Must Be Love (2 page)

The local station Megadrive Radio plays an oldie from Wet Wet Wet. The rain pelts down, turning to sleet.

Talyford. There was a clue in the name, I think wryly as I stop at the edge of the murky stream that foams and swirls across the road before it continues its way down the valley to join the river. I guess it’s safe to cross. There’s no way of telling since the depth indicator post has been broken off and chucked in the hedge, but as I’m not sure I’ll find my way into the other end of the village if I make a diversion, I drive on, being careful not to make waves, and reach the other side.

Further down the hill, the stream passes in front of a handful of cottages, all painted pale pink, a shop with a post office, a small church and a courtyard of cob-and-thatch barn conversions with ‘For Sale’ signs outside, which make up the vast metropolis – I’m being ironic – of Talyford. I park in front of one of the cottages, the Old Forge, and make my way across a wrought-iron footbridge over the stream to the front door.

I knock, but there’s no answer and, remembering that this is Devon and therefore nothing happens in a hurry, I wait for a couple of minutes before knocking again. A dog whines from the distance, and eventually the door opens and a woman who’s a few years older than me greets me from a wheelchair. I notice her purple eyeliner and her smock, splashed with paint.

‘Hi. I’m Maz, the vet. Ms Diamond?’

‘It’s Penny. Thank you for coming so quickly …’ She spins her chair so she ends up facing down the hall and all I can see is the back of her head: the piece of ragged tie-dyed sheet tied like a bandanna and the wooden beads that adorn her multicoloured locks of hair. ‘Sally’s this way.’

She waves me past her into some kind of studio set up with an easel, and stacks of canvasses, some virgin white, others painted with eerie landscapes, some in the stark light of a fiery sun, others dark with slanting rain. I’m not sure how best to describe them: impressionistic or amateurish. Who am I to criticise, though, when I can’t draw or paint to save my life?

‘I’m sorry about the mess. When the estate agent described it as bijou, I didn’t appreciate quite how small the place was.’ Penny points towards the far corner of the room. ‘There’s Sally over there. I’m really worried – I’ve never seen her like this.’

I step around the easel, taking care not to tread on any of the tubes of paint scattered across the floor, so I can get close to a rather beautiful golden retriever with a pink nose and dark brown eyes. She stands in the corner in a harness attached to a short lead, panting and dribbling, her belly swollen so big she could pass as a cartoon dog.

‘She had Christmas dinner early.’ Penny twists the silver fretwork ring on her finger. ‘She stole mine from the worktop: turkey, sprouts, stuffing, the lot.’

‘When was that?’ I’m trying to keep calm, but I’m looking at Sally and thinking, Very sick dog, not much time.

‘About two hours ago. Declan, my carer – he comes in twice a day – took her out for a good run afterwards. “To get her to use up the extra calories,” he said. Apparently she drank lots from the stream on the way back, and since then her stomach’s been getting bigger and bigger.’ Penny’s freckled face crumples. ‘I’m afraid she’s going to burst.’

The dog groans and retches. Strings of saliva dangle from her jowls and make a sticky pool on the floor.

‘Is there something you can do? An injection? Tablets?’

‘I wish it was that simple. I’m going to have to take her straight to the surgery. She might have to stay with us for a while.’

‘I don’t think I can bear the thought of Christmas without her.’

‘It’s a shame, but …’ It’s non-negotiable. If Sally’s got any chance of survival it’s back at Otter House, not here in the wilds of Talyford.

‘I rely on Sally,’ Penny cuts in. ‘She picks things off the floor for me, fetches the phone …’

‘I see.’ Now I understand why the dog’s wearing a lead and harness indoors, and I can feel the pressure piling on as Penny chatters away as if she can’t stop, a side effect of living alone, I suspect. At least, I’m assuming she lives alone. Opposite the window that looks out onto a tidy lawn and shrubbery, there’s a wall with photos, including wedding pictures of a younger and much slimmer Penny in a 1920s-style ivory dress, standing beside a rather striking groom who has spiky hair and red drainpipe trousers.

‘It’s serious, isn’t it?’ Penny’s voice quavers. ‘I can tell from your face. She isn’t going to die?’

Not if I can help it, I think, but I refrain from giving grounds for optimism. I don’t want to raise Penny’s hopes.

‘Is there anyone who can be with you? Anyone you can go and stay with?’ I ask, worried how she’s going to cope, practically and emotionally.

‘I can’t impose on Declan. He offered to stay all day tomorrow, but I told him he mustn’t because he has his own friends. I can’t ask my sister because she’s in York with her kids. Sally’s my family now. Sally, darling,’ Penny calls. At the sound of the sob that catches in her owner’s throat, the dog looks up momentarily before returning to stare at a paint spot on the stone floor as if she’s depending on it for her survival. ‘What will I do without you?’

‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.’ I take Sally by her lead and coax her out along the hall, following Penny, who opens the front door for us. ‘I’ll call you when I have any news.

‘Hurry up, Sally,’ I add, but once outside, Sally refuses to clamber into the front of my car so, with the sleet stinging the back of my neck, I have to half lift, half force her in. Her limbs are stiff and her claws scrape the paintwork. Her hard belly pings and pops like gas bubbling through an airlock on a demijohn.

‘For an assistance dog, you aren’t being terribly helpful,’ I tell her as I sit her in the footwell on the passenger side, praying she won’t be sick.

When I glance back at the Old Forge as I drive away, I catch sight of Penny at the window with a tissue pressed to her nose. Life isn’t fair, is it? I can’t imagine what it must be like confined to a wheelchair and dependent on other people – and a dog. I’m not sure I’d consider Sally a pair of safe paws.

I call ahead to the practice to ask Frances to warn Izzy to prepare theatre.

‘Izzy isn’t in this afternoon,’ Frances says. ‘She’s gone into Exeter to do some last-minute shopping.’

‘Oh?’ I’d forgotten. ‘You’d better tell Emma, then. I’ve got a possible GDV.’

‘What’s that in English, Maz?’ says Frances, then before I can explain that it’s a case of bloat with added complications, she adds, ‘No, don’t worry – I’ve got it.’

‘Cheers, Frances.’ I drive on back across the ford, slowly and steadily in first gear, and right in the middle, slowly and steadily, the car shudders and rolls to a stop, the engine cuts out and water starts flooding into the footwell, turning my feet to blocks of ice. Sally clambers onto the passenger seat and starts panting steamy breaths of fermenting sprouts into my face. I fiddle with the key in the ignition and press my foot to the floor, but nothing happens. The headlights of a vehicle come flaring through the rear window behind me, and the driver starts hooting at me to get out of the way.

What can I do, though? I think, as the water rushes on past and the hooting continues. What’s wrong with people? It’s pretty obvious I’m not going anywhere fast. I tighten my grip on the steering wheel, annoyed at whoever is behind me, but above all with myself because Sally’s chances are slipping away with every minute that passes.

I shove the door open. ‘Maz? Maz!’ someone yells over the sound of splashing.

I lean out of the car to find Alex, my current boyfriend and the best thing that’s ever happened to me, wading towards me, all six foot one of him.

‘What on earth are you doing here?’ I say, surprised and pleased, and more than a little embarrassed that he’s turned up in the middle of nowhere to find me in a predicament of my own making.

‘I’m on my way back from a stitch-up at the Wilds’ place,’ Alex says.

‘The horse sanctuary?’

‘That’s right. They rescued this poor young cob from near death and now it’s gone and got itself caught up in barbed wire. A case of sod’s law, don’t you think?’ Alex holds on to the car door, the water swirling around a couple of inches below the tops of his wellies: my knight with a shining four by four. ‘I took the short cut.’

‘Well, I’m very glad you did,’ I say, taking in the fierce, stormy blue of his eyes, and the way his dark hair is beginning to curl at the ends in the wet. I note the few hairs silvering at his temple – he is ten years older than me, after all – and the spatters of mud – no, blood – on the stonewashed denim jeans that hug his long, muscular thighs, and the yarn of his ancient Arran sweater, snagged here and there into loops.

‘I bet you are, seeing your sleigh has let you down,’ he chuckles. Then, noticing I’m staring at him utterly bemused, he goes on, ‘The antlers.’

Blushing, I whip them off and leave them, rather bent and battered, on the dashboard. They were one of Emma’s madcap ideas to make the practice feel more Christmassy. What must Penny have thought? I glance towards Sally. I could swear her belly’s blown up even bigger since I squeezed her into the car.

‘Alex, you’ve got to give us a lift,’ I say urgently as Sally retches again. ‘Me and the dog.’

‘Of course.’ Alex smiles, the creases at the corners of his eyes deepening – and yes, they’re definitely creases, not worry lines, because Alex isn’t the worrying type.

My teeth chattering with cold, I slide out of the driver’s seat and give myself up into his arms so that he can carry me to his four by four. I cling on to him just a little longer than necessary, breathing his scent of cow, penicillin and musk, before he lets me down, his lips brushing mine, our bodies briefly in full contact, my heartbeat quickening against his, and his hand squeezing my buttocks, so that all of a sudden I feel much warmer.

Alex hurries back for Sally and lifts her into the back seat, the boot being stacked up with his boxes of kit and drugs, calving gowns and buckets. (Alex and his father own the neighbouring vets’ surgery at Talyton Manor. It’s a traditional mixed practice, treating farm animals and horses, along with a few cats and dogs.)

‘I’ll get someone to bring the tractor up and give your car a tow back to the Manor, then we can have it seen to.’ Alex gets into the front seat and turns on the ignition. ‘What’s up with the patient?’

‘She’s OD’d on Christmas dinner. Her eyes were bigger than her belly.’

‘They aren’t now,’ Alex points out, as Sally lets out a gut-wrenching groan. ‘I’d better put my foot down,’ he adds, and the engine roars into life. ‘The dog’s in a bad way and you’re soaked through, Maz. In fact, I really should get you out of those clothes – as a purely preventative measure, of course,’ he goes on. ‘We don’t want you going down with pneumonia for the festive season.’

‘Alex!’ I pretend to scold him, yet I’d love him to strip me down and make love to me … I look back at Sally. Just not right now.

‘Unfortunately, though,’ Alex says as we head into Talyton at speed, ‘I’m on my way to another call. Mother’s booked in as much as possible for today in the hope tomorrow will be quiet. And talking of which, did you manage to do that swap with Emma?’

‘I’m sorry, Alex. She’s got Ben’s parents staying over Christmas. They’re only here for three days and they’ve driven all the way from Edinburgh to see them. And anyway, if Sally does pull through, I’ll have to stick around to keep an eye on her. It’s nothing personal.’

‘But I want us to spend Christmas together …’

‘So do I …’ Just you and me, I want to say, but I can’t because I’m afraid I’ll hurt his feelings. I’m not ready to enjoy a jolly family Christmas up at the Manor with Alex’s children and his parents. I watch the muscle in his cheek tighten and relax during the intervening silence.

‘Lucie will be disappointed,’ he says eventually. ‘She’s been planning to make up a stocking for you.’

I try not to feel guilty at letting her down – I mean, he’s the one who told her I’d be there when he wasn’t sure of my plans, not me. Lucie is Alex’s daughter. He has a son too, Sebastian, and I don’t want to get too involved with them, at least until our relationship is on a firmer footing. I can remember my mother bringing a series of boyfriends to the flat to meet me and my brother, how just as I’d begun to accept one, she’d dump him and go on to the next. Not that I have any intention of dumping Alex, you understand. I’m still a little afraid that Alex might one day dump me.

‘I was hoping to wake up and find you in my stocking,’ Alex says.

‘I didn’t know you wore them,’ I tease. ‘Stockings,’ I add when he pretends not to follow.

‘I’m not that in touch with my feminine side.’

‘What feminine side?’ I say archly. As far as I’m concerned, Alex is all man.

‘We’ll have to do Christmas next year, then,’ Alex sighs.

‘Next year,’ I echo quietly, afraid of tempting fate by daring to believe we’ll still be together in a year’s time. I can’t help it when my two previous exes both let me down just as they’d convinced me this was it, the happy ever after. I try to remain optimistic as Sally utters another groan, weaker this time. Why shouldn’t this be third time lucky?

Alex pulls across the road and onto the pavement outside Otter House, killing the engine before jumping out. He carries Sally ahead of me into the practice, striding out and shouldering double doors aside, as if he owns the place. Reaching the prep area, he puts Sally down gently on the bench, where she collapses, gasping for air, her tongue ominously blue.

‘She doesn’t look too good,’ Emma says, emerging from theatre with a cap instead of her Santa hat over her brunette locks, and carrying a stomach tube. ‘Hi, Alex. What are you doing here?’ she asks, as I throw a gown over my wet clothes and plug in the clippers.

‘I was between calls when I came across Maz stranded in the ford. How are you?’

‘I’m well, thanks.’ Emma touches her bump, all clucky and maternal. (She’s almost five months gone now.) ‘How about you? How’s business?’

‘It’s pretty busy at the moment.’ Alex holds on to Sally for me while I clip a patch of hair from her flank. ‘I’m booked up with calls all day.’