‘So, you’re not jetting off to Dubai after all?’ Davina cooed, clapping her slender hands together as if I’d just told her we’d communally won the lottery. Anyone else might have questioned my story about us deciding at the last minute that it would be better if I stayed put in good ol’ Blighty for now and carried on working while my husband went to Dubai alone and sorted out somewhere for us to live. It suited her that I was staying and that was all that mattered. Davina was all about the business.
‘Yes,’ I breathed, thanking God for Davina being so, well … Davina. ‘That’s right, so if it’s all right …’
‘Katya can reschedule your regular clients as soon as she gets in. And we can lose that silly girl, whatever her name is.’ She tapped her hot pink nails on her desk. ‘Honestly, if she can’t keep hold of a tiny little poodle, I can’t imagine what use she thought she’d be to me.’ Davina rolled her perfectly made-up eyes. ‘You’d better call Mrs. Parker and tell her you’ll be back walking Bubbles from today.’
‘I’ll call her now …’
‘What a good thing I didn’t let Henry Halliday know you were thinking of leaving us. You know what a stick-in-the-mud he is about having people he doesn’t know in his home.’ Davina treated me to one of her dazzlingly white-toothed smiles, her glossy lipstick, as always, matching her nail polish. ‘It’s almost as if I knew you wouldn’t really toddle off and leave me in the lurch.’
A grin spread across my face as I made myself a large mug of tea and took an even larger handful of biscuits from the tin. My job back with no questions and biscuits for breakfast. This day was already about a million percent better than yesterday. Yesterday – that wiped the stupid grin straight back off again. All I’d done was get my job back. The time for grinning would be when Alex stopped arsing about and called me with the mother of all grovelling apologies and I’d told him to get stuffed. Either that or when I’d saved up enough for the air fare and gone out to Dubai and found a high enough balcony to push him off – I gathered they had quite a lot of those over there.
Katya wasn’t in yet, so I sat at her desk to phone Mrs. Parker. But while nobody else was in the outer office to see me, I logged into my email account, wishing I’d let Alex have his own way and buy me the latest smart phone for my birthday so I could do this in private. I must be the last person under the age of a hundred and five in the whole phone-owning world with such an old mobile, but it worked perfectly and I liked it. Being low maintenance hadn’t done me any favours. That bottle of perfume I’d asked for instead seemed like a huge mistake now. It certainly hadn’t made me smell so nice my husband wanted to be on the same continent as me.
There was nothing from him and I didn’t dare write anything to him just yet, as I was pretty sure anything I composed right now would get me arrested. While I still had the computer to myself I logged into my Facebook account too. No personal message. Just the usual crap. Half of me wanted to see Alex’s page. Would it still say Relationship Status – Married to Beth Dixon with the photo of us, all tanned and happy, petting Santorini donkeys on our honeymoon at the top of the page? I was half convinced that he’d arrive there and realise he’d just had a wobble. Well he could wobble right off for all I cared. Angry? Moi? My finger was still hovering over the mouse when I heard Davina coming towards her office door. I logged off and picked up the phone to call the owner of the disappearing dog.
Far from a tiny little poodle, Bubbles was a large standard size, wilful as a stroppy teenager and surprisingly strong. The first time I took him out, he nearly yanked my arm out of its socket when he caught sight of an unfortunate cat in the distance. If that poor girl yesterday hadn’t been warned, then it really wasn’t her fault she’d briefly lost him. I’d try and talk Davina into giving her another chance.
My first call of the day took me back to the Netley Villages. They were like the three bears of villages – Netley Magna being the big daddy bear, Netley Mallow, the medium sized mummy bear, and Netley Parva, where Talisker lived, the baby bear. Right now I was off to one of a pair of 1930s bungalows overlooking the duck pond in Netley Mallow, to visit Anthony and Cleopatra. Yes, seriously.
Tony and Cleo, the names they actually answer to, are brother and sister, two beautiful ginger cats. I reckon I’d have called them Hudson and Mrs Bridges if they were mine – I bought Mum the fortieth anniversary DVD box set of the original Upstairs Downstairs after the new version came out. He has a white smudge on the front of his neck, like a little bow tie, and white back paws as if he’s wearing spats. She has a white belly and white smudges on her cheeks like she’s wearing an apron and has flour on her face. And if Cleopatra/Mrs Bridges had ever had kittens, I’d have kept a female one and called her Ruby – yes, fanciful I know. But, like Talisker, they’re regular customers and I’ve had time to get rather fond of them.
I let myself into their bungalow. Anthony was stretched out on the arm of the sofa. He opened a lazy eye as I walked over to him, closed it again, and stretched himself even longer.
‘Hello, handsome,’ I dropped my bag on the ottoman and stood over him. ‘Where’s your sister?’
Behind me, Cleopatra meowed as she pitter-pattered out of the bedroom, where I knew she liked the king size bed to herself.
‘I trust madam had a comfortable night?’ Kneeling down, I stroked her. She paused to lean her head into my hand for a moment before meowing at her brother, telling him, I imagine, to get up, which he did, stretching and yawning as he went. Both of them escorted me into the kitchen and watched to make sure they were getting the right flavour Fancy Feast, the right amount of biscuits, and that their water was changed properly. As they tucked into their breakfast, I ran myself a glass of water from the tap and went to sit on the ottoman.
This could really work, I thought as I sat there, sipping my water. OK, the Steadmans, Tony and Cleo’s owners, had an erratic schedule, filming documentaries. They could go weeks without needing us and then call us at the last minute to feed their pets for two days. There were also times they needed us a couple of days a week for a month or so. But for the weeks when I couldn’t camp out at Henry Halliday’s cottage, this could definitely be somewhere I could spend the odd night.
I entertained the cats, playing with a couple of their toy mice. Anthony joined in, dashing back and forth trying to catch them, while Cleopatra washed her face and watched us. Then I picked each of them up for a cuddle, tidied up their His and Hers litter trays, and headed off to my next call.
Yes, I could definitely do this.