‘Megan,’ warned George.
Rachel wished her mother was here now, to see how much more complicated this was than everyone thought. Bloody ‘get me the Acker Bilk albums’. Dot hadn’t just left her a lovely six-bed villa with gardens and furniture – she’d left her a house that would probably take months to sort through, a business she didn’t have the first clue about, forms to fill in before any of it could be sold or distributed, employees that depended on her, and fifteen reject animals that she’d be guilt-tripped into dealing with.
‘Anyway, sorry to interrupt the tour, but I need to talk to Megan about clipping Lulu,’ said George, briskly, and strode over to Lulu’s pen as if Rachel wasn’t there. He let himself in, and to Rachel’s surprise the poodle perked up her head and allowed him to lift her. His manner with Lulu was a complete change from his manner with humans: firm, but gentle and almost tender.
‘You’re still not yourself, are you?’ He turned back to Megan with the dog tucked into the crook of his arm, looking smaller than ever in his sturdy hold. ‘Yes, on principle, once she’s on her feet again, it’s a good thing to get her tidied up, but you’re not to make her look like some kind of ridiculous Hollywood handbag dog. And don’t tell me about the course you’ve just done.’
‘I’ll do a traditional puppy trim,’ said Megan. ‘But she’d love to have some poms! Look at her, she’s a show girl!’
‘Megan,’ said George again, and this time he sounded properly stern. ‘She’s not a toy, and I don’t want her looking like one, in case she gets the wrong kind of attention.’
Lulu glared at Megan from the safety of her protector’s embrace, her black button eyes shiny in the mass of matted fur.
‘You know that’s not what . . .’ she started, then stopped as he lifted a warning finger. Rachel sensed an old banter between the two and felt awkward.
‘Don’t look so horrified,’ George added, seeing her eyes fixed on Lulu’s scar. ‘She’s just been spayed. We neuter all the dogs, or rather, I do.’
‘George is very good about discounts,’ explained Megan. ‘Deep down he’s a softie.’
‘No, I’m not,’ George corrected her. ‘About this trim . . .’
Rachel let her gaze drift down the pens, where she could make out a brindled Staffie, and a couple of fat chocolate Labradors, a perky Jack Russell bouncing off the walls, and several Heinz 57, terrier-ish looking dogs with fresh eagerness in their brown eyes and a ‘pick me!’ wag in their tails. Other pens seemed empty, and she didn’t want to look, in case their occupants were lurking miserably at the back like Lulu, unable to dredge up the spirit to hope.
How could you choose just one? Her throat tightened as if she’d swallowed cotton wool. How could you walk out, knowing you were leaving fourteen disappointed creatures to wonder what was wrong with them? When their owners would come back for them?
She looked down, and blinked in surprise. Gem had appeared silently, out of nowhere, to lie in front of her, his narrow paws placed neatly together while he waited for something to do.
‘I’m not Dot,’ she whispered, so Megan wouldn’t hear her. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
Rachel, she thought, for God’s sake don’t start talking to the dogs. Get a grip.
‘Megan?’ Her voice cracked, despite her efforts to sound light. ‘I’m going to have a bath. What’s the routine for, you know, locking up?’
‘No need,’ Megan replied cheerfully. ‘I’ve been living in? Part of the deal as kennel manager. Hope you don’t mind – Dot let me have the whole of the second floor? It’s got its own self-contained bathroom and sitting room. I won’t be in your way.’
‘Oh,’ said Rachel. ‘Right.’
So she had a lodger as well. Great. Actually, maybe that was great.
‘Shall I sort you out some supper?’ asked Megan. ‘Freda’s brought a casserole for you, and there’s loads in the cupboards.’
‘No, I . . .’ Rachel didn’t want to say, ‘I don’t want to talk to anyone’, not when Megan was being so kind, but she really didn’t. ‘I’ve got some work to do,’ she said instead. It was a catch-all excuse that had worked for so much in the past. Ironically, of course, she didn’t have any work to do, unless you counted the letters to write to her ex-clients, explaining that she’d now resigned.
‘No problem!’ said Megan. ‘I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about sleeping in Dot’s bed, so I’ve made up the spare room next to hers? There’s towels on the heated rail in the bathroom.’
Rachel forced out a smile. ‘Um . . . thanks. Thanks for everything you’ve done.’
Megan’s smile increased. ‘Really, my pleasure. Have a nice bath!’
‘Good evening!’ said George Fenwick, tipping his head in a deliberately old-fashioned manner. ‘And let me give you the number of my dry cleaner!’
‘You have a dry cleaner?’ Rachel pulled an incredulous face.
He smiled. ‘Touché.’
But Rachel was too weary to enjoy scoring points off him. Instead she sloped off to Dot’s roll-topped bath to soak away some of the weariness in her bones.
3
Johnny Hodge put his empty pint glass down between the empty crisp packet and the dish of pistachio shells and checked his watch.
Quarter past eight. Bill had been at the bar for twenty-four minutes, which was a record even for the Fox and Hounds, where service depended on whether Ray’s darts injury was playing up or not.
Johnny knew he should have gone himself. Even when Ray was in the pint-pulling zone, Dr Bill’s drink-buying always took twice as long as everyone else’s on account of the locals treating it as a chance for some unofficial medical attention in the comfort of their own pub. That was the price you paid for being a doctor. Very few people, on the other hand, bothered to button-hole Johnny to ask about the GCSE History syllabus.
He glanced across at Natalie, but she was staring vacantly into the distance, an unfamiliar expression for her, and his heart sank.
Johnny could guess what she was thinking about: it was all she ever thought about now. She’d be calculating her fertile period and assessing whether it was worth hauling him back home early or leaving him for another hour with Bill. Ironically neither option – passionate sex with the most gorgeous woman in the bar, or an extra round with his best mate – filled him with the joy it should.
Bill might be a qualified doctor, but in Johnny’s private opinion, when it came to human fertility he was a rank amateur compared to Nat. She did her best to keep the gory details from him, but when your wife started to seduce you for half the month then ignored you miserably for the other half, even a bloke like Johnny had to know something was going on. And he wasn’t as daft as he made out. He’d seen the website she thought she’d hidden from him, the one that she plotted her morning temperature on. Nat thought she’d hidden that from him too, muffling the bleep bleep bleep of her thermometer before the alarm went.
These days it was less like making love and more like being a sperm courier.
Johnny tapped his foam-streaked glass against the table, more to distract himself than to get Nat’s attention. ‘How long does it take one man to buy a round?’ he asked in a cheerful tone. ‘What’s he doing up there? Brewing the bitter?’
Natalie snapped out of her trance and looked towards the bar, where Bill was indeed pinned to a bar stool by an eager girl, in knee-high boots, who seemed to have something wrong with her neck going by the way she was encouraging Bill to peer at it. He didn’t need much encouragement, bending his dark head so his hair fell into his eyes, making ‘hmm’ faces.
‘No, I think he’s doing one of his out-of-hours surgeries,’ she said drily. ‘Funny how many strange rashes seem to crop up in here. Ray ought to get the place fumigated.’
‘I think she’s requesting a home visit,’ said Johnny.
‘She’ll be lucky,’ said Natalie. ‘There’s a waiting list, isn’t there?’
Bill was a handsome bloke, even Johnny had to acknowledge
that. Tall, athletic, twinkly brown eyes – Bill had the sort of college rower good looks that meant he could wear polo shirts with the collar turned up and not look a total prat. He was exactly the kind of guy Johnny’s mum had hoped his sister Becky would bring home – although Johnny was willing to lay money on Bill never actually reaching the ‘meeting mum’ stage, such was his endless turnover of adoring women. Three dates, or two weekends, was the average lifespan of a Bill girlfriend. And yet he always managed to break up so sensitively that they still cried on his shoulder and insisted to Johnny that he was ‘the nicest man I’ve ever met’.
In Johnny’s opinion, it was time Bill took this whole mating game more seriously. Not just because he thought marriage had a lot to recommend it, but because there were only a finite number of women in a small town like Longhampton.
‘Do you think if he was less of a looker he’d stop playing the field so much?’ mused Natalie, out of the blue. ‘Do you think he’s got too much choice?’
She often did that, slip inside his head, without him realising. Johnny slid his arm along the velvet booth, so he could pull her a bit closer.
‘I think he looks at us, and wants what we’ve got,’ he said, honestly. ‘But what we’ve got doesn’t come along that often, does it? I think how lucky I am every day, meeting the girl of my dreams in the comfort of my own school canteen. Twelve years down the line, you’ll always be the cute sixth-former to me. With your Jennifer Aniston haircut.’
Johnny could have added, and every day you get more beautiful, and more amazing, and I can’t believe that an ambitious, intelligent, gorgeous woman like you would pick someone like me. But he didn’t, because Nat already knew how he felt about her.
‘Lucky me,’ he said instead.
She gave him a sideways look, her clever green cat’s eyes glinting with amusement. ‘Stop it. You’ll make me nauseous.’ But she leaned over and pressed a secret kiss in the hollow of his neck, quickly, so no one would see. Johnny’s heart rate sped up and he hoped it meant they were heading into a Green Zone. It might be worth sacrificing a round for.
But Natalie’s mind was back on Bill. ‘Bill needs a girlfriend,’ she said with a sigh, sinking back into the ancient burgundy velveteen. ‘He can’t keep on being so fussy. He can’t keep on hanging out with sad marrieds like us. Why did he dump the last one?’
‘She couldn’t park her car.’ Johnny returned his attention to the bar, where the brunette was laughing uproariously, and heaving her cleavage around. The first signs of rigor mortis were setting in on Bill’s smile. ‘Come on, the guy doesn’t ask for much. He only wants a woman between twenty-six and twenty-eight, no baggage, no scary exes, good cook, blonde hair, taller than Kylie Minogue but shorter than Kate Winslet, likes the outdoors but also home comforts.’
‘Who’s perfect at parking.’
‘Well, yes.’
‘He’s trying not to find someone,’ said Natalie with a sigh. She knocked back the last of her Diet Coke while Johnny was racking his brains wondering what she meant. ‘Should we leave him to his consultation or should you rescue him?’
They scrutinised Bill’s body language; long legs crossed over each other, arms folded defensively over his chest. As they looked, he caught Johnny’s eye and made a tiny shaky-head gesture.
‘I’ll rescue him.’ Johnny rose to his feet, nearly knocking the small table over. He wasn’t small, and the tables had got very close together since Ray had tried to upgrade the Fox and Hounds to a gourmet experience by shoving the drinkers into the snug to make space for a dining room. ‘What can I get you?’
‘A bloody Virgin Mary.’ Natalie had sacrificed white wine at the same time as she’d given up tea, coffee and anything else that might interfere with her hormones. ‘Johnny, I’m not nagging but don’t you think you should . . . have one too?’ She bit her lip and looked down at her handbag, next to her on the shabby velvet seat. She seemed more cross with herself than him.
Johnny knew what she’d stopped herself saying: had he remembered the advice about his own beer consumption? Natalie never nagged; it had been one of their self-written marriage vows, along with his promise to iron his own shirts. But in this case she didn’t need to; if it was a choice between giving up the ale and giving Dr Bill’s flat-shoed nemesis Nurse Sonia the dreaded sample for analysis, he was willing to make the ale sacrifice for a few months.
Twelve months, now, it had been since they’d ‘stopped trying not to get pregnant’. The longest twelve months of his life.
Still, Johnny thought, it was really important to Natalie, having a baby. And to him. Obviously. It was important to them both, because whatever made her happy, made him happy. But if it came to it, Johnny secretly thought that if it was just him and Natalie for the rest of their lives, he’d be happy enough.
‘A Virgin Mary? Eeh, cocktails? At the Fox?’ he said instead. ‘Think I’ll join you in that. Give Ray some sophistimacation practice for those fine dining yuppies he wants to bring in.’
Natalie looked up and smiled gratefully, and he loved her a little bit more.
Twenty minutes later, Natalie drained the tomato juice dregs and shouldered her bag.
‘I’d better be off,’ she said, with an apologetic smile. ‘I know, party pooper. Sorry.’
‘So early?’ Bill looked disappointed. ‘Does this mean we’re getting old? It’s not even a school night. Mr Hodge is still here, look!’
Natalie gripped the shoulder strap. ‘No, I’ve just . . . I’ve just got some reports I need to write up before the weekend kicks in. I hate leaving it till Sunday night. Rather get it done while it’s all fresh in my mind.’
Johnny started to reach for his jacket, but she shook her head. ‘No, honestly, hon, you stay here and finish your drink. It’s fine.’
‘We’ll share a cab,’ offered Bill. ‘Won’t make it too late.’
‘Before midnight’s fine.’ Natalie smiled. ‘He turns back into a frog after that. See you later!’
She walked out of the pub into the night air, which had taken on an even sharper chill in the last few days. No sign of spring yet, she thought, clutching her hooded parka tighter as she blipped the central locking on their Mini Cooper and slid inside.
Natalie loved her Mini Cooper. Johnny got the bus into school most mornings, so this was really her car, for driving to the business park on the outskirts of town where she worked, and for the endless marketing strategy meetings she had to schlep all over the place for. Every time she ran her hands over the leather steering wheel Natalie felt good about her life. It was a new car, and a bit of a luxury, but it had been their big treat to themselves, her and Johnny, since they didn’t have anyone to spend their money on but themselves, not like their brothers and sisters who spent every available penny on their kids.
She’d ticked the ISOFIX child seat fittings option, just in case, when Johnny was faffing around deciding on what type of alloys they should get. It was sensible anyway, for secondhand values. A rational decision. Not just because Natalie often imagined a chunky little Maclaren child seat there, in her rear-view mirror. With a chunky little Hodge inside.
As she pulled carefully out of the pub car park and onto the main road, there was a tight knot of moodiness in her chest, and she probed it ruthlessly. Since she and Johnny had officially started trying to conceive – Natalie hated the twee TTC phrases but found herself using them anyway – she’d tuned into her body like it was a kind of radio transmitter. Every twinge and mood swing and break-out registered in some part of her brain.
Was it the pub? Did she resent not being allowed to drink on her baby diet? Not really. She missed the coffee more. God, she thought, you’d never believe women managed to get pregnant in the past, what with smoking and drinking and rare meat and what have you.
Was it Bill? Not really. She didn’t mind hanging out, the three of them. Bill and Johnny were friends from college, and he was like an extra brother.
Was it work? The knot tightened and she
knew she couldn’t ignore it.
Yes, work was getting to her. The credit crunch had clamped its jaws around the multi-national food company she worked for, as a marketing executive in a new organics sector, and her boss, Selina, was sharpening her claws on her team every day. What had really set Natalie’s nerves jangling was the way she already knew today’s monthly strategy meeting hadn’t gone well; Natalie was smart enough to see that other people’s budgets were being cut, leaving even less room for them, but there wasn’t much she could do about it, short of bailing out the World Bank.
With a sharper flick on the indicator than was strictly necessary, she indicated to turn onto the road up to the estate where she and Johnny lived.
But if she was being honest – and Natalie always tried to be honest – it was a guilty, less noble niggle passed down that chain of more reasonable work-related irritations that had caused the knot in her chest.
That morning, when Kay Lambert, the third pregnant woman in a twenty metre radius of her desk, had made her big announcement via the office email, something had burst inside Natalie, something hot and jealous and stinging. Kay was really nice, but she was thirty-seven and she already had two children. This one was ‘a happy surprise!’ She hadn’t even been trying. She hadn’t been on IVF or anything, just ‘a rather naughty wedding anniversary in Bath!’ It was so unfair.
Natalie’s knuckles went white on the wheel. She hadn’t let it show. She hadn’t wanted to spoil Kay’s moment, because she was happy for her, happy for anyone who was expecting a baby. In fact, she’d been the one to organise the collection and had bought the adorable sling she’d added to her own secret Mothercare wishlist.
So how come it’s not me, howled the voice in her head, her mouth twisting with the effort of not crying. I’m only thirty, I don’t smoke or drink, I love my husband, we have sex at the right times, I take folic acid every morning, I don’t even drink bloody coffee any more! What’s wrong with me?