by Dillon, Lucy
‘She doesn’t need to worry,’ Rachel protested. ‘I’m a big girl! I’m nearly forty!’
Ken’s eyes looked straight into hers, clear with fatherly adoration, and Rachel felt her chest tighten. ‘You might be nearly forty, but you’ll always be our little girl, Rachel. Our first little girl.’
If only he knew how little I felt now, she thought. How much I wish I could just bury my head in his chest and have all this go away.
Val’s Clarks sandals clomped along the tiles outside the kitchen, and Gem’s head sprang up from his sleeping position. Before Ken and Rachel could exchange glances, Val was back in the kitchen, pink lipstick refreshed, eyes bright with tears and fresh wipes.
‘What are you two gabbing about?’ she asked, in an upbeat voice that was meant to telegraph a total change of subject. ‘And do you think George will be dropping back in for a cup of coffee after he’s dealt with his horse?’
‘I’ll text him,’ said Rachel, hearing her own voice mirror her mother’s. ‘You never know. Ice cream, Dad?’
‘Lovely!’ Ken smacked his knees, his usual sign that the tricky emotional stuff was over. He seemed relieved. ‘Where’s the loo in this place, Rachel? Excuse me, ladies.’
‘Now then, I was looking at the wallpaper on the stairs.’ Val launched into a helpful stream of advice about redecorating as Rachel picked Dot’s china pudding bowls out of the crockery cupboard, but though she smiled, Rachel wasn’t listening.
Instead, she was trying to imagine what it must have felt like, to hear the man you’d let inside your head, whom you thought you knew, tell you that he’d been someone different all the time. She probed her own heart. What if Oliver hadn’t told her about Kath, for all those years? What if she’d discovered that?
In fact, Kath had known. She’d chosen to live with that bitter knowledge that Oliver loved someone else, in exchange for security, and a family. Wouldn’t that erode your spirit, like battery acid?
It wasn’t quite the same, she decided. What Felix had asked Dot to keep secret meant changing everything – including who she was. Someone who hadn’t known her lover well enough to pick up on those secret needs. No wonder the shock of it had washed Dot up here, devastated and directionless. And she’d been younger than Rachel was now.
Maybe you never really knew people. Rachel laid Dot’s silver spoons mechanically on the table. Mum wouldn’t guess that Dad could have pulled a bloke, if he’d wanted to. Dad never knew his little girl had been some man’s mistress for longer than Amelia had been married. Maybe Mum was right: George could be a closet bigamist for all she knew.
A shiver ran over her, not about George so much as for herself, and the future that she hadn’t a clue about, with the baby she still couldn’t quite believe would be here by Christmas. Dot had been right about this house being full of secrets. Four Oaks, if Felix had paid for it, was an enormous secret in itself. Maybe it would be better to sell it, and make the fresh start Dot should have made, instead of tying herself in knots trying to keep Dot’s mad displacement passion going?
Val laid a hand over hers and Rachel looked down at it.
Her mother was smiling contritely. They were alike in that respect. Always sorry at once for their outbursts.
‘Lots to think about, darling?’ said Val.
Rachel nodded. She felt too tired to argue. ‘Lots,’ she said. And she managed a watery smile.
25
Rachel wasn’t looking forward to finding ‘a quiet moment’ to talk to Val about Dot’s painful family secret, but luckily, she didn’t have to, thanks to the most frenetic Saturday the kennels had had in months.
The doorbell started ringing just after she’d finished making breakfast, when the first wave of dog walkers arrived, encouraged by the bright morning, and spring air. It didn’t stop, and soon the kitchen was full of volunteers, all chatting and scoffing bacon sandwiches, which Val insisted on making, leading to some pointed jostling at the Aga with Freda, Queen of the Grill Pan.
To dispel the simmering tension, Rachel suggested that Ken and Val take Gem for a walk and when they’d gone, she started dealing with the queue of people waiting in the rescue office. Natalie’s website had brought in a new batch of would-be rehomers wanting to meet the dogs and, while she and Megan chatted and discussed home checks, a heartbroken family turned up with their three terriers, in tears because their new council landlord refused to allow pets. Megan had only just calmed them down, when George arrived with a Yorkshire terrier that someone had abandoned outside the surgery.
He said he couldn’t stay, despite Rachel’s pleas.
‘I’m only flying past on my way to a call-out.’ He checked his watch, tension deepening the line between his eyebrows. ‘I should really have sent Darren down with this one.’
‘Can’t you stay ten minutes? Mum and Dad’ll be back soon.’
George pulled a face, and Rachel wished he had just a smattering of Oliver’s people skills.
‘My sister’s had some crisis and they’re going to have to leave earlier than they thought,’ she went on, reluctant to tell him the truth – that she wanted to prove that he did put her before work. ‘I know my mum would like to say goodbye.’
‘You know I can’t.’ George looked tetchy. ‘Rachel, there’s a sick dog waiting for me. I can’t tell the owners, sorry Tucker copped it, but I was making small talk about car restoration with my girlfriend’s parents.’
‘Well, if you put it like that, you’d better sod off now.’ Rachel knew she was being unreasonable but something about the previous night had set her nerves twitching. She and George were just too used to being their own people to play happy families at such short notice. Maybe they’d never be able to.
He opened his mouth to say something, and then clearly thought better of it. A short silence opened up between them, and Rachel felt a twinge of regret that she didn’t feel she could press him on it, in case it was something she didn’t want to hear.
George didn’t back down. ‘Tell them I’m very sorry not to have seen them before they left,’ he said courteously. ‘But I’m sure I’ll see them again. At your Open Day perhaps?’
‘They’re going to be in Mallorca.’ Rachel paused, before adding, ‘With Amelia and the children.’
‘Oh.’ He looked sympathetic for a second. ‘Lovely. Anyway, I’ll give you a ring. Are you doing anything tonight?’
‘I’ll see how I feel,’ Rachel replied, before she could stop herself.
He flashed her an unreadable look, nodded at Megan, who had returned from checking in the new arrival, and left.
‘What was that all about? He’s a grumpy so-and-so.’ Megan handed Rachel a cardboard kennel tag, to go on the door of the Yorkie’s new run. ‘Can you write a good heart-rending message for Mitzi, please?’
‘Mitzi?’ Rachel sat down at the desk and got her marker pen out. She had to blink back tears and she wasn’t sure why.
‘All Yorkies are called Mitzi, it’s the law. OK, how about: “I loved my humans, who fed me treats – but didn’t clean my teeth! Then my teeth started hurting, and when they found out how much it was going to cost, they just dumped me at …” ’ Megan stopped. ‘Sorry, is that too sad? Rachel, don’t cry.’
Rachel wiped her streaming eyes with the back of her hand. ‘It’s not that, it’s my stupid hormones.’ She looked up from the desk, and decided that Megan needed to know. It was rude not to warn her about the horrendous mood swings if nothing else. ‘You have to keep this quiet, but I’m pregnant. I’m having a baby.’
‘I know what pregnant means.’ Megan’s eyes widened. ‘Is it …’
‘It’s George’s. Yes, it’s a bit of a surprise.’
‘That’s lovely news.’ Megan clasped her hands together, and looked as if she really meant it. ‘That’s so great for you, and for George!’
Rachel raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s early days. In every way.’
‘You know, that totally restores my faith in whirlwind romance, and chance
s coming just when you’d given up,’ said Megan. ‘I mean,’ she added, apologetically, ‘for George. We’d all given up for George.’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Rachel, with a wry smile, and turned her attention back to making Mitzi’s story good enough to bounce her straight into a new home.
In the end, Natalie sent in her CV to the dream chocolate job, but when she wasn’t called in for an interview (‘we had a fiercely competitive selection process’) she wasn’t as disappointed as she’d thought she’d be. In fact, a tiny part of her was relieved the decision had been made for her – for now, at least.
Maria Purcell from the recruitment agency wasn’t overly concerned, although she did ring while Natalie was out with the dog to suggest that she come into the offices ‘for a follow-up meeting, to assess our strategy going forward’.
‘That’s a great idea,’ Natalie had said, with one eye on Bertie’s slobbery jaws. ‘Um, I’m about to go on holiday for a fortnight, so maybe we should liaise when we get back?’
She knew, even as she said it, that Maria’s eyes would be narrowing with suspicion, but she didn’t care: she needed more time to work out what she wanted to do. Johnny was no help; in fact, he’d refused to offer any advice about anything – keeping Bertie, her going back to work, going on the IVF waiting list. It was all up to her, apparently. She was the only one who deserved to make decisions.
Johnny’s sudden and horribly uncharacteristic slump into apathy had started when he’d decided on the morning of the appointment that he didn’t want to go for the fertility consultation at the hospital, and no amount of pleading could persuade him otherwise.
‘What more do I need to know?’ he’d whined. ‘My sperm’s rubbish. Face it. I’m trying to.’ And then his expression had turned stony and he’d refused to discuss it further, storming off to school with a face that had probably scared his first three classes into total silence. Natalie had stared at the door for five minutes after he’d gone and then she’d lain on the sofa and cried until Bertie scrambled up next to her, and licked the tears off her face.
With Johnny refusing to discuss treatments or even consultations, there didn’t seem much point carrying on with her ‘baby sabbatical’ plan. It seemed so indulgent now. So, she reckoned sadly, she might as well call Maria Purcell back and get her career back in gear.
She kept her voice professionally breezy until the call was over, and then hung up with a sigh. Bertie had bounced up onto the park bench next to her, ignoring her attempts to remove him, and was now burying his head in her bag, in search of KitKats.
Natalie leaned back and gazed across the canal, where a swan was escorting a flotilla of dusty cygnets towards a lock she’d never known was there until she’d started walking Bertie along the towpath.
I’m going to miss this, she thought, with a pang. It wasn’t like being on holiday any more – it was like having a different sort of life.
Walking Bertie had opened her eyes to the town she thought she knew back to front. Their strolls had taken her past elegant Georgian villas, houses with faded adverts for bakeries and coachbuilders still in the brickwork, pretty bridges over abandoned railway lines, a hidden church hall, and a community of nice old people who’d almost become familiar faces as she and Bertie had passed them, day after day. Natalie wondered how she’d ever found time to think properly before she had an hour to march around the footpaths, letting her mind turn over the problems as her feet followed the yellow footpath arrows.
Bertie’s head emerged, triumphantly, from her bag; he’d found the sock Johnny had hidden in there, to ‘train’ his tracking abilities, back in the early days when they both believed Bertie could be persuaded into advanced canine skills.
‘That’s two weeks old, Bertie,’ she pointed out, removing it from his mouth, and felt a tug of sadness, remembering how she and Johnny had held hands as they strolled through the park, and watched their dog potter on ahead of them. A family.
Bertie gazed up at her with eyes that melted her heart, every time. He was trying so hard, and she was going to have to give him back too. Life was bloody unfair sometimes.
Back in the main square, Rachel was having another meeting with Gerald Flint at the solicitor’s office, in which he was ‘tidying up’ the loose ends from the probate process. It seemed to have taken for ever to Rachel, but Gerald seemed pleased about how quickly everything had progressed.
He was even more impressed about how promptly she’d sent off the cheque for the first bit of the inheritance tax to get probate moving, but then he hadn’t had Val nagging him about divvying up the contents of the house to deserving relatives and redoing the bathroom decor.
‘It was lucky you had some savings to fall back on,’ he said, when she glossed over how she’d raised the money. ‘We tend to advise clients to make arrangements, so their benefactors aren’t embarrassed. But that was Dorothy, I suppose. Every penny spent on the dogs.’
‘Mm,’ said Rachel.
Dot had left arrangements, albeit – typically, Rachel now realised – complicated, secret ones that required day trips to London jewellers. In addition to the necklace, Rachel had also sold a ring she’d bought for her thirtieth birthday, a flashy ‘I don’t care that I’m not married’ sapphire she’d bought in a fit of self-pity, and some tiny diamond studs Oliver had given her. They were the only jewellery he’d ever given her, in fact, and so they’d been harder to give up, but Rachel wanted to disguise Dot’s necklace among her own pieces, in case any questions were asked. One unfaithful lover’s gift was as good as the next, after all.
‘We can try to negotiate with the Inland Revenue about a timeline for the rest of your liability,’ Gerald went on, ‘but it might help to discuss what your plans are. Do you want to sell the house, or maybe some of the land? If you’re intending to stay.’ He paused. ‘I don’t mean to rush you into anything, but these processes can take a while. You could be looking at a good year or so, given the state of the current market.’
A year? I’ll have a newborn baby by then, thought Rachel. That put things in a different light, all of a sudden. If she wanted to make a fresh start somewhere else, she’d have to decide fast, so she wouldn’t be trying to juggle estate agents, movers and midwives all at the same time.
Still, no more agonising over Heals or Liberty for Christmas decorations this year, she thought.
‘I don’t know if it helps – and this is off the record,’ said Gerald, hesitantly. ‘But the agent who valued the land, nice chap, handles a lot of the larger estates locally, did ask me if I thought you were planning on selling. He has a client on his who’d be interested in buying the whole place outright. He’s looking for a big family house, with outbuildings for studios, and a bit of land for privacy. Cash buyer, I should think. Worth bearing in mind, maybe? That house needs a fair bit doing to it, going by the survey, and to be honest, why take on the stress if you don’t need to?’
‘That’s quite a tempting option.’ Even the idea of arranging decorators made her exhausted right now. ‘Maybe I should take his card?’
‘It’s good to have options,’ said Gerald, searching out the agent’s details. ‘You could parcel off some land, but given that you don’t have any connections here, I’d be inclined to sell the lot and start again with a tidy sum in your back pocket.’
Rachel toyed with the mental image of a lovely cottage somewhere, mortgage-free, and money in the bank to tide her over for a while. In all honesty, she couldn’t make up her mind what she wanted – some mornings she woke desperate for her old life, some nights she went to bed buoyant with happiness at the thought of one more dog and one more new owner neatly matched up. It was impossible to work out which reaction was real and which was hormones, when even the sound of birdsong could reduce her to tears.
‘I need some time to think,’ she said. ‘I’ve been run off my feet arranging our Open Day. Well,’ she added, in the spirit of honesty, ‘I’ve had a lot of help. It’s been one pile of admin after another,
but hopefully it should kickstart the kennel business for Megan. Then if I do decide to sell, it’s a going concern.’
‘Ah, yes!’ Gerald’s face lit up. ‘The Open Day! Our secretary had a letter from … is it Natalie, your new sponsorship director?’
Rachel nodded. ‘Natalie’s our new kennel director, full stop.’
She wasn’t sure she’d be half as far on with the Open Day without Natalie’s feverish intervention. She’d breezed through the insurance admin, and the permissions, and sent off for all the details about registering as a charity ‘if it made life easier’. Rachel wasn’t sure how it could, but Natalie seemed to relish the challenge. ‘Can we count on Flint & Sunderland to sponsor a kennel? Or a dog bowl with your name on it, for a year’s tinned tripe?’
‘Ha! Seems appropriate for a firm of solicitors. Yes, I should think we’ll be in touch about that. Only right, since I’ve had so many happy years with my two.’
Gerald always seemed to come to life when she got him onto the topic of dogs, Rachel thought. The stuffed shirt turned quite avuncular. The more she got to know about the dog world of Longhampton the more it seemed like a canine version of the Masons. Everyone knew everyone.
‘And I got my letter from Megan too,’ he went on. ‘Or should I say, Molly and Spry got their letter from Gem!’
‘Right,’ said Rachel, less confidently. She hadn’t had a chance to check over Megan’s letters, but she’d noticed there was a pawprint stamp on the office desk, which made her suspect the worst.
While she and Natalie were sorting out the sponsorship/kennel promotion, Megan had offered to get in touch with the various rehomers who’d taken on Four Oaks dogs over the years, inviting them to support the day. All their details were on handwritten files in the office, usually with photos and Christmas cards clipped to them.
‘I always said, if Dot Mossop could have matched up people the way she matched up dogs and humans, we’d all have been queuing up the road.’ He beamed. ‘We’ll be there – this Saturday, is it?’
