Page 9 of The Village Midwife
Ottilie looked awkward. ‘That’s not really the reason…We’re going so that Zoe can get a feel for the area to see if she likes it.’
Flo folded her arms and huffed.
‘I don’t mind,’ Zoe said, and Flo’s sulk turned into a smile of triumph.
‘See!’ she told Ottilie. ‘Zoe doesn’t mind. What time will you be picking me up?’
Ottilie let out a sigh, her face such a picture of exasperation that Zoe felt the immediate urge to apologise. ‘We’ll see,’ was all she said, but it was clear from Flo’s smug gulp of her tea that the old lady saw it as a done deal.
4
Kestrel Cottage was a new build, rendered in painted hardwood panelling and topped with a neat slate roof. It was compact, the grounds contained by a low drystone wall and a row of young trees bravely defending it from the winds that swept over the hills. If Zoe was very still and quiet, she could hear the bleating of distant sheep.
There was a meeting with Corrine and Victor, the owners of Daffodil Farm, to settle the final arrangements. It was three hours in which Zoe had been offered at least four different types of cake and so much tea she was now sloshing wherever she went, and then Victor had taken her across to the house that was to be hers for the next six months in his old Land Rover. She’d agreed on six months because she still wasn’t sure Thimblebury was the place for her.
That was also the reason she hadn’t yet given her ex, Ritchie, the go-ahead to buy her share of the house they’d shared in Manchester. At least, that was what she told herself, though, in her heart, she knew there was more to it than that, reasons she didn’t want to acknowledge, even in the privacy of her own thoughts. What she’d told Flo was true – they’d drifted apart –but that didn’t mean she no longer loved him. There was love, of a sort – she knew that much. What she couldn’t decide was whether it was the right kind of love, the kind of love that kept couples together. Her feelings had been confused, even as they’d started their divorce, and they were hardly any clearer now the deed was close to being done.
She could admit that she cared for him still, but beyond that she really didn’t know. It was exactly the same kind of doubt that clouded her mind about the move to Thimblebury. Ottilie had persuaded her in the end by showing her a snapshot of a life so wonderful and cosy it couldn’t possibly be real, and Zoe had been seduced by it. But now she was here, the newest resident of a tiny village in the Lake District, alone in an admittedly cute but also isolated cottage, she wondered whether she’d made a terrible mistake.
The living room was furnished in another couple’s belongings, and that hardly helped her to feel at home. It was all perfectly nice, perfectly good and modern, but so obviously someone else’s taste, every item speaking of a marriage built brick by brick, only to have been toppled, that it made Zoe sad. Sad for them and sad for herself.
She ran a hand across the back of the cornflower-blue sofa and gazed at the whitewashed floorboards and walls, shelves in the alcoves at either side of the log burner stripped bare of the personal trinkets they would once have housed. With a sigh, she made her way through to the kitchen, furnished in glossy units and granite worktops, empty in the same way, staring back at her like a body without a soul.
‘Melanie and Damien were ever so happy here,’ Victor had said cheerfully as he’d handed Zoe the keys at the front door. ‘If not for the divorce, neither of them would ever have left it. I hope you love this little house as much as they did.’
Right now, Zoe didn’t feel happy at all. She felt like running back to Victor and Corrine’s warm kitchen and handing the keys back. She sat at the breakfast bar and took a deep breath.
‘Stupid cow,’ she told herself. ‘It’s only a house. A nice house. Like Ottilie says, a house you’re bloody lucky to get around here, where there are hardly any for rent or sale.’
She’d arranged for her own belongings to follow in a removal van. The furniture left behind by Victor’s daughter and son-in-law on their separation would do her just fine, and it would feel far more like her home once her own odds and ends were in.
As she poked around, opening and closing cupboards and inspecting the stove, from the corner of her eye she noticed movement beyond the boundary wall that was overlooked by the kitchen window. She looked up to see a man striding across the fields. It was difficult to see what he looked like from this distance, but the confidence and agility of his movements suggested strength and purpose. She wondered vaguely if it was Victor’s son-in-law, Leon, who lived close by. Then she noticed the dog. She couldn’t tell what breed it might be, but it was about the size of a Labrador, shaggy shades of grey and full of energy. It looked a lot like a dog she’d had as a girl, and she smiled as it chased to and fro, racing in circles around him as he walked.
A sudden gust of wind lifted the lid from the recycling bin in the back yard, sending it skittering across the ground. It took a second to locate the right key on her bunch to open the back door, and then she hurried out to secure it, giving the man a cursory glance through the gaps of the wooden gate as she did. Ordinarily, she’d have said hello, but she was preoccupied with rescuing her bin lid. She managed to grab it and then plonked it back on the box, securing it with a stone from the garden. A moment later, the dog was bounding towards her. It leapt up at the gate, tail wagging furiously.
‘Hello!’ Zoe leaned over to fuss it. ‘You’re a big hairy thing, aren’t you? What’s your name?’
‘Griz!’ The man strode in their direction. ‘Griz, come here! ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said as he caught the dog by the collar and reattached the leash. ‘He’s gone a bit crazy with all this open air today.’
‘That’s all right; he’s lovely. What’s his name? Griz?’
‘Grizzle.’
‘That’s cute.’ Zoe rubbed a hand over the dog’s head, and he licked it. ‘Hello, Grizzle.’
‘He seems to like you,’ the man said. Zoe was struck by how handsome he was close up. ‘Then again, he’s as soft as they come – he likes everyone. Got him from the rescue home a couple of months ago.’
‘That’s nice. That you gave him a second chance, I mean.’
‘They said he had a nice owner before, but it was an older man who had a stroke and couldn’t cope with him after that. He’s still young – needs a lot of exercise.’
‘Lucky you live out here then where there’s plenty of space.’
‘I don’t. Not yet. Maybe. What do you think? Do you like it here?’
‘I’ve not long moved in, actually.’
‘Right…so how are you finding it? I mean, have you been here long enough to decide what you think?’
