‘All right,’ she sighs, and off she goes with the chicken draped in a towel under her arm.
‘That gives new meaning to the concept of a chicken wrap. I don’t know why you’re worried about parenting, Maz. You’re a natural.’ Alex glances at his watch. ‘How long do you think it takes to blow-dry a chicken?’ he adds with a wicked grin, and we discover that it’s about as long as it takes to go upstairs, jump into bed and consummate my new status as Alex’s live-in lover.
Chapter Nineteen
Abracadabra
It’s the middle of July and the school holidays have begun for some, and after a fairly quiet month we’re suddenly inundated with requests for passports for pets travelling abroad with their owners, and boosters for those staying back home in kennels and catteries. We have an onslaught of itchy, allergic dogs and a few broken bones. Luckily, we’re fully staffed.
I can’t find my stethoscope – there’s nothing unusual in that. Drew hasn’t seen it. Neither has Izzy.
‘But I have found this,’ she says, when she joins me in the corridor on the way to Kennels. She diverts to the laundry and comes back with Penny’s painting. ‘It was behind the freezer.’
‘Oh? It was a present for looking after Sally. It isn’t really to my taste.’
Izzy holds it at arm’s length. ‘Which way up is it supposed to be?’
‘I don’t think it matters all that much.’ I hesitate. ‘If I wasn’t worried about Penny finding out, I’d donate it to the WI for their next charity auction. I shouldn’t think it’s worth more than a few quid, but I can’t bring myself to throw it away.’
‘Penny’s a real artist, Maz, not some dabbler,’ Izzy says, laughing at me. ‘I’ve seen her paintings in the paper. She exhibits in London.’
‘No!’ I try looking at the painting with fresh eyes, but the fact it’s worth something doesn’t help me like it any more.
‘I bet there’s somewhere you could hang it in the Barn. Take it home tonight – don’t forget.’ Izzy pauses as Tripod comes stalking past, mewing for food. ‘Have you been abandoned, you poor neglected creature?’
‘You know I can’t take the cats with me – Old Fox-Gifford and his dogs would finish them off. Anyway, I get to see them almost every day.’
I hope Izzy’s joking, I muse, as she continues sternly, ‘A dog is for life, Maz. A cat is no different.’
I go and join Emma in Kennels. She’s in limbo at the moment, waiting to start the injections for her next cycle of IVF.
‘Your greyhound’s got to go this morning,’ she says. ‘I need the big kennel for Brutus. He’s coming in for X-rays.’
‘I’m not sure she’s ready.’ I’m not sure, either, why Emma thinks her patient should take precendence over mine. Gemma – she’s the greyhound – is recovering from major surgery. I stroll over and open the kennel door, and Gemma hangs back, waiting for me to tell her she can come out. She’s a lanky ex-racer with a soft brindle coat and gentle manner. I check her over. It’s all looking good.
‘I expect you’d rather be at home,’ I say to her, and she nudges my face with her cold, wet nose as if in agreement. ‘I’ll get Shannon to offer her some chicken – lightly boiled, not incinerated. If she eats it, she can go.’
‘As long as she’s gone by ten-thirty,’ Emma says sharply, and I want to say, What’s wrong with you? like I used to do when she was having a bad day, when that was all it took to snap her out of it.
After I’ve sent Gemma home, I catch sight of Brutus hopping three-legged down the corridor to Kennels, and wonder why Mrs Dyer was prepared to let her dog suffer for a whole month rather than risk seeing me or Drew, and then I forget all about him while I’m out on two visits.
‘Emma says can you come and look at this X-ray,’ Izzy says when I get back.
‘Now or later?’
‘Now, this minute.’ Izzy fiddles with the clip on her dosimeter.
‘I’ve got a couple of phone calls to make.’
‘Well, go and tell Emma yourself,’ Izzy says a little wearily. ‘I’m getting a bit fed up with acting as go-between.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I suppose that is what we’ve been doing, Emma and I, relaying messages through Izzy and sometimes Shannon, because it’s easier not to talk to each other. When we’re face to face, I’m acutely aware of my growing bump being in the way. ‘I didn’t realise …’
‘I know things are a bit awkward between you at the moment, but they won’t get any better if you don’t speak to each other. However, I hate to see the practice suffer,’ Izzy says, ‘so I’ve had a heart-to-heart with Chris, and decided that if it’s any help, I’ll give the honeymoon a miss. We can still do the big white wedding.’
‘If you do that, Izzy, I’ll have to sack you. Otter House will still be here when you get back, I promise.’ And as if to prove that everything’s fine between me and Emma, I head out the back to find her.
She’s in theatre with Brutus heavily sedated, his head on the trolley and his tail on the operating table.
‘I had to bring him in here – he’s so big, there didn’t seem to be anywhere else to put him.’ Emma gazes at the X-ray on the viewer, and taps a spot on one of the bones with the end of her pen. ‘What do you make of that?’
‘I’d say it’s a primary bone tumour,’ I reply, which means that whatever Emma suggests – amputation, radiotherapy – the outlook for Brutus is pretty grim. It looks too small and insignificant, this little patch of moth-eaten bone, to have such potentially dire consequences.
‘Bad news, then.’ Emma tugs the film out of the tab at the top of the viewer and sticks it in an envelope. ‘I’d better make a double appointment for Mrs Dyer.’
‘She’ll be devastated.’
‘Yep,’ Emma says. ‘Actually, I think I’ll send it off for a second opinion,’ and I think, Why, what about my opinion? Doesn’t my opinion count any more?
‘I don’t see how it can be anything else.’
‘You know very well that it could be,’ Emma counters.
‘Yes, but the chances are that it’s malignant. You wouldn’t wait for a second opinion if it was Miff. You’d operate tomorrow.’
‘Well, I know how fussy Mrs Dyer is. I don’t want her turning round to me a couple of months down the line to tell me I got it wrong. And anyway, given another couple of weeks, waiting for the radiologist’s report, I’ll be able to fit the op around my IVF.’
‘You can’t do that. Are you mad?’
‘We don’t have to be martyrs, Maz. There are times when you have to put yourself before the practice.’
‘Not before a patient, though.’ I can’t believe what I’m hearing from my once caring and compassionate partner. ‘By the time you get around to operating on Brutus, that tumour will have had more opportunity to spread.’
‘It may have spread already,’ Emma says. ‘Look, Maz, Mrs Dyer’s my client. I’ll handle this in my own way, thank you very much.’
‘I really don’t think you’re doing what’s best for the dog.’
‘Well, I do.’
It’s like she’s punishing me for being pregnant. It’s as if she can hardly bear to look at me because my fecundity is a painful reminder of her barrenness. I refrain from pointing out that the X-ray doesn’t have any ID on it, no name or marker to indicate that it’s the right not the left leg, which is always useful. I don’t think Emma will take kindly to anything I say at the moment.
I grab a Kit Kat and an apple for lunch, keeping half an ear on Megadrive Radio’s report that the Met Office is forecasting a month’s rain to fall in the next four days. The rain has already begun to fall as a soft grey drizzle, what the locals describe as Dartmoor mizzle, and all I can think of is all those mucky paw marks when clients bring their wet dogs into the practice.
I go through to Reception to check the daybook. Frances is sitting at the desk, knitting. I don’t say anything. She’s been putting in extra hours, helping out with some of the admin, while Emma’s been flitting
in and out of the practice.
‘What are you making?’ I ask her.
She holds up a length of white knitting.
‘It’s a baby bag. It’ll have a hood so your baby will be snug as a bug at night.’
‘Er, thank you. That’s very kind,’ I say, stroking my bump, but I’m thinking overheating and cot death.
‘Small babies are always kicking their blankets off at night, then they get cold and wake you up. This’ll help him sleep through.’ Frances returns to her task, needles clacking, the skein of wool on the table flicking over and over as she tugs on the main thread. ‘It’s St Swithun’s Day – if it rains today, it’ll rain every day for a month.’
‘It is raining,’ I say, gazing out of the window. There’s a flock of seagulls lining up on the roofs of the houses opposite, a sign of imminent bad weather.
‘Three of your afternoon appointments have already cancelled because of the forecast.’
I don’t understand. A bit of rain never hurt anyone, apart from the odd heroine in a Brontë novel perhaps, and that was just a device for bringing her closer to the hero. And thinking of heroes, I think of Alex and how lucky I am.
A gust of wind rattles the windows and a door slams shut. Raindrops, bigger ones now, patter against the glass.
‘I do hope the boats are all safely home today.’ Frances falls silent for a while, remembering, no doubt, the day her husband and his crew went down in a storm in the trawler the Emily Rose. There’s a memorial in the church; their bodies were never found. ‘You won’t remember the last time the Taly burst its banks, will you, Maz? It must have been six or seven years ago, before Emma set up the practice. The water came right into the centre of town. All the shops got flooded. Mr Lacey lost the labels on his wines and had to auction them off as mystery lots. And Otter House –’
‘I know,’ I cut in, recalling the time just before I signed the papers for the partnership with Emma, when she took me through the three-quarter-height door in the back of the stationery cupboard and down the steep stone steps into the cellar to point out the watermark that reaches almost to the top of the bare brick walls. We didn’t stay long. It smelled as if something had died down there. ‘It can’t happen again, though, not with the flood protection scheme.’
‘Oh that,’ Frances says dismissively. ‘They say it’s like putting a net out to catch a wave.’
I’m not sure who she means by ‘they’, but I suspect it’s one of the many self-confessed experts in Talyton who always know better than the professionals. I take a step closer to the desk, stumbling as I go and catching the edge for support.
‘Maz, you’ve gone pale all of a sudden. Are you all right? Is the baby kicking?’
‘Yes, I think so.’ I look down, trying to remember when I last felt it move. My heart beats faster. I’m not sure. I grab my stethoscope from the consulting room. The bell is cold on my skin when I listen in, catching the sound of a heartbeat even faster than mine. The baby elbows the stethoscope away, and I can relax once more.
‘Who’s the fussy mother now?’ says Frances.
I smile wryly. I know I’m afraid I’ll reject it once it’s born, but, as I’ve said before, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if it ended up like Emma’s baby, in a tiny grave covered with flowers, because I’d somehow wished it there.
Alex and I share a rare Sunday morning together, just the two of us with no young Fox-Giffords to disturb us with wet chickens and Bob the Builder DVDs. We lie in until eleven, then go downstairs to make brunch.
‘That cockerel woke me up at five,’ I tell Alex.
‘You’ll get used to it,’ he says.
‘I heard your father’s Range Rover going out at about six, and then the horses disturbed me at about seven.’ There was a lot of banging of buckets and stable doors.
‘They expect to be fed at the same time every day, and my mother insists on it. She gives them breakfast at the weekends when Lisa isn’t around to do it. She doesn’t work weekends.’
‘Talking of breakfast, what shall we have?’ I open the fridge. It’s nearly empty, apart from a mouldy tomato, half a packet of butter and three slices of ham. Oh, and an insulated container. I open it and find a syringe of an off-white fluid which looks suspiciously like – well, it isn’t milk. ‘Alex, is this what I think it is?’
‘Probably.’ Alex mooches up behind me and rests his chin on my shoulder. I’m wearing his robe. He’s in his night-time attire of a loose T-shirt and shorts.
‘What’s it doing in our fridge?’
‘I didn’t think you’d mind.’ His hand strokes my buttock. ‘You being a vet and all that. The fridge in the surgery’s broken – I had to put it somewhere.’ Alex pads away across the kitchen to fill the kettle, his bare feet leaving transient prints on the stone floor. ‘Liberty should be ready to receive it later today. I know it’s a little late in the season, but I’ve found the perfect stallion and I don’t want to wait another year to get her in foal.’
‘What’s he like, then? Tall, dark and handsome?’
‘Big, bay and gorgeous,’ Alex says.
His excitement is infectious, and I find myself thinking I wouldn’t begrudge him these foreign bodily fluids taking up space in the fridge if there was actually some food in there as well.
‘Alex, when do you go shopping?’
‘Ah,’ he says. ‘I haven’t had time.’
I understand completely: I’ve been wondering how I’m ever going to find a couple of hours to go and buy an outfit for Izzy’s wedding, which is in less than two weeks. There’s no way I’m going to fit into any of my other clothes.
‘Perhaps we should have some kind of system, you know, a list and a rota, rather than this rather hit-and-miss arrangement we’ve been relying on till now.’
‘We could go together,’ Alex says. ‘I can nip across to my parents to get some milk for your cereal.’
‘It’s straight from the cow, isn’t it? I shouldn’t drink it unpasteurised because of the baby.’
‘You’re right.’ Alex smiles.
Little does he know about the sense of remorse that takes a hold of me when I remember a time I did wish the baby ill. It’s different now, I tell myself. Although it’s still growing inside me, it’s a person with a life of its own, its sleep patterns independent of mine. It, too, woke me in the middle of the night, squirming about and landing the odd punch on my bladder.
‘I’ll drive into Talyton as soon as I’m dressed,’ Alex says.
‘I’ll come with you,’ I decide. ‘We can stock up – on cheese, nuts and pulses, instead of all the rubbish you eat.’
It’s true – you don’t get to really know someone until you’re living with them. I didn’t realise how much Alex depends on a diet of takeaways from Mr Rock’s, ready meals from the Co-op and cake. I hadn’t noticed before how he likes to read thrillers – Wilbur Smith, John Grisham and James Patterson. He used to slip the books under the bed when I was staying overnight. Now I’m a permanent fixture, he leaves them out on the bedside table, and the shelf in the bathroom. I’ve also found photos of him when he was younger – pictures stashed away in a box in the boot room (I call it the cloakroom), along with some old postcards. There’s Alex looking incredibly youthful at his graduation, his wedding to Astra, and another of him with longer hair and eyeliner, dressed in a frilly white shirt for an eighties-themed party, a New Romantic, not the old one he’s become.
When he’s scanning Liberty in her stable a couple of hours later to see if she’s ready for insemination, he plays her soft music on the radio.
‘She’s ready,’ Alex says, his apron rustling as he withdraws the ultrasound probe.
‘Personally, I prefer a natural mating,’ he observes when he injects the semen sample. My sentiments entirely, I muse, smiling, as he goes on, ‘But the stallion’s abroad.’
Assisted reproduction. It’s all horribly clinical, and it makes me think of Emma. There’s no passion, no warmth, no connection.
/> ‘There we go, Libs,’ Alex says. ‘Let’s hope that’s done the trick.’
‘It’s going to be a long wait,’ I say.
‘Yep, eleven months and she’ll have a healthy foal at foot. That’s the plan anyway.’
‘Does she need any special attention from now on?’
‘No more attention than usual. I’ll scan her again in a couple of weeks to check it’s worked, and make sure she isn’t carrying twins.’
That rings a bell. I vaguely recall that multiple pregnancies are a no-no in the horse: you can end up losing both mare and foals if you let them continue.
‘Have you been in touch about those antenatal classes?’ Alex asks.
‘No. I know Lynsey said she found them useful, but the whole idea seems like a bit of a waste of time to me.’
‘You might pick up some useful tips, make some friends … I’ll come with you.’ Alex winds up the lead on the scanner and wheels it outside on the trolley. He stops and looks at me. ‘You haven’t told your mother yet, have you?’ he says, out of the blue. ‘Why don’t you invite her down for a few days? She can stay here.’
‘It isn’t a good idea.’ I can hear her having a go at me, making me feel stupid and inadequate for making such a big mistake, for risking my career. I’ve hardly seen or heard from her since I left London, and I’m more than happy for it to stay that way.
‘Maz, she can’t be as bad as you make out.’
‘Alex, she’d be all over you.’
‘No! That’s ridiculous.’
‘You know all about nymphomaniac mares? She’s an outrageous flirt.’
‘All right, I get the picture,’ he says, but I can see he’s unconvinced. ‘What about the baby? It’s her grandchild.’
‘You don’t understand. I don’t want or need her in my life. I’ve moved on.’
‘But she’s your family.’
‘You’re my family now, you and Bean,’ I say, as Old Fox-Gifford screams into the yard in his Range Rover. He turns the corner too sharply, skidding through the gravel, and brakes too late, crashing into the rear of my car. The rooks fly up out of the trees and the dogs come flying out of the Manor, barking and jumping up at him as he descends stiffly from the driver’s side in wellies, a boilersuit tied at the waist with baling twine, and a striped pyjama top.
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