The one professional mistake that James had made – the only one that mattered, really, when it came to it – was not to have held his hands up and taken the blame for what had happened to Bertie. Charles Sullivan might have been angry, he might have taken his custom away and entrusted the care of his cat and his one remaining dog to another vet, he might even have threatened to sue for some kind of compensation, but what he almost certainly wouldn’t have done was demand that Harry get rid of James. And even in the unlikely event that he had done, had James’s recent behaviour not been so erratic, his appearance so unkempt, then Harry would surely not have listened. As it was, Harry was so preoccupied with his own doubts about James’s state of mind that when he got the call from the woman purporting to be Charles Sullivan’s aide, and he was told that Charles had been given reason to believe that James had effectively killed Bertie through incompetence – exhibit A, the swab that had got itself lodged in Bertie’s throat – he didn’t think twice about calling James in to explain himself.
‘It was a genuine mistake,’ James said immediately, believing – wrongly, of course – that Amanda, the nurse, must have worked out what had happened and reported back.
‘You’re telling me that it’s true? That you caused the accidental death of Charles Sullivan’s dog and then tried to cover that fact up?’
‘I’m sorry,’ James said. ‘But you know how it is. These things happen.’
‘No, no James,’ Harry said. ‘You misunderstand me. I’m not angry about what happened to Bertie, I’m angry that you made me look like a bloody fool. I’m angry that you put me in a situation where I had to defend your actions without knowing the facts.’
James shuffled from one foot to the other. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered.
‘It’s the deception,’ Harry continued, in full flow now. ‘The fact that I was put on the spot and forced to bluff my way through the conversation so it didn’t look like I had no idea what was happening at my own practice. I had to tell her I was already investigating what had happened. Surely you can see how unacceptable that is?’
‘It won’t happen again,’ James mumbled, looking at his shoes.
‘I know it won’t, James, because … and I’m sorry, I really am … I’m afraid I’m going to have to let you go.’
James looked up for the first time. This couldn’t be happening. ‘Please don’t do this, Harry.’
Harry was still talking: ‘We can make it official with all the attendant publicity that might bring or else you can just agree to leave at the end of the week. It’s up to you to do what you think is the right thing.’
James had no doubt that the right thing to do was the thing he was going to do. It was what he should have done in the first place and then he wouldn’t have been in this mess. It was what he should have done a year ago too, when Katie and Stanley first appeared in his surgery.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll deal with any appointments that have already been made and then I’ll go. Don’t worry, I won’t make it any more difficult for you than it already is.’
‘Thank you,’ Harry said, turning back to some paperwork on his desk to indicate that their chat was over.
James walked out into the corridor in a daze. This was it. He was unemployed. He had gone from having his own successful business along with a beautiful house and an equally beautiful wife (not to mention the mistress, but he was trying to gloss over that even in his private thoughts) to being out of work and living alone and unloved in a motel in the space of three short months. He had no job, no home, no partner, no money, no self-esteem. No dignity, he thought bitterly.
Next step would probably be to grow his hair long and move out on to the streets where he could sit in a cardboard box all day, maybe with a mangy-looking dog on a piece of string. He had heard you could hire them for a few hours from modern-day Fagins who kept them by the dozen. The skinnier the better. People were far more likely to give money to a homeless person’s dog than to the person himself, apparently. That just about summed up the world, James thought miserably. Maybe he should become an alcoholic or get a crack habit, although how he was meant to afford to do either of those things now he didn’t really know. God, he couldn’t even be a proper tramp. How pitiful was that? He’d have to turn to crime to fund the drug habit he hadn’t yet acquired. No wonder Stephanie didn’t want him any more. He was just considering which was more effective, pills or hanging, when his phone rang. He looked at the caller ID: Finn. Of course, Finn, he thought. Finn still loved him. Finn was a reason to carry on.
‘Hi, mate,’ he said, his eyes watering at the thought of his son.
‘Where are you?’ Finn sounded angry. ‘You promised you’d be here.’
James panicked. Be where? He looked at his watch. It was five to four already. How had that happened? Shit, he thought, his heart lurching. Finn’s football match. Somewhere back when he had been feeling more like a normal human being he had promised his son that of course he would be at the game and that he would arrange with Harry to have one of the other vets see his patients. The kick-off was at four. Fuck.
‘I got held up. I’m leaving now. I’m so sorry, Finnster, I should have rung you.’ He started stuffing things like keys and money into his pockets to make a quick getaway.
‘You forgot about it,’ Finn was shouting now. ‘You never do anything with me. I hate you.’
James listened as Finn pressed the button to end the call. Great. He raced through reception with his head down. He could see Cheryl Marshall and her beagle Rooney, his four o’clock appointment, watching him expectantly. He was so intent on avoiding Cheryl’s eye that he almost bumped into Harry, who was coming the other way, carrying a small dog that must be on its way to surgery. ‘I have a family emergency,’ he muttered, without stopping.
‘What about your patients?’ Harry protested.
‘I don’t work for you any more, Harry,’ he shouted back as he broke into a run in the street. ‘Go fuck yourself,’ he added, for good measure, although he thought later this might have been overkill. So, this time doing the right thing actually meant fucking his boss over in favour of his son. God, it was complicated. They should teach stuff like this in school: ‘How to have the moral high ground’, ‘Honesty for beginners’ or ‘Treading the path of righteousness 1:01’.
Stephanie hated standing on the sidelines with the other parents. Not that she didn’t enjoy watching Finn play, she nearly burst with pride every time he got the ball and, on occasion, had been known to shout, ‘Tackle him,’ rather too over-excitedly. No, it was the forced conversation with the mothers of his team mates – it was always the mothers, except for Shannon Carling’s father whose wife had died soon after Shannon was born and who worked flexi-time so that he could look after his daughter – the illusion that because they all had sons and daughters the same age they must have other things in common. Most of them were nice enough, some of them she was even friends with, but the forced jollity of the incessant banter during matches exhausted her. Plus she was in a foul mood because James hadn’t turned up to watch Finn as he’d promised he would. Not that she cared one way or another if he was there but she knew her son was bitterly disappointed. And, to be fair, it wasn’t like James, these days, to be so unreliable. He had been going out of his way to prove what a caring and hands-on father he was.
She checked her watch again – a quarter past four. Finn was running his heart out on the pitch, with a miserable look on his face. She glanced round to see if there was any sign of James – he had told Finn he was on his way – just as he rounded the corner of the school drive, red-faced and sweating, running as if he was being chased. All the other mothers turned to look and she knew that they were torn between thinking that they were grateful their husbands didn’t go around making such twats of themselves and feeling jealous and a bit sad that Stephanie had a husband – albeit a soon-to-be-ex one – who could be bothered to come to school events.
‘Did you run all the way?’ Stephanie said when he had flopped down on the grass beside her.
He nodded, unable to get enough breath to speak.
‘Well, better late than never,’ she said, and then hated herself both for being so catty and for trotting out such a cliché.
James didn’t reply. Instead, as soon as he had got his breath back, he stood up and started shouting encouragement to Finn, who turned round, beaming, when he heard his father’s voice, his anger forgotten in that way children have of being able to be so instantly forgiving. They didn’t speak again until the end of the match when Finn came running over – buoyant from a five to four victory – flung himself at his father and asked him if he was coming over for tea.
Stephanie noticed James cast a nervous glance her way. ‘Oh, no, I don’t think –’ he started to say, and Stephanie interrupted. It would make Finn happy and in some way compensate for his earlier disappointment.
‘I’m sure Daddy would love that, if he doesn’t have anything else to do,’ she said, and managed a smile.
James smiled back gratefully. ‘I don’t. I don’t have anything to do.’
Stephanie thought he seemed rather subdued during their – very early – supper. She was hoping to have the meal over by six, and then she could hide in the living room while James and Finn chased each other round the garden for a couple of hours before he headed back to the Travel Motel. He was making jokes with Finn, going over their old rehearsed routines, which made the two of them crack up but which left pretty much everyone else cold, but it didn’t seem like his heart was quite in them. Finn didn’t notice, of course, so overexcited was he that his father had witnessed him deliver the crucial cross which had spawned the third goal, but Stephanie had an inkling something was wrong – something more than his usual woes, that was – and that whatever it was he was going to want to share it with her. She wasn’t sure she could face dealing with whatever new problems James perceived he had: she had enough on her own plate, trying to find a suitable time and occasion to tell Michael the good news. She had been putting it off. She didn’t know why.
By seven thirty Finn was exhausted and ready for bed, and it was apparent that James was going nowhere. Reluctantly she opened a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and offered him a glass.
‘I may as well drink the whole bottle. I don’t have to get up for work in the morning,’ he said, with a grim laugh, and then he waited for her to ask him what he meant, which, of course, she did.
As soon as James got to the part about Charles Sullivan’s aide, Stephanie knew where the story was going. ‘Was it a woman?’ she asked.
‘Was what a woman?’ James said, evidently confused by this detour.
‘His aide. Was the person who phoned up a woman, do you know?’
James’s brow furrowed into several long creases. ‘It was, I think. What’s that got to do with anything?’
Stephanie knew she couldn’t tell him. Or, at least, if she ever did she needed to think it through very carefully first. ‘I just wondered, that’s all. Anyway, carry on.’
When he got to the point where Harry had sacked him Stephanie exhaled loudly. OK, so this had gone too far. Apart from anything else James being completely out of work would affect both her and, more importantly, Finn.
‘I don’t know what I’m going to do,’ James said plaintively, and he looked so pathetic that all she felt for him was pity.
‘I guess we’ll have to sell the house after all,’ she said, and James looked like he might burst into tears. ‘Buy two smaller places.’
‘No. I’ve told you that’s not going to happen. That’s not why I’m telling you. I’m going to sort myself out, I promise.’
He carried on with his story, getting to the part where he had shouted at Harry as he ran down the street to get to Finn’s game. Stephanie couldn’t help but laugh at the way he described Harry’s open-mouthed stare. ‘Did you really tell him to go fuck himself?’
‘I did.’
‘About time, I reckon.’
‘He was gesticulating like he wanted to kill me but he had someone’s Chihuahua in his hand, so it kind of looked less macho than he was hoping, I think,’ James said, laughing himself.
‘You should talk to the police. Tell them he was threatening you with it. That’s a lethal weapon.’
‘It had a pink jumper on,’ he added, helpless now. ‘And nail varnish. I distinctly saw that the dog had nail varnish on. Also pink.’
Stephanie wiped her eyes. ‘It was probably going in for a nose job.’
‘Breast augmentation,’ James said. ‘All eight of them.’
‘Do you want another glass of wine?’ Stephanie said, and then wondered where that had come from.
‘Thank you,’ he said, holding out his glass for her to fill.
As soon as James had left – nearly two and a half hours later, and for all that time they had chatted and laughed and he had exhibited a remarkable lack of self-pity – Stephanie tried to call Katie. What she had done was beyond belief. OK, so they had both agreed that James had to pay. She flushed as she reminded herself that it had all been her idea. Well, Natasha had started her off thinking that way, to be fair, and she wasn’t exactly sure how she felt about Natasha and her advice at the moment. She forced herself not to think about the way she had spoken to her friend. At this rate there wouldn’t be anything left she could think about that didn’t make her feel uncomfortable.
Katie’s mobile rang and rang, and eventually went to voicemail. Stephanie left a message, trying to sound much friendlier than she felt because she wanted to make sure that Katie called her back. ‘Hi, it’s Stephanie, call me! We haven’t had a chat for ages.’ Then she did the same with Katie’s home phone. An hour later she tried both again and the same thing happened. She left more messages, this time saying Katie wasn’t to worry how late it was – if she could still call Stephanie back this evening that would be wonderful, thank you. She left her mobile on her bedside table and went to bed angry.
She slept badly. She felt panicked about what Katie might do next. The woman had clearly lost her mind and had no intention of stopping. Paying James back was one thing. Completely ruining his life was quite another. Stephanie had always believed that the punishment had to fit the crime. She had wanted James humiliated, like he had made her feel humiliated. She had wanted to make him feel hurt and ashamed and regretful. But the truth was that both she and Katie had been able to pick up the pieces of their lives. Whatever he had done to them, they still had their work and their homes and their friends. They still had foundations to build on. It was simply too much to strip James of everything he’d had in his life, to leave him with nothing. Not to mention the fact that to hurt James like this would inevitably hurt Finn too. Finn, who had already all but lost his father, would probably also lose his home and the garden he loved. Of course they could manage somewhere smaller, the house was too big for the two of them really, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that at the moment what Finn needed was some stability in his life.
At six thirty she got up and made herself a cup of tea and tried to find displacement activities to stop herself from dialling Katie’s number too early. She made a lot of noise hoovering outside Finn’s room so that he got up and came out to see what was going on. By the time she had dropped him off at school and returned home it was gone nine. A respectable hour to call someone.
Once again Katie’s phones rang and rang with no response. Stephanie had convinced herself in the night that Katie was actually avoiding her and could now picture her standing, mobile in hand, checking who was calling before she decided whether or not to answer. She left two strained, polite messages, which didn’t sound quite as jolly as she’d managed to sound yesterday: ‘Katie, I really want to talk to you, you know, just to see how you are. Call me back.’ This was crazy. Katie could avoid answering the phone to her for the rest of her life if she put her mind to it. There had to be something else she could do.
By the time James had got home – well, to the Travel Motel which was the closest thing he had to a home, these days – he’d felt a little bit worse for wear, having had four glasses of wine, but surprisingly cheerful for a man who had just lost his job. Stephanie had cheered him up, just as he had dared hope she might. A couple of hours’ laughing about the tragedy of the situation he found himself in had made him feel like a different person.