More or less everything was straightforward, until she came to an email from Lavender. Fern, the mum-to-be from the commune, had been into the reception in person asking to see Zoe. She’d apparently left without saying what she’d wanted. Why walk all the way here for nothing? Why not phone? As unreliable as it seemed to be, Zoe knew Fern had access to one. Unless something had changed and she now didn’t?
The more she reflected on the situation, the more Zoe worried about it. She only wished she could work out why. There was…it was really nothing more than a general feeling of unease, that things weren’t as they ought to be. She’d seen no concrete proof, but…
She wondered how to get in touch with Fern. Did her in-person visit mean she’d rather the commune not know she’d been trying to speak to a midwife other than Arwen?
With a few minutes to spare before her first appointment of the day was due to arrive, she went through to see Lavender. Perhaps their perceptive and experienced receptionist could shed some light on it.
‘I was a bit busy.’ Lavender fixed a stamp to an envelope and tossed it onto a pile of letters. ‘She came in like a startled deer,asked for you, and then went. I did try to find out what she was after.’
‘Did you get the feeling…?’ Zoe lowered her voice and leaned in. Only old Mrs Icke was in the waiting room and she was infamously deaf, but it seemed to be a selective deafness that nobody was quite convinced existed. It would be just Zoe’s luck for her to hear this and repeat it to someone else. ‘Well, did she say I couldn’t contact her?’
‘She didn’t ask if you would, but she didn’t say not to either. Can’t you just phone? We’ve still got a number on file.’
‘I know we have, but she doesn’t always get to answer it. I’m not sure if it’s her personal phone or some sort of communal number. Last time I called it, she wasn’t allowed to come and speak to me.’
Lavender raised her eyebrows, her face lighting with curiosity.
‘That’s the impression I got anyway,’ Zoe added quickly to shut down any salacious speculation. ‘I’m not saying that’s what’s happening. I could be very wrong.’
Lavender looked faintly disappointed, but she didn’t seem keen to let go of the gossip yet. She tossed another letter onto the pile. ‘I always thought they were a weird lot. I shudder to think what goes on in that place.’
‘I’m sure it’s only weird to us because we don’t understand it. It’s just another way to live, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, a weird one.’
‘I’m sure if anything bad was happening, we’d have heard about it before now. They’ve been there for a few years, haven’t they? And nobody has ever come from there and said anything…’ Zoe didn’t know how to finish the sentence because that hadn’t been what her gut had been telling her only minutes earlier. But she preferred to avoid fanning the flames of rumours that might not be remotely true.
‘All I’m saying,’ Lavender began with the conviction of someone who’d had a glimpse of a certainty nobody could dispute, ‘is that if they lock themselves in one day and set fire to?—’
‘Lavender!’ Zoe hissed, glancing at Mrs Icke. ‘Don’t say things like that!’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened – I watched a documentary on somewhere just like that. And I’m sure it wouldn’t be the last. There are weirdos everywhere and people daft enough to listen to them. There’s a reason these people don’t fit into normal society.’
‘Maybe they just don’t want to.’
‘But that’s not what you think in this case, is it? Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation now, would we?’
As much as Zoe hated Lavender’s smug assertion, she couldn’t help but admit to a tiny grain of truth in it. ‘I was only trying to get to the bottom of the message,’ she replied tartly, annoyed that Lavender had seen what she’d hoped to keep hidden. She turned to go back to her office. ‘Thanks for your help.’
‘You’re welcome,’ Lavender replied, tone heavy with sarcasm as she went back to her post.
Zoe was tempted to reply, but instead she marched back to her office. Sometimes she liked Lavender very much. Sometimes she had less patience, and today was looking like the latter of the two.
She was deep in thought as she returned to her desk. Should she pay the commune an impromptu visit? She could go under the pretence that she was passing and wondered how Fern and Arwen were coping. But she hadn’t exactly been welcomed last time, and she didn’t see how things would be any different now.Perhaps her first instinct was the simplest and most logical one – that she’d phone the commune’s number when she had a moment in the hope that Fern would answer. But whatever she settled on would have to wait – her first appointment was due, and Zoe was nowhere near ready for her.
Zoe didn’t much feel like going to lunch in the kitchen. She was still annoyed at Lavender, which probably had more to do with the fact that Lavender had rumbled her true feelings on Fern’s commune, feelings that went against her tolerant nature, than it did with Lavender herself. Although, Lavender was very good at being right about things and even better at being smug about it. Even so, she was eager to share the meal Shabana had brought in because she’d never eaten something their locum nurse had made before, and she didn’t want to offend her. She also hoped to catch up with Simon, who she felt she’d neglected somewhat, on a personal level, over the previous weeks. And so she bottled up her pride and went into the kitchen to find Lavender mid-flow in a conversation with Shabana and Simon, sharing her side of the conversation she’d had with Zoe that morning about Fern and the commune.
On the odd occasion during her working life, Zoe had walked into a staff area and a sudden silence had descended, and she’d known that the conversation had been about her. It was a part of working for a large organisation doing a job that could be considered high stakes, that decisions she made or opinions she held on a case would rub someone up the wrong way, and so she’d never taken it personally. She’d decided there was no point because the very fact the room had fallen silent meant she didn’t know what they’d been saying anyway, and she could only surmise it had been about her, so what was the point in getting upset over an unknown thing? Lavender, however, didn’tseem worried at all that Zoe had walked in. She simply threw a wordless acknowledgement her way and then carried on.
‘If it was me, I’d call the police. That place needs to be raided because you can’t tell me there’s not something going on there. At the very least, I’ll bet there’s drugs on the premises. These places are full of drug addicts.’
Shabana went to the stove, perhaps feeling she wasn’t a firm enough part of the team to get involved either way. Simon looked as if he wished the ground would swallow him up. He offered Zoe a deeply apologetic grimace before turning back to Lavender.
‘I’m not sure we should indulge in generalisations like that. We don’t know any of this. I haven’t seen much of them, but from what I have seen, they appear to be a peace-loving bunch who’ve just chosen to live outside society.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘And who here hasn’t dreamed, even once, of living with that much freedom?’
‘Freedom?’ Lavender scoffed. ‘Zoe, tell him about their so-called freedom. That poor girl can’t even come and see the midwife without the rest of the commune having a vote on it. I don’t call that freedom. I call freedom being able to go to Tesco when I want and talk to my friends on the phone when it suits me without everyone else having a meeting about it.’ She reached for the water jug. ‘It’s weird.’
Simon turned to Zoe. ‘Doyou have doubts about this woman’s situation?’
