comfortable with her curves. They were generous but firm, and her skin had always been clear and her blue eyes wide, and her hair had always naturally been a colour that others had paid a lot of money for. Josh had always said that, for him, it had been love at first sight.

For her, it hadn’t been so much love as lust at first sight. She’d triaged him as a student nurse working in the accident unit, where he’d turned up with a cut on his hand from some barbed wire while on a public disorder call, and before the appointment was over he’d got her phone number. He’d told her afterwards he’d been so bowled over by her that he hadn’t been able to help himself. He was the luckiest person on earth to have cut his hand that day, or so he’d said, but Ottilie knew different. She was the lucky one. Josh had made her who she was today.

She couldn’t wait to give him his gift too. Not the saucy one they’d joked about – though he’d get that too – but the one she’d managed to keep a secret, even though it had half killed her. He’d always wanted to see the Northern Lights and she’d booked a cruise in Norway where they’d go out into the wilds to see them from the sea. She’d been saving for a couple of years, cutting her spending a little here and there: a cheaper shampoo or mascara, home-made lunches instead of the canteen, that sort of thing, subtle, so he wouldn’t notice the money go from their joint account and she wouldn’t be taking from the running of the house.

Their next week off was just over a fortnight away and she’d told him she was taking him to Blackpool. So he knew he was seeing some lights but not quite the ones he’d been expecting. And she was so excited to see his face when he finally worked it out that she could barely contain herself.

But she had a shift to finish, and about ten more after that before they could both hang up their uniforms and head off, and so she had to contain herself for that long at least.

The two hours since lunch had gone by in a blur. Some days work was busy but manageable, and some days the ward seemed to lurch from one crisis to another, each one dealt with in the nick of time, but it could be stressful on days like that. Today wasn’t that yet, but Ottilie felt as if it might be heading that way. There had been some sort of commotion in Accident and Emergency. She didn’t know what, but rumours had filtered up to the ward, a warning that they had to be ready to get very busy. For now, Ottilie was trying not to think about it. One patient at a time, she always told herself – she couldn’t do any more than that if she was going to do her job properly, though it was sometimes very hard to stick to her own rule when there were so many demands on her time. She loved her job, but sometimes she wondered if she must be quite mad to do it.

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