Page 16 of Christmas for the Village Midwife (The Village Midwife #2)

From a small speaker on the reception desk, traditional carols were playing.

It was possibly at a volume too loud for the space, and they’d undoubtedly get complaints from patients once the doors had opened, but one look at the surprisingly dark scowl on Lavender’s face, despite the festive jollity of the music, persuaded Zoe that she shouldn’t mention it.

Besides, she was balanced on a stepladder tacking bright streamers to the wall, and so Zoe decided it was better not to distract her, not even with a good morning.

But Lavender called down as Zoe walked past.

‘You have no objections to me putting up Christmas decs in your room?’

‘I don’t see why I would. Good morning, by the way.’

‘Only some people seem to think they’re unhygienic.

Honestly! It’s not like she’s performing open heart surgery in there.

’ Lavender came down the ladder and dug into a cardboard box on the floor, pulling out another garland.

‘I mean, it’s Christmas, isn’t it? I’ve been patient enough – left up to me I’d have put them up weeks ago, but Simon told me to hang on.

But people want to be cheered up, don’t they?

If you’re ill at Christmas, you at least want something to take your mind off it.

It’s nice to see the place looking bright, isn’t it? ’

‘Is it?’

‘Of course!’ Lavender held up some tinsel. ‘This is not tacky! It’s nice tinsel. It wasn’t cheap – I ordered it online from John Lewis!’

‘It’s lovely tinsel…’

‘And there’s nothing migraine-inducing about a splash of colour, is there? And trees don’t take up that much space, do they? Not a tiny three-footer! Zoe, you were over there last night, weren’t you? I bet they don’t have a scrap of tinsel up in that house, do they?’

‘You mean Emilia’s house?’

‘Yes! Is the sister as miserable as her?’

‘You mean Georgia?’

At this point, Zoe was reeling from the speed of Lavender’s interrogation. She also hoped that Emilia wouldn’t walk through at that moment and overhear any of the conversation she seemed to have been kidnapped by.

‘I don’t know what her name is. I’ll leave, you know. I’ve had just about enough! Fliss didn’t care for Christmas, but at least she let the rest of us enjoy it! At least she didn’t suck the joy out of everything!’

‘Well, I wasn’t here last Christmas, so…’

Yanking the tinsel behind her, Lavender stomped back up the ladders. ‘I don’t have time to talk right now. I’ve got a load of tacky decorations to get up!’

Zoe paused, floored by the aftermath of Lavender’s ire, and wondered what she could say to make it better. But as she watched Lavender tug the tinsel into place, she decided it was probably best to say nothing. Leaving her to it, she met Ottilie in the corridor.

‘I see you’re still in one piece,’ she said with a wry smile.

‘Lavender? Yes, apparently Emilia has issues with Christmas decorations. She flat-out refused to have any in her room and told Lavender in no uncertain terms what she thought of it all. But she hasn’t banned them from everywhere, has she? Lavender was putting them up in reception.’

‘I think she would if she could, but I wonder if Simon has had a word. Lavender’s threatened to hand in her notice at least three times this morning that I know of.

He doesn’t have a long history of working with her like Fliss did, but even he can see how good she is for the running of the surgery.

It’d be chaos if we lost her – at least until we could get someone trained up, and to be trained to her standard would take months. Maybe even years.’

‘What do you do when she’s ill?’

‘Panic,’ Ottilie said with a grin.

‘I hate to break it to you, but she’s just threatened to hand in her notice with me too. You don’t really think she’d go?’

‘If you’d asked me a couple of months ago, I’d have said no way, but since Fliss left…

well, we all know they were close, and Lavender was gutted when Fliss retired.

I think under the radar it’s been on her mind since then.

She doesn’t really need to work, you know.

I think they’d manage all right on her hubby’s money, but she likes coming to work because…

well, I think it gives her purpose. But if it stops being fun, then why would she want to come? ’

‘I suppose so, but nobody is irreplaceable. One day she’s going to retire as well, and then we’ll have to sort things out for someone else to take over.’

‘I know, but I don’t fancy dealing with that any time soon.

What she doesn’t know about the running of this place really isn’t worth knowing, and when the time comes for her to leave, it would be better if it was under amicable circumstances, ideally with a handover period so someone new can be trained. ’

‘Simon will smooth things over.’

‘He could if—’ Ottilie stopped, looking guilty as Lavender appeared at the end of the corridor with a tattered old box in her arms marked Decorations .

‘Are you going to tell me I can’t do your room?’ she demanded.

Ottilie gave her head a vigorous shake. ‘God no! Please come and bless me with Christmas cheer because I’m afraid to refuse it!’

Lavender dropped the box with a crash and her hands went to her hips. ‘Is that meant to be funny or something?’

‘Sorry, no, it’s not. Of course you can come in and do mine. I mean, I can do it if you’re busy?—’

‘I’m always busy, but I still make time for stuff like this, even though it’s not appreciated.’

‘It’s appreciated by us,’ Zoe said. ‘Very much.’

‘Just give us a bit of warning before you come down to our rooms,’ Ottilie said.

‘I’m not stupid!’ Lavender shot back before scooping up the box and marching back to reception.

‘Bloody hell,’ Ottilie said, blowing out a long breath. ‘You don’t happen to have a hard hat in your room, do you? The mood she’s in today we’ll need all the bodily protection we can get!’

Corrine handed Billie an apron. It was decorated with sprigs of holly and had deep symmetrical creases that suggested it had been recently purchased and only just taken out of the packaging.

Zoe had brought her own over, one that had been gifted to her by Corrine shortly after her arrival in Thimblebury.

Corrine wore her old splattered, faded, tested and true faithful, the same one she almost always had on whenever Zoe called in.

‘I don’t need that,’ Billie said, holding it at arms’ length. ‘I won’t make a mess.’

‘I’m sure you won’t, but just in case. I’d hate for you to stain that lovely top.’

Corrine gestured for her to put it on, and in the end Billie did, checking out the kitchen as if she hoped nobody really cool was hiding in a cupboard ready to jump out and laugh at her.

Zoe shared a secret look of amusement with Corrine. ‘No Ottilie?’ she asked. ‘I thought she was coming.’

‘She phoned to say she was feeling tired and wanted to stay in.’

‘I don’t blame her.’ Zoe glanced at Billie. ‘How are you doing there? Not too tired to bake?’

‘I’ve done nothing but sleep this week,’ Billie said. ‘I’m all right. You’re as bad as Dad, keeping on asking me every five minutes.’

‘It’s only because he cares about you,’ Corrine said briskly. ‘You’d have cause for complaint if he stopped asking, I’d say.’

To Zoe, Corrine’s statement sounded a little like a rebuke and not like the usual gentle Corrine at all. She couldn’t deny, however, that there was some truth in it, and, as Billie didn’t reply, it seemed she thought so too.

Perhaps Corrine thought she’d been a little harsh, however, because her next enquiry was much more like her old self. ‘Do you bake at all?’ she asked Billie.

‘Not really. Don’t have time. I mean, I didn’t used to.’

‘Not even with your mum?’

‘No,’ Billie said, as unflinching at the mention of her dead mother as Corrine was in addressing her.

Zoe was used to that reaction now. Billie had built a wall around her grief – for both her mother and Luis, the boyfriend she’d lost tragically, shortly before she’d discovered she was pregnant with his child.

She kept it locked up tight, and Zoe understood better than most that it was a coping mechanism, the only way she’d learned how to function in the face of so much heartache.

‘Mum ran the business with Dad,’ she continued. ‘She didn’t have much time for cooking. We ate out a lot in Spain. It was cheap and pretty good.’

Corrine looked sceptical, as if the notion of someone who didn’t cook must be a lie. But then she gave a practical nod. ‘So I’ll start at the beginning and you won’t feel I’m teaching grandma to suck eggs. Righto, that’s all I needed to know.’

Zoe and Billie went to wash their hands while Corrine got various tools and bowls from the cupboards.

From the corner of her eye, Zoe spotted what she presumed was Corrine’s latest gingerbread test run sitting on a board.

If it were possible, it was even more impressive than the one Zoe had seen before.

‘Corrine… this is amazing!’

‘Well, it’s better than the last one,’ Corrine said, coming up behind her and giving it an ultra-critical once-over. ‘Yes, I think it’s getting close to something reasonable now.’

Billie came to see what they were looking at. ‘That’s what I’ve got to do?’ she asked, staring at Corrine’s creation with uncharacteristic awe. It wasn’t often Zoe saw her impressed, and that had to be impressive in itself. ‘There’s no way!’

‘Don’t be downhearted before you’ve even had a go,’ Corrine said. ‘You don’t know what you’re capable of until you try.’

‘I know I’m not capable of that!’

Zoe herself was fully aware of her own severe shortcomings, but she intended to have fun trying. ‘As long as it tastes good, I won’t worry too much if mine doesn’t look perfect,’ she said.

‘That’s the spirit,’ Corrine said with an encouraging smile. ‘It’ll all look the same once it’s gone down.’

‘Easy for you to say!’ Billie replied, eyeing Corrine’s baking with serious doubt. ‘That looks amazing and probably tastes amazing too.’