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.

There was a spontaneous smattering of applause and cheers from both sides of the river. People looked at each other as the clapping built in volume, with expressions a mixture of uncertainty, defiance and tentative joy.

Sylvia was assisted inside the pub and out of the sun’s glare and the ambulance arrived a few minutes later, but the twin crowds lingered.

After a swift assessment of the situation, Alice disappeared into the Boatman and reappeared with a microphone.

‘Right, then, Ferrington,’ she called, clambering up onto a picnic bench. ‘I think this is it. Enough. Sylvia Jackson has lived in this village her whole life, she raised her kids here. Taught most of yours, as did her grandparents, her mum and dad, and now her daughter Kerry. None of them took sides. None of them said a bad word about any of you, New or Old. Everything they did has been for the good of this village and our children. And now she nearly died, because one, she ordered a slice of cake without checking whether it contained almonds, and two, the only person who could help her was stuck twenty metres away because the bridge that should have got her here lies in ruins.