“It’s still touch and go, though,” she adds at the end of the conversation. “I’ll call you again in an hour or so.”
“Now, where were we?” she says as we settle on the sofa in the staff room with a welcome cup of tea, leaving the door propped open so we can keep an eye on Robbie. “When do you have to leave Crossways?”
“In a couple of weeks, when I’ve worked out my notice.” Two weeks? The realization that I’ll be leaving Crossways, the place I’ve called home for the past five years, so soon hits me in the chest. It’s my own fault, though. I went and lost my job—okay, I jumped before I was pushed. I broke one of the cardinal rules of the workplace—never fall for a colleague, especially one who’s recently divorced. When it all went wrong, I decided I wasn’t staying to have my nose rubbed in it.
“I’m really sorry it didn’t work out, Maz.” Emma takes off her surgical cap and ruffles her hair. “Mike seemed like such a nice guy.”
“They always do at first,” I say. Mike owns Crossways Vets in southwest London. Charismatic, successful, and good-looking, with the most amazing brown eyes. I really thought he was the one. He was clever and dedicated too, managing to mix working in a practice with some research work at the Royal Vet College, which might partially explain why his marriage fell apart.
He’d been divorced for just a few months when I started work there, and I admired him for admitting the almost instant attraction between us, while wanting to hold back for his ex-wife’s sake. Perhaps that’s what made it so exciting, the frisson of Mike’s arm brushing against mine as he showed me the latest techniques for ligament repair in the operating theater, then the snatched kisses in the consulting room before he announced to the rest of the staff that we were a couple. Funnily enough, they didn’t seem surprised.
We moved in together and started making plans for me to buy into the partnership with him. We had four and a half blissful years together. Until he realized he was still in love with his ex-wife.
“I’m going to find the next couple of weeks pretty humiliating, what with the nurses gossiping in the staff room and Mike going around the practice singing like he’s James Blunt. He always sings when he’s happy …” Robbie lets out a deep and noisy sigh from his kennel, matching my own sigh of regret. I try to shrug it off as I watch Emma top up Robbie’s pain relief with an injection, but I can’t—there’s nothing that can deal with the pain of rejection. “I’ll get over it,” I say, the words rasping out of my throat. “My heart isn’t broken this time, just bruised.”
“I don’t believe you,” says Emma.
“Mike wasn’t anything special,” I reaffirm, but I know I’m lying to myself, and Emma can tell too. “He had a hairy back—spooning with him was like nuzzling a shaggy dog.” I wrinkle my nose at the thought. “And he was a bit of a geek. And he liked playing golf. And he was a faithless piece of sh—” I stop abruptly. No point in getting wound up all over again. He isn’t worth it. “Men, they’re all the same,” I say.
“Ben excepted,” Emma replies, glancing toward her wedding ring, a simple but weighty gold band, which she wears on a chain around her neck.
“Ben excepted,” I say contritely.
“He’s my rock.” Emma smiles, and I feel a twinge of envy that she’s been so lucky in love and I haven’t. “In fact, it’s partly for Ben’s sake that I’m asking this enormous favor of you. We’re planning to take six months out to travel—you know he’s got all those relations in Australia.”
“Six months?” That’s a lot longer than I expected, and I try not to let my dismay show. I was beginning to come round to the idea that, if I decided to work here in Emma’s place, I could treat it as a bit of a holiday, a couple of weeks in the country.
“It’s doctor’s orders—Ben’s actually.” Emma’s husband is a GP, which I guess comes in useful sometimes. “He says I’m stressed out, that I’ll have some kind of breakdown if I keep going as I am …”
Her voice trails off, and I realize that she’s been putting on a brave face since I arrived late last night. She does look completely shattered. I’ve been so wrapped up in my problems, so busy whinging on about my breakup with Mike during our recent phone conversations that it didn’t occur to me Emma was having a tough time too.
“I haven’t been coping terribly well recently …”
“When did you last have a day off?” I ask.
“Not since I opened the practice.”
“But that’s two—no, three and a half years ago. Emma! Why didn’t you ask for help sooner? I could have covered the odd weekend for you.”
“I didn’t like to bother you—you were busy enough already.”
“Not too busy to help a friend.” I’ve known Emma for twelve years now, and she’s always been there for me, always ready to help me out of a fix. “Do you remember when we first met? There can’t be many people who can say they met their best friend at vet school over a dead greyhound.”
“I wonder if Professor Vincent is still stalking the Dissection Room, scaring the life out of first-year vet students.” Emma smiles. “What did he used to call you? Gwyneth, wasn’t it? As in Gwyneth Paltrow. And I was Catherine Zeta-Jones, which was rather flattering, I thought.”
“I didn’t make a terribly good first impression, did I?” I say, recalling how I’d been fiddling with the knot on the canvas roll holding my dissection kit when suddenly it came undone and my shiny new scalpels, forceps, and scissors skittered across the floor to land at Professor Vincent’s feet.
“There was one person you impressed,” Emma says, getting up from the sofa.
“Oh, don’t.” I know exactly who she’s talking about. Ian Michelson. Sandy blond with hazel eyes and a few freckles across the bridge of his nose, good-looking and clean-cut with a brilliant smile and glasses, he shared our greyhound. When our gloved fingers touched, very briefly, across the dog’s brindle chest, my heart skipped a beat and I fell for him. We went out together for almost six years. He was my first boyfriend, my first love, my first heartbreak.
I watch Emma walk across to look at Robbie. She checks on his wound and covers him with a blanket to keep him warm.
Emma has stuck by me and helped me through the difficult times—when I thought I was too clumsy to be a vet, and when I ran out of money and nearly had to abandon my studies halfway through the course—which is why I’m going to do this for her. Even if I do have to spend six months stuck in the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest Starbucks. I owe her.
CHAPTER 2
Country Ways
Mike doesn’t have the courage to say good-bye, but that’s the kind of man he is. I glance back in the rearview mirror when I stop at the traffic lights a few yards down the road from Crossways. The figures of the people in the waiting room are silhouetted against the windows, and as far as I know, Mike is hiding behind the blinds in his consulting room.
From the group who came out to wave good-bye—some of the staff and the chap from the corner shop who’s also one of my favorite clients—only Janine, the ex-wife who hounded me out, is left. Having turned up at the practice today on the excuse that her dog needed its booster, she stands on the pavement with her arms hugged around her chest—with glee, I imagine, that she’s seen me safely off the premises and out of temptation’s way. But she needn’t worry: to be honest, the way I feel at the moment, I can’t imagine being tempted by any man again. Ever.
If you put me in a room with Jude Law, Daniel Craig, and Brad Pitt right now, would my heart beat a little faster? I doubt it.
When the lights change, I put my foot down and I’m off, joining the queue of traffic leaving the capital.
There isn’t much room for luggage—I’ve sent most of my belongings ahead by courier—but I’ve stuffed a couple of clinical waste bags of clothes and books in the passenger footwell. At least one of my contemporaries from vet school is driving about in an Aston Martin with a personalized number plate, something like K9 VET, and others have monster gas guzzlers
. But I love my sporty red coupe, even though it’s rather impractical for a vet.
On the seat next to me is the box containing my farewell present from Crossways: a brand-new stethoscope, with the card all my colleagues had signed, reminding me not to leave it lying around in men’s bedrooms, which is what happened to the last one. (I was helping a client—a C-list celeb, it turned out, who’d once been on Big Brother—to catch his cat, which had taken one look at me and scampered under the bed. Really.)
I drive on, with mixed feelings of regret and inadequacy for not realizing what Mike was up to when he was “helping” Janine out by walking their dog, a dippy Irish setter with a penchant for swallowing pebbles. I thought it was fair enough that he did his bit since they shared joint custody. Naive or what?
Eventually I enter the county of Devon, where the radio retunes itself, latching on to a local station that is playing some middle-of-the-road pop harking back to the eighties, and the weather changes from sunshine and showers to a steady drizzle. At the turning for Talyton St. George, the road narrows into a country lane with dense hedges on either side, and I run into the back of a traffic jam of all things, a queue of three or four cars behind a herd of black-and-white cows and a tractor with a sticker in the window reading BRITISH BEEF.
I glance at my watch, and my blood pressure starts to rise, like the steam from the cows’ backsides as they wander along, stopping on and off to take a mouthful of grass or release a spattering of muck onto the road. I swap from the radio to the CD player. Beyoncé starts singing “End of Time” and I realize I’m going to have to get used to the slower pace of life down here.
Finally, I reach Talyton itself, passing through Market Square, where red, white, and blue bunting flutters between the elaborately styled Victorian lampposts to tempt tourists to stop at the Copper Kettle or Lupins the gift shop before they continue on their way to the coast. I turn in to Fore Street, and there it is, my destination and home for six months, Otter House Veterinary Clinic.
I leave my luggage in the car and dash through the rain to take shelter inside, where I find a woman behind the desk in Reception, dressed not in blue to match the decor, as you might expect, but in an orange, flower-power smock. When she looks up from a pile of post, I can see that she’s in her mid to late fifties, and that locks of thick, honey blond hair seem to have come adrift from the bun pinned up on the top of her head, contrasting oddly with her wispy gray fringe.
She turns her attention back to the envelope on the top of the pile, picks it up and holds it to the light, then takes a small knife from a pot beside the computer and runs the blade along the top fold to open it. She extracts the letter and spends a few moments reading it before slipping it back into the envelope.
Is it possible she doesn’t know I’m here? I give her the benefit of the doubt and clear my throat loudly.
“Name?” she barks.
“Er, Maz.” I feel my brow tighten into a frown. “I’m Maz Harwood.” I step forward, holding out my hand. “You must be Frances. It’s lovely to meet you.”
“Your pet’s name?” the woman says impatiently.
“I haven’t got a pet.”
“You’re in the wrong place then. This is a vet’s surgery. Don’t waste our time.”
The fluorescent tube above me grows dim, then flickers and brightens again.
“I’m not a client,” I say, slightly cowed by her manner. She isn’t exactly welcoming. “I’m the relief. The vet. Emma’s expecting me.” I make to go on through to the corridor beyond Reception.
“Stop right there!” Frances says sharply. “You can’t go any further—the rest of the practice is out of bounds to anyone who isn’t a member of staff.”
“But I am.”
“Not until tomorrow, I believe. Take a seat. I’ll buzz Emma, but I’m warning you—this may not be a convenient time …”
Deciding not to cross Frances right from the start, I sit down, eyeing her from a safe distance as she stabs at the buttons on the phone on her desk.
A few minutes later Emma appears in the doorway, in scrubs and surgical gloves. “Hi, Maz.” She bounds over to greet me, giving me a hug. “I’m so glad to see you.” She releases me and turns to Frances. “I hope you’ve made our new vet welcome.”
“Of course,” Frances says, cracking a smile in Emma’s direction.
“Has the second post come yet?”
Frances picks up the opened letter. “Is this what you’ve been waiting for?”
“Thanks.” Emma grabs it and turns away to read it.
“Good news, I believe,” Frances offers, feigning surprise when Emma turns back, all smiles.
“Phew, what a relief,” she says. “I’m in the clear. No case to answer.” She tucks the letter into her pocket. “I saw a sick cat and booked it in for some tests—I was busy so it had to wait for a few days. In the meantime the owner took it to guess where, and Old Fox-Gifford diagnosed renal failure. The owner followed up on his suggestion that I’d been negligent, and I’ve had to go through the rigmarole of contacting the Vet Defence Society, and answering questions from the Royal College.” I bet Emma spent hours worrying about it, I think, as she goes on, “I could have done without the extra stress.”
“I’m sure it was all a misunderstanding,” Frances says, and Emma raises one eyebrow at me.
“Come through. The coffee’s on, and I’ve managed to restrain myself and save you a doughnut.” She takes my arm, and I accompany her along the corridor to the ward area, or Kennels as she calls it.
“Did you realize Frances had already opened your post?” I ask on the way.
“Yes, she opens everything to save me time.”
“She reads it too. I saw her,” I add, which seems to be news to Emma. “Isn’t Frances a bit fierce for a receptionist?”
“Maybe, but she knows her job.” Emma grins. “I know it’s a bit unethical, but I managed to poach her from Talyton Manor Vets a couple of months ago. She’d worked there for years.”
“You don’t think the Fox-Giffords deliberately set you up with her?”
“No.” Emma thinks for a moment. “Definitely not. They’ve been a pain in other ways, but no, I was the winner this time. She might read my mail, and refuse to wear the uniform—she says blue doesn’t suit her—and she still believes that the sun shines out of the Fox-Giffords’ behinds, but she has loads of local knowledge, which comes in useful.”
I get the impression that Frances treats Emma with more respect than I can ever expect. I’m the outsider, the newbie, whereas Emma’s lived in Talyton almost all her life, apart from a few years in Cambridge and then in Southampton when Ben did his GP training.
“Let me introduce you to the rest of the team—not Nigel, though, because he only comes in once or twice a week.” Emma touches her hand to her mouth and giggles. “I’m twittering on, aren’t I?”
“Like a baby bird” comes a voice from the far side of the room. A woman dressed in navy scrubs like Emma brings a white wire basket over to the bench. Her skin is pale and freckled, and her short auburn hair is run through with silver threads. She looks like she’s in her late twenties, but Emma’s already told me she’s forty-two.
“You’ve met Izzy before, haven’t you?” says Emma.
It was at the party Emma held when she first opened the practice, over three years ago. I recall Izzy getting quietly sozzled on Pimm’s and lemonade, claiming afterward that she hadn’t realized it was alcoholic, which is probably why she seems a little shy now, greeting me with a nervous hello.
“What do you want to get on with next?” she asks Emma.
“I was going to take Maz to the staff room for a coffee before I finish off here.”
“Don’t let me interrupt what you’re doing,” I say hurriedly. I glance around at the surgical instruments piled up beside the sink and the soiled drapes heaped in a bucket on the draining board. I expect Izzy’s impatient to make a start on the clearing up.
“There’s only
the castration left,” she says, pointing toward a basket that I notice on closer inspection contains a black feline, more kitten than cat, sitting on a blanket surrounded by toys. “Meet Fang.”
“It’ll only take a few minutes,” Emma says, looking at me apologetically.
“Why don’t I help you, then Izzy can get on?” I lift Fang out of the basket and onto the table. He makes to spring off, but I keep him there, hugged to my chest. I catch a whiff of perfume, something floral, in his coat. Emma injects him with a pre-med before he has a chance to notice.
“Where do you want him?” I ask, looking at the rows of gleaming stainless-steel cages against the far wall, designed to house anything from a guinea pig to a Great Dane. “High-rise, or ground floor?”
Izzy picks up a newspaper and lines an empty cage, adding a piece of vet bedding on top for warmth, saying, “Emma, being vertically challenged, prefers me to stick them in the middle.”
I shut Fang inside it. He arches his back and yowls at his reflection, then backs off, his tail in the air.
“You wuss.” I coax him to turn around so that I can scratch him behind the ear through the bars to reassure him. It must be pretty scary for a young cat to be locked in a cage, surrounded by the smells of dogs and disinfectant, especially when he starts losing control of his faculties as the pre-med takes effect.
“Fang’s owner says he’s been straying away from home,” Izzy says. “She’s hoping this’ll reduce his urge to roam the countryside.”
“I can think of other cases where castration would come in useful,” I say, unable to disguise my bitterness as I recall how Mike wandered back to his ex-wife’s bed. “Preferably without an anesthetic,” I add, fetching a dozy Fang from his cage.
“You scrub, I’ll buzz,” Emma says, once Fang’s lying asleep on the operating table, and I watch her shaving the hair from his balls, wishing there was such a thing as voodoo. She cleans the op site, gives it a squirt of surgical spirit, and opens a foil packet, holding it out to me so I can tweak the blade free, keeping it sterile.
City Girl, Country Vet Page 2
