Vets in Love

by Cathy Woodman

  ‘I know. He’s told me and I wouldn’t expect anything less of him.’

  ‘Of course, I’ll be staying around now,’ Mel goes on, and I think she doesn’t know, does she?

  ‘That’s cool with me,’ I say. ‘Matt and I aren’t planning on moving anywhere.’ She stares at me. ‘We’re actually back together. He must have forgotten to mention it to you.’

  Mel opens and closes her mouth like a dying fish.

  ‘I do feel sorry for you,’ I say, moving close to her, ‘with the prospect of being a single mum ahead of you, but whether you like it or not, Matt is my boyfriend. There is absolutely no chance of him coming back to you, so you can stop playing games. You’re beginning to make yourself look like a stalker. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘I believe so,’ she says.

  ‘Good.’ All I want to do is get out of here. The confrontation with Mel has left me feeling stressed out, but if I was hoping for a quick getaway in the lorry, I am disappointed.

  ‘Beauty’s enjoyed her stay at the hospital so much, she doesn’t want to go home,’ Mum says when I return to the car park. She’s standing beside the ramp while Robert leads the pony – with Willow’s boots up to her elbows – towards the lorry. Beauty puts one hoof then another on the bottom of the ramp and stops dead, baulking at the idea of going any further.

  ‘Get on,’ Robert growls, but Beauty merely reverses, tosses her head, yanking the lead-rope from his hand before trotting off to the neat lawn nearby where she puts her head down to graze.

  ‘The little bugger,’ Robert says, examining the silvery rope burns on his palms. ‘She took me by surprise.’

  He catches her, wraps the rope around her nose and tries again, but Beauty isn’t having any of it. One of the grooms appears with the offer of lunge-lines and whip. After two hours of trying both the carrot and the stick approach, there are six of us against one pony.

  ‘How long can she keep this up without hurting herself and opening up the wound?’ Mum asks eventually.

  ‘She’s going to have to stay here,’ one of the grooms says.

  ‘No way,’ Robert says. ‘She’s cost me a fortune – cleaned me out already.’

  ‘Can I have one last go?’ I interrupt.

  ‘What are you, some kind of horse whisperer?’ Robert says wearily. ‘Oh, go on.’ He throws me the end of the lead-rope and I walk the pony away.

  ‘Whoah,’ I say when we’re a little way from the lorry. I let Beauty sniff my hands and check me out. She tries to nudge me out of her space, but I send her back with a flick of the rope. ‘What’s your problem, pony?’ I murmur. I scratch her neck, which she loves, stretching out with her top lip quivering. ‘Let’s go.’ I turn her to face the lorry, quickly so she hasn’t got time to think about it, and walk her smartly towards it. She’s going in. I keep walking, and the power of positive thinking, or the fact that she’s decided, like the rest of us, she’s had enough, carries us up the ramp and into the box where I wait for Robert to shut the gates behind us so she can’t run out again.

  ‘Good girl,’ I tell her, giving her a mint from my pocket.

  ‘How did you do that?’ Robert asks when we’re driving back to the farm.

  ‘I asked her nicely,’ I say, grinning.

  When we arrive at the farm it’s dark. Robert leads Beauty into her stable, a pen more suitable for a sheep than a pony, in one end of a barn. In fact, her sole companion is a lame old ewe. Robert gives her a flake of sweet-scented hay and a bucket of fresh water. It’s a far cry from the luxury Willow lives in.

  ‘Let’s have a drink to celebrate Beauty’s return,’ Robert says, his arm around my mother’s waist.

  ‘I’m going home,’ I say. ‘I’ll drop the lorry back to Delphi’s. She’ll drive me home.’

  ‘I can do that,’ says Robert.

  ‘There’s no need.’

  ‘Thanks for this evening,’ he says.

  I smile. ‘It’s no problem. I expect Beauty would have preferred to travel in your trailer as it turns out.’

  ‘Yes, I think she does prefer second class over first,’ Robert says. ‘She’s a funny old bird.’

  I wish Mum and Robert goodnight and head back to the yard. I don’t mind. Any excuse to see Willow. I park the lorry and wander over to see my horse. The lights are on and Delphi is doing her last routine checks on the horses, swapping Dark Star’s stable rug for a lighter fleece. She maintains that nine-thirty is her last visit to see them, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she turns up at midnight too. I don’t know how she does it. Like looking after Gabriel, it’s relentless.

  On hearing me, Willow whinnies and my heart lifts. I stroke her and she nibbles at my hair, and my troubles evaporate. When I’m with my horse, nothing else matters.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Give a Dog a Bone

  IT’S GOING TO be a difficult day, I think. It’s Friday, a couple of days after I helped collect Beauty from the hospital, and Matt is taking Mel for a scan. I know it’s important to him, I know it’s something he has to do, but even though I fight it I’m wracked with pain and jealousy at the thought of him sharing such an intimate moment with his ex-lover, bonding over their baby.

  During the first part of the morning, I struggle to concentrate, knowing that Matt is with her, but when I receive a text from him to say he’s back at Westleigh and, apart from being slightly small for its dates, the baby is fine, I relax a little.

  At coffee time, I head for the staffroom for a drink, but decline the cream slice Claire offers me.

  ‘I can’t. I’m in training.’

  ‘That’s a first,’ Janet says. ‘That means we can share the extra one, Claire.’

  ‘Shane’s giving me grief. I’m going to the gym three times a week as well as riding, and living on tuna and pasta.’

  ‘He won’t know,’ Claire says.

  ‘He’ll force me into a confession, then make me trot on the lunge for hours without stirrups as penance.’ I finish a glass of water. ‘I’ll see you later. Just eat that—’ I point at the slice, oozing cream from its puff pastry layers and gleaming with sugary icing ‘—before I come back.’ On the way back to the consulting room, I call Bridget through from reception.

  ‘How are you?’ I say, ushering her to the chair beside the desk. ‘Is this about the hand?’

  ‘You should have been a detective,’ she says with irony.

  ‘I am and my powers of deduction are amazing,’ I say with equal sarcasm. There are some patients who appreciate it and some who don’t. Bridget is someone you can have a banter with without it causing offence. ‘If I am not very much mistaken, you are here about your hand, the one with the bandage.’

  She chuckles as she starts to remove the dressing.

  ‘I stabbed myself with my scissors – not deliberately, I hasten to add. I’m always doing it.’ She sighs. ‘I think it’s my age.’

  ‘Let’s have a look,’ I say, finding a shallow wound with swelling and heat around it. ‘When did it happen?’

  ‘Last week. It should have healed by now.’

  ‘There’s some infection there. I’ll clean it up.’ I fetch a kidney dish, gloves and cleaning materials. ‘How is the diabetes? Have you seen the consultant?’

  ‘Ah, I don’t know how to say this, but I have a confession to make.’

  ‘Bridget, you must take this seriously. How many times have I told you?’

  ‘I’ve been to see her, but I couldn’t bring myself to admit that I do know why I haven’t been under control.’ She shakes her head, her frizzy curls bouncing about. ‘I was hoping to keep it quiet, but I can see it’s a stupid thing to do. I’m playing Russian roulette with my health.’ She holds up her hand. ‘And here’s the evidence. It won’t heal because of the diabetes.’

  ‘You’d better tell me …’ I dab at the wound, making her wince. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You really need to learn to be more gentle, Dr Chieveley,’ she says lightly. ‘They say you make grown men cry.’


  ‘Do they? That’s the first I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘And small children.’

  I smile to myself. ‘Tell me about your theory on the diabetes.’

  ‘Remember I told you the vet said that the disease was exactly the same in dogs as it is in humans? Well, it turns out that it isn’t. I ran out of insulin a couple of times and I thought I could use Daisy’s doggy version.’

  ‘Bridget, that’s so dangerous. You could end up killing yourself!’

  ‘Shannon, my daughter, caught me out one day. I didn’t realise that although I was injecting the same amount from the syringe, it was more dilute than my own insulin, so I wasn’t using enough.’ She pauses. ‘I thought the vet knew more about it than you.’

  ‘So it won’t happen again?’

  ‘Shannon’s made sure I never run out by organising a regular delivery from the pharmacist.’ She hesitates. ‘You won’t tell anyone, will you?’

  ‘Your secret is safe with me,’ I say, chuckling. ‘Have you started barking yet?’

  ‘Not yet, although Shannon might say otherwise when I’m yelling at her to get out of bed some mornings.’

  I send Bridget away with a prescription for antibiotics and an appointment for a week’s time before calling in my next patient, James from next door with Eternally Frazzled Mum, who has good reason to appear frazzled today.

  ‘I’ve had to take time off work again,’ she says, bustling in. ‘I can’t afford to keep doing this.’

  James walks in behind her, his shoulders slumped, his T-shirt stretched across his chubby frame and his jeans slung low around his hips, revealing a pair of pink and white striped pants. He has the beginnings of a black eye and something is wrong with his nose.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ I ask.

  ‘Mum’s been duffing me up,’ he says.

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly, although it’s tempting considering what you boys put me through.’

  A tear of blood trickles from James’s left nostril. I hand him a box of tissues. He sits with it on his lap and the blood drips into the box – not quite what I was intending.

  ‘Take a tissue.’ Ally nudges him in the shoulder. ‘Tell the doctor what you’ve been doing.’

  ‘I was on the trampoline and I bumped into one of the poles,’ he mutters.

  ‘Go on,’ Ally says. ‘Why did you bump into one of the poles?’

  ‘It was last night,’ he goes on reluctantly. ‘I was trampolining in the dark.’

  ‘Ah, I see …’

  ‘But he couldn’t see. That was the problem,’ Ally says, lightening up. ‘I’m worried he’s broken his nose. It looks crooked to me and he has such handsome features.’

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ James sighs. ‘Do you have to?’

  I make much of examining his nose to prove to Ally, if nothing else, that there is absolutely nothing to worry about. The nose isn’t broken. It only looks broken because it’s distorted by the bruising from where he came into contact with the metal pole.

  ‘This isn’t going to affect your good looks in the future,’ I assure James. ‘It will not stop all the girls chasing after you.’

  He grimaces, still too young to be interested in the opposite sex, unlike some of us, I think wryly to myself.

  ‘I would suggest that you abandon this extreme sport of yours in order to prevent any further incidents,’ I add with a grin.

  ‘Thank you, Nicci. You’ve put my mind at rest.’ Ally fishes her bra strap out from under her top. ‘Let’s get you home, James. I must get back to work.’

  Another hour passes and I’m finished for the day. I’m just about to leave for the yard when Fifi phones to ask where Cheska is because she hasn’t turned up at the garden centre.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for her,’ Fifi complains.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I’ll see if I can get hold of her and find out what’s happened.’

  ‘If she can’t get herself organised to turn up for the interview or let me know she isn’t coming, I don’t think this is going to work,’ Fifi goes on.

  Infuriated at my sister’s behaviour, I apologise profusely on her behalf and drop by the house to have a word with her on my way to ride Willow.

  Cheska is sitting on the lawn in the garden, sunning herself.

  ‘Hey, don’t you know you’ll get skin cancer,’ I say snappily.

  She shades her eyes and looks in my direction.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Nicci. I wasn’t expecting you back until this evening.’

  ‘Why aren’t you at Fifi’s?’ I ask her. ‘She was expecting you.’

  ‘I didn’t see any point,’ she responds. ‘It’ll never work out. You haven’t got time to look after the children and I can’t afford to pay for childcare.’

  ‘For goodness sake, Cheska. You haven’t even tried. And it isn’t all about the money. You need to get out and meet people. You need to get a life.’ I gaze at her. ‘If you want to sit around moping, you’re welcome.’ I won’t interfere again. There isn’t any point going for an interview if you don’t want the job – Fifi would have seen straight through her immediately.

  I turn to go back inside the house.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Cheska asks.

  ‘To the yard. Where do you think?’

  I return home later, having taken Willow for a good gallop and had a session at the gym en route. I’m coming downstairs in my bath robe after a shower when Matt turns up.

  Sage offers to switch off the television and leave us alone.

  ‘There’s no need, Sage,’ I say. ‘It’s all right. We’ll go out.’

  ‘I’ve got some food at my place,’ Matt says as though he’s reading my mind.

  ‘Pasta?’ I ask.

  ‘Remember, Auntie Nicci’s only allowed to eat healthy food, because she’s in serious training,’ Sage says.

  ‘Let me get dressed and find my keys,’ I say, hanging back to avoid any possibility of a hug or kiss, because all I can see when I look at him is a vision of him with Mel, driving her to the hospital and sitting with her as she lies on a bed, with her belly exposed, and their faces as they gaze at their baby on a screen. ‘I’ll catch up with you.’

  When I get to Matt’s house, the Bobster gives me a cautious greeting, coming in for a pat before heading off outside with a bone.

  ‘She likes to bury them for a while,’ Matt says, putting a saucepan of water on the top of the range and sprinkling a pinch of salt and a splash of oil. ‘When they’re really smelly, she digs them up and brings them back in.’

  ‘Matt, that’s vile.’ I stand by the dresser where a black and white photo catches my eye. My heart misses a beat because I know exactly what it is. It’s the scan of the baby.

  ‘I know.’ Matt takes a bag of pasta out of one of the cupboards and puts it on the kitchen table. ‘Are you all right, Nicci?’

  Shaking my head, I pick up the photo.

  ‘Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?’ I ask.

  ‘We decided we didn’t want to know.’

  ‘We?’ Matt and Mel making decisions together. My fingers tremble and the baby’s features blur in front of my eyes. ‘I told you – I’m not sure I can deal with this,’ I choke. I put it back down and turn to leave. ‘It’s too much …’

  ‘Come here,’ Matt says, his footsteps right behind me as I rush outside, trying to put some distance between us. ‘Nicci, please don’t go.’ He catches my arm and pulls me up short.

  I turn to face him. His eyes are filled with pain and regret, and something else, fear, maybe.

  ‘I can’t bear to lose you,’ he begins. ‘I wish I’d never met Mel, but I did. It was a fling and I thought she understood that. It was never going to go anywhere. Oh dear, like the Bobster, I believe I’m digging myself into a hole here. What I mean is, when I said I wasn’t looking for a relationship as such, she made out that it was fine because she wasn’t either. I accepted what she said at face value.’

  ‘It’s different for girls.’ I�
�m not being sexist, but it’s what I believe, that it’s impossible to have a no-strings attached fling. Being a doctor, I know all that cuddle hormone released during sex plays havoc with the female brain.

  ‘I think she trapped me with this pregnancy. She thought I’d commit to her because of the baby, but I can’t do that, Nicci, because I’m committed to you. You have to believe that.’ He pauses. ‘Please don’t walk away from this. It will get better, I promise.’

  ‘I can’t see how,’ I sob. ‘You’ll be with her when the baby’s born.’

  ‘I won’t be far away, but Mel’s mother is going to be her birth partner,’ Matt says. ‘I thought it might help … I don’t know what else I can do.’ He releases my arm. ‘I want to be with you, not Mel. I’m done with the one-night stands and the single life. I want to go to bed with you every night and wake up with you every morning.’ He takes a deep breath and continues, his voice breaking. ‘We can get through this, you know. I love you, Nicci.’

  ‘Oh, Matt.’ There are no words to describe the way I feel. My heart lurches and my stomach is tied up in knots. ‘I love you too …’

  He sweeps me into his arms and holds me close, planting kisses down my neck, and I melt into his embrace.

  *

  Later, I can’t stop smiling in the darkness as I lie in Matt’s arms, warm and secure, listening to the rise and fall of his chest, the gurgle in his belly and the beat of his heart.

  Matt wakes me with tea, toast, butter, and honey from the hive. The sun is shining through the curtains, the pigeons cooing in the oak tree at the end of the garden, and the hens clucking in their coop. I stretch and yawn. It’s idyllic.

  ‘I wish I could come back to bed.’ Matt leans down in his white bathrobe to kiss me, and I put my arms around his neck.

  ‘Come back then,’ I say, smiling.

  ‘I can’t,’ he says, stroking my shoulder. ‘I’ve got rounds to do at eight.’

  ‘What time is it now?’

  ‘Seven-fifteen. I’m going in the shower then I’ll be off. You stay there – there’s no rush.’

  I sit back against the headboard of the bed. He’s right. There isn’t. It’s Saturday, Delphi’s doing Willow for me and I’m not riding until mid-afternoon.