‘Just calling in to see Eleanor’s friend. She works here.’
‘Alice Munroe.’ He sneered Alice’s name as though it was a euphemism for a pub toilet.
‘Right. Great to see you.’ Daniel turned to me, jaw set. ‘Let’s eat at that table in the sunshine. If he’s got that much of a problem with it, I’ll take the cider I haven’t even grown the apples for yet elsewhere.’
‘Okay.’ I gave an internal sigh of relief that he’d seen sense.
I fetched us drinks and menus from inside, saying a quick hello to Alice, who was busy serving plates of sandwiches to the Ferrington Foxes football club. Luke gave me a brief nod, which I guessed was his equivalent of someone else running over and throwing their arms around me.
A few minutes later Alice came to find me in the garden.
‘Well, this is cosy.’ She bent down to give Hope a kiss. ‘Nice to see you venturing over to the dark side, Daniel.’
‘Your words, not mine.’
‘Becky told me the news.’ She threw me a wink.
‘What news is that?’ Daniel asked.
‘Dating, kissing… For what it’s worth, I agree with Becks that if you’re going to take a man like Daniel off the market, the least you can do is make the most of it. Men like him are all too rare.’
Daniel looked momentarily surprised, before burying a grin behind his bottle of cider.
‘They aren’t that rare,’ I replied, pointedly. ‘Amazing women, like, ooh, I don’t know,youfor instance, have no reason to be settling for a man who is any less than equally as amazing.’
Alice pursed her lips. ‘Right, what’ll it be?’
Halfway through our decidedly average burgers, there was a sudden shout from the other side of the garden. A crowd quickly gathered around the figure of a woman who had collapsed onto the grass beside her table.
‘Is anyone here a doctor?’ a younger man called out, stepping away from the huddle. His face was scrunched in distress. ‘She’s not breathing. I don’t think the ambulance will get here on time.’
‘She’s allergic to nuts,’ a woman said through floods of tears. ‘I can’t find her epi-pen anywhere. She’s always leaving it at home. Does anyone have one?’
‘Does anyone have an epi-pen?’ the man repeated, shouting loudly to catch everyone’s attention. ‘Sylvia’s allergic to nuts!’
The rest of us in the garden answered a collective no. Alice ran back out from the pub with a regretful shake of her head on behalf of the customers inside.
‘Can somebody please do something?’ the woman cried in panic. ‘There must be something at the doctor’s surgery!’
Everyone whipped their heads around in response to a shout from the other side of the river. Dr Ziva was craning her neck from the footpath beside the Old Boat House. ‘Somebody needs a doctor?’
Ziva’s face turned grim as she was offered a brief explanation. ‘I’ll fetch my bag. But keep looking for a pen. By the time I’ve driven round…’
Luke suddenly appeared from somewhere behind us, sprinting across the garden and disappearing over the river’s edge in one smooth manoeuvre.
‘Is he going to swim across?’ somebody gasped. ‘The water’s freezing!’
Before anyone could answer, a little boat came into view as he rowed furiously to where a gaggle of onlookers were waiting at the dock that gave the Old Boat House its name.
In the endless minutes it took him to reach the far side, Ziva was waiting. Ably assisted by one man on the dock and Luke in the boat, she clambered in and they set off back to where the woman on the grass was turning a terrifying shade of purple.
Daniel rushed forwards to help Ziva up, and she immediately got to work.
It felt like forever.
Sylvia’s daughter sobbed into a napkin while her son stood, white-faced and trembling, and waited to see if his mother was going to make it.
Eventually, Ziva moved back, gesturing to Sylvia’s son to help his mother into a sitting position.
