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HETTIE AND GRACE SAT on the kitchen steps overlooking the walled garden. Their mugs of coffee sat on the step beside them. Pig was yapping at Flossie the spaniel, and she was watching him out of one lazy eye from her prone position on the warm patch of earth at the edge of the vegetable plot.
Hettie flicked the ash from her cigarette onto the gravel path. ‘So, it’s really happening now.’
‘It’s so exciting! I’ll miss our gossips though.’
‘I’m meant to be giving these up. I really can’t afford them.’ Hettie stared at her cigarette. ‘You can come and gossip at Hardacre. I’ll be glad of the company. Pig! Give it a rest!’
Hettie stretched out a leg and prodded the thigh below her shorts. ‘I’ve got soft. Working again is gonna hurt.’
‘You’ll have help though, right? Alexander will help? From what you’ve said you’ll need it.’
‘I can call on Bill’s man, Dave, if I need to. Alexander’s really busy, and anyway I’d kind of like to do this myself. My project, my yard.’
A lazy bee hummed by and settled on the clematis that fell over the wall behind them.
‘You’re brave.’
‘Or foolish.’
‘I’d be looking for all the help I could get.’
They were quiet for a moment, absorbing the warmth of the sun.
‘He’s glad you’re taking it on though? I mean, he’s on board and being supportive?’
‘Strictly speaking, he doesn’t know I’ve taken it on yet. I only rang Bill this morning. But yeah, he has been supportive. When he manages to hide his frustration that I’m doing it my way, not his.’ She squinted into the sun and waved her cigarette. ‘That’s why I’m still here. I’m psyching myself up before I walk to the practice and tell him. I’ll be quizzed on the spreadsheet again. It’s like sitting a bloody exam.’
She drew on the cigarette, and her face became pensive. He was being supportive, in that annoying, superior way he had. Dishing out advice she hadn’t asked for, so sure he knew best. Which was probably true, and that needled too. She knew it was just his way, but it made her feel insufficient, as if he doubted her ability. Or was it that she doubted herself and was projecting that onto him? Either way, it only made her more determined to prove she could do it. ‘I’m committed now anyway, whether he’s on board or not. I’m still my own person. I can do what I want.’
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SHE DALLIED ON HER way to the practice. Pig chased Artie and Fred, who were riding their bikes around the Hall, and farther along the footpath he disappeared into the wood on the heels of a muntjac. She couldn’t follow him through the ragged stinging nettles that grew at the edge of the trees, so she sat on a fallen log to wait it out. She took some pictures of Doris, whistling through her teeth to get the little dog to tilt her head in that adorable way she had with one ear cocked. She called Pig again, but without much expectation, and looked back down the hill over the roof of the Gatehouse.
She couldn’t see Hardacre from here. It was too far away on the other side of the village. Maybe she should have shown Alexander the spreadsheet before she called Bill, but she was meant to be making her own decisions, and to be honest, she had enough qualms of her own without hearing Alexander’s. She’d concluded it was one of those situations where if she thought about it too much, she would never do it. So she’d gone ahead and done it, and that had been a buzz. Although the rush of euphoria had morphed into a fizz of anxiety now.
A rustle from the woods brought her back to her feet. Pig, loping now, with his tongue hanging out, panted his way back.
She missed Alexander’s lunchtime slot. Not that he actually stopped, but she could usually catch him between patients and sit with him for fifteen minutes. He was ushering an overweight chocolate lab towards his clinic and didn’t see her arrive. Never mind, she could just tell him later. The compulsion she’d felt to share it with him when she’d come off the phone to Bill felt less urgent now.
She stared at the door to his room for a moment after he’d closed it. There were a motley assortment of pets and their owners crowded into the waiting room. Pig strained on his lead to get at a cat basket on the floor. Janet smiled and waved from the reception desk, with the phone pressed to her ear.
She would go home; the news could wait. It would give her more time to think about how she was going to tell him.
‘Hettie!’
Tom crossed the tiled floor with eager footsteps, and his smile was so wide it crinkled his eyes at the corners. He looked taller dressed in his surgical scrubs.
‘I thought that was you.’ He stopped in front of her, leant against the doorpost, dropped one foot behind the other and tipped his head in the direction of the waiting room. ‘I doubt you’ll catch the boss though. We’re flat out today.’
She tugged on Pig’s lead. Something about the too-close chumminess of Tom’s stance made her feel slightly uncomfortable. She smiled back at him but took a small step back as she did so.
Tom was easy to chat to, once you got over the personal space thing. So easy she almost forgot why she was there. She was lounging against the wall herself, laughing at Tom’s account of his landlady at the B&B where he was staying, when Alexander appeared like a black cloud behind him, which made her instantly straighten and killed the laugh in her throat. ‘Alexander! I missed your lunch break—’
‘Have you no work to do, Tom?’ He stood a head taller than Tom, and the hardness in his eyes failed to back up the smooth tone with which he delivered the question.
Hettie’s cheeks warmed with embarrassment.
Tom touched his forehead in mock salute. ‘Yes, boss.’ He nodded at her before walking off with what appeared to be a deliberate lack of hurry.
She shook her head. Where the hell had that come from? She could only whisper back at him in the crowded reception, ‘Alexander! What the fuck was that?’
‘I might ask you the same question.’
She could see the muscle above his jaw clench and real anger in his eyes. She tightened her fingers around the dogs’ leads, and made herself take a deep breath. Janet was looking in their direction, and the conversation in the waiting room seemed to have lapsed into an untimely silence. ‘I was waiting for you to get free.’
‘I won’t be free for hours yet. I’ll see you at home.’ He turned on his heel, and walked to the desk with his patient notes.
She power-walked back to the Gatehouse, driven on by the injustice of being spoken to that way and the frustration of not being able to bite back at him. She only went in to grab her keys but, as an afterthought, dashed off a note and left it on the kitchen worktop.
Taken Hardacre on – there now. Dogs are with me.
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HARDACRE WAS LIKE A theme park for the terriers. Feral scents and rat runs, musty stables and hidden crannies, all begged to be explored. The dogs scampered to and fro, crossing the yard in front of Hettie as she leant on the Landy and looked around her.
This was it then.
The familiar buildings and vacant stables were a jarring reminder of a past she’d thought she’d left behind. They might be empty of horses, but they still held too many memories. She lit a cigarette and wondered if she would be able to sweep the memories away with the cobwebs. Or maybe make new ones to bury them under. Clean stables, clean slate, clean start.
She straightened, threw the cigarette to the ground and trod on it. That sounded like a bloody lot of cleaning, so she’d better get going.
The disorder beckoned her on, but she hadn’t come prepared. No tools, not even her notebook. She hadn’t thought ahead in the rush of irritation that had propelled her here so quickly.
She rooted around in the Landy and found an old receipt. She scribbled a list on the back of it with an unreliable biro, strolling through the barn as she wrote: broom, wheelbarrow, shovel, bucket, weed-killer, hammer, nails, paint and rat poison...
Doris hounded a tabby cat out of one of the stables. The sudden commotion and streak of brown fur startled Hettie. Her heart overreacted, hammering in her chest until she laughed out loud at herself. Her laugh sounded sharp in the derelict building. No amount of cajoling would tempt the cat back down from the rafters.
She could have added to her shopping list, but she’d run out of space to write, and that lot would make a big enough dent in her savings for now. The to-do list she stored in her head, adding to it as she circled the U-shaped block of stables: rubbish disposal, cleaning, repairs and painting.
The centre of the yard was a trap for the afternoon sun, but the stables were shaded and cool. In the windowless tack room, she shivered in her T-shirt and shorts. There was so much to do, but best not to think about it all in one go: the admin and advertising, the bills to put in her name... She hurried back out to the sun.
She shoved the bungalow door, shunting a heap of junk mail that lay on the doormat – free newspapers, flyers and a number of envelopes that looked like bills. She peered at the topmost envelope: Mr J. Greaves, Hardacre Farm.
A trickle of hot fear slid down the back of her neck. It brought with it the illogical thought that he might still be there too.
She kicked the envelope away, quickly glancing around before snatching a half-filled bin bag. Her movements were jerky as she knelt on the floor, stuffing the mail into the bag. When she stood she wiped her hands briskly across the front of her shorts. That was her first job sorted. She would have a bonfire later.
Despite its plain brick façade, the bungalow’s rooms were large and light. Generous windows overlooked the yards and paddocks. The toilet flushed, which was a bonus. She wasn’t ready to sort out the yard loo. Grim enough ten years ago, from her brief peer into its dark interior it had gone downhill since she’d worked here. She could put a kettle in the kitchen, and maybe a washing machine, if she found one.
Absently, she hauled Pig out of the bin bag he had buried his front-end in. ‘We’re not calling it Hardacre though. Something else. Redfern Livery Stables? That sounds cool, doesn’t it, guys?’ She laughed at herself and scruffed Pig’s head. ‘Bloody hell, look at the state of you, dog! Baths all round before I let you lot back into the master’s house.’
Until just then she’d forgotten all about Alexander pissing her off.
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HE STILL HAD A FACE like a bear on him when he finally got home, which was good because it reminded her that she was pissed off with him, but frustrating because she was also bursting to tell him her plans for Hardacre. She arranged her face to disapproval and didn’t look up from her laptop, which sat on the sofa beside her. The telly was muted but headline banners for the ten o’clock news rolled across the screen. Alexander stopped in the middle of the room.
‘I’m sorry. Shitty, bastard day, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.’
‘No, you shouldn’t. Nor on Tom.’
Alexander sighed and walked past her to the kitchen. She heard him set a glass onto the worktop.
‘So you’ve taken it on? Just like that? What happened to finishing the business plan?’
She frowned at the screen of her laptop. ‘I finished the plan. You’d have known if you’d spared me thirty seconds earlier instead of throwing a hissy fit—’
‘Right. I’ve said sorry.’ His weight dropped onto the arm of the sofa, and the ice in his whiskey clinked against the glass. ‘I thought I was going to check it for you.’
‘Because I’m not up to the job myself?’ He really did look like he’d had a shit day – weary shouldered, eyes cast down.
‘You’re putting words in my mouth.’
‘What’s up?’ She shifted her legs so he could sit.
‘Nothing. Impossible owners, idiots who...’ He shook his head and slid down into the space she’d made for him. ‘Nothing I want to offload onto you. How was your day?’
‘Exciting, and scary. But I’ve been pissed at you since lunchtime, and now I’m trying not to let your lack of enthusiasm scare me even more. Idiot owners who do what?’ She knew he found the clinics difficult, and some owners frustrating. He’d sounded off before about dogs so obese they could hardly drag themselves into his surgery. But this was different.
‘Trust me, you don’t want to know.’ He slipped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her into his side. ‘It is exciting, about Hardacre.’
She tucked her legs underneath her as she leant against him. ‘Redfern Livery.’ She smiled as she corrected him. ‘And I do want to know.’
The ice cubes clinked again as he lifted the glass to his mouth and paused there before drinking. ‘I’ve got to destroy a young, perfectly fit horse tomorrow.’ He delivered it deadpan, which made it sound all the more shocking.
She swung round and sat up. ‘No!’
‘Not a fucking thing wrong with it. An ex-racehorse, bought from the sales by an idiot woman because her daughter “needed” a thoroughbred. She says it’s psychotic, dangerous. I’d say they haven’t got a clue, and her daughter couldn’t ride one side of a three-legged donkey—’
‘Dear God! Alexander, that’s awful. You can’t just destroy it.’
‘Apparently that’s my job, clearing up after clueless owners. She can’t sell it, it throws everyone off, if it lets them get on in the first place, and she certainly can’t control it, so it is dangerous. Poor bastard is only four... good breeding, too. He raced a couple of times but didn’t make the grade.’
Alexander sagged into the sofa, and Digger moved onto his lap. He stroked the dog’s head and tipped his head to swallow the rest of his whiskey. ‘This way her insurance pays out for loss of use. Or she thinks it will, but I’ll make bloody sure the report records the euthanasia as owner’s choice.’
‘You can’t put down a healthy horse. I won’t let you do it. Why don’t you buy him?’
‘Don’t think I haven’t thought about it, but if I rescue every misfit animal who comes my way, we’d be overrun in weeks.’
‘I’ll buy him then.’
Alexander sighed. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have told you. I’ve broken client confidentiality—’
‘So bloody what? She’s broken a horse! A four-year-old thoroughbred with good breeding... he might be a steal!’
‘Three grand, she wants. The same as she paid when she bought him.’ He lifted Digger off his lap and stood up. ‘You can’t fill your stables with rejects.’
Hettie followed him to the kitchen. She couldn’t let him do this, and she knew he didn’t want to. ‘Think about it. I’ve got twenty stables, none of them filled yet.’
‘He’ll cost you a fortune, and he’s dangerous.’
‘He’ll just need time and patience. I can give him that.’
They faced each other and his resigned half-smile told her she’d won. An easy battle though. She didn’t believe he’d have put the horse down. He just needed someone to give him a way out.
She lifted his hand and kissed it. ‘I’ll ask James if I can put him with the yearlings until Hardacre is ready. A few weeks with the youngsters will be good for him, remind him how to be a horse.’
Alexander laughed and shook his head. ‘You’re as mad as the bloody horse is. How the hell you think you’re going to run a business when you’ve blown your savings... Would you let me pay for him?’
‘No. But thank you.’ She stopped his words with a kiss. ‘Maybe it’s time you thought about getting out of the clinics and into surgery...’ She dropped a line of kisses along his neck to punctuate her words. ‘... before you lose all your clients by calling them idiots.’
‘You’re probably right.’
‘How you think you can run a business when you’ve blown your goodwill...’
‘Okay, okay, enough.’ Alexander covered her mouth with his own.
‘I love you, Melton, even if you are a grumpy bastard.’ She felt his lips curve into a smile against hers.