When I woke up Thursday morning, Jane had already gone. She left a note on the kitchen table to say thanks and that she’d pick the car up later. My first reaction was to be relieved, mostly because I’d woken up, still wearing Liv’s wombat shirt and didn’t have the energy to take it off when I went downstairs to make a cup of tea. But as the kettle boiled almost instantly and I chucked a teabag in a cleanish mug, I realized I was also disappointed.
‘It’s not fair,’ I said out loud to the kitchen.
All right, yes, I should have talked to Liv when she called me in the pub. Why was everything suddenly so confusing? And why was I talking to myself? I missed Daniel Craig, he always understood. I wondered how he was getting on, stuck on his own at home with Liv. I bet he missed me too, that cat needed a man around the house.
Three months ago, everything had been certain. I was going to propose to Liv, she and Daniel were going to move in and we were going to live happily ever after. I’d even decorated his bedroom in secret but now I was a thirty-four-year-old man with a fish-themed back bedroom with an in-built kitty water fountain. It seemed like a good idea at the time, now it just made me look like I had a very extreme fetish. The giant litter tray did not help.
Now I didn’t have a clue what was going on. Yes, I’d had a momentary freak out but that didn’t mean Liv had to run off and have an existential crisis of her own and make everything worse. If anything happened with Jane and me, quite frankly, it would be her own fault. I brewed my tea, shook out the last dregs of my cornflakes and sat down at the kitchen table, chomping with great purpose. Women had to make everything so complicated. I remembered the first time I used Liv’s bathroom and spent fifteen minutes reading the back of every product in her shower and then smelling them all. I had had one bottle of shower gel and one bottle of shampoo – she must have had twenty things in there. Even having a shower had to be turned into a production. Admittedly, I had added a face scrub and two different moisturizers to my bathroom but that was her influence as well.
‘Women can’t leave things alone,’ I announced to the empty room, imagining Daniel Craig agreeing with me while patiently awaiting the leftover milk from my cereal bowl.
And Jane … I could not work her out. She seemed interested, she was definitely giving me signs, I was sure of it. Not that it mattered; I wanted to work things out with Liv. But Jane was so hot. I’d gone out with some really fit girls. Ana, the Colombian girl I’d travelled with in South America, had been improbably beautiful and Jen, my uni girlfriend, was a stunning redhead and then there was Liv, hardly someone you’d kick out of bed for eating biscuits. Still, there was something about Jane that I couldn’t put my finger on. She put me on edge, but in a good way. She was the present under the tree on Christmas Eve. You could see it, you were almost certain what was inside but you were still so excited about opening it the next morning, just in case it was nothing like how you imagined. And it wasn’t just that she was fit, there was a connection. Before Liv that was something I told myself to explain away the fact that I wanted to get someone into bed and never get out again but with Jane, there really was something there. We had so much in common, travelling, changing careers, annoying older brothers. And we were both tall. That had to count for something.
The phone rang while I was washing out what had been my last clean cereal bowl and I saw Tom’s name appear on the screen.
‘All right,’ I answered after wiping off my fingertips on the back of my shorts. ‘How are you?’
‘Good, mate, good,’ he replied. ‘I’m in the car, on my way up to a conference in Norwich. Thought I’d check in.’
‘There are so many days when I regret dropping out of law school,’ I mused, opening the back door and getting a face full of the clean, crisp September morning. Setting the phone to speaker, I peeled off Liv’s T-shirt, looked at it for a moment and then threw it in the washing machine, replacing it with my red hoodie that hung over the back of a kitchen chair. ‘Today is not one of them.’
‘It’s a glamorous business,’ he said with a laugh. ‘What’s going on in your neck of the woods?’
‘Not much.’ I crunched the first fallen leaves underfoot on my way up the garden to the workshop.
Tom had a beautiful house in London but his back garden amounted to a twelve by twelve square of concrete behind the kitchen, shared by a disposable barbecue, two chairs, a table and an assortment of cats, rats and god knows what else. One thing I loved about living out in the country was the space, the chance to breathe. My grandparents hadn’t done much with the house or the garden in their last few years but the sheer scope of it had given me so much to play with. I had a greenhouse, a patio, a little wild flower garden at the very back (because try as I might, I couldn’t keep anything alive on purpose) and a huge lush green lawn that just begged you to get outside whenever the sun was shining. While part of me still missed city life, the garden alone was a decent trade.
‘The wood for the bar’s arriving in ten minutes so I’m starting on the build this morning.’
‘And what does that entail exactly?’
‘They want it to have an older look, so I’ll sand it down a bit, stain it, age it, you know. You’ve got to rough it up a bit but you want to keep the top smooth for drinks and everything.’
‘You realize the only tools I’ve got in my house are a hand drill and one of those sets of screwdrivers you get in a Christmas cracker, don’t you?’
‘You’re a failure as a man,’ I told him. ‘There’s no hope for you.’
‘I already know that, Ad, I don’t need you to tell me. I came home the other night and Mads was changing the plug on the toaster. I didn’t have a fucking clue what she was doing, I’d have bought a new toaster.’
‘Are you coming to the christening on Sunday?’ I asked. ‘Chris said Maddie had been helping out.’
‘Maddie has not been “helping out”,’ Tom corrected. ‘Maddie has been working round the clock to find available Cirque du Soleil performers to perform a flash-mob-style performance to Circus by Britney Spears.’
‘I have been led to believe there is a circus theme,’ I replied gravely. ‘My brother is a monster.’
‘I’d like to disagree but my girlfriend was practically in tears all night last night because the elephant he wanted has got a cold and she was too afraid to tell him. She’s a professional events organizer, Adam, the woman deals with psychotic brides day in and day out – and she’s scared of your brother.’
‘I refer you to my last sentence,’ I replied. ‘He’s a monster.’
‘The last christening I went to didn’t even have drinks, it was just a cup of tea and a Fondant Fancy,’ Tom replied. ‘Who has an elephant? Do you know he wanted lions? He actually wanted her to find lions. For his child’s christening.’
I wanted to be surprised but I wasn’t. I could still remember the look on his face when I told him I couldn’t get Bradley Cooper to show up to his Las Vegas stag do and I was fairly certain he still hadn’t forgiven me, Bradley, or the state of Nevada.
‘So, things are sorted out with Liv?’ Tom’s voice was far too cheerful for this early in the morning. ‘Or are you still in the doghouse?’
‘Doghouse, hundred per cent,’ I said, settling down at my bench. ‘In fact, I’m not even allowed in the doghouse. I can see it, but I’m somewhere down the bottom of the garden, piss wet through in the mud.’
‘Did you apologize?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you say it like you meant it?’
‘I did mean it.’
‘At any point, did she say “I’m not going to tell you what’s wrong”?’ he asked. ‘Because that’s a sure sign you’re in deep shit.’
‘She told me she wanted a break,’ I replied. ‘And that was after I’d had the “it’s not you, it’s me” speech.’ I left out the phone call the night before, on the grounds of it being altogether too depressing.
Tom made a noise I usually associated with car mechanics and on-call electricians.
‘I don’t like the sound of that. Sorry, mate.’
‘Yeah, well.’ I raked my hand through my hair, catching on the tangles I had not brushed out. I was out of Liv’s conditioner and I couldn’t bring myself to buy more. Not just because it was embarrassing, but because the smell of her hair wafting around my face all day was too much. ‘It’ll work itself out, won’t it?’
‘It will if you want it to,’ he replied. ‘You could always try talking to her again. It can’t hurt, can it?’
‘I suppose not.’
Tom made the noise again.
I had absolutely zero intention of trying to speak to Liv again after that phone call. She’d come round when she’d calmed down. After all, she was the one who had asked for time and space, I was only giving her what she wanted.
‘I hate making rash, sweeping statements but women don’t always say exactly what they mean,’ he said, a crackly voice down a crackly line. ‘Or at least, they’re not as black and white in what they say. Is there any chance she’s hoping you’re on your way round with a massive diamond ring to declare your intentions?’
‘Normally, I’d say no,’ I replied. She certainly didn’t sound like she was waiting for a ring on the phone. ‘But I’m at a complete loss right now. She’s not acting like herself at all.’
‘Then you’ve got to take her at her word,’ Tom said. ‘And hope for the best.’
Whatever that meant.
‘I’d better get off,’ I replied, keen to end this conversation and get started on the far more straightforward sanding portion of my day. That was a part that made sense. ‘Busy day – got to clear some space for a wood delivery.’
‘Yeah, OK,’ he said with a slight sigh, clearly not done with the conversation. ‘I’ll see you Sunday, mate.’
‘See you Sunday,’ I agreed, ending the call quickly and stretching my arms high above my head until I heard my shoulders click.
It was the little things that felt wrong. Running out of the conditioner she always bought, not taking her mug out of the cupboard even when all the others were dirty. All week I’d managed to convince myself things were all right but it was getting harder by the second. Liv not being around was like trying to watch your favourite TV show after the main actor leaves: even though it’s the same, you know something isn’t right and the whole thing isn’t nearly as good. That said, if someone had asked me a week ago what my life would look like without Liv in it, I would have described a Mad Max-esque, post-apocalyptic wasteland with less Charlize Theron and more electric guitar. But now that had all changed. Life without Liv was strange but not unbearable, just sad. And, even though I still felt guilty even considering it, there was a sliver of a chance that life without Liv could also be known as life with Jane.
Life with Jane. I closed my eyes and pondered the possibilities. Going out with someone in London when I was up here would be a pain in the arse but I could always help out in the bar some evenings, hang out in her speakeasy, drinking Old-Fashioneds like a blond Don Draper, only without the sociopathic tendencies. And maybe we could go travelling once I’d got a couple more gigs under my belt and things were up and running with Camp Bell. She’d told me she’d always wanted to do more of Central America and it was on my to-do list as well. Liv had never been up for backpacking, but Jane’s itchy feet sounded even worse than mine.
‘It could all turn out for the best still,’ I told the giant plank of wood I was shifting. ‘Maybe I’m not ready to settle down, after all.’
Like most planks of wood, it had very little to say but my imagination was ready to fill in the blanks. The future I’d envisioned with Liv was pretty simple. We’d get engaged, she’d move in, we’d get married and give Daniel Craig one or two human siblings. The whole thing was so clear in my mind, I almost felt like I was watching a movie when I thought about it: the little boy running around the garden, pregnant Liv chasing after him while I worked on a rocking horse in the workshop. It was a memory of an event that had yet to happen, but like my mum always said, everything happens for a reason. Usually, I wrote that off as bollocks, obviously, but what if the reason I hadn’t been able to propose was because I was supposed to meet Jane? It was hard to argue with the possibility. Mostly because I didn’t want to.
I hadn’t done anything wrong, I assured myself. I hated feeling so miserable and guilty all the time for reasons I couldn’t even put a finger on. Liv said she needed space to think, then Liv told me not to call. Was I supposed to sit around twiddling my thumbs waiting for her to make a decision? It hardly seemed fair, after all, this could go on for months and when she did finally make a decision, I could still end up on my own. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, that scared me. I had permanently flipped off the bachelor switch the moment I decided to propose to Liv and it didn’t feel like the kind of thing that could be easily reversed.
All of this really only left me with two choices. I could sit around the house, talking to a plank of wood, sleeping in her T-shirt and crying on the floor or I could get on with things and see what happened. Pursuing Jane would be entirely out of order but I wasn’t going to avoid her either. That seemed fair.
’You’re not doing anything wrong,’ I said again. And this time, I almost sounded as though I believed it.
‘I don’t know about you but I’m knackered,’ David said, dropping down on the little Ikea sofa with a cup of tea as I walked into the breakroom. I nodded and wiped my eyes with my sleeve.
‘Liv, please don’t cry.’
‘I know, there’s nothing else we could have done,’ I said, massaging my temples as though I could rub my headache away.
‘That and it’s really unattractive,’ he replied, pointing to my cheekbones. ‘You get all puffy around here and it does you no favours.’
‘Noted.’ I patted my cheeks gingerly. ‘He was fine when I checked on him last night. God, they were devastated.’
‘They’re always devastated,’ David reminded me as I settled down on the Klippan beside him. ‘I’d be more upset if they weren’t, wouldn’t you? Their dog just died.’
It turned out Ronald, my beloved Labrador, had not eaten something manky. When I opened the surgery on Thursday morning, he seemed fine if not especially chipper. Within an hour, he was vomiting again, turning in circles in his cage and it became very clear Ronald the dog had suffered a stroke. I’d called his owners who confirmed that yes, now I mentioned it, he had been walking a bit funny the day before but they put that down to his puking his guts up so they hadn’t thought to bring it up.
‘If I’d known more yesterday I might have been able to do something,’ I said, my arms flapping down by my sides, as though they weren’t properly attached to my shoulders. ‘I should have seen it, though, I should have known …’
‘And done what?’ David asked, putting his tea down on the table to give me his full attention. ‘Other than put him out of his misery a day earlier? He was fine when we came in this morning, he wasn’t in pain. I know it’s a shit business but it’s done now.’
‘He should have been at home with his family and not spending his last night in a cage at the vet’s,’ I said, still not quite able to let myself off the hook. ‘Poor Ronald.’
‘You mean Lucky Ronald who had a nice long life with people who loved him and didn’t suffer at the end.’ He took hold of my hand and squeezed. ‘What’s up with you? This is hardly the first time we’ve been through this.’
‘I know,’ I replied with a sniff. ‘Just feels like I missed something, that’s all.’
‘You didn’t,’ he said with certainty. ‘So pack it in. You need some rest, we both do.’
‘Then I’ve got good news,’ I said, patting his scrub-covered thigh. ‘It’s time to go home.’
We opened early on Thursdays and usually finished up at four, but between the untimely loss of Ronald and several last minute appointments, it was already after eight. I’d promised myself I would take the afternoon off and actually spend it sorting my life out, but instead of sitting in front of my Pinterest vision board and looking for my copy of The Secret, I’d been busy with the very worst parts of my job; clearing the anal glands of a particularly rancid tabby and sending Ronald off to meet his maker.
‘You OK?’ David asked, pulling a packet of Polos out of his pocket and offering me one. ‘And I don’t mean about the dog. Last night was a bit weird.’
‘A bit?’ I said, declining the mint. ‘Adam was in the Bell with another woman.’
It didn’t seem possible when I said it out loud. Not even a little bit.
‘We still don’t entirely know what was going on there,’ he reminded me. ‘Has Cass been able to get anything out of Chris?’
I raised an eyebrow.
‘I literally do not believe a word that man says,’ I told him. ‘He’s full of more shit than all the toilets in the village combined.’
‘You still want to know though.’
‘Well yeah, obviously,’ I said. ‘But I haven’t checked my phone in, I don’t know, seven seconds? So I’ve no idea.’
‘Anything I can do?’ he asked.
I nodded. ‘Actually considering having my vagina sewn up. You’re good at stitches, aren’t you?’
‘I’ve got a rule against seeing my boss’s vagina, recreationally or otherwise,’ David replied with great certainty. ‘All joking aside, really, are you all right? You’ve not seemed yourself since you got back off holiday.’
‘Can’t think why.’ I dropped my head forward onto my knees and let my hair cover my face. ‘I just don’t want to think about it.’
‘And if I was asking how you felt about deworming a cat, that would be a great answer,’ David pulled me back upright by my ponytail. ‘It’s a lot to deal with at once. You’re not Abi the Great and Emotionless and this isn’t a casual ghosting we’re talking about.’
‘Better we break up now than later,’ I said, tears stinging the edges of my eyes. ‘Now I can concentrate on the surgery.’
‘The surgery you don’t even know that you want?’
‘That’s the one,’ I confirmed. ‘Although to be honest, I’m not sure how not sure I am now.’
‘You’ve lost me,’ David said. ‘Are we talking about this place or Adam?’
I dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands as it started. First my ears began to tickle, then my eyes. It was something I was getting perilously used to.
‘I feel so stupid,’ I whispered as my work husband bundled me up into a comforting hug. ‘I feel like I don’t even know him. My Adam wouldn’t do this. He’s the same but different, like a same character being played by a different actor.’
‘Like Doctor Who?’
‘More evil than that.’
‘Sam Mitchell?’
‘Less evil.’
‘The Master?’
‘Do you do anything other than watch TV?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘Next question?’
‘It’s all shit,’ I said, pressing my thumbnail into the pad of my forefinger to distract me from potential tears. ‘I can’t believe Ronald died, I can’t believe we’re breaking up, and I can’t believe it’s my fault.’
‘You can stop that right now.’ David pulled away to look me directly in the red, blurry, swollen eye. ‘I won’t stand for self-pity and you know it.’
‘But it feels so good,’ I said, smearing my supposedly waterproof mascara onto his nice scrubs. Revlon, you filthy bloody liars. ‘I really don’t understand what happened. What did I do wrong?’
‘Liv, you asked for time and he couldn’t give it to you,’ he replied. ‘That’s not on you.’
‘But if I hadn’t asked for the break,’ I insisted. ‘If I’d just let it go when he came to apologize in the first place …’
‘Then we’d be going through all of this in six months’ time,’ he replied knowingly. ‘If he was going to do it, he was going to do it and there’s nothing anyone could have done to change a thing.’
‘Honest man’s opinion,’ I started, not sure I really wanted the honest answer I was about to ask for. ‘What do you think he’s doing?’
‘Honest opinion?’ he asked. With a gulp, I nodded. ‘If something is going on with him and that girl – who isn’t that hot, by the way – then it’s a rebound. I’d have to say he’s feeling hard done by and he’s flirting with her to make himself feel better. He probably only took her to the Bell because he thought you’d be there to see them.’
It was an honest, considered, XY chromosome response. Even though the girls and me hadn’t had a regular Wednesday in the pub for months, he might have remembered. He might have been doing it to make me jealous. The thought of it should have made me mad, but instead it was strangely reassuring.
‘I feel like I might have really messed things up,’ I admitted. ‘I shouldn’t have pushed him away because I was freaking out about the surgery, I should have let him help me.’
David stared at his fingernails while he thought about what to say next.
‘Maybe,’ he replied. ‘But you didn’t, so what next?’
Blunt, fair and to the point. Exactly what I’d asked for – and exactly what I didn’t want to hear.
‘I actually do something with my life?’ I suggested. ‘Instead of sitting around and waiting for life to happen to me? One minute I was that weird girl who cleaned out dog cages on weekends and the next I was that weird grown woman who cleaned out dog cages for a living. I’m thirty already, I don’t want to wake up forty and still be sitting here having the same conversation.’
‘This is something,’ David said, waving his arms around in the air. I assumed he meant the surgery in general and not just the breakroom with its curly-cornered Tom Hardy posters and rubbish bin full of Jaffa Cake boxes. ‘Just because you haven’t won an Oscar or broken the internet with your arse doesn’t mean you haven’t done anything with your life. If it does, then what does that make me? Sidekick to no one? I don’t think so. I’m fucking awesome, Liv. I wouldn’t hang around with someone wasting their life.’
‘The only way my arse could break the internet would be if I sat on it,’ I replied. ‘And yes, you are awesome, but you know what I mean, I want to do something.’
He skewered me with a stare. ‘You’re an amazing vet, you make the best Sunday roast I’ve ever eaten and, quite frankly, you’re probably my best friend.’
I looked up to see bright pink spots in the middle of his cheeks before he clucked his tongue and stood up to collect our dirty mugs from the table.
‘Probably?’ I asked with a small smile.
‘If you were my best friend, you’d put a word in for me with Abi,’ he said, dumping them in the sink. ‘I know you’ve got her and Cassie, but ever since I’ve known you, my life has been better for it. You’re so hard on yourself all the time. Just for once, can you take one minute to sit back and see what everyone else sees?’
‘You know I’m going to make you say it,’ I said, retying my ponytail. ‘What, exactly?’
‘I see a clever, caring, funny woman with a great arse and nice tits who chose to dedicate her life to making a difference in other people’s,’ David replied, one fist dug into his hip. ‘It pisses me off when you constantly do yourself down. Abi doesn’t do it, Cass doesn’t do it, I don’t do it. You’re a good person, Liv, but you’re angry with yourself for not being exceptional. Only you’re totally missing the point – you are exceptional.’
‘Right now I feel exceptionally stupid,’ I said, closer to happy tears than sad ones for the first time in forever. ‘Thank you. I’m still not entirely convinced but it was nice to hear.’
‘And if you were convinced, you’d be a massive wanker and I’d have to take it all back,’ he said with a casual shrug. ‘Apart from the arse bit, I can’t deny that.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t talk about my arse,’ I instructed, shifting awkwardly on the settee.
‘Noted.’
‘Really though, thank you,’ I said. ‘You’re going to make someone a lovely wife one day. Just not Abi.’
‘It’s all I’ve ever wanted,’ he replied. ‘Now do one before the phone rings and someone wants you to come round and inspect their gerbil or something.’
I didn’t need telling twice.
With a quick salute, I grabbed my bag and staggered out the door front, hugging myself against the chill in the air. I checked my phone as I crept around the building: nothing from Adam, nothing from Abi or Cass but there was another message from Henry. A flood of welcome relief washed over me as I opened it and saw a smiley face emoticon. Just a message, no dick pic. Between his decision not to photograph his penis and David’s pep talk, it went a small way to restoring my faith in men.
‘Livvy!’
The last thing anyone wants to hear when they’re walking out of work is the sound of their boss calling their name. Especially when they’ve been avoiding their boss all week and that boss is their dad.
‘Glad I caught you.’ He marched up the path, clutching an envelope in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other. ‘I’ve got some paperwork you need to sign.’
‘Can we not do this now?’ I asked, wiping my face with the back of my hand. ‘It’s late, Dad, I’m knackered.’
‘No, we need to do it now,’ Dad insisted, waving the envelope in the air. ‘No point in procrastinating, Livvy, got to get on with the future, live in the now.’
Well, at least I had a better idea where my copy of The Secret was hiding.
‘My now needs a cup of tea,’ I replied, rubbing my eyes with the back of my wrist. ‘My now can’t read paperwork when I’ve been at work since half past six this morning.’
‘You don’t need to read it,’ he assured me. ‘You need to sign it.’
I closed my eyes and opened them again, just to make sure he was really there and I hadn’t accidentally inhaled something I shouldn’t and passed out in the examination room. But no, I was wide awake and my dad was standing in front of me, tweed jacket, neat trousers, ruddy cheeks, looking every inch the image of a country vet. I, on the other hand, looked every inch an actual vet: dirty scrubs, messy hair, no make-up and raw, red eyes.
‘Come on then.’ I gave up and nodded back towards the flat. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
‘I brought champagne,’ Dad replied, following me down the path and up the stairs inside.
‘And you’ll be leaving it here when you go,’ I said, throwing my keys on the counter and flipping on the already full kettle. ‘Don’t you worry about that.’
‘It’s a good job I didn’t bring your mother with me.’ He cast a disapproving eye over my living room and tapped his envelope in the palm of his hand. ‘You want to get this place tidied up, Olivia.’
‘What I want is to sleep,’ I assured him. ‘This week has been manic.’
‘I’m sure it’s not been that bad,’ he said, clearing a spot on the settee and settling down. ‘Everything always feels worse when you come back off holiday.’
I glared at the back of his head for a moment.
‘No sugar in my tea, by the way, I’m trying to cut it out. Did you know they’ve said it’s more addictive than drugs? Isn’t that mad? Adam’s mum was telling us all about it at the party. You should throw it out, it’s a silent killer, Olivia.’
Gripping the handles of two mugs, I concentrated on making the tea and not bashing him in the head. Murdering your dad was frowned upon, wasn’t it? Generally speaking?
‘I had the solicitor put together a deed of ownership,’ Dad explained while I gathered together enough biscuits to be considered an acceptable spread.
‘Mmm-hmm.’
‘So, you’ll sign all three copies then I’ll take them back to the solicitor, he’ll sort everything out at his end and then you’ll be the sole owner and proprietor of Dr Addison and Associates Veterinary Clinic. Isn’t that exciting?’
He turned just in time to see me shovel an entire Hobnob into my mouth.
‘I know you’ll need another vet,’ he went on, ‘so I’ve asked a few of my friends if they know anyone and it turns out Dr Khan’s son is looking for a new practice, so he’s going to give me a call. Lovely man, Dr Khan, always wears a tie.’
‘Shouldn’t he be calling me?’ I asked, pouring boiling water straight into our mugs and bypassing the teapot entirely. Mostly out of spite. ‘He is going to be working for me, after all.’
‘Yes, but I thought it’d save you a job,’ Dad replied. ‘Didn’t you just tell me how very busy you are?’
Narrowing my eyes, I dunked the teabags three times before dumping them into the sink.
‘Besides, I’d rather have someone I trust in there, Livvy. Your mum is chomping at the bit to get off on a cruise and I need to know the place is in safe hands.’
‘And what are these?’ I asked, waving my hands in front of my face. ‘Flippers?’
‘You’d be the first to admit you’re not exactly the most business-minded girl in the world,’ he said with a smile, picking up an old copy of Marie Claire, frowning at the cover lines and putting it back on the table, face down. ‘You’re going to have a lot more to worry about than you do now, you know, and you’d be surprised at how long the business side of things takes. You’ll really need someone to take part of the practice work off your hands so you can look after everything else.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that actually,’ I said, skimming little white floaters from the top of his tea. ‘You know admin isn’t exactly my passion, so I’m thinking about hiring an office manager.’
Dad took his tea and considered it for a moment.
‘Did you make this in the teapot?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘Of course I did.’
‘Hmm.’ He sniffed his tea and set it on the table. ‘I’m not sure about that. This is what’s best for the business. An Addison in charge, just like there always has been.’
‘And what about what’s best for me?’ I asked. ‘Seriously, Dad, if I have to do all the books by myself, there won’t be anything left for an Addison to be in charge of. It makes so much more sense to get an office manager in than it does to hire another full-time vet when that’s the part I’m good at.’
‘Olivia, don’t shout, you’re upsetting the cat.’ Dad gestured over to DC, who was sleeping undisturbed in the corner of the room. ‘And I think your milk is off.’
My dad really had a gift for making me feel like a child. I hadn’t been shouting but I was getting bloody close. I was also two seconds away from stamping my foot, running to my room and reminding him I’d never asked to be born.
‘Livvy,’ Dad took off his glasses, polishing them on the white handkerchief he pulled out of his back pocket, ‘come on now, is something else the matter?’
‘Many, many things are the matter,’ I replied, taking a swig of sour tea. ‘But the only thing that matters right now is you steamrollering my ideas. Dad, I’m thirty years old, if you want me to run the surgery, you need to let me run the surgery.’
‘Have you had a falling out with Adam?’ he asked, a too sympathetic look on his face. ‘It’s not like you to get so upset about nothing.’
Shaking with anger, I put down my tea before it spilled. How dare he assume I was upset about anything other than the surgery? Poor little girl Liv, she couldn’t possibly be questioning his decision once it had been made.
‘It’s not nothing,’ I argued. ‘Can you hear yourself? You want me to take over the surgery, you want me to give up treating the animals, the part I love, to do admin, which I hate, and you want to choose who I employ to take over the part of the job you’re taking away from me. It’s not exactly a treat, Dad.’
He pushed his glasses back up his nose and shook his head at me with a smile. Condescension, thy name is Dad.
‘You know you’re overreacting?’ he said, reluctantly sipping his tea. ‘I’m only trying to help. Running the surgery isn’t a game, Olivia, you can’t take on the parts you want and fob off the parts you don’t. That’s not how real life works.’
‘Actually, that’s exactly how it works,’ I replied. ‘It doesn’t make any sense to take me away from the animals and put me on paperwork when I can employ someone else to do it better than I can.’
‘I’m not bringing in a stranger to run my business.’ Dad waved his hands in the air and I realized this was possibly the most emotional I’d ever seen him without a sherry in his system. There was a reason why he didn’t drink. ‘That’s not how it’s done.’
‘It’s not how you did it,’ I countered. ‘But this is going to be my business. Not yours. If you don’t want me to do this the way I want, maybe you shouldn’t be leaving in the first place.’
He gave me a look I recognized from endless arguments across the dinner table. No, you can’t go round to Abi’s after school when you’ve got homework to do. No, you can’t go to university in London when you can go to Nottingham and live at home. No, you can’t make any decisions even though you’re a grown bloody woman who has come up with a perfectly sound business plan of her own.
‘Right.’ Dad stood up and tapped the envelope on the coffee table. ‘I’m going to go. You can drop these round when you’ve signed them. You can bring them round after the christening on Sunday.’
‘Dad, sit down,’ I insisted, raking my hands through my hair. ‘I want to talk about this.’
‘I think you’ve made your point,’ he said, fumbling in his jacket pocket for his car keys. ‘I’ll let you know when I’ve spoken to Dr Khan’s son.’
‘Jesus,’ I muttered to the cat. Was I hallucinating? Why wouldn’t anyone listen to me? David was always threatening to spike my tea with ketamine, he must have finally come good on his promise.
‘I’ll talk to you later,’ Dad said, picking his way through my messy flat. ‘And clean this bloody flat, it’s a disgrace.’
I waited for him to shut the front door behind him before stamping my feet on the floor, stuffing two more biscuits into my mouth and flinging myself on my back on the settee. Daniel Craig made a quiet roaring sound before stretching out his single back leg and hopping over to leap onto my belly.
‘That is not comfortable, you know,’ I told him as he padded up and down, his tiny feet pressing into my flesh. ‘You’ve been told before.’
But, like everything else on earth with a penis, Daniel Craig had little interest in listening to anything I had to say. Almost everything else on earth, I thought, grabbing my phone and pulling up Henry’s message. Henry was interested in what I had to say. Henry wasn’t down my local with another woman or forcing me to hire Dr Khan’s son who might or might not, in fact, be a very good vet, but that wasn’t the point. Henry wanted to trade emoticons and pleasantries and, according to his latest message, get a drink together on Friday night.
Closing my eyes and pulling a blanket over Daniel Craig and myself, I let myself imagine, for just a moment, how it might feel to say yes.