‘Hello!’ she shouted. ‘Anyone home?’
There was no reply, but the dogs seemed to get louder. A solo chicken strutted past, and that was the first sight of actual life she’d seen since she’d got there.
With a sigh of frustration, she decided to dial the phone number she had once more. A man answered.
‘Hi, I don’t know if it was you I spoke to earlier, but I was hoping to get hold of Fern.’
‘I don’t think it was me. What do you want her for?’
‘I’m…I’m Zoe Padbury. A friend of hers.’
‘She’s never mentioned a friend called Zoe.’
‘But could you find her? I spoke to her earlier today, and she was meant to meet me.’
‘Meet you?’ He sounded doubtful. ‘She never said anything about wanting to go outside.’
Outside?Zoe resisted the urge to draw attention to the strange phrasing. She hadn’t really come across a community quite like this before, however, not in her professional capacity, and so perhaps it wasn’t so strange to them.
‘I really only need a quick word. I wouldn’t keep her for long.’
The line went dead. Did that mean he was going to get her? Zoe leaned over the gate and tried to get a good look over it. Now she could hear more activity coming from the back of the house so had to assume that was where most of day-to-day life happened. There were fields beyond – she could see the open ground at either side of the farmhouse, and the eaves of some outbuildings further away. Perhaps there was a lot more land behind it than was immediately apparent.
Just as she was thinking of phoning the number again, a woman emerged from the house and strode towards the gate. Not Fern – an older woman with long, grey hair, her muddy jeans tucked into a pair of wellies and an oversize parka slung around her shoulders.
‘You’re the…midwife.’ It was a statement rather than a question.
Zoe nodded. Was this Arwen, the commune mum Fern had talked about, the woman who’d wanted to take on the care of Fern and her baby?
‘She’s got everyone she needs here. I’m sorry you’ve made a wasted journey.’
She didn’t sound very sorry, and Zoe wasn’t about to walk away from this without some proof that Fern wasn’t being coerced into decisions about her care that she wasn’t happy with. After all, she’d phoned Zoe earlier for a reason.
‘Not wasted,’ she said as pleasantly as she could. ‘Not at all. I’m glad I’ve been over to see where she’s living.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It doesn’t mean anything. I would like to talk to her, if I could. Just to see for myself she’s all right.’
‘We’re not a cult, you know,’ the woman said sharply.
‘I never said you were. I only want to speak to her. If she’s here, then I don’t see what the problem is.’
‘She’s not.’
‘That’s not what the man I just spoke to on the phone said. He said she hadn’t gone outside today.’
‘I’ll get her.’
‘I’d rather come in to see her.’
‘It upsets the kids when strangers come in.’
‘But it must have to happen sometimes. Like when the utilities need seeing to, that sort of thing. Better to get them used to the idea that sometimes strangers do have to visit, isn’t it? Anyway, I’m hardly a threatening presence.’
The woman walked away without a reply, and Zoe was left once again to lean on the gate and wonder if she would get what she came for.
She waited for five minutes, constantly checking the time and torn over whether it was better to go back to work to see the patients she knew would absolutely turn up, or whether it washer duty to wait here until she saw for herself Fern was well, no matter how long that took. Her mind raced with options. She could, if she was very concerned, even call the police, but she didn’t want to do that if she could help it. A visit from the police would, at worst, uncover something horrible, and Zoe didn’t want to think about that, but at the very least it would erode any trust she might possibly build here and perhaps stop Fern from ever contacting her again, even if she needed help.
