Must Be Love

by Cathy Woodman

  Shannon heads off down the corridor.

  ‘Hey, where are you going?’ I run down the stairs, calling after her. ‘What about your patient?’

  ‘I’m gonna throw up,’ she calls back.

  ‘Better let her go,’ Drew says, amused. ‘She’ll learn.’

  Chuckling – I’m allowed to laugh because it’s happened to me on more than one occasion – I lift the cat off Drew’s shoulder, gently easing its claws out of his scrub top. ‘Come on, Snowy.’

  Drew takes him back while I fetch a fresh syringe and more food, and we start again.

  ‘How are you getting on?’ I ask him. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yeah, not bad,’ he says in that laid-back way of his.

  ‘How’s the kitten with the greenstick fracture?’

  ‘He’s doing fine,’ Drew says.

  ‘Good.’ I thought he might be more expansive – I know from Izzy that the first cast Drew applied to the little creature came off within half an hour of him going home, much to the owner’s consternation. I can still hear the surprise and awe in her voice when she returned with the kitten to have the leg re-cast. ‘It gave me such a fright, Maz. I thought his leg had come off with it.’

  ‘And the house rabbit? Ernest?’

  ‘Oh, he’s back to normal, hopping about and chewing every cable he can get his teeth into,’ Drew says. ‘I advised Ernest’s owner to make him live outside from now on – he’s going to end up fried if she doesn’t take more care.’

  Satisfied that Drew is happy and looking after our patients with the same care as Emma and I do, I turn to more personal matters.

  ‘I guess you must have settled in okay by now. You must have seen all the sights Talyton has to offer,’ I say, aware that Drew’s looking at me, eyebrows raised ever so slightly.

  ‘Not yet,’ he says, glancing down the corridor where Shannon’s emerging from the cloakroom, wiping her hair with a paper towel.

  ‘Where are you heading once you’ve finished here at Otter House?’ I go on.

  ‘After Talyton St George, the rest of the world,’ Drew says, and I envy his freedom.

  ‘What made you decide to go travelling?’

  ‘After uni I went straight into practice in Sydney. A few months later I had one of those, “is this all there is to life” moments, and took off.’

  I detach the syringe from the feeding tube, and Drew puts Snowy back in the cage under the stairs.

  ‘Do you miss home?’ I’m not being gratuitously nosy – I’m asking on Shannon’s behalf. (That’s my excuse.) ‘Your family? Friends? A girlfriend?’

  Drew turns, tears off his plastic apron and strips off his top.

  I take two steps back.

  ‘Are you coming on to me, Maz?’ he asks quietly.

  ‘Me? No. No way.’

  ‘I must have misunderstood. It’s just you’re always hanging about, watching me, and now you want to know about my love life …’ He pauses. ‘It’s all right. I have this effect on women.’

  ‘Drew!’ I can’t stop myself. How vain can you get? ‘It’s nothing like that.’

  ‘So it’s more to do with checking up on me, and maintaining the honour of the ladies of Talyton.’ Drew grins. ‘I thought so.’

  Blushing, I don’t push for an answer – about the girlfriend – because Shannon’s back within earshot.

  ‘You’re going to have to toughen up,’ I tell her, as she watches Drew stroll towards the laundry to find clean clothes. ‘And keep your mind on the job,’ I add, but I can see she isn’t going to listen to an old fogey like me, who’s tied down with all kinds of responsibility, including the threat of an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy.

  The next morning the blinds filter pale light into the bathroom, highlighting the wand in my hand. Positive. It’s there in blue and white. I drop it in the bin and wash my face, pausing to stare at the mirror. I hardly recognise myself. My eyes are dark with exhaustion, my expression like a rabbit’s caught in the glare of fast-approaching headlights.

  I didn’t plan for this. Well, you don’t, do you? I’ve had the odd slip-up before, contraceptively speaking, but nothing happened and I kind of assumed that I was immune, that it couldn’t and wouldn’t happen to me, but now it has and I’m going to have to get on and do something about it because I’m nine weeks gone, and soon I’ll be showing, like Emma. Frances has already guessed. How long will it be before Alex notices?

  I take a couple of gulping breaths, trying to suppress my panic.

  I don’t see how I can run a business, stay on top of my career and bring up a child, and when I say ‘bring up a child’, I don’t mean drag it up like my mother did.

  I can hear my mother now, talking inside my head, which is a surprise to me because I don’t think of her all that often. ‘You can always do something about it.’ The voice is sharp, uncompromising. ‘You don’t have to have it.’

  I remember how my mother had an abortion soon after my dad walked out on us. She’d wanted the baby whereas my father hadn’t, but after he left, she went ahead and got rid of it anyway. I vowed I’d never do the same, but now I can see her dilemma. Abandoned by my father, she had two children already and held down as many menial, low-paid jobs as she could, to support us. The last thing she needed was another mouth to feed.

  It was probably more complicated than that. I reckon her decision had as much to do with her pursuit of men as it did with the purchase of food and clothing. It was hard enough attracting a mate with two children in tow, let alone three. My mother can’t be happy without a man in her life, you see. I relax my hands, releasing the tension in my knuckles. I always get wound up when I think of my mother.

  I remember how she left me in the flat in Battersea with my little brother when she went out to work. When I was twelve or thirteen, and Damien was about three, I let him crawl about with his toy train in the kitchen, while I caught up with some homework in the room I shared with him. It wasn’t difficult – studying was a means of escape from my rather ordinary life – and I became so absorbed that I forgot to keep half an eye on what he was up to.

  It wasn’t long before I detected the scent of chlorine and heard a strange retching sound as if the cat was coughing up a hairball. I found Damien, red-faced and choking, with tears pouring down his cheeks. My mother’s bottles of bleach and kitchen cleaner were on the floor beside him, a glass tipped on its side, liquid foaming out across the lino.

  ‘What have you done?’ I swore at him and shook him by the shoulders. ‘Mum’s going to kill me because of you!’

  His face crumpled and he started to bawl because I was yelling at him, and I realised I was frightening him, and I was scared too, and I fell to my knees and hugged him tight.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I cried.

  ‘He’s going to die.’ That’s what my mother told me when he was in hospital having his stomach pumped out. ‘And it will be your fault, Amanda. I’ll never forgive you.’

  Damien didn’t die, and the incident faded into family history, although the memory now is as fresh as if it only happened yesterday.

  A baby of my own? A child? I shudder at the thought of the responsibility and commitment. Glancing down, I notice my hand lightly caressing my stomach. My throat filling with bile and resentment, and my cheeks growing hot with tears, I pull it away. I can’t go through with it. It’s impossible.

  Chapter Nine

  Hold Your Horses

  The prospect of sitting on a horse becomes quite inviting compared with telling Alex about the predicament I’ve found myself in, and what I’m intending to do about it. Very briefly, I consider not telling him at all, but my conscience won’t let me do that.

  I want to tell someone. Not Emma, because how can I tell her I’m pregnant, that I fell pregnant without trying – while trying not to, even – while it took her years to do the same? How can I tell her I’m not going through with the pregnancy, when all she wants is a baby? I can’t bring myself to pick up the phone and te
ll Alex either, because I don’t know how he’ll take it.

  I put it off until Alex collects me on the Saturday afternoon, excited and happy, because he has his children with him for the weekend.

  ‘Who’s on call?’ he asks, as I jump into his four by four beside him.

  ‘Drew.’

  Alex leans across and kisses me on the mouth, then grimaces. ‘You’ve been eating Marmite.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ It used to be a guilty pleasure of mine, more recently a craving.

  ‘I like Marmite,’ says a small voice from behind me.

  I turn and glance over my shoulder. Lucie’s already dressed for riding, in purple jodhs and a matching Cuddly Ponies top. Sebastian wears beige breeches and a sweatshirt with a tractor logo. As for Alex, I hardly dare look at him. His long-sleeved shirt is perfectly respectable, but his jodhpurs are so fitted they’re positively indecent. He is gorgeous, and I love him, and I’m confused, my emotions in turmoil. I know it sounds mean with Lucie and Seb here, but I wish I could have Alex to myself without anything – I glance down at my stomach – coming between us.

  ‘Hello, Lucie. Hello, Seb. How are you?’

  ‘Very well, thank you,’ Lucie says primly, answering for both of them as Seb unintentionally aims a kick into my kidneys. At least, I give him the benefit of the doubt.

  ‘I want my mummy,’ Seb says, on the way to Talymouth.

  ‘You’ll see her tomorrow night,’ Alex says patiently. ‘In the meantime, we’re going shopping with Maz. What do you think she needs if she’s going to learn to ride?’

  ‘She needs two legs and a brain,’ Lucie pipes up. ‘That’s what Humpy says. Why does Humpy call her Madge if her name’s Maz?’

  ‘I can’t answer for your grandmother,’ Alex says. ‘I’m talking about what gear Maz needs, what equipment,’ and I feel a frisson of desire, overwhelmed with remorse, and I try not to look in his direction as he drives us on south out of town, taking the road towards Talysands.

  There are spring lambs in the fields with their mums, some gambolling about, some still wobbly on their feet. At the top of the hill, where there is the first glimpse of the sea, Alex turns off into a driveway and parks outside a small warehouse-style building that has a sign above the door: Tack n Hack.

  ‘It’s part of the Letherington’s horsey empire,’ Alex explains. ‘Delphi does the odd shift in the shop to help out.’

  Delphi is there, exuding an air of horse, Chanel and superiority. I shouldn’t mind, but I do, because she’s all over Alex like a rash, offering her cheek for him to kiss and holding his arm.

  ‘How lovely to see you.’ She tugs at a strand of blonde, slightly greasy hair that has escaped from her ponytail. It doesn’t matter that she looks unkempt, that her hands are dirty and she has straw sticking out the top of her boots, she looks fabulously fit. Her shirt, adorned with a Tottie logo, reveals just a hint of cleavage, and her jodhpurs show off her shapely legs. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Maz needs some jodhs, boots and a hat,’ Alex says, turning back to me.

  The tack shop is filled with all kinds of horsey gear: gleaming ironmongery, beautifully crafted saddlery, grooming kits, buckets, shampoos and sprays. I didn’t know you could buy beauty products for horses, but there are whiteners, conditioners and glittery hoof dressings. The air is heavy with the scent of leather, wax and a hint of Alex’s aftershave.

  Maybe I’m being paranoid, I think as we go round the shop with Delphi making suggestions and picking things up for me to try on in a poky little changing room with just a curtain for privacy. I’m certainly not feeling myself today. I feel sick and tired, a hostage to this alien that has hijacked my body and taken my life to ransom.

  ‘Would you like me to fetch you a larger size?’ Delphi asks from the other side of the curtain.

  ‘Please,’ I say, a little humiliated that I can’t fit into the equivalent of a size ten. I always wear a size ten. I dismiss the next pair of jodhpurs that she brings – they’re purple with a black seat, and they make my bum look not merely big, but enormous. As I’m peeling them off, I overhear snatches of conversation.

  ‘Lady’s back to her old self,’ I hear Delphi saying.

  ‘Did you get my text about the blood results?’ Alex asks.

  ‘Alex,’ Delphi says in a flirty tone, ‘I thought you knew I don’t do textual relationships,’ and then she laughs, neighing like a horse. (Why does she bring out the bitch in me?)

  I slip into another pair of jodhpurs, plain navy ones this time, and pull back the curtain.

  ‘What do you think, Alex?’

  ‘They’re perfect,’ he says, smiling with approval.

  ‘Boring,’ says Lucie. ‘The purple’s much nicer.’

  By the time I’m fully kitted out, I feel quite sexy. There’s something about riding gear: jodhs with Lycra that holds everything in, knee-high boots that make my legs look even longer, and a hat with a green silk that looks great with my blonde locks. I don’t go along with Lucie’s suggestion that I need a hairnet. What’s she trying to do? Make me look like Ena Sharples so her dad doesn’t fancy me any more?

  ‘I love the jodhs’ – Alex touches my bottom – ‘and the hat.’

  ‘It’s a bit like wearing a headache.’ I try to take it off, but it’s pretty well jammed to my skull.

  ‘You have to have one – riding’s a dangerous sport. Not all that dangerous,’ Alex corrects himself, but it’s too late – I noticed. He grins. ‘Otherwise the Fox-Gifford line would have died out long ago.’

  ‘Actually, Alex, I’d prefer to give riding a miss today. I’d really rather watch you and the children …’

  ‘You are looking a bit peaky, ha ha.’ He tugs at the peak on my silk. ‘Come on, Maz, some fresh air will do you good. Now, are we sure there isn’t anything else before I settle up?’

  ‘I’m paying,’ I say hurriedly.

  ‘No, this is my treat – and Lucie wants a new dandy brush.’

  ‘Specially for my pony, Tinky,’ says Lucie at the same time as Sebastian says, ‘I wanna ’andy brush too.’

  ‘All right,’ Alex sighs. ‘Go and choose one.’ Is he always this indulgent? He looks at me, a little embarrassed perhaps. ‘Seb’s becoming quite the shopaholic – he gets it from his mother.’

  ‘Maz, you have to have a crop.’ Lucie pulls a sparkly purple stick off a display of horsewhips of all different lengths and colours, and I wonder what kind of person makes an industry out of beating horses. ‘If your horse is naughty, you give him a smack. Like this.’ She whacks her own leg. ‘Ouch!’

  ‘That seems a bit mean,’ I say, trying not to laugh at Lucie’s self-inflicted discomfort, but she’s undaunted. She puts her hands on her hips and squints through loose strands of her hair. ‘You have to let them know who’s boss.’

  ‘Lucie’s right,’ says Alex.

  ‘Daddy’s got lots of whips at home,’ Lucie goes on.

  ‘Alex, I didn’t know you were into S and M,’ I tease, then cover my mouth, remembering too late. The children. Not in front of the children.

  ‘What’s S and M, Daddy?’ says Lucie.

  ‘It’s a bit like those sweets, M&Ms, but for grownups.’

  Alex settles up with Delphi at the till. I watch them, but there’s no hint that anything is going on, and anyway, I dismiss it because my stomach is uncomfortably compressed inside the jodhpurs, reminding me that I have another, more pressing problem to think about.

  The Manor itself is an elegant Regency house with a porch at the front supported by fluted pillars, and looks as if it’s straight out of a Jane Austen adaptation. However, on closer inspection, you can see that it’s beginning to need some TLC. There are cracks opening up in the white render, a couple of slates missing from the roof, and the downstairs window frames are rotting, giving the impression that the Fox-Giffords prefer to spend their money on their horses than their home.

  The house sits in a formal garden with lawns, a spreading cedar and tradition
al borders, and is surrounded by green fields. The Fox-Giffords’ herd of red South Devon cattle are grazing in the fields to the west of the Manor. To the east and continuing round behind the Manor, there are grass paddocks for the horses, divided by posts and electric tape.

  ‘I hope you don’t think I’m going to have a go at those,’ I say, as we pass the showjumps set up in the outdoor arena.

  ‘What do you think, Lucie?’ Alex asks.

  ‘You have to learn to walk, trot and canter properly first,’ Lucie opines.

  ‘And I don’t want a big horse either,’ I go on. ‘The smaller the better.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Maz.’ Alex is laughing. ‘We’ll look after you.’

  ‘I’m going to kill her.’ I glance behind me to see my would-be murderer in his car seat, arms folded, lower lip jutting out and tears in his eyes. ‘I wanna go riding with Mummy. I want my mummy.’

  ‘Oh, do shut up, Seb,’ says Lucie, as Alex parks in the courtyard at the back of the Manor alongside some other vehicles – a battered Range Rover, a lorry with a jumping horse stencilled on the side, and a vintage Bentley. There are four horses and ponies tied up outside the stable block. Lisa, the Fox-Giffords’ groom, has tacked them up ready for us.

  ‘You’re riding Jumbo.’ Lucie shows me to an enormous grey cob who rolls his eyes and flares his nostrils, blowing warm breath over my hands as I introduce myself. Does he like me? I’m not sure. I don’t kiss him.

  ‘Can’t I have a smaller one?’ I ask, taking a couple of steps back.

  ‘You’ll be fine – he’s like a rocking horse,’ Alex says. ‘Get your hat on, Seb.’ I watch him fasten the strap under Seb’s chin. He’s a good dad. He isn’t distant or stuffy with his kids. He picks Seb up, carries him around the yard, then drops him, giggling, onto a small grey pony almost twice as broad as it is tall.

  ‘Hold on tight.’ Alex checks the girth before he sweeps Lucie up and sticks her onto the other pony, a handsome bay. ‘Your turn next, Maz.’