Eastwold Book Bundle

Chapter One

District Nurse Alina Merrycott looked at the patient notes clutched in her hand and grimaced. Old Cedric Mahoney’s gout was still causing him incredible pain, and her lunchtime visit to change his dressings would do little to improve his discomfort. Scribbled in red pen, there was a warning remark. “Keep his walking stick out of reach. He hits people.” Come on, Alina, chin up. You’ve dealt with worse than him in your time.

Drawing her shoulders back, she raised her fist to knock on the door just as Linda Cranford, the harried Meals on Wheels volunteer, opened it to leave.

‘Good morning. Linda. How are you?’ Alina said, nimbly jumping aside, allowing Linda to push her basket ahead of her so she could squeeze out the narrow doorway. Alina’s stomach rumbled. A reminder that she’d missed lunch.

‘Busy as ever, and it’s already afternoon,’ Linda replied briskly. She removed her white caterers’ trilby to waft it at a large buzzing insect, then hurried down the path, jamming her hat firmly onto her head so it didn’t blow away. A wisp of mousy brown hair escaped, floating around her face as it was caught in a sea breeze. Linda stopped at the gate, removing her hand from the hat to open the latch. She turned, her light blue eyes squinting in the sunshine. ‘Careful,’ she said. ‘He’s in a bit of a grump today.’

Alina opened her mouth to reply, but Linda had already rushed away to her next client. She smiled. When was Cedric Mahoney anything else? She called out a cheery greeting to the old man as she stepped into the tight hallway of the tiny Victorian cottage.
She heaved her medical bag into the sitting room, placed it on the sofa and watched as the dust motes rose in a cloud. Cedric refused to have help to clean the cottage, but since it was now impossible for him to walk—thanks to his gout and the recent surgery—he definitely needed help. She made a mental note to call Kriya Andhra, the social worker, later.

‘How are you, Cedric?’ she said. ‘Did you have a nice lunch?’

The old man simply glowered at her. His rheumy, pale green eyes narrowed under bushy white eyebrows. ‘She brought me fish. I hate fish,’ he grumbled.

‘You ate most of it, though,’ said Alina noticing the clean plate. ‘That’s good.’

‘I was hungry, wasn’t I?’ he replied. ‘Can’t bear to see waste.’

Alina nodded in reply but kept her thoughts to herself. She took a few disposable gloves from her bag and popped two of them on the dark brown carpet. Then she slipped her hands into another pair before kneeling on the ones on the floor to attend to his dressings. Both she and Cedric winced as she unwrapped the bandages, uncovering the surgery site from where the tophi lumps, caused by the gout, had been removed. Holding her breath she took the final dressing from his big toe. The red line from the surgeon’s blade was stark against the old man’s pale skin, but there was no sign of swelling or infection.

‘That one’s healing up nicely, Cedric,’ said Alina. ‘How are you getting on with the medication?’

The old man narrowed his eyes and Alina made a very unchristian remark under her breath when his walking stick collided with her shoulder. She bowed her head, biting back the tears of pain, knowing she should have paid attention to the warning on his records, and put the heavy wooden cane out of reach. It would be dreadful publicity if a nurse, let alone one who was also part-time vicar, were to be arrested for assaulting an elderly patient, regardless of how much she’d been goaded.

The uric acid crystals forming around the old man’s toe joints would make his feet feel as if they were constantly on fire. It really wasn’t her intention to cause him unnecessary pain when she changed the dressings. I’ll need to put some arnica oil on my shoulder. Especially if she was to wear the little black off-the shoulder number she’d picked up from Melody Bell’s Eastwold Emporium to the golf club dinner-dance tomorrow night. It was a little slinkier than she normally, wore but Melody was an excellent saleswoman and Alina had to admit she felt good in the dress. At a mere five feet two inches, plus a few additional and unwanted pounds, she was never going to be willowy, but the black dress made her feel wonderful—almost sexy. Well, sensual at least.

She shook her head, bringing herself back to the here and now and Mr Mahoney’s feet. He braced himself, readying for the next raft of pain. She did not disappoint. In amongst his yells she heard a beeping sound. Persistent. Irritating and getting louder.

‘Aren’t you going to answer that thing?’ Mr Mahoney shouted.

‘Pardon?’ said Alina, suddenly realising that the noise was her phone. She pulled it out of her medical bag and stared at the reminder.

Daisy and Aaron’s wedding—3pm.

She muffled a squeal of anguish but noticed that it was not quite one thirty. She had plenty of time to get to her other job. As long as redressing Mr Mahoney’s other foot went well, she might even manage some lunch. She placed the walking stick out of reach and removed the dressings. She bathed the wound site and redressed his foot. ‘You do need to keep taking the tablets, Cedric,’ she said. ‘How’s your diet?’

‘I want some steak,’ muttered the old man. ‘I can’t stand all this rabbit food the Meals on Wheels woman brings me. If that’s what she fed her husband, it’s no wonder he left.’

‘You know red meat isn’t good for you, though. It builds up the uric acid and the gout will flare up again.’ Alina reached out behind her kneeling position and used Mr Mahoney’s stick to push herself up from the floor. She bent down, peeled the two gloves from the carpet, shuddered at the brown stickiness left on them and put them in the bin bag. At least the mess hadn’t soaked through her trousers and onto her skin.

‘I’ll see you after the weekend, Cedric,’ Alina said, ensuring his walking stick was back within reach. Not that he’d be walking anywhere. She made a mental note to warn the care team who’d be putting him to bed that he might be more irritable than usual this evening.

‘You not going to make me a cuppa?’ Cedric grumbled. ‘Dr Miriam always makes me a cup of tea and she stops for a chat. She keeps me up to date with everything that’s going on.’ He stuck out his bottom lip and reached for his cane.

Alina glanced at her watch. She could make time. Despite the number of people she saw throughout the day, she knew what loneliness felt like.

Patting her pocket to ensure she had more gloves in there, she strolled into the kitchen, bracing herself for what she expected to face.
Putting the gloves on she filled the kettle, rinsed out the teapot and scrubbed at a couple of teacups. She was surprised to find fresh milk in the fridge, briefly wondering if it was from Meals on Wheels or the night team. She’d stay for a quick chat and be on her way. There would be no time for lunch.  

After washing up the teacups, Alina stepped outside Cedric’s cottage and pulled the door shut. Shards of flaking paint dropped to the doorstep and were caught in a small eddy. They whirled around in a miniature maelstrom. The paintwork here was a stark contrast to the other neat cottages in the row.

Shielding her eyes, she looked out towards the sea. White crested waves galloped towards the beach and she heard the crash as they hit the groynes, which protected the sandy cliff base from erosion. The fence, supposed to protect people and their dogs from falling over the edge of the cliff was loose in places; posts hung precariously in mid-air.

Alina took a deep breath of fresh sea air, which tugged at the neat bun on the nape of her neck. Rubbing her shoulders, she eased out some kinks and stretched. After several years working in a busy London hospital, she was still getting used to the salty crispness of Eastwold. In many ways it reminded her of her hometown of Bournemouth but here, on the Suffolk coast, the North Sea was much colder than the English Channel, bringing with it bitterly brisk breezes despite the summer sun. Out the corner of her eye, Alina spotted a hovering seagull poised to dive bomb her. She ducked as she scampered along the road to her car, flinging her bag on the back seat and taking refuge in the front. The hungry gull realised it had lost out this time and, with the despairing cry of a howling child, it wheeled away, rising high on a thermal, as it searched for a tasty morsel to steal from its next victim.

Shivering, Alina peered through the windscreen after it. One memory floated into her mind. The screech from a particularly large gull and her suddenly empty ice cream cone…

The phone bleeped again and she snatched it up, noticing with an anguished squeal that there was only half an hour until the wedding and she would have no time to eat anything at all.

‘Please, please, please,’ Alina whispered as she placed her key in the ignition.

Delia, her burgundy and grey Citroën Dolly, was temperamental. Sometimes her engine would turn over without problems but increasingly there seemed a need for divine intervention. She turned the key. The engine coughed. Pumping the accelerator, she turned the key again. You’ll flood it. She heard Jake as clearly as if he were sitting next to her. She glared at the empty passenger seat, stroked the steering wheel, and prayed. Delia shuddered into life and they were soon chugging away from the sea towards the parish church of St Edmund the Martyr.

She was going to make it to the wedding after all. Well, she grinned, her green eyes sparkling as she tucked an unruly red curl behind her ear, it’s not as if they can really start without me.