Lost Dogs and Lonely Hearts (34 page)

She’d lied to Natalie. The test
had
worked; she hadn’t even had to wait the three minutes for the blue cross to appear in the window. It had pinged up there at once, as if it couldn’t underline enough how stupid she was not to know already.

Rachel had lied partly because she couldn’t get her own head around this startling new fact, and partly because she hadn’t wanted to put poor Natalie in the position of having to react one way or
the other. It made Rachel feel even worse than she already did: Natalie wanted a baby so much and couldn’t have one, while she, who’d never even allowed herself to imagine her own baby while her heart was tied to a man who made it very clear a secret second family wasn’t on the agenda, had managed to do the statistically improbable and get pregnant without even trying.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought about children over the last ten years. She’d often wondered what it would feel like to say those words that seemed to reduce everyone else to tearful ecstasy: ‘Darling, I’m having a baby.’

But Oliver, the lying bastard, had been clear that he had all the family he wanted already. ‘I’m not some Tory politician who secretly likes the idea of fathering kids everywhere,’ he’d said, the first time the conversation had drifted within discreet distance of the topic, ‘so don’t ever put us in a position where we might have to have a conversation neither of us will like.’

That had been the choice: their affair, or her having children. If she was honest, Rachel had never felt broody enough to sacrifice the easy life she had. Whether that was self-protection or not, she didn’t know. She’d never allowed herself to go beyond imagining the mess and disruption, just in case it turned out to be dangerous.

Rachel ploughed on across the field, making her lungs burn with the effort of running on the uneven ground. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.

If it was real, shouldn’t she feel different somehow? She hadn’t been fudging the truth when she’d told Natalie she wasn’t sure how late her period was. She never bothered to keep track, since stress at work often threw her off, as did stress with Oliver. Recently, her whole body had gone haywire, but with the benefit of that little cross, she saw other signs: the itchy, sore breasts that she’d put down to – Rachel almost laughed at her own idiocy – cheap washing powder. And that sickly feeling in the morning she’d assumed was Megan’s lurgy – apparently not.

She stumbled over a molehill and broke her stride, coming to a staggering halt. Gem suddenly shot forward from his discreet following position, and bounded ahead to check she was all right, anxiously circling her as she bent over to get her breath back. Her heart was pounding and she felt aware of every part of her body now, except her stomach, which felt no different at all.

You couldn’t hide anything from your body. Even now, that solitary cell was dividing into heart, fingers, hair, making decisions, moving on while she stood there unable to take it in.

Running away, thought Rachel, wasn’t going to change anything. This was one decision that she couldn’t duck out of. One way or another, she would have to deal with it because it was actually happening inside her.

She straightened up and looked out over the fields to the thick pine forest behind Four Oaks’ neat Mr Men house façade, and tried to make it feel more tangible. She dredged through her half-forgotten biology knowledge, ashamed at how little she actually knew. When? How?

Well, not how
exactly
. . .

A tiny fantasy crept into her head like ivy. What if it was Oliver’s?

Their Last Time, though she hadn’t known it then, had been the week before she’d found the Paris receipts. That made it . . . Rachel tried to work backwards. Time seemed to pass differently here. Six weeks ago? But Oliver had always been so careful. Despite his claims to the contrary, he really wasn’t a spontaneous man. Even when they’d done it on his desk in the office, there were condoms suspiciously to hand.

But what if it was his? Did that trump Tara the tennis coach – or Kath, and his three existing kids? Rachel tried to play the scene in her head but it was too messy. She just couldn’t imagine Oliver melting with delight; she’d tried for years to picture that, but he’d made it hurtfully clear he wouldn’t. And what about Kath? She couldn’t keep up that patronising ‘you’re so old!’ routine if she was pregnant with Oliver’s baby. She’d fight tooth and nail to stop Rachel getting any money.

Rachel’s breath burned in her lungs and she sank down onto the grass. Gem lay down near her, waiting, and without thinking she reached out a hand and laid it on his neck. His coat was rough, not silky like some of the more pettable dogs, but it was warm. Gem had the tough coat for the country rain and muddy fields; he wasn’t a sleek town creature, he was a survivor. He’d survived long enough for Dot to rescue him from his cardboard box.

The first tears welled at the corners of Rachel’s eyes.

Inside, she knew it was George’s baby, not Oliver’s. Sod’s Law alone would have made it him. The man she barely knew, on the one night she’d been too drunk to check he’d sorted out the condom properly – but then, as her mother had warned her at sixteen, two careless minutes was all it took.

She closed her eyes and felt sick, but with regret, not hormones. George was the first proper, promising relationship she’d had since she was twenty-one, with a man who, from what little she knew of him, seemed to be exactly what she needed: amusing, decent, as stubborn as she was. What was he going to say when she told him? Either he’d feel morally obliged to stand by her, or he’d react with Oliver-like horror and demand that she get rid of it. Which was worse?
 

The truth slowly sank into Rachel’s bones, as the cold from the earth crept through the material of her trousers. She wasn’t the person she’d been yesterday. But she didn’t even know who that person was. She hadn’t reacted in the way she’d have predicted: no shrieks of horror, no immediate phone call to the nearest discreet clinic. She wasn’t weeping tears of broody joy, sure, but she wasn’t running around desperately trying to get rid of the tiny parasite growing inside her. She felt suspended in mid-air, unable to decide what she felt.

What did she want? It was so long since she’d seriously asked herself that.

‘Gem,’ she said. ‘What am I going to do?’

The dog leaped up, thinking she wanted him to do something, and then when he saw her despairing face, he dropped to his belly, to lie with his nose on his paws, waiting. Rachel patted the space next to her, and eagerly, Gem sidled over like a crab, to lean in against her side. Slowly, she lay back on the ground and looked up at the clouds drifting across the china-blue sky, feeling the hardness of the field beneath her and the heat of Gem’s body comforting her.

Even in the wide open air Rachel couldn’t ignore the sense of being trapped by something huge and invisible. The responsibility. The timetable. The emotional tie she’d never be able to sever with George and Longhampton and this spinsterish inheritance.

No one knows about this baby but me, she thought. No one knows. And it’s not a baby yet. It’s just a few cells. I could go back to London for two days, no one would bat an eyelid. I could put the world on pause, come back, and be exactly the same. She let the idea spin round in her head, as the puffy clouds drifted without urgency.

Gem might think I’ve abandoned him, she thought. I can’t leave him. I can’t take him with me. I can’t go. That’s it. I can’t go.

And it wouldn’t be the same.

An image drifted into her head from nowhere: of Dot carrying Gem and his brothers around in a sling for days while they were still too little to be left. That was a woman who’d replaced her chances of her own biological children with dogs, but had not been able to replace that need to love, and nurture.

Do I really have that, Rachel wondered. Maybe I am as selfish as everyone makes out. Shouldn’t I know what I want? Didn’t Mum say she cried with joy when she found out she was expecting me? And Amelia, announcing it at some poor upstaged cousin’s wedding, because ‘she couldn’t keep her happiness in’?

‘What kind of bloody awful mother am I going to be?’ she said aloud, and stretched out an arm. Gem laid his head along it, waiting patiently.

Back in the house, Megan was making up some special scrambled eggs for a half-starved pregnant Doberman bitch as if nothing was any different.

‘I saw you and Gem up in the orchard,’ said Megan, when she let herself in. ‘Are you going to start doing some agility with him?’

‘Agility?’ Rachel looked at the phone messages, her eye skimming for ‘Oliver’ as it habitually did. She blinked it away.

‘Yeah. He’d be great. You could do some at this Open Day. There are posts and little jumps in the shed – you want me to get them out? It’d be good for the Staffies too, get some of their energy worked out and it’d make a good display for visitors. I had a look at Natalie’s plans, hope you don’t mind.’

Rachel could see the notes Natalie had left on the kitchen table. She had clear, precise handwriting, and had marked out boxes and flow lines. That seemed like a long time ago.

Natalie. Rachel felt a wrench inside, remembering the miserable expression on her face when she’d handed over the test. It’s just one test, she told herself. It’s really early days. It might be nothing. I might have got it wrong.

‘Megan, are you registered at the surgery?’ she asked. ‘Who’s your doctor?’

‘Dr Carthy.’ Megan didn’t react to the sudden change of topic. ‘I’m trying to get on with Dr Harper, obviously.’

‘Is Dr Carthy . . . nice?’

Oh, shut up, Rachel, she thought crossly. Nice? Unlikely to shout at single women who manage to get pregnant on a one-night stand like a stupid teenager, do you mean?

‘Er, yes? Quite old-fashioned, though. There are some female doctors there – Dr Powell is very friendly, Dot fitted her up with a sweet old Cavalier King Charles spaniel a few years ago.’ She smiled hopefully, then her face clouded over. ‘You’re not ill, are you?’

‘No, no. Just . . . just thought I should get registered.’

‘Good,’ said Megan. ‘Cup of tea? I was about to put the kettle on. Freda’s left all sorts of notes to work through – and lots of juicy gossip from the café. She thinks Ted might finally agree to retire this year! Can you believe it? She reckons she’ll be able to prise his hands off the fryer now Dr Carthy’s got him on statins. I reckon we should find her a dog.’

Rachel felt a sudden need to be on her own, in complete silence, where she wouldn’t have to pretend everything was the same. There was too much going on in her head to fake an interest in Ted Shackley’s cholesterol levels.

‘Megan, listen, I hate to leave you with Freda’s notes, but I really need to get cracking with the sorting out,’ she said, with an apologetic shrug. ‘Orders from my mum – an hour a day of junk-sifting, until it’s done.’

‘No problem,’ said Megan. She carried on stirring the scrambled eggs. ‘Give me a shout when you want a cup of tea.’

Rachel made her way upstairs, and stood for a moment on the landing, looking into the big mirror that hung over the stairs, wondering when Dot’s face had changed from the one looking back at her to the white-haired dowager in the photographs.

She knew she should really tackle the spare rooms, all of which were full of heavy Victorian furniture from her grandparents’ old house, according to Val – they’d need to go to the sale room, once she’d emptied them of whatever was inside. But instead she felt drawn to Dot’s room, and that lovely wardrobe of clothes and secrets. She wanted to see the glorious evidence of her aunt’s single life, before she let the routine of Four Oaks swallow her up.

There were two wardrobes in Dot’s bedroom. The one nearest the bed was filled with simple tweedy skirts and the basic, hard-wearing clothes she’d worn to tramp the dog-walking loop each day. Rachel shifted the hangers back and forth, checking there were no mysterious boxes stashed at the back. Bar an unworn pair of Marks & Spencer Footglove gold sandals with the receipt still inside, it was exactly the collection of heathery separates a middle-aged dog lover would own.

But the other wardrobe – that was a different life altogether. Rachel’s skin tingled as she trailed her hands across the hangers, trying to feel the occasions and memories clinging to the clothes. Shimmering satin gleamed out from between fur-tipped wool coats, bright slashes of bold orange and burnished cerise that only a woman with dark eyes and a long, lean frame could carry off.

Rachel laid each hanger over the bedstead until the frame was thick with clothes, each one a night out, or an office party in. There were wool suits with A-line skirts and cropped jackets that made Rachel suspect that Dot’s job in the City hadn’t been as menial as Val seemed to think. She let her fingers creep into pockets and into bright crocodile-skin handbags, and pulled out fragments of Dot’s swinging London world – bus tickets and taxi receipts into Soho, a dry-cleaning bill for three dinner jackets, a shopping list including champagne and eggs, headache tablets and dance cards, one from a New Year’s Ball at the Dorchester in 1969.

Every dance was full, but ‘Felix’ featured in every other slot.

Were these the secrets Dot meant in her letter? she wondered. The secret, independent life that Val had never bothered to ask about? Had she, in fact, made some money of her own, and then retired to look after her dogs – maybe that was what had broken her and Felix up, her ambition?