Page 64 of The Village Midwife
While Zoe handed them out, he took the brief opportunity to check them all over. ‘Alice…look at the state of you,’ he grumbled. ‘What have you been rolling in? You’re going to need a bath, and I wasn’t planning on doing it this month.’
‘I could do it,’ Zoe said.
Victor gave her a patient smile. ‘I think you’d regret offering. Likely get a kick in the face if you don’t know what you’re doing. She wouldn’t mean it, mind, but might do it by accident. Better if I do it.’
‘Right. Well, is there anything else I can do?’
‘Not really, unless you fancy shovelling up some dung.’
‘I don’t mind doing that. Once you’ve been present at a birth or two, you can cope with any kind of bodily waste.’
Victor threw his head back in laughter. ‘I’ll have to remember that! No, I think I’ll fasten them in for now and come back up later. There’s nothing really urgent that needs doing.’
‘Ah, I see. You’re excited to start detecting?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he replied with mock innocence, and it was now Zoe’s turn to laugh. ‘Do you mind if I walk to Hilltop with you?’
‘Want to join in, eh?’
‘I thought I might call in to see Billie – take the opportunity to see how she is.’
‘Just like young Ottilie – you never stop working, do you?’
‘I don’t know about that, but it doesn’t really feel like work to me. It’s only visiting one of my expectant mums for a chat. I’d call that a nice morning rather than work.’
‘Either way, you’re more than welcome to walk over with me.’ Victor locked up the box where he kept his treats and put it on a high shelf, and the minute he did, his herd started to wander off.‘It’s a fickle kind of love,’ he said with a wry smile, ‘but I’ll take it over none.’
‘I don’t blame you.’ Zoe followed him out of the field and waited for a moment while he fastened the gate, her gaze on the dew-soaked hills rolling away towards the horizon. Below, somewhere in a hollow but unseen from this vantage, lay the village of Thimblebury.
‘Have you always lived here?’ she asked.
‘Man and boy,’ he said briskly. ‘Wouldn’t be anywhere else.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
‘What do you think?’ he asked her with a shrewd look. ‘Can you see yourself staying?’
‘I’m not sure yet. My head says to wait and see, but my heart…’
He gave a sage nod. ‘Fair enough. Come on – let’s get going. It’ll take us twice the time if we have to walk at half the speed for your little legs. If we’re not careful, we’ll be losing the daylight before we’ve started anything.’
‘Oi!’ Zoe squeaked with a grin. ‘I’m not having leg slander like that!’
‘Should have eaten your crusts as a girl then.’
‘I thought that gave you curly hair?’
‘Does it?’ Victor chuckled. ‘That’s put me right…’
It took them a good fifteen minutes to negotiate the fields and paths that led to Hilltop. By the time they got to the neighbouring farm, Alex was already out at the front gate, scraping the mud from a shovel that was propped up against the garden wall. Grizzle had his nose stuck around the base of a tree, presumably on the scent of something interesting. The minute he sensed new arrivals, however, his head whipped up and he bounded towards the garden wall, tail wagging.
‘You been out already?’ Victor called, nodding at the shovel as he reached to fuss Grizzle.
‘I had an hour to kill so I had a poke around,’ Alex said, his attention diverting to Zoe with an unspoken question.
‘Find anything?’ Victor asked.
‘No. But there’s plenty of time, right? Morning, Zoe…’
