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Phyllis reaches over for another liquorice torpedo and then, with it halfway to her mouth, she sits up suddenly. 'Which fridge?'
Val, her mind still on Lucille's problems, is slow in catching up.
Phyllis is unforgiving of her mental tardiness. 'Which fridge? Which refrigerator have you put the violet creams in?'
Fully in the picture now, Val opens her mouth. She closes it again. She has made a fatal error.
'Nurse Dyer, we've had words about this once this month already.'
Phyllis, Val can tell, is winding herself up to unleash chapter and verse of the Nursing Regulations, no doubt with a hefty serving of the Nonnatus House Code of Conduct mixed in for good measure.
'The refrigerator in the clinical room is not to be used for the storage of confectionary. It is not, as you are well aware, an appropriate repository for stockpiling comestible items. It is, as you also know very well, neither a hygienic nor particularly safe environment for food, and as for the dangers of cross contamination...'
Once Phyllis gets going, Val knows from experience, she can keep going for a while. Phyllis has remarkable stamina in the issuing-of-reprimands department. Even in this heat. Val makes another feeble effort at interjecting, but Phyllis waves it away, and keeps on. Val reasons she'll be lucky to get away with being rota'd for extra shifts on deep cleaning duty at this rate.
As Phyllis keeps going, Lucille catches Val's eye, sympathetically. Val feels an odd fondness tug at her heart. It gives her courage, of a sort.
'But - ' she tries again.
'No buts. You will take those chocolates out of that fridge at your earliest convenience. Hiding them away like that like a secret - I'm surprised at you. Most of all, it's not like you to be so - ungenerous.'
That stings, a little. See, that's the thing, really. It isn't that Val's not generous. She is - to a fault, her dad would sometimes say. But the first lesson anyone at Nonnatus House learns is that if any sweet treat is left unattended anywhere on the premises, it will, fairly promptly and not-so-mysteriously disappear without a trace. And - well - to put it bluntly, Sister Monica Joan is banned from the fridge in the clinical room.
'I'm not hiding them. They aren't a secret. I've just told you where they are.'
Phyllis harumphs. 'Well. You will take them out of that refrigerator, and then you will make sure that the whole area is spotless. I don't want any hint of contamination anywhere near it.'
Lucille gives Val another small smile, but there's laughter in her eyes. That fondness tugs at Val's heart again.
Because that's the thing. That's the thing. It's not like Val was ever planning on keeping the chocolates to herself. Because ever since they were handed to her by Mrs Hagger, Val's had this little bubble of a growing idea. Just a couple of days earlier, she and Lucille had spent a pleasant tea break in swapping stories about the food that reminded them of home ('Just wait until you try my auntie Edie's pie and mash' - 'It'll be nothing to my mother's special saltfish' - 'I dare you to say that to auntie Edie' - 'I dare you to say that to my mother!'). Val couldn't help but thinking of that when Mrs Hagger put the sweets in her hand: violet creams had been Val's mother's special treat, bought for Christmas, birthdays, and other, select, special occasions.
And so, this little bubble of an idea that Val has - a silly idea, perhaps, but it's one to which since it occurred to her Val has become strongly attached - is that she'd like to share the violet creams, some of them at least, with Lucille. It's daft, she knows, but somehow, she feels like she needs to show Lucille that little bit of herself, and her history, and her family, and her Poplar. But when she'd got back to Nonnatus, the sweets were not at their best: over-warm and sweating and claggy to the taste, and so she had put them in the fridge to spare them from Sister Monica Joan's embrace for one evening at least and - well, trying to explain all of this to Phyllis seems far too complicated, and so Val decides not to try.
'I'll sort it,' she says.
'See that you do.'
----
'So these are your secret sweet treats,' Lucille says, the next afternoon, while she's on call and Val's just returned from her rounds. Lucille picks a chocolate from the bag, and pops it in her mouth.
'They were never a secret,' Val says.
'No,' Lucille agrees. 'The refrigerator is looking spotless, by the way.'
'But what do you think?' Val urges. She's not sure why, but Lucille's opinion on this somehow seems to matter quite a lot to her.
Lucille tastes again. 'Different,' she says. 'Very - you.'
The ringing of the telephone prevents Val's reply.