District Nurse on Call by Donna Douglas

Author:Donna Douglas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2017-07-27T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Six

Agnes had grown to dread Friday afternoons.

Sitting alone in the hall at the Miners’ Welfare Institute, surveying the rows of empty chairs in front of her – not so many now, she had learned her lesson after that first week – she would listen to the ponderous ticking of the clock, willing the hands to inch around to half-past three, when she could pack everything away again and the agony would be over for another week.

She knew she should give up. It was her fourth clinic, and not a soul had come in all those weeks. Apart from Carrie Shepherd, who turned up in a show of loyalty that somehow made Agnes feel even more of a failure.

Dr Rutherford had hardly been able to disguise his satisfaction.

‘What did I tell you?’ he had said. ‘These people will never appreciate you, no matter what you do. Might as well give it up, my dear.’

It was his words, as well as her own stubborn streak, that kept Agnes turning up at the Welfare Institute every week, setting up the chairs and putting out her screens and scales.

At the end of the passage, she could hear the women laughing as they went about their work in the soup kitchen. It was three o’clock and the children would be coming out of school now, making their way up the lane for their only meal of the day.

The rich scent of frying onions drifted through the open double doors, making her stomach groan. She hoped Jinny had remembered to leave her something to eat before she started on the afternoon rounds.

The sudden sound of a shower of gravel rattling against the window shook Agnes out of her reverie. She started to her feet in surprise, just as another missile came sailing through the open window, landing inches from where she had been sitting.

Agnes stared down at the jagged rock at her feet, too shocked to move for a moment, until a shout of laughter from outside galvanised her. She rushed outside, squinting in the bright sunshine, just in time to see a group of boys running up the road.

‘Come back!’ Agnes called after them. ‘You could have hurt someone—’

‘Oi, miss!’

Before she had time to react, a hand reached up and snatched the cap from her head, wrenching it free of its pins and making her yelp in pain.

Agnes swung round and found herself staring into the insolent, smirking face of a dark-haired boy. Christopher Stanhope. He and his tearaway friends always seemed to be hanging around the village these days, jeering at her as she cycled past.

He twirled her cap in his grubby fingers, just out of her reach.

‘Give me that back,’ Agnes said, trying to keep the anger out of her voice.

‘Shan’t.’

‘It doesn’t belong to you.’

‘It does now.’ He took off his cap and put hers on instead, striking a comical pose. ‘Don’t you think it suits me?’

‘Give it back!’ Agnes made a grab for it but Christopher was too quick for her. His skinny body ducked out of reach.

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