The Village Vet (13 page)

‘That shouldn’t really be one of the criteria for giving me the job,’ I point out. ‘Don’t you worry that Diane might take steps to remove you as chair after this?’

‘I am one of the founder members. She wouldn’t dare. Look, dear niece, I did what I had to do. If I’d put this to the committee, it would have taken them months to agree.’ Fifi clears her throat. ‘Diane will thank me for this one day.’

I doubt it, I think. If I wasn’t in the thick of the squabble, I would find it quite entertaining, the charitable ladies of Talyton St George acting most uncharitably towards each other.

‘Oh dear, I’d better come over and see what’s what after I’ve had a ring round to twist a few arms.’ She pauses. ‘Why don’t you have a word with Jack when he comes to check the traps? He called me to let me know he’s on his way to you.’

‘I see …’

‘It won’t be for ever, Tessa. Those little birds will soon grow up and fly the nest.’

By the time Jack arrives, I’m feeding the blue tits yet again.

‘Hi,’ I say when he knocks and enters the bungalow – I left the front door open deliberately so I didn’t have to stop partway through to let anyone in. ‘How are you?’

‘Good,’ he says, coming to join me in the office area behind the reception desk where I’ve perched the incubator on the table.

‘I’ve checked the traps and they’re empty,’ I go on.
‘The
cats around here don’t appear to like tuna. I think we need to put something else on the menu.’

‘Menu?’ Jack frowns.

‘That’s what I said,’ I say, half joking, half serious. ‘I feel like the manager of a hotel, organising all these meals.’

Jack suggests pilchards for the ferals while I’m dangling the tweezers loaded with cat food above the second baby blue tit.

‘I think that one’s had enough,’ Jack observes as the chick sits there with its beak firmly closed at last. He stands behind me, looking over my shoulder into the incubator, so close that I can feel the warmth radiating from his body and his breath hot on the back of my neck. A tingle of irrational, unwanted and unexpected excitement rushes down my spine, spreading across my lower back. I dismiss it. It’s nothing.

‘In half an hour, I’ll have to start all over again,’ I say. ‘I called my aunt to see if she could rally some helpers, but she hasn’t come back to me. She said you’d been in touch with her.’

‘It was the other way round. She was checking up on me,’ Jack says, smiling. ‘I’ll ask Libby if she’ll come and help you out later.’

‘How is she?’ Libby is Jack’s sister who must be twenty-four or twenty-five now. She’s lived with epilepsy for the past fifteen years, and as a consequence her family are very protective of her and she’s still living with their parents.

‘She’s well at the moment,’ Jack says. ‘She hasn’t had a fit for a couple of years now, but she still isn’t allowed to drive because of her medication. She has a part-time job – you might have seen behind the till in the Co-op.’

‘I have. I haven’t really talked to her much though, only to say hi.’

‘She gets bored sometimes. She missed so much school and she struggled through her college course. She isn’t an animal person, as such. She likes them, but hasn’t much experience apart from looking after the family pets. I think she’d enjoy helping out here though.’

‘Come on, little one.’ I pick up one of the baby blue tits to clean out the toilet tissue nest. The chick is so delicate that I’m afraid that I’ll snap its legs or crush its chest. The slightest movement of air ruffles the blue and pale yellow down on its body. ‘Let’s make you comfortable.’

‘How are they doing?’ Jack asks.

‘I thought one was dying when I admitted them, but it’s still here, alive and flapping.’ I place the chick back into the nest alongside its sibling. ‘There you go. You have a good snooze and I’ll be back in half an hour. Keep eating like that and you’ll grow big and strong.’

‘You make a good mum – I mean, as in mummy bird,’ Jack says awkwardly. ‘Which flying school are you planning to send them to?’ he continues, teasing.

‘Jack!’

‘It’s good. It shows you care.’ Jack hesitates. ‘You know you’ve changed, Tess. You’re quieter somehow, less happy …’

‘It’s hardly surprising, is it? Not so long ago, I was about to be married to a lovely guy’ – okay, so there’s a hint of the rose-coloured spectacles going on – ‘when my whole life fell apart.’

‘It isn’t all that bad, surely?’

‘I gave up a good job as head nurse at a practice in Exeter, thinking I’d soon be having babies. I did some
maternity
cover for four months before the wedding – Nathan didn’t like it. He said he’d prefer it if I supervised decorating our house, but I knew I’d miss work if I gave it up altogether.’

‘He must be doing pretty well for himself,’ Jack says enviously.

‘You haven’t heard, have you? It was all a front. There is no money. Nathan set up his own business, but it failed. He’s declared himself bankrupt so he gets off virtually scot-free.’

‘Really?’ Jack’s brow furrows. ‘The bastard!’

‘I’m left paying off my credit card bill for the reception and honeymoon which I didn’t get to go on and Nathan did, and when the house is sold – it’s on the market now – I’ll still have a few thousand that I owe as my share of the joint mortgage. Thanks to Nathan, I’m drowning in debt.’ I pause, wondering why I am telling Jack this when it has nothing to do with him.

‘I’m sorry, Tess. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but I’m here if you need a shoulder to cry on.’

‘As a colleague,’ I say quickly.

‘Of course,’ he says, in a slightly mocking tone of voice, and I kick myself inwardly for being so prissy.

‘I’m lucky to have this job,’ I say, changing the subject, ‘although I have no idea how long I’ll be staying here.’

‘What do you mean? I thought you’d signed a year’s contract.’

‘I haven’t seen any paperwork yet, and anyway, with the committee and my aunt at each other’s throats, I imagine my contract could be cut short at any moment.’ It all comes spilling out.

‘Is there any way I can help?’ Jack says.

‘Pick me the winning lottery numbers, perhaps. I can’t think of anything else.’ I lean back with a sigh. If I close my eyes, maybe everything will go away. Including Jack. I open one eye. Maybe not Jack. It’s good to have company, and he is good company, or do I just feel that way because he’s the only company I have at the moment, the single person in my life who doesn’t go on about the wedding and what a shame it was?

The Fray’s ‘How to Save a Life’ is playing on the radio that I left on for the baby birds.

‘I take it the dog stopped barking,’ Jack says. ‘You see, I was right when I told you to leave him alone.’

Should I enlighten him? ‘Oh yes,’ I reply. ‘He was quiet all night.’

‘Good. Look, I’ll go and get Libby now,’ he says.

‘It’ll be good to see her again,’ I say, glad to have some space. It’s rather warm in here, and it has nothing to do with having my hands inside the incubator.

Chapter Six

Early Birds

IT’S THE MIDDLE
of May and I’m still here. The baby birds are more voracious than ever, getting through mealworms by the kilo, and DJ has finished the stables at last, although I’m still tripping over the cupboard doors and pots of paint. The apple blossom is on the trees and I’ve seen a little owl, nuthatches and a green woodpecker in the grounds of the Sanctuary. After a couple of weeks, I’m beginning to feel more at home and more convinced that I know what I’m doing.

Yesterday, Jack took the first feral cats – there are three of them – to succumb to the temptation of tinned pilchards in tomato sauce to Otter House vets for neutering, and today, Libby, who has been volunteering daily for the past week, is helping me out with the routine chores.

We’re in reception, taking a break, although I’m still working, investigating ways to raise funds for the Sanctuary with a fun day and a ball, having discussed various possibilities with Diane and Wendy when they dropped by for a couple of hours at the beginning of
the
week, ostensibly to help, although I suspect it had more to do with keeping an eye on the place as it appears there is still tension between them and my aunt.

I have dismissed Diane’s desire for a jumble sale as too much work for too little return. Although she argued that the WI used to make lots of money from their jumbles, Wendy reminded her of the near riots that happened at the last one, at which someone broke their arm, tripping in the crush at the doors of the church hall, and two people were tackled for stealing jumble. A fun day and a ball sound far more entertaining – and much safer.

I glance away from the laptop, another second-hand donation to the Sanctuary, towards Libby, who sits very still on one of the office chairs that were given to us by a friend of Wendy’s. You can tell that Libby is Jack’s sister by the striking family resemblance in the light blonde hair, which she wears in a boyish crop, the brown eyes and the expressive mouth. Dressed in a pink T-shirt and fraying jeans with a white plastic apron over the top, she is stroking a well-endowed custard-coloured rat that sits on her shoulder with his long, naked tail draped behind her neck. He was found abandoned under the footbridge over the river a couple of days ago.

‘To think he would have starved if those people hadn’t noticed him,’ she says. ‘They could have at least undone the cage door, so he could get out and search for food. He’s so cute.’

I have to say I don’t warm to him as I do to the dogs and cats. There’s something off-putting about the twitching whiskers and red eyes. I wonder if I would like rats more if they had hair on their tails. He nuzzles
at
Libby’s hair. Someone must have loved him once, just not enough.

‘Why do people take on rats if they’re going to give them up?’ I muse aloud. ‘It isn’t as if they live for ever. You would have thought they could stay the course.’

‘Talking of courses, I think films like
Ratatouille
have a lot to answer for,’ Libby says. ‘If I was a little kid, I’d feel let down if I took on a real rat and discovered it was nothing like Remy and couldn’t cook soup,’ she adds with a giggle. ‘I’m going to speak to our neighbour, if that’s all right with you, Tessa. Ally has three sons and a dog. I do some babysitting for her now and then, and I know the boys would love to have another pet. What shall we call him though? He needs a name.’

‘How about Nathan?’ I blurt out.

Libby raises one eyebrow. ‘Isn’t he your ex?’ When I nod, she goes on, ‘Isn’t that a little unfair?’

‘Nathan is a rat,’ I say.

‘I mean that it’s unfair on the rat,’ she chuckles, her face dimpling, ‘but I think the name suits him.’ She detaches the newly christened rat from her hair and lowers him back into his cage. ‘He can stay indoors here for now, can’t he?’

‘I guess so,’ I say with a sigh. Soon, there will be more animals living with me in the bungalow than in the rest of the Sanctuary put together, because I’m still smuggling Buster in to be with me every night. There is a steady stream of new arrivals, more animals turning up than leaving. In fact, Jack is carrying a bright red cat-carrier with the next one across the car park right now.

‘Allow me to introduce you to Teddy,’ he says with a smile, as he places the carrier on the desk. ‘He’s a
tabby
and white domestic shorthair, about two years old, and he’s been living with his current owner for a couple of months. They saw him advertised online as needing a home and couldn’t resist, but unfortunately for everyone involved, Teddy proceeded to make their elderly cat’s life a misery, ambushing her on the litter tray and guarding the cat flap, so they decided he had to go, and here he is. He’s all yours, Tess.’

‘And mine, for now,’ Libby says. ‘I’ll take him.’

‘Thanks. I’ll print off a record card and join you in the cattery in a mo.’ I turn back to Jack. ‘Are you collecting the ferals from Otter House later, or am I?’

‘I’ll get them,’ he says, frowning, and I regret being sharp with him. It must have been an attempt to hide my reaction to his presence, because I’m still confused by him, by the difference between the man who strode up the aisle in the church, determined to wreck my wedding, and the man who is here now, rescuing stray and unwanted animals. ‘Do you need a hand with Teddy?’ Jack asks.

‘I think Libby and I can manage one small cat between us.’

‘Okay,’ Jack says quietly. ‘I’ll see you later.’

Once he’s gone, I join Libby in the cattery. Teddy is already in a run, hiding under a piece of veterinary bedding on his shelf with just his tail hanging down over the edge, the end twitching dangerously.

‘I’m sorry, Tessa,’ Libby says. ‘I should have left him in his carrier so you could look at him first. There’s something wrong with one of his paws – he went ballistic, hissing and spitting at me when I let him out.’

I pick Teddy up, along with his bed, and examine him, wishing I had not been so quick to dismiss Jack, because I could do with his help. Libby doesn’t have
the
confidence yet to hang on to a stroppy cat that’s growling and lashing out in every direction, but I can see enough to confirm that Teddy has an abscess – one paw is swollen to twice the size of the others. I call Otter House to book him an appointment, wondering about the story that Teddy’s owners have spun to Jack, and suspicious that this is more about them being unable to afford vet’s bills than Teddy’s alleged intimidation of their other cat.