by Em Taylor
Not Just my Heart
Em Taylor
Copyright © 2020 by Em Taylor
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover artist Rebeca Ira-P
Line Editing by Mia at Aim Editing
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Not Just My Heart
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
Dedication
To Kirsty N. You deserve your own dedication in one of my books because you were always there for me when the job got tough. You were the best book lady in the world, and you were never a book snob. I miss you even if we lost touch in the last year. I’m sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye properly. You were a great friend and an amazing colleague. Sleep well xx
Chapter 1
Lacey
“OKAY, BENJI, IF YOU stand up, I’ll have a look at the underside of your tail.” I nudged the backside of the rusty-coloured mongrel, and Benji huffed, looking over his shoulder at me with big doleful eyes, indicating he was not impressed at being poked and prodded. As a vet, I was on the receiving end of this look regularly, but it never failed to hurt my feelings. I was doing these animals a favour, and they thought I was the enemy.
“Come on, boy. This will soon be over,” I said, using my most soothing voice.
Miss Brown, his owner, frowned. “I’m sure it’s nothing that medicated shampoo can’t fix. I can get some from the big pet shop at the retail park.”
Taking the hint from me pressing on his rear, Benji stood up, but he still refused to lift his tail. I managed to raise it enough to see the red and broken skin on his backside, suggesting he needed much more than cheap, medicated shampoo.
I was still inches from the dog’s backside when a puff of air broke the silence, and the unmistakeable smell of a doggy fart permeated the atmosphere. Miss Brown hid her head in her hands and groaned. While my instinct was to make a face and move away from the offensively-arsed dog, I put on my game face and smiled. I was used to it, and Benji needed help. I could be a professional in the face of a dog breaking wind.
“Benji has an allergy,” I said. “It’s probably something in his food, but it may be dust or something else. I’m going to give you a special shampoo and suggest a special diet for ...”
Miss Brown raised her head from her hands, tears brimming in her eyes. She bit her lip and gazed at the window. The frosted glass stopped her from seeing out onto the quiet city street, yet she stared anyway.
“How much to have him put to sleep?” she asked.
“Euthanised? Miss Brown, he’s healthy. It’s just an allergy. With the right care and attention, it ...”
“I can’t afford it.” She stared at me. A solitary tear slipped down her cheek, and she swiped it away. “Ms Kendrick, you may have a well-paying job, but some of us are on zero hours contracts. Some weeks I get twelve hours of work. If I have a bad migraine and can’t go in, they cut my hours even more. That’s what it’s like for some of us. Sometimes I feed him while I go without.” She motioned me away from the dog as if to spare her beloved pet from hearing this uncomfortable conversation and I moved willingly. “You’re clearly not stupid. If I take him to the cat and dog home, no one is going to take him on if he needs a special diet. They’ll put him down anyway. I ... I’d rather not put him through that. I’d rather he died in my arms.”
Tears streamed down her face, and I swallowed hard. She was right about the cat and dog home. They were fantastic, but they would struggle to rehome a dog with special food and hygiene requirements.
“Are you on any benefits?” I asked.
“No. It’s complicated if you’re single and have a job where your pay goes up and down. I manage, but only just.”
I nodded my understanding. “Wait here for a moment.”
Giving her Benji’s leash, I patted her awkwardly on the arm and went to the storeroom in the hallway. I grabbed a large bag of hypoallergenic food and a bottle of the shampoo I recommended and headed back into my surgery.
Miss Brown furrowed her brow. “I said ...”
“Let’s see if it works. Some customers make donations to help those who can’t pay their vet bills. It’s put in a kitty and we keep it for times like these. Come back and see me in two weeks, and we’ll see how Benji is doing. If he’s no better, we’ll look into other reasons for his skin flaring up.”
“I don’t want charity,” she protested as I handed her the bag of food and bottle of shampoo.
“This is for Benji.” I tried not to grind my teeth, and turned my attention to the dog instead, offering him a treat and stroking the soft fur on his head. “I don’t want to put a healthy dog down. We may easily get on top of this, and he’ll be able to return to his previous diet. Try this for two weeks, then we can go from there.” And tonight, I would go home and research the cheapest hypoallergenic dog food on the market.
Miss Brown nodded. “Okay, but only for Benji.”
“Do you need me to drop the food off at your place in the car tonight?” I asked, noticing she was struggling under the weight of the bag.
“No, it’s fine. I’m strong.”
I smiled. I wasn’t going to take her independence away. She’d already left some of her dignity in my surgery by accepting charity, but only she and I knew that. This was the bit I hated about my job—the fact I had to charge people for caring for their beloved pets. It wouldn’t be any better than asking people to cough up the funds as they wheeled their grandma out of the hospital. Of course, in some countries that was what happened, but in Scotland human medicine was free at the point of delivery. Sadly, it wasn’t the case for our furry and scaly babies.
I rubbed Benji behind the ears and helped him onto the floor. Holding the door open for them both, I followed Miss Brown out of my surgery to the waiting area and shook my head at Annie, the receptionist, as we passed so she knew not to pull up Miss Brown’s file and ask her to pay.
We both watched Miss Brown and Benji leave. The second the door closed behind them, Annie shoved me back towards my surgery and handed me my next lot of case notes. “You did it again, didn’t you?”
“What?”
“You’re paying for that dog’s treatment,” she said. “The partners are going to lose their shit with you.”
“It’s being paid for. Who pays for it is none of their concern.”
“You’re a big softie,” she said, but I knew she liked that I was such a pushover when it came to animals. She was in the field of work for the love of animals as much as I was.
I walked back out into the waiting room, glanced down at my notes and called out my next patient’s name. “Rover.”
I expected to see an Alsatian or an Irish wolfhound. When a chihuahua was carried over to me, under the arm of a burly looking man who looked like he belonged on a buildi
ng site, I had to hide my shock by opening Rover’s notes and pretending to look for something. Once I had schooled my expression, I looked up and smiled politely.
“Hi Rover. Let’s get you inside and we’ll have a look at you.” I nodded to his owner. “Hi Mr Jones.”
Today was turning out to be an interesting day at the office.
Chapter 2
Rory
I COULD TELL THE MOMENT Calum Morris walked into my classroom he was not in a good mood and it was going to be one of those periods for him. I saw a lot of my younger self in Calum. I’d been a tearaway and was often in trouble at the age of thirteen, at least until a French teacher who was young, enthusiastic, had a sharp sense of humour, and also coached the boys field hockey team became my hero. He took no prisoners, yet he also took the time to get to know me and understand me. If anyone asked me who my favourite teacher was, I’d always say Mr Hamilton.
As I led the class through the fun part of the French lesson, Calum became more and more disruptive, shouting out wrong and rude answers to make his classmates laugh.
I tolerated it the first couple of times, hoping he would get bored if I didn’t react. However, when his fourth interruption sent the class into uproar, I raised my arm and pointed to the door. “Go and stand in the hallway, Calum. I’ll talk to you in a minute.”
He stood, scraping his chair back across the floor with deliberate slowness, and sauntered from the room with his head held high. When he shut the door behind him, I refocused on the class.
“Okay, the joke’s over. Start working through page eighteen of your textbook while I talk to Calum.”
Leaving the classroom as they pulled out their textbooks, I closed the door behind me.
I was pleasantly surprised to find Calum in the corridor. Sometimes he took off even in such a short space of time. I looked down at him and pursed my lips. Calum was small for his age. His tie was askew as he leaned his shoulders against the wall and played with an elastic band he had procured from somewhere. No doubt he’d been pinging bits of paper around with it in a previous lesson.
I held out my hand for it. He glowered, but I raised an eyebrow and waited.
“I’m no doing anythin’ with it,” he said.
“Then you don’t need it.”
“It’s to haud up my troosers.”
“Your trousers are holding up fine from what I can see.”
“If my pants and troosers fall doon and I scar the girls for life wi’ ma big cock, it’s your fault.” He handed me the elastic band.
“I’ll take the chance.” I bit back a smile. “Why are you being disruptive?”
“I’m not.”
“You were shouting out stuff you knew wasn’t the answer, then you were just shouting out rude words for the sake of it, Calum. Are you trying to get yourself excluded again?”
“I’m getting excluded anyway.”
“Who says?”
“Mrs Ronson.”
“What did you do?”
“I didnae dae anythin’. Someone put a sign on her door sayin’, ‘Mrs Ronson has a blue waffle.’ She said it wis me.”
I schooled my features. “Was it you?”
“I didnae write the note.”
“But you put it on her door?”
“Aye, ’cause Bobby Craig dared me.” He pointed down the corridor to where Bobby must be in another class.
“Well that was kind of stupid.”
“Cannae back doon fae a dare.” Calum said as he tugged on his hair, clearly upset that a man of my stature didn’t understand the way things worked.
“You can when the dare is sexually harassing teachers.” I said in my calmest voice, bending my knees and trying to make eye-contact with the boy.
“Aw, come on, sir. Naebody likes Mrs Ronson.”
“That’s not the point ... I mean ... there’s nothing wrong with her, and what you did was wrong. Absolutely wrong. And you know it.” I nodded because Calum knew it was wrong.
He stared at his feet for a moment and then nodded as the fast click-click of heels along the corridor approached us. It could only be the woman herself—my boss—Mrs Ronson. No one else walked at that speed, and everyone knew her walk because of it.
Calum looked towards the sound, his eyes wide, then at me and I murmured, “Here’s your chance to apologise.” Turning to the passing whirlwind of dark brown curls, I said, “Mrs Ronson, do you have a moment? Calum has something he’d like to say.”
I expected a muttered sorry, yet to my surprise, the young lad looked her straight in the eye.
“I’m sorry, Mrs Ronson. It was a dare. I didn’t write the note, but I stuck it to your door and that was wrong.” He watched me for confirmation he’d said the right thing, and I nodded.
“Oh, umm, thank you, Calum. That’s a very mature apology. I ...”
Her lips continued moving but no words came out. She looked quite flummoxed, peering at me for guidance. Weird since she was a Head of the Modern Language Department and I was just a teacher.
I glanced at Calum. “Calum, go back into class. Start on page eighteen and remember the date. Trente et un Janvier.”
“Oui, Monsieur.”
The boy hurried back into class, and I returned my focus to Mrs Ronson. “Have you referred him to the headteacher yet?”
“No. I haven’t had time.”
“Are you going to?”
“Rory, this kind of thing ...”
“I know. I explained to him how serious it was, but I don’t think he realises the significance of the content of the note. He’s probably not looked up the meaning of the phrase. He just knows it’s something to do with a lady’s private parts, and he’s at the immature stage where he still thinks private parts are funny. He’s not got the sexual connotations bit in his head yet.”
She looked to the classroom door, then back to me and deflated slightly as her shoulders relaxed. “You’re probably right.”
“Listen, he hates writing out French verbs. I’ll set him a punishment exercise to copy out three pages of French verbs to be handed in to you tomorrow, and if he doesn’t hand it in, then you can refer him.”
“Okay. That sounds like a fair compromise. I’m not sure excluding children like him does any good anyway.”
“I’ll keep you posted,” I said as I walked back into my room to deal with any mayhem that may have ensued since I left to deal with Calum.
I loved my job.
Chapter 3
Lacey
“ANYWAY, I PULLED ON my jeans and top, grabbed my sandals, and ran out the door as fast as my feet would carry me,” I squealed, grabbing my wine and holding it to my chest as I gazed at my friends. Their faces were lit up like the Eiffel Tower on Bastille Day in anticipation of what would happen next.
“Did he follow you?” Olivia asked.
“I screwed up my nose and shook my head. “No, he was wearing nothing but a lacy thong. Quite sure he’d have been arrested for going out in public like that.”
“Have you got back on the Tinder horse yet?” Annie asked, pointing at my phone on the bar table.
“I haven’t been on there for months. I think he was the final straw with guys.”
“But did you get a look at his winkie?” Olivia asked.
I screwed up my nose. “He wasn’t turned on yet, which was a bit insulting, but what I saw wasn’t impressive.”
“Maybe he was a grower, not a show-er.” Olivia lifted her hands and moved them apart to suggest, the increasing sizes of the male anatomy, and I struggled not to laugh.
“I hope for his sake he is,” I said. I met Barry, the taxi driver who liked ladies’ underwear, on Tinder, and we’d clicked until he took his jeans off. Sure, the average penis wasn’t very impressive in its unaroused state, but poor Barry was under-endowed from what I had seen. The lacy thong was as much of an excuse as anything to bolt.
“You shouldn’t let him put you off. There are lots of nice guys out there,” said Annie.
&nb
sp; I hummed in acknowledgement but something—or someone—had caught my attention. He was looking right at me.
“Shit,” I hissed. “It’s him.”
“Who?” Olivia asked, glancing up. She spotted Rory walking towards us in a split second and pursed her lips. “He’s not coming over to speak to you after all this time, is he?”
I’d known Olivia since my first year at university, so she had been friends with Rory back in the day. She still saw him too because her boyfriend was his best friend. She’d had difficulty in the early days of mine and Rory’s split in not telling me what he was up to. However, now she kept quiet about him.
She stood, so I put my glass of wine on the table and placed a restraining hand on her arm. “It’s fine. I’m over him.”
My churning gut told me I was full of bullshit.
“He’s making a beeline for us,” she said, gesturing in his direction.
“It’s a free country.”
It felt anything but free at that moment.
I looked around for somewhere to run, except it was a crowded pub in Glasgow’s West End on a Friday night. I was trapped. And Rory fucking Thompson was heading straight for me.
I ran my fingers through my hair and swept my tongue around my teeth. If I couldn’t feel good about this meeting, I’d damn well look as good as I could.
“Lacey, fancy meeting you here.”
“Aye. Fancy that.” I lifted my gaze to his dark brown eyes and the years, the hurt, and the pain all resurfaced.
“You look great.”
“You look like shit.”
He chuckled. “Still my Lacey. A tongue as sharp as barbed wire.”
“Not your Lacey. You gave up on us to go whoring around Glasgow. Pick up anything nice? Gonorrhoea maybe?”
He looked down and pursed his lips. “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”
“Why should I?”
“Because ...” He fixed me in place with his gaze. “I never stopped loving you.”
“For fuck’s sake, Rory. You can’t drop that on the poor girl after all this time,” cried out Olivia.
