I’d slept almost all the way home on the train from London but the taxi from the train station had been a different matter. I kept reminding myself that nothing would really have changed, that I’d only been away for a little over a month. When the driver dropped me off, I’d debated where to go first but really, there was only one place I wanted to go.
It felt strange to walk back into the surgery as though nothing had happened, backpack over my shoulder, suitcase in one hand, bag full of wacky-flavoured KitKats in the other. I had thought it might seem smaller or older or at least less familiar, but, in reality, it was exactly the same. Same posters on the pinboards, same magazines on the coffee table. The doorbell chimed as the front door closed behind me, alerting whoever might be inside that they had a visitor, and I took a deep breath in, ready for whatever was coming.
‘Just a minute, I’m coming.’
Oh god. I wasn’t ready. I looked back at the door and considered making a run for it but it was too late.
‘Livvy!’
My dad stood in the hallway between the examination rooms and the waiting room, rubber gloves up to his elbows, arms held aloft.
‘Hello, Dad,’ I said with a weak, all-teeth smile. ‘Everything all right?’
‘I was just about to set a Doberman’s broken leg,’ he said with a sniff.
‘Are you crying?’ I asked, as he tried to wipe his face with the inside of his elbow. ‘Dad?’
‘No,’ he said, rushing across the waiting room and pinching me in an all-elbow hug. ‘Of course not. Oh, it is good to see your face.’
I wrapped my arms around his waist and hugged him back. It had to be our first hug since secondary school but it was worth the wait.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I told his scrub-covered chest. We were so British I had to get the apologies out the way first thing or they would have to wait for someone’s deathbed. ‘I should never have run off the way I did.’
‘No, you shouldn’t,’ he agreed, before taking stock for a moment. ‘But I understand you had a lot going on and I should have discussed things with you rather than simply have expected you to do as you were told. You’re not a child.’
I broke away from the hug to see a tight, cat’s arse look on his face.
‘Did Mum tell you to say that?’
‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘But I think she’s right. Have you been to see her yet? She’s been so worried.’
‘I sent emails,’ I said, curling my shoulders in on themselves. ‘I texted.’
‘She’ll want to see you,’ he said firmly. ‘I’m going to be in surgery for an hour at least, so why don’t you go over now?’
‘Do you need help setting the leg?’ I asked, dropping my backpack on a waiting-room chair. ‘I could run upstairs and get changed.’
Dad shook his head. ‘I’ve got help. Dr Khan’s son, remember? He’s assisting me. I know, I know,’ he said, seeing the look on my face, ‘but I had to get someone in, Livvy, it’s been very busy for the past few weeks and we didn’t know when you were coming back.’
‘Oh …’ I sucked in my bottom lip and nodded. It wasn’t as though I’d expected to walk back through the door and have everyone magically give me everything I wanted. Whether I thought I was in the right or not, I’d walked out on the surgery; I really should have been grateful my dad was still speaking to me, let alone happy to see me.
Of course, I wasn’t.
‘He’s working here now?’
‘He is,’ Dad replied. ‘And a fine job he’s doing as well.’
Hmm. A fine job.
‘But I have explained his position is currently temporary,’ he added. ‘And that things may change when you take over.’
I chewed on a smile, trying not to look too happy.
‘I’m still far from impressed with the way you behaved,’ Dad warned. ‘But we don’t need to talk about this right now. You need to go and see your mother.’
‘Where’s David?’ I asked, hedging. I did want to see Mum, if only to deliver her KitKats before I ate them all, but I wasn’t quite ready for the lecture I knew was coming and was fairly certain I deserved. ‘Is he not here today?’
‘Oh. My. God.’
‘He’s here,’ Dad replied.
I turned to see my friend silhouetted in the front door, clutching a twenty-pound sack of cat litter. Without a second thought, he threw it to the ground and ran straight through the cloud of litter dust, sweeping me off my feet in a huge hug.
‘You’re back!’ he yelled in my ear. ‘Why didn’t you call me?’
‘You know me,’ I coughed with a lung full of litter. ‘I don’t like a fuss.’
‘I’ve got to get back to Dr Khan’s and Mr Punk’s broken leg,’ Dad said, smiling as he backed away, the smile never leaving his face. ‘I shall speak to you later.’
‘You look amazing,’ David said, dragging me into the breakroom and immediately turning on the kettle. ‘Is your hair pink? It’s shorter. What did you eat? Did you do naked karaoke? Tell me everything.’
‘It was pink, it’s washed out now,’ I replied, combing my fingers through the ends. ‘But yes, it’s shorter. I ate loads of stuff and I don’t know what films you’ve been watching but I don’t think there is such a thing as naked karaoke. Will that do?’
‘No,’ he said bluntly, flicking a teabag in my face. ‘Specifics. I need details. And why didn’t you tell us you were coming home?’
Before I could reply, the phone started singing in reception. Automatically, I reached over the front desk and answered.
‘Dr Addison and Associates,’ I answered without thinking. ‘How can we help today?’
‘It’s Mr Beavis.’ The voice on the other end of the line was not a happy one. ‘Gerald Beavis. It’s my Valerie, she’s not well, not well at all.’
‘Of course, Mr Beavis,’ I replied in my most professional voice while David gagged and shook his head back and forth. ‘Do you want to bring her in?’
‘Is Dr Addison not working today?’ he asked with hesitation.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and exhaled.
‘My dad’s in surgery right now, Mr Beavis,’ I said. ‘Can I help?’
‘She keeps being sick,’ he said, his voice wavering. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong, she won’t stop.’
‘Can you bring her in?’ I asked as kindly as possible. ‘We might need to do some tests.’
‘I don’t want to move her,’ he replied, pausing to clear his throat. ‘She’s really not well.’
‘I’ll come out,’ I said, standing up and shaking off my jet lag.
‘Thank you, Dr Addison,’ Mr Beavis said with only a slight hesitation. ‘We’ll be waiting.’
David looked at me with a sour face as I hung up the receiver.
‘I hate that cat,’ he said. ‘It’s really old anyway. Fuck it, Liv, let’s go and get wasted.’
‘I can’t,’ I replied, grabbing my white coat from the rack. All that was missing was my cape. ‘I’ve got to go and see a man about a cat.’
‘And then you need to come and see me about a drink,’ he said forcing one more hug on me before grabbing his phone from the side. ‘I’ll round up the troops.’
‘I’ll let you know when I’m done,’ I promised, swapping my suitcase for my bag of instruments and heading out the door. ‘Hopefully I won’t be long.’
I’d been back in the village for less than thirty minutes and it already felt like I’d never left. I looked up at the window of my flat and saw a fluffy tail flicker past a curtain. With something like a smile on my face, I set off down the road.
Mr and Mrs Beavis only lived five minutes away and the walk was just what I needed to clear my head. It was already turning cold but I barely felt it, I was so wired. Japan had been incredible. For years I’d watched it in movies and built up a version of the country in my head, something between Memoirs of a Geisha, Lost in Translation and Godzilla, full of karaoke and Harajuku girls and Hello Kitty and fish. To be fair, giant lizards aside, I hadn’t been far off. Every day, for five weeks, was sensory overload, from one extreme to the other. I landed at Narita international airport after two connections, with nothing more than my suitcase, backpack and a two-night reservation at a Tokyo hotel. I went from the mind-boggling madness of cities that didn’t know how to stop, to a kind of serenity I’d never known, lodging with monks in Mount Kōya. And while Tokyo didn’t give me much time to think, lodging in the temples gave me nothing but. No internet, no mobile service, and not even a TV. I had never felt so far away from myself and I was forced to find another me. If I’d gone looking for a break I’d found one, but it only presented me with a new problem. I’d assumed that once I got my time-out everything would magically fall into place, that my world would suddenly make sense, but instead it turned out to be just like my mum had said. Nothing good or real was that easy.
The Beavises’ semi was just a couple of streets over from Adam’s house. Valerie was in her bed, perched on top of a newspaper-lined kitchen table and not looking the slightest bit pleased with her lot in life.
‘She started being sick this afternoon,’ Mr Beavis said as his wife busied herself by putting on the kettle for what I had to imagine was the hundredth time that day. ‘I can’t imagine there’s anything left in her now, the poor thing.’
‘And it only started today?’ I asked, pulling out my beloved stethoscope and listening for poor Valerie’s weak heartbeat. ‘She’s been fine the rest of the week?’
‘Absolutely fine,’ he nodded. ‘She’s been eating fine, doing her business, playing outside.’
I gently pressed on Valerie’s abdomen, squinting out the kitchen window.
‘There’s no blood in the vomit?’ I asked.
‘We saved some,’ Mrs Beavis said, holding a rancid yoghurt pot under my nose. ‘It’s in here.’
Wrenching my head back, I took it from her, quickly shifting to breathe through my mouth.
‘Is that an oak tree?’ I put the Not-a-Yoghurt down on the kitchen sink and pointed at a large tree at the bottom of the garden.
‘Yes,’ Mr Beavis replied, gently stroking his cat’s head as she mewed her displeasure. ‘Do you think she ate the leaves? Are they poisonous?’
‘OK, I can’t be sure until she’s had a scan but I think Valerie has eaten something she shouldn’t have. It looks like, and it definitely smells like, she’s got a blockage and most often it’s something like an acorn. I think it’d be best to take her to the animal hospital in Nottingham and get an endoscopy done.’
‘Can’t you do it?’ he asked, clutching his wife’s hand. ‘I’d be much happier if you could do it. Valerie doesn’t like strangers messing with her.’
‘Yes,’ I said, surprised.
I watched as they ran around preparing the cat carrier, packing up her favourite toys and favourite food and looked at Valerie with a small smile on my face.
‘We’ll sort you out,’ I promised in a whisper. ‘Don’t you worry.’
‘Didn’t you say this was going to be epic?’
‘He did,’ Tom confirmed to Cass, standing back to survey our work. ‘He definitely used the word epic.’
The three of us stood in front of my workshop, staring at my masterpiece. The idea was simple but spectacular. I’d win Liv back by recreating the aisle of the supermarket where we had first met, fill it with equal parts candles and pasta then beg her to forgive me. We’d skip over the bit where she’d been shagging around with some bloke from Tinder, turned down my proposal and run off to Japan, and then I’d propose. Again. It was the most romantic idea in the world.
Except the execution wasn’t quite as romantic as the concept.
Tom had done an excellent job with the pasta but unfortunately, even after I sent him out twice, we still only had about forty boxes of penne and thirty boxes of orecchiette and though seventy boxes of pasta sounded like a lot, when I pulled my workshop shelves into the middle of the room to create a makeshift supermarket aisle, we only managed to fill two of the five shelves on either side. And thanks to a leaky can of wood stain and the month of shit weather, the whole workshop smelled like damp death. In my head, it was going to be an exact replica of the moment we met, with better lighting and fewer lecherous comments from my dad, transporting us back in time to a moment before I’d been such an incredible dickhead. But instead of a loving recreation of our most special moment, it looked like I was building a corner shop set for a post-apocalypse zombie movie. And a shit one at that.
‘The candles look nice though,’ Cassie said, desperately looking for a bright side the way Liv said she always did. ‘You’ve done a lovely job with the candles.’
Even that was a lie. I’d always thought there were more candles in those bags of tealights you got from Ikea. The overall effect was definitely more ‘unexpected power cut’ than anything else.
‘This is ridiculous!’ I kicked one of a thousand plastic bags across the room. ‘What a stupid idea.’
‘It’s a lovely idea,’ Cass argued. ‘And Liv will love it.’
‘I don’t know …’ Tom slipped his hands into his pockets and clucked. ‘If you’re going to propose to a woman, you need to do it right. And I’m not sure this is right.’
‘Bloody men,’ Cass said loudly. ‘There is a woman in the room, you know. Who happens to be one of the best friends of the woman you’re planning to propose to. Anyone thought to ask me my opinion?’
Tom and I shared a glance. We really hadn’t.
‘Liv will love the effort,’ she agreed, gesturing to my sub-Netto pasta aisle. ‘But all she really needs to hear are the words. Did Chris tell you how he proposed to me?’
‘On holiday in Italy,’ I answered, Tom nodding in agreement. ‘In Venice, wasn’t it?’
‘We were in Venice,’ she confirmed. ‘And he’d hired a gondola and booked a fancy dinner and all that nonsense, but do you know when he actually proposed?’
‘Not on a gondola or at the fancy dinner?’
‘When I was in the toilet,’ she replied flatly. ‘I was in the lav, you know, finishing up, and he started babbling about something outside the door, saying how he had been thinking about this for weeks and nothing felt right but he had to say it, and when I opened the door, face covered in zit cream, he was standing there with the ring in his hand. He looked like he’d been bent over and shagged backwards.’
‘Funny how he never mentioned any of this,’ I said, looking at my disastrous handiwork.
‘And you still said yes?’ Tom was amazed.
‘I said yes because I wanted to marry him,’ she replied. ‘I didn’t care how he asked me, I didn’t care about the ring, I said yes because I love him and I want to be with him.’
She thought about what she had said for a moment, glancing down at her ring.
‘I cared about the ring a little bit,’ she conceded. ‘But the main thing was that he asked. The how, the where, the when wasn’t important at all.’
‘I don’t believe her,’ Tom whispered in my ear. ‘My girlfriend is an event planner.’
‘And how many of the events your girlfriend plans are women proposing to their boyfriends?’ Cass asked. ‘Or even women proposing to other women? Trust me, this thing has got totally out of hand. Just go round to her house, say you’re sorry, and ask the woman to marry you.’
‘I’m not going to argue with her,’ Tom said, stepping back. ‘Not just because I’m scared of her but because, well, anything’s better than this.’
He picked up a box of orecchiette and turned it around in his hands.
‘You’re going to be eating pasta and sauce for the rest of your life. I should have got you some Ragú.’
‘All Liv cares about is you, her friends, her mum and dad, and Daniel Craig,’ Cassie said before turning to Tom with an explanatory pat on the back. ‘Her cat. But she does care about human Daniel Craig as well.’
‘Who doesn’t?’ Tom replied.
‘You’re right,’ I said to Cassie, scattering tiny candles all over the workshop and nodding at Tom. ‘She’s right.’
‘Also, this place is a complete fire hazard,’ he said as he turned on the overhead light. ‘You really need to get your workshop cleaned up, mate.’
‘We don’t even know when she’s coming home,’ I said, the absurdity of the situation hitting me like seventy boxes of pasta. ‘I’m stockpiling pasta in a damp workshop to impress a woman who has turned me down once and is currently halfway around the world. I got carried away.’
Sinking down onto my workbench, I watched as the wind knocked itself out of Cass and Tom’s sails.
‘I ought to get back to Gus,’ Cass said, starting towards the door. ‘Seriously, Adam, don’t give up. She’ll love this.’
I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not she truly believed herself or if she still just felt guilty.
‘I’ve got to get off as well, mate,’ Tom said, clapping me on the back. ‘You know Liv better than me. If Cass says she’ll love it, I’m sure she’ll love it.’
Hmm.
‘The ring is beautiful though,’ he added. ‘You can always lead with that.’
I watched as they walked down my driveway, leaving me alone in the saddest supermarket the world had ever seen.