Chapter 13
Did you get my message the other night? x
Zoe locked her phone with an impatient exhale.
Ritchie’s message was where all the trouble began.
If not for Ritchie’s message, Zoe wouldn’t have had her phone set to silent and wouldn’t have missed Tegan’s call.
The last thing she wanted to do this morning was read or respond to Ritchie’s stupid messages.
There was a light tap at her office door.
‘You can come in.’
Ottilie pushed open the door. ‘Hey, how are you? Simon told me about Tegan. You mustn’t blame yourself.’
‘I saw her in clinic.’
‘And you put her under surveillance, which was what any of us would have done with any other patient. There was no huge red flag…was there?’
Zoe didn’t like the way Ottilie had left the question open-ended.
As if there might have been a red flag and that Zoe might have missed it.
She’d been over the question herself many times since she’d left Tegan’s house.
Could she have done more? Should she have seen the signs?
But every time she asked herself, the answer was the same.
If time had somehow rewound and she could have done the clinic appointment again, she’d have done the same thing, every time.
It was what her training would have told her to do.
There were warnings of something, but nobody at that point could have known what.
‘Fliss wants you to pop in to see her,’ Ottilie added. ‘If you can spare five minutes.’
‘Did she say what she wanted?’
‘No, but I wouldn’t worry.’
Zoe got up. ‘I might as well go before clinic starts. I’m assuming her first patient isn’t in with her yet.’
‘I don’t think so. Knock and if she tells you to bugger off, you’ll have your answer.’ Ottilie gave a smile of encouragement, but Zoe couldn’t return it.
‘This is not like you,’ she added as Zoe made her way to the door. ‘I know this is a disappointing outcome, but you’ve dealt with cases like this before. I’ve never seen you so down.’
Zoe almost flinched. Ottilie had always been compassionate.
The Ottilie Zoe knew would have been as cut up about a patient in her care coming to harm as she was.
A disappointing outcome? They didn’t sound like Ottilie’s words, and Zoe wondered whether she was paraphrasing something Fliss had said that morning.
Perhaps that was why Fliss wanted to see her, to say: Chin up.
It was a disappointing outcome, but life goes on .
And life would go on – Zoe knew that. Knowing it eased the guilt.
Perhaps there had been a time when she would have seen this as part of the job, but that was before she’d lost her own baby.
Now, she understood, for the first time, that it was so much more.
‘I’ll go and see,’ Zoe said as Ottilie moved out of her way. ‘If she fires me, don’t worry – I’ll say goodbye before I leave.’
Fliss did not want to fire Zoe. The expected pep talk was issued.
Zoe nodded to everything and answered in the way she thought Fliss might want her to, and at Fliss’s prompting agreed to bring any worries to one of the partners rather than fretting.
She left the office feeling like she’d been to see the headmistress at school over some minor misdemeanour and then went to get on with her day.
Luckily, her morning clinic was a light one, and as she didn’t particularly want to socialise, she skipped lunch, taking herself out for a walk to clear her head instead.
As she passed the shop, she saw Magnus outside, putting up a large poster on the village noticeboard.
‘Hello,’ he called as he spotted her. She’d tried to sneak past, but it seemed she’d have to do better next time. ‘Out for a walk?’
‘Yes.’ Zoe forced a smile. ‘I’ve only got half an hour, though, so I doubt I’ll get far.’
‘I thought the surgery was closed for the whole hour?’
‘Oh, yes, but I’ve got to eat too,’ Zoe said, her ruse to get away from a protracted conversation with Magnus well and truly rumbled.
‘I suppose you’ll be coming.’ He angled his head at the poster. ‘Most everyone in Thimblebury will be there.’
Zoe stepped forward to take a closer look. ‘Oh, I’ve heard about that. Fliss said there was going to be an event of some kind, but I hadn’t realised it was going to be quite so big.’
He tapped a hand on the page. ‘Five hundred years. You can’t imagine it, can you? Five hundred years of this little place. I don’t know where they’ve got that number from, but someone’s worked it out.’
‘Five hundred years of it being an actual village or just people recorded as living here?’ Zoe asked, her mind going vaguely to the possibly Bronze Age finds she’d looked at during her visit to Hilltop.
‘Oh, I think people have lived around here for thousands of years. It’s probably when the king or queen recognised it or something like that. Geoff says it’s in the Domesday Book, and that’s ancient.’
‘I’m sure it would be,’ Zoe replied, not a clue whether it might be or not. Though, like most people, she’d heard of it, she barely knew what the Domesday Book was, let alone what was in it.
‘We’ve been given money,’ Magnus continued.
‘Have we?’ Zoe wondered who ‘we’ might be. Presumably the village, though knowing Magnus it could have been anyone.
‘Yes. There’s going to be fireworks and music and circus acts.’
‘Is there?’ She took another look at the poster. ‘I’m surprised they’re doing it so late in the year…Won’t it be a bit cold? Is it all going to be outside, I take it?’
Magnus gave a vague shrug. ‘To me, it’s not so cold. In Iceland, we’d be wearing our shorts.’
‘Would you?’
He laughed. ‘No, but I like to tell people that and see if they believe it. We’d wear big coats, like you.’
‘Oh, of course.’ Zoe made a show of laughing along, though she didn’t much feel like it. ‘I’m sure it will be a lovely occasion. I expect we can just turn up?’
‘Yes, yes. Geoff and I will be helping with the organisation. We’re on the committee, you know.’
‘That’s good of you.’
‘There’s going to be little films to tell stories of Thimblebury through the ages.’ His chest puffed out ever so slightly. ‘I’ve been asked to make one about coming to live here from Iceland. I can’t believe people are interested, but they must be.’
‘I can imagine you being good at that.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ Magnus said, clearly flattered anyway. ‘Did you enjoy your chocolate, by the way?’
‘My… oh, yes, thanks.’
‘He’s been asking us what so many people like, and he’s spent so much money. A sure sign he’s up to something, correct?’
‘I couldn’t possibly say,’ Zoe replied and then began to walk away, the sounds of Magnus chuckling to himself fading with every step.
She’d been warned that Flo was the village gossip, but she was beginning to see that Magnus would give Flo a run for her money.
Now that she thought of it, so would Lavender.
And to an extent, Ottilie’s friend Stacey too.
Thimblebury, on the whole, seemed to thrive on gossip.
Zoe had never lived in such a tight-knit community before, so perhaps it was the same wherever you went.
As she retraced her steps to the surgery, her stomach began to growl.
She was hungry, and that was good. She’d had no appetite at all so far that day.
She took it as a sign that she was feeling better.
After work, she’d drive back out to Tegan’s house.
The hospital had sent discharge notes, so Zoe knew Tegan had been sent home and that, aside from the obvious, there were no immediate concerns.
Which reminded her that she still had to reply to Ritchie.
Not because she was desperate to, but because he’d keep messaging until she did.
Or worse, he’d turn up at her house again.
She’d get back to work, see if there was any lunch left and then do it before she started the afternoon clinic.
She only wished she didn’t have to. Why couldn’t he leave her alone and move on?