I answer it.
‘Otter House Vets,’ – how I love saying that – ‘how can I help?’ Once I’ve ascertained from the panicking client that I have an emergency on my hands and she’s housebound, I arrange to visit. ‘I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’
Frances frowns as I put down the phone. I know what she’s getting at.
‘If you book anything else in, Maz,’ she says, surveying the packed waiting area, ‘we’ll all be here till Christmas.’
‘It is Christmas, Frances, pretty much.’ The day before Christmas Eve, anyway, I think, tearing my eyes from the hypnotic lime and yellow swirls on Frances’s top. Emma would prefer her to wear a uniform, saying that the neo-hippy look doesn’t suit anyone, let alone someone in their late fifties like Frances, but I think she brightens the place up and provides a little light relief from the all-blue theme which runs through the practice: blue chairs, pale blue walls and blue-grey, non-slip, easy-clean floors. It’s Emma’s choice – blue’s her favourite colour. ‘I’ve got to go. Will you let Emma know I’m on my way to Talyford?’ I won’t disturb her while she’s consulting.
‘Will do,’ Frances says.
I pick up the piece of paper on which I’ve scribbled down the address, grab my jacket and keys from the cloakroom and dash off. Frances’s voice ringing out across the waiting room, brings me to a halt.
‘Maz, come back. Haven’t you forgotten something?’ I turn to find her holding out the visit case. ‘You’ll forget your head one of these days,’ she adds with mock severity.
I fetch my car, a sporty coupé that I’ve hardly used recently; the drive up to Talyford will do it good. That’s my excuse anyway – it’ll do me good too. I ought to change it for something more practical, but – not that I’m sentimental or anything – it feels like the last connection to my old life as a city vet, working in London.
As I drive out of the car park at the side of Otter House, I glance back at the practice, a solid three-storey Georgian building rendered the colour of clotted cream. It has my name on it, along with Emma’s – my best friend for over fifteen years, and now my business partner – on a brass plaque outside. It’s like a dream, and if I wasn’t driving, I’d have to pinch myself. I still can’t believe my luck.
Emma and I met over a dead greyhound at vet school, and I’d always hoped that we might end up working together. I smile as I recall how one of our professors, who thought himself a bit of a film buff, referred to me as Gwyneth Paltrow on account of my blonde hair, and Emma as Catherine Zeta Jones.
With the heater on full blast, I head out of Talyton St George, following the confusing one-way system which has evolved because the streets aren’t wide enough to take two lanes of traffic. I pass the butcher’s where a queue of shoppers with coats and brollies stand under a striped awning waiting to collect their pre-ordered turkeys and hams, before I emerge from Market Square, between Lacey’s Fine Wines and Lupins, the gift shop, and turn north on the road signposted to Talyford. My windscreen wipers are working full blast as the pelting rain turns to sleet, and I smile to myself as, appropriately, the local radio station, Megadrive Radio, plays an oldie from Wet Wet Wet.
Talyford. There was a clue in the name, I think wryly as I stop at the edge of the murky stream which foams and swirls across the road before it continues its way down the valley to join the river. I guess it’s safe to cross. There’s no way of telling since the depth indicator post has been broken off and chucked in the hedge, but as I’m not sure I’ll find my way into the other end of the village if I make a diversion, I drive on, being careful not to make waves, and reach the other side.
Further down the hill, the stream passes in front of a handful of cottages, all painted pale pink, a shop with a Post Office, a small church and a courtyard of cob-and-thatch barn conversions with ‘For Sale’ signs outside, which make up the vast metropolis of Talyford. I park in front of one of the cottages, the Old Forge, and make my way across a wrought-iron footbridge over the stream to the front door.
I knock, but there’s no answer and, remembering that this is Devon and therefore nothing happens in a hurry, I wait for a couple of minutes before knocking again. A dog whines from the distance, and eventually the door opens and a woman who’s a few years older than me greets me from a wheelchair. I notice her purple eyeliner and her smock, splashed with paint.
‘Hi. I’m Maz, the vet. Ms Diamond?’
‘It’s Penny. Thank you for coming so quickly . . .’ She spins her chair so she ends up facing down the hall and all I can see is the back of her head: the piece of ragged tie-dyed sheet tied like a bandanna and the wooden beads which adorn her multi-coloured locks of hair. ‘Sally’s this way.’
She waves me passed her into some kind of studio set up with an easel, and stacks of canvasses, some virgin white, others painted with eerie landscapes, some in the stark light of a fiery sun, others dark with slanting rain. I’m not sure how best to describe them: impressionistic or amateurish. Who am I to criticise though, when I can’t draw or paint to save my life?
‘I’m sorry about the mess. When the estate agent described it as bijou, I didn’t appreciate quite how small the place was.’ Penny points towards the far corner of the room. ‘There’s Sally over there. I’m really worried – I’ve never seen her like this.’
I step around the easel, taking care not to tread on any of the tubes of paint scattered across the floor, so I can get close to a rather beautiful Golden Retriever with a pink nose and dark brown eyes. She stands in the corner in a harness attached to a short lead, panting and dribbling, her belly swollen so big she could pass as a cartoon dog.
‘She had Christmas dinner early.’ Penny twists the silver fretwork ring on her finger. ‘She stole mine from the worktop: turkey, sprouts, stuffing, the lot.’
‘When was that?’ I’m trying to keep calm, but I’m looking at Sally and thinking, very sick dog, not much time.
‘About two hours ago. Declan, my carer – he comes in twice a day – took her out for a good run afterwards. “To get her to use up the extra calories,” he said. Apparently, she drank lots from the stream on the way back and, since then, her stomach’s been getting bigger and bigger.’ Penny’s freckled face crumples. ‘I’m afraid she’s going to burst.’
The dog groans and retches. Strings of saliva dangle from her jowls and make a sticky pool on the floor.
‘Is there something you can do? An injection? Tablets?’
‘I wish it was that simple. I’m going to have to take her straight to the surgery. She might have to stay with us for a while.’
‘I don’t think I can bear the thought of Christmas without her.’
‘It’s a shame, but—’ It’s non-negotiable. If Sally’s got any chance of survival it’s back at Otter House, not here in the wilds of Talyford.
‘I rely on Sally,’ Penny cuts in. ‘She picks things off the floor for me, fetches the phone . . .’
‘I see.’ Now I understand why the dog’s wearing a lead and harness indoors, and I can feel the pressure piling on as Penny chatters on and on as if she can’t stop, a side effect of living alone, I suspect. At least, I’m assuming she lives alone. Opposite the window which looks out onto a tidy lawn and shrubbery, there’s a wall with photos, including wedding pictures of a younger and much slimmer Penny in a 1920s-style ivory dress, standing beside a rather striking groom who has spiky hair and red drainpipe trousers.
‘It’s serious, isn’t it?’ Penny’s voice quavers. ‘I can tell from your face. She isn’t going to die . . . ?’
Not if I can help it, I think, but I refrain from giving grounds for optimism. I don’t want to raise Penny’s hopes.
‘Is there anyone who can be with you? Anyone you can go and stay with?’ I ask, worried about how she’ll cope, practically and emotionally.
‘I can’t impose on Declan. He offered to stay all day tomorrow, but I told him he mustn’t because he has his own friends. I can’t ask my sister because she’s in
York with her kids. Sally’s my family now. Sally, darling,’ Penny calls. At the sound of the sob which catches in her owner’s throat, the dog looks up momentarily before returning to stare at a paint-spot on the stone floor as if she’s depending on it for her survival. ‘What will I do without you?’
‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.’ I take Sally by her lead and coax her out along the hall, following Penny who opens the front door for us. ‘I’ll call you when I have any news.’
Once outside, Sally refuses to clamber into the front of my car so, with the sleet stinging the back of my neck, I have to half lift, half force her in. Her limbs are stiff and her nails scrape the paintwork. Her hard belly pings and pops like gas bubbling through an airlock on a demijohn.
‘For an assistance dog, you aren’t being terribly helpful,’ I tell her as I sit her in the footwell on the passenger side, praying she won’t be sick.
As I drive away, I catch sight of Penny at the window with a tissue pressed to her nose. Life isn’t fair, is it? I can’t imagine what it must be like confined to a wheelchair like that and dependent on other people – and a dog. I’m not sure I’d consider Sally a pair of safe paws.
I call ahead to the practice to ask Frances to warn Izzy to prepare theatre.
‘Izzy isn’t in this afternoon,’ Frances says. ‘She’s gone into Exeter to do some last-minute shopping.’
‘Oh?’ I’d forgotten. ‘You’d better tell Emma then. I’ve got a possible GDV.’
‘What’s that in English, Maz?’ says Frances, then before I can explain that it’s a case of bloat with added complications, she adds, ‘No, don’t worry – I’ve got it.’
‘Cheers, Frances.’ I drive on back across the ford, slowly and steadily in first gear, and right in the middle, the car shudders and rolls to a stop, the engine cuts out, and water starts flooding into the footwell, turning my feet to blocks of ice. Sally clambers onto the passenger seat and starts panting steamy breaths of fermenting sprouts into my face. I fiddle with the key in the ignition and press my foot to the floor, but nothing happens. Banging the steering wheel in frustration I watch helplessly as the headlights of a vehicle come flaring through the rear window behind me, and the driver starts hooting at me to get out of the way.
Table of Contents
Cover
Copyright
About the Author
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Trust Me, I’m a Vet
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Other books by this author
Trust Me, I'm a Vet: The Otter House Vets Series Page 33
