Snowed in at the Practice Read online

  Melva leaned forward, elbows on her knees, brown uniform almost crackling. ‘I think the most important thing, is to start as you mean to go on. One must really be very firm with Baby from the outset. Or indeed Babies, I should say. Baby needs to know his or her routine and to fit around the family, don’t you agree, Mummy? There’s no need for the entire family to be disrupted during their early years, after all.’

  Holly nodded and sipped her tea, desperately trying to regain her composure and determinedly looking away from Elsie for fear of total and unprofessional collapse. Although, come to think of it, she wasn’t here in a professional capacity, was she? This was her home, her children, her rules.

  ‘And if the family in question wanted a slightly more, well, laid-back approach. After all, if I’d been at work all day, I would like to see my children—’

  ‘After bedtime?’ Melva cut in. ‘Oh, Mummy. Routine is everything – especially with twins.’

  Elsie’s snort was quiet but unmistakable.

  There was no doubt that Melva was qualified – overqualified probably for what they needed – but Holly was beginning to realise that it wasn’t letters after their names she was after. Given a decent amount of experience – unlike the dreadful Bettina – they needed someone like-minded to slot into their already chaotic lives.

  Showing Melva the door was easy.

  Working out what to do next to narrow the search was somewhat harder. A squawk from the baby monitor meant their time was up. The last candidate would very much have to take them as she found them.

  *

  Nuzzling both of the girls into her arms at once was a skill that she had carefully honed over the last twelve months. Olivia and Lottie settled so much more happily if they were together and Holly could also do away with the constant tally chart that ran in her subconscious to check she was dividing her time equally.

  It had been the same with Ben and Tom and nothing had really changed.

  There was still only one Holly to go around, only this time she was stretched in four directions.

  Wiping ineffectually at the sweet potato purée stain on her blouse, Holly gazed down at her girls adoringly, their starfish fingers reaching out and grasping anything within reach. After every meal, it was cuddle time.

  Family law.

  Admittedly, it was a little cosy on the sofa when everyone was home, but it also gave Holly a real opportunity to spend time with her kids. It was also the time that Ben and Tom were most forthcoming about their day at school. If she asked as soon as they got home, she was lucky to get a ‘yeah, good’ in response. If she wanted to know how they were really doing, then cuddle time was it.

  Perhaps the same could be applied to Elsie, she wondered, whose behaviour had become increasingly squirrelly of late. ‘So, any news on the noisy neighbours?’ she asked, all innocence, determined not to let on that Connor had already dropped her in it.

  The doorbell rang, setting off a cacophony of barking from Eric and the odd, snuffling grunty greeting that Nineteen had adopted since being relocated to the garden full time.

  ‘Crap, she’s early,’ said Holly, looking around at the scene of devastation that had taken a mere twenty minutes to evolve. There was also no hiding the look of relief and guilt that flitted across Elsie’s face and Holly briefly wondered whether Elsie was in fact having an amorous affair with some ageing lothario on the other side of the party-wall.

  ‘Don’t you dare tidy up for the staff!’ said Elsie firmly, regaining her poise. ‘I’ll get the door; you stay put.’

  Holly fidgeted uncomfortably, every part of her screaming out that just a quick tidy, a gathering of muslins and onesies would surely be okay – her contentedly settled children staring up at her said otherwise. Stay put, don’t move. If she was here to judge, then Plum Castigliano was not the help that Holly needed.

  Holly smoothed the tiniest perfect ringlet from Olivia’s forehead, finding a more serene sense of purpose simply from following their lead. She glanced up to see Elsie practically fizzing with excitement in the doorway.

  ‘Come through, come through and meet Dr Graham,’ Elsie said impishly, mouthing something to Holly that looked like ‘way too hot’. Holly frowned for a moment before Plum walked in behind her and the mystery was solved.

  Plum walked across the sitting room, looking for all the world like a young Sophia Loren. ‘Oh, hello, bambinas,’ she said warmly, tossing her well-worn Tods bag onto the floor and sitting down beside Holly on the sofa, eschewing the carefully positioned ‘interviewee’ armchair. ‘Oh, Dr Graham, they will be heart-wreckers when they are bigger, yes?’ She held out a finger and Lottie instantly clasped it tightly. ‘This is good. Girls need to be strong, Dr Graham, don’t you think?’

  ‘Hi,’ said Holly, ‘I’d shake your hand, but—’

  Plum laughed easily. ‘You have them full, no?’ She leaned in and brushed feather-light kisses on each of Holly’s cheeks. ‘So we say hello the Italian way.’ She crossed her endless legs and her slender pencil skirt moved with her body as though it were tailored to fit her personally.

  ‘I have here my documenti and my references . . .’ She reached down and pulled out a sheaf of papers held together with an expensive tortoiseshell hairclip. ‘But you know, the most crucial things cannot be written on a piece of a paper.’

  Holly’s glance flickered over to Elsie, who was looking equally spellbound. ‘We were saying just the same thing, only moments ago,’ she confessed, not even looking at the paperwork. ‘Why don’t you tell us a little about yourself?’

  Plum smiled. ‘Well, this is no problem. I talk a lot. You need to know this about me.’ She glanced down at the gurgling babies in Holly’s arms. ‘So there is also no problem with the cell phone and the iPad. With my babies, we do the talking – in English, in Italian, as you prefer.’ She smiled, blushing prettily. ‘Così – about me. I am the middle child of seven in my family. You know Italians! So from a very early time I was taking care of my little brother and sisters. Then I trained with a lovely family in Florence – they had three nannies and eight children, from babies to teenager. I had to learn fast, you know? And then I like to travel, so I work with this company who lend the villas – very big, very beautiful – a lot of very spoiled children, though. It is sad, I am thinking, to have so much, but appreciate so little. But I realise, you see, my English needs the work and so I am arriving this month, with all my letters of support and you can phone these families too if you want.’

  Plum stopped for a moment, guiltily smiling as she realised she had barely taken a breath. ‘I am not looking for temporary, Dr Graham. I look for a home in England, with a nice family, like when I was beginning in Florence. I look to grow with the children, you know.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Holly after a moment. ‘And how do you feel about animals? Dogs, pigs, occasionally geese . . .’ She was feeling her way here, waiting for the flaw, the crack in the porcelain of perfection.

  Plum laughed. ‘My home in Toscana is a farm, so I’m okay if you want me to milk a goat.’ She shrugged apologetically. ‘I’m okay to butcher your pig, but I do not like to do the killing, I’m sorry.’

  Holly gasped. ‘No, no, he’s a pet – the pig. He’s part of the family. No killing required.’

  ‘Oh, okay! Uff!’ said Plum prettily. ‘Sometimes the English can be a little . . .’ She made her deep limpid eyes go wide. ‘You know?’

  ‘Oh, I do,’ said Elsie, nodding her head, as though she herself weren’t one hundred per cent Union Jack through and through.

  Holly shook her head and laughed. ‘Okay, so you’re good with animals, you’re used to a little chaos and you’re happy for me to call your references?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Plum firmly as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. It was indeed a world away from the evasive, canny manoeuvrings on this very point that they had witnessed of late.

  Lottie began to squirm and fidget and Holly moved to quickly adjust.

  ‘May I
?’ asked Plum, as she caught Lottie before she could slide any lower on Holly’s lap. ‘Well, hello there, I’m Plum,’ she said very seriously. ‘It is most wonderful to be making your acquaintance.’

  ‘That’s Lottie,’ said Holly, watching Plum’s deft and easy manner with interest.

  ‘This is such a pretty name,’ Plum said. ‘You are a very lucky girl, Miss Lottie. My true name is Vittoria, but my brothers and sisters they called me Plum, like in the books. And also it is hard to say, no? Can you say Vittoria, little Lottie? You see – complicato – too tricky.’

  Holly looked up at Elsie, eyes questioning. She was so strongly tempted to hire this girl on the spot. Yes, she was gorgeous and Elsie was right, way too hot to be a sensible hire. But then, what did that say about Taffy if she turned away this perfect woman on the strength of a possible flaw in his willpower?

  ‘Plum?’ said Holly. ‘Do you drive? Can you cook?’ Her common sense reasserted itself in the face of this woman’s charisma. But in all honesty, who was she kidding? She knew instinctively that Plum would simply gel with their household, that Ben and Tom would adore her and that she’d match Elsie banter for banter.

  Plum shrugged. ‘Of course. I have a clean licence and I can cook for the whole family if you like. You like lasagne? Risotto? Maybe a little roast pork?’ She gasped in horror. ‘Not your little piglet, of course! I can go to the butcher!’

  Elsie was working hard to find reasons to find fault too. ‘Ben – he’s six – has a severe allergy to dairy. How would you handle that?’

  Plum considered for a moment. ‘It will be difficult for him, yes? With friends and play-days after school? I think I must teach him to cook delicious things that have no dairy. Teach him where to look, which dishes are safe, so he can eat with confidence. Invite his friends for a meal, you know. Show them that different isn’t bad. Different can be good. But we must be careful too – your other boy, and these girls, they need their calcium. I am thinking lots of seafood and the – how do you say? Legumes?’

  ‘How would you feel about a trial period?’ Holly said after a moment.

  ‘To live with you here?’ Plum queried.

  Holly nodded. ‘I have some time before I go back to work. Things are a little, well, uncertain on that front, but I thought perhaps we could overlap?’

  Plum’s face lit up. ‘You could show me the rope! I would love this. Sometimes, when I start with a new family, they just give me a list.’ The disdain in her voice for this approach was unconcealed. ‘You can show me how you like things to be. I am not their mama, after all. But I need to follow your lead.’

  Holly paused, taking in the chic, beautiful young woman before her. She had no doubt that she would treasure and nurture her children. And, in a way, wasn’t it complete discrimination to turn her away simply because she was so stunningly beautiful? She tugged briefly at her sleeves, wondering whether as part of her acclimatisation programme, Plum might be persuaded to take her shopping. There was a time and a place for dungarees and Taffy’s jumpers, but if she were going to pick up the mantle of Dr Graham, rather than simply ‘Mummy’, then where better to start?

  Lizzie’s advice flickered through her head: ‘You feel good; you look good.’ She made a concentrated effort to ignore her other, more salient, pearls of wisdom – ‘Never invite a beautiful woman into your home unless you plan to be there.’

  Holly watched Lottie’s reaction to Plum, her peals of laughter and her open smile. ‘Plum, do you have any personal commitments? A boyfriend? An all-consuming love of drums or tap-dancing?’

  Plum laughed, her raven hair reflecting the beams of sunlight that filtered through the window, as she leaned forward to clasp Holly’s forearm affectionately. ‘Oh, Dr Graham, you make me laugh. But no – there is nothing, nobody. I am footloose and fancy-free. Did I say that right?’

  ‘You did,’ said Holly, knowing it should make a difference, make her pause, but her heart was ruling her head in making this decision. ‘When would you like to start?’

  Chapter 11

  Alice passed the box of tissues across the desk to Margaret Harwood and gave her a moment to compose herself. It was almost as though the Universe was having a little laugh at her expense this afternoon.

  Seriously, she thought, what were the odds that—

  ‘And I know she’s busy,’ sobbed Margaret, ‘and they’ve got a lot on, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t visit! I am her mother, after all.’

  Alice tried so hard to empathise with her patients, to look past the medical sometimes, to the personal issues behind their symptoms, but this one was seriously testing her. Although it wasn’t poor Margaret’s fault that her appointment came hot on the tails of three increasingly bulldozing voicemails from Alice’s own mother.

  ‘Well,’ said Alice, ‘why don’t you go and visit them? I’m sure that Kim would love to see you, even if she can’t swing a visit to you here. I mean, if she and her husband are both working, and the kids have schools and clubs and commitments, that’s five people’s diaries to wrangle. Whereas, if you went to stay with them, you could slot right in. Granny on site? From what you’ve said, it seems like Kim has her hands pretty full?’

  Margaret looked at her sharply. ‘Did she call you? Did she tell you to say all this?’

  Alice shook her head. ‘I just like to look at situations from both sides. And, to be honest, Margaret, I don’t want to be prescribing you anti-anxiety medication just because you’ve asked for it. Anxiety is a clinical diagnosis, Margaret. It’s more than a bad mood, or feeling panicky or angry—’

  ‘Well, I phoned that Lizzie woman on the radio the other week and she said that misplaced anger could be a sign of anxiety,’ Margaret countered, looking very pleased with herself.

  Alice sighed; there were some patients who were never going to be happy unless they walked out of her consulting room with a prescription in their hand. Sadly, she had yet to find a way to prescribe what Margaret really needed on the NHS. She saw it a lot; older women who seemed to have forgotten how challenging it was to raise a young family, and that was even before the concept of ‘having it all’ had translated into ‘doing it all’ for most women. And, of course, like poor, much-maligned Kim, the later they were starting a family, the more likely they were to be juggling a demanding career, young children and increasingly challenging elderly parents. And the geographical spread hardly helped.

  Alice sighed. There wasn’t a prescription for empathy, although rarely a day went by when Alice didn’t wish otherwise.

  *

  Even three patients later, Margaret’s obvious distress still left footprints in Alice’s mind.

  Was there a similar story being shared with her own mother’s GP back in Orkney, she wondered, trying to follow her own advice to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. Particularly where her own mother was concerned, it was easier said than done.

  Freya Walker was Orkney born and bred, never having entertained for a moment that her mainlander-husband would have done anything except follow her back to the islands and make his own life there too. Since his passing, she had become gradually more and more resolute in her belief that life began and ended in the wilds of this Scottish outpost. Her moods were mercurial at best, her disposition towards Alice changing with the direction of the wind, or so it seemed.

  She had taken Alice’s decision to head south as a sign of rebellion, accusing her of going ‘soft’ but always, always believing that she’d be back.

  Alice took a deep breath, picked up the phone and dialled, wondering which version of Freya Walker would be on parade today: loving mother, demanding tyrant, Orkney’s greatest proponent or simply a tearful old lady appealing to her daughter’s compassion to come home?

  ‘Mum, it’s me.’

  ‘Whitna wey is tha ta say Aye te tha mither?’ came her mother’s garbled response, her words a mongrel combination of English and Orkney’s distinctive dialect. As always, it took a few moments for her mind to change gear
when her daughter phoned from ‘aff sooth’. Alice could almost hear the cogs whirling. ‘How are ye, Alice?’

  ‘I’m okay, Mum. Just at work and thinking about you, so I thought I’d call.’

  ‘Ah, well tha’s alwis nice to hear,’ replied Freya, her tone softening more and more with each syllable. ‘I was talking about ye only yesterday. Magnus Droll from the castle sends his best. Offered to find a job for your Jamie if you’re ready to come home? Assuming he is still your Jamie with this daft job in Donegal keeping him away.’ She always spoke as though Alice were away from the islands under sufferance, a nuisance to be tolerated until she could be home again. Freya Walker had never understood Alice’s desire to flee the somewhat overwhelming reality of island-life and she really couldn’t understand why Jamie had made his choice to be away from her daughter.

  Alice smiled through slightly gritted teeth. ‘You are lovely, Mum. And do please thank Magnus, but I’m not sure there’s much call for training assistance dogs at the castle.’

  ‘Ach, he’s adaptable, isn’t he, this lad of yours? He likes dogs, and they’re in need of a gamekeeper.’ She paused. ‘Dr Sjorgen is retiring next year, you know . . .’

  Alice did know.

  She’d been receiving the countdown to Dr Sjorgen’s retirement in every phone call for the last three years. It felt like a large Countdown clock ticking in the background of every phone call and the resulting tug of obligation and guilt was a cocktail that left a bitter taste.

  In Alice’s opinion, it was no coincidence that the Orcadian expression for common sense was ‘mither witt’ – it was absolute doctrine that mother knew best, an uncomfortable relic of her island education that refused to release its tenacious hold on her belief system no matter how far south she moved.

  *

  Never had Alice been so delighted about one of Tilly’s dramas as she was after ten minutes of this circular conversation with her mother, going nowhere but wearing her down nonetheless. And her mother wondered why she didn’t call more often?