Rachel felt awkward, as if he was a child showing her up in a supermarket. ‘Bonham,’ she said, ‘don’t be rude. I’m sorry, he’s a bit grumpy.’
‘Oh, he’s fine, he just needs to have a sniff,’ said the old lady, leaving her crooked fingers dangling, and sure enough Bonham began to edge forward, approaching her chair with tiny steps, until he was near enough for her to scratch behind the ears. ‘There. Good lad.’
Rachel felt a lump in her throat at the way the lady’s hunched shoulders seemed to relax at Bonham’s wagging tail. Stop it, she told herself. It’ll be a poobag belt next.
‘He never does that for me,’ she admitted.
‘It’s a knack,’ said the old lady happily. ‘Isn’t it, Bonham lad?’
‘Do you want to keep him?’ Rachel joked. ‘He’s going spare.’
The sadness in the sigh was audible. ‘Oh, I wish.’
‘You know, Megan,’ said the receptionist – Lauren, according to the badge on her chest, ‘you should start bringing your doggies in for our oldies to play with. They’d really cheer up the Evergreens, wouldn’t they, Ida?’
‘Ah!’ Megan reached into her bag and pulled out a poster. ‘Funny you should mention that. We’re on a dog mission as it happens.’
‘Hang on,’ said Lauren as a Ford Fiesta drew up next to the ramp. ‘Here’s your lift, Ida. Let’s just get Mrs Harris here into her car. Ida, you’re going to have to say goodbye to Bonham, sorry.’ With a neat movement, she rolled the old lady down to her waiting lift, and helped the carer unload her, keeping up a stream of reassuring chat. Rachel had to resist the temptation to pop the Jack Russell into the back seat with Ida – Bonham himself seemed perfectly happy about stowing away.
‘Lauren runs the surgery,’ Megan whispered under her breath. ‘She knows everything that’s going on round here. She’s the one who sells our cakes and does the book stall.’
‘Does she want a dog?’ Rachel whispered.
‘Lauren!’ A young man stretched his head out of the surgery doors, keeping his body inside in the warm. From the stethoscope round his neck, Rachel assumed he was a doctor, and from the dishevelled look of his brown curls and his anxious expression, she guessed there was a problem with something. ‘Lauren, can you come and sort out the computer?’
Lauren straightened up and rolled her eyes at Rachel and Megan. ‘You’d think doctors would be able to manage a simple computer, wouldn’t you? But no! Just getting Mrs Harris away!’ she called over the car.
‘That’s Dr Harper,’ Megan whispered. ‘You know I said you had to start fancying older men round here? Well, he’s the exception. I mean, he’s older for me, but not for you, I guess.’ She went pink. ‘Sorry, that came out ruder than I meant.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Rachel started to whisper, then shook herself. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said in a normal voice. ‘I prefer older men, anyway. Ted’s the one for me.’
‘Right now, how can I help you two lovely ladies?’ Lauren said, marching back towards them, ponytail swinging. ‘And you lovely puppies?’ she added, bending down to scratch some ears.
‘We’re on a rehoming drive,’ said Rachel. ‘Trying to find new owners for these dogs, and about five more just like them back at the kennels. Hello. I’m Rachel.’ She jiggled back the four leads around her wrist and offered her hand. ‘I’m Dot Mossop’s niece.’
‘Of course you are – I could tell that at once from your nose,’ said Lauren. She shook Rachel’s hand and smiled broadly. ‘You’re the spit of your auntie. I mean, we always said when she was younger she must have been a looker. Not in a traditional way, mind, but striking, you know. Sorry, that came out wrong, I didn’t mean . . .’
Rachel wondered if she’d spent too long surrounded by PRs, or whether everyone in Longhampton was just incredibly tactless.
‘Lauren!’ The doctor at the door was pleading now. ‘There are four people waiting at reception and I can’t get into the appointment booking screen!’ He dropped his voice. ‘And I don’t know who two of them are. I need your expertise.’
Lauren rolled her huge eyes. ‘Now, here’s a prime candidate for a new dog . . . Follow me, ladies. Dr Harper!’ She strode inside, her long legs covering the ground in seconds. ‘Weren’t you saying to me the other day that we ought to be encouraging people to do more exercise?’
‘Er, yes?’ Bill glanced between Megan and Lauren, and winked at Megan. ‘Hello, Megan. Nice to see you.’
Megan gave him a shy smile. Not, Rachel noticed, her usual hundred-watt Bondi beam. She looked away and busied herself keeping their small gaggle of dogs out of the way of the automatic doors.
‘Well, look.’ Lauren turned and pointed to Rachel. ‘Rachel here’s hoping to find some new homes for Dot’s rescue dogs and weren’t you saying just the other day that you were thinking of adopting one? To get you jogging again?’
‘I’m a very busy man, as you know, Lauren,’ Bill began but Lauren was having none of it.
‘Come on, your social life doesn’t take up that much time! You could bring it to work – you know Dr Carthy wouldn’t mind – and then walk it at lunch, and set a great example about getting out and about. In fact, we could run some kind of lunchtime club – I know I’d come out with you.’
‘Lauren . . .’ Bill’s handsome face took on an air of desperation, as if he’d tried and failed to stop Lauren in full flow before now.
‘Let me give you a poster to put up,’ said Rachel, seizing the moment and handing him her last poster. It had a photograph of Chester, an adorable springer spaniel with long brown ears and speckly legs.
‘ “Aw! I’m Chester’’,’ read Lauren, to the small audience now gathering around them in the foyer. ‘ “My owners moved to a flat that didn’t have room for me, and so they left me behind on the street, tied to their old skip. I don’t know where they’ve gone but I hope there will be someone else out there who wants some unconditional love. I’m happy to take you for walks, help you throw a ball and warm up your knee if you let me on the sofa at night. Please call Megan or “Rachel and they’ll tell you all about me.” ’
She looked up at Rachel in horror. ‘They tied him to their skip?’
‘Apparently.’
Lauren’s wide mouth gaped. ‘That’s appalling.’ She turned to the doctor, with renewed passion. ‘He’d be perfect for you, Dr Harper. I can just see you now, striding across the park, with your long scarf on, and your faithful dog Chester, bouncing along by your side.’ She paused, then continued, ‘It’s a great way of meeting people too, you know. You’re always reading about how people met the love of their life when their dogs had a scrap in the park. Not that you need any help in that department,’ she added, knowingly.
‘You’ll have to excuse Lauren,’ apologised Bill. ‘She watches a lot of Hugh Grant films.’
‘Why watch films when you can watch what goes on in here, is what I say!’ Lauren neatly snatched the poster off him. ‘I’ll put it up here, where everyone will see it. Next to the Walk for Life one.’ She marched over to the Community Notices, unpinned some old posters and put Chester right at the centre of the board, directing all the yellow arrows towards him.
‘Right. Great. Now can you please sort out the computer?’ pleaded Bill, running his hands through his hair.
‘Absolutely!’ Lauren swerved around the table of magazines, and the stray toddlers in the waiting area, then slid behind the reception desk. ‘Oh, you’ve gone into the wrong screen – you’ve re-ordered all the cleaning supplies.’
Bill opened his mouth to protest, but then raised his hands at Rachel. ‘What can I say? I won’t hear the end of it, but yes, I have been thinking about adopting a dog.’
‘Wonderful! So, shall we see you up at the kennels?’ asked Rachel, feeling more like her old professional, deal-closing self, and less like an inept amateur dog walker. ‘I mean, if you’re serious about getting a rescue? You can always come and have a chat. We don’t bite.’
‘None of our dogs
do,’ added Megan, in a squeakier version of her usual voice.
‘It’s his half day tomorrow,’ Lauren called out from behind the desk. ‘Sorry, Dr Harper, but you know what you’re like. You need someone to get you organised.’
He turned round to roll his eyes at her, and Lauren raised her hands like a pair of puppy paws and looked sad. ‘Poor baby Chester. He could be behind the desk with me,’ she said. ‘Guarding my biscuits. I need something to stop that Diane pinching them.’
There was a distant grunt of outrage from the dispensary.
‘I’ll give you a ring and arrange an appointment.’ He held out a hand to shake Rachel’s and she enjoyed the momentary sensation of his strong, dry clasp and direct eye contact. She recognised his handsomeness, but there was no tingle inside her, though. Just a note that no one wore nice shirts like Oliver’s round here. ‘Now, I’m sorry to dash off, but there are two as yet unidentified patients waiting for me.’
‘Bye!’ said Megan breathily.
Rachel nodded and smiled at him. ‘See you soon.’
The dogs were fidgeting in the foyer, bickering under their breath like bored children – apart from Gem, who was waiting in his usual position, long nose on his white paws. ‘Let’s get you lot home,’ she said. ‘Come on, Megan.’
‘I’ll make sure I point out your poster,’ added Lauren, giving them a sunny smile. Her fingers were clattering away efficiently on the keys as she spoke. ‘We’re very good at raising volunteers in this surgery. Captive audience.’
She winked, and as Rachel stepped out towards the automatic doors, the sun came out and made the golden daffodils glow in their grey flowerbeds.
7
Natalie was doing three things at once, something she’d got very good at since she’d been promoted to head of her team, and something she felt should stand her in good stead for motherhood.
She was simultaneously repairing her make-up in the space-age loos of GreenPea’s fifth floor conference suite, and rehearsing the observations she was going to make to Selina about the pitches she’d just heard for the new all-organic cookie campaign, while keeping one eye on her mobile phone which was propped in her handbag, in case the last advertising team called back with the projected market share figures she’d asked for.
Natalie knew taking her phone into the loos was a shocking habit but everyone in marketing did it. They were all too scared to miss a call right now. Rumours were going round the kitchen – via Andrea, the office manager, who had ears like radar and a desk near the boss – that head office was ‘restructuring’, and Natalie was smart enough to know what that meant: redundancies.
She swiped her lip-gloss and checked her teeth for smears. Her team was good, and had been mentioned in the last three meetings, but it still wasn’t safe, Natalie knew that. She handled most of the own-brand organic range GreenPea was developing, but in the last year, GreenPea had bought out a smaller company who came with a red-hot marketing director who’d worked with WholeFoods in the US. And from what Natalie had heard from Andrea, Jason didn’t intend to stay on the second floor for long.
Make-up done, Natalie turned to her fourth bit of multi-tasking. She took a quick look around the cubicles and, checking she was alone, slipped into the one furthest from the door and rummaged in her bag for an ovulation stick.
Trying to get pregnant robbed you of any Victorian modesty when it came to bodily functions. These days she spent more time pondering her various bodily fluids than any sane human being ought to. Natalie ripped off the plastic packaging and prepared to aim for the white test area, wondering at what point in the fertility obstacle course she’d lost the last bit of dignity.
She recapped the test, sat back and waited for the lines to appear in the tiny window. Natalie didn’t really need to do the ovulation test – she knew from her obsessive temperature taking when the egg was about to drop, as Johnny put it – but secretly she liked seeing the double lines forming. You always got two lines on an ovulation test, unlike the pregnancy ones. Natalie had never seen two magic lines appear on a pregnancy test.
Well, apart from once. One Sunday morning, the third month after she and Johnny started trying, she’d sneaked out of bed, weed on a stick even though it was far, far too early to know for sure, and while she brushed her teeth to fill in the two agonising minutes, to her astonishment, two pink lines had appeared. Natalie had felt the bathroom floor go light beneath her feet as the blood banged in her eardrums. They’d done it! They’d made a baby!
She’d flown downstairs to show Johnny, but he’d already left to get the Sunday papers. Natalie dialled his mobile with trembling fingers, bubbling with the words she’d practised saying so casually: hello, Daddy! Or maybe, Is that the Longhampton Father of the Year? She couldn’t decide.
The phone had rung in his pocket, and Natalie kept glancing at the test, unable to believe it – but while she watched, and the phone rang, the first line began to fade, fade, fading away until there was nothing there. It had gone! A chemical error, not a baby at all.
She hung up before Johnny could answer, and slumped down onto the kitchen floor, unable to raise her head for the crushing disappointment. Of course it was too soon to test. Of course these things happened. Of course it was early days. But still . . . Natalie didn’t tell Johnny, when he came whistling through the door, knowing he’d say everything she already knew, albeit with gentle kindness. She’d never had a positive test again.
This month it would be different, she told herself, staring at the two pink lines that confirmed that an egg was ready to go. This month it had to be their turn, even the statistics said it would be. The lines had to match in colour to prove she was fertile. Were they equal or was that left one slightly darker? She held it up to the light to check, then jumped as she heard the door open outside.
‘. . . call a meeting to discuss that, Kim. That’s a pretty tough directive to share with my teams cold.’
Oh God, thought Natalie, her heart sinking. It was Selina. She had one of those Bluetooth headsets so she could be a bossy bitch in any hands-free environment, including the lavatories.
‘Really? You’re sure?’ The taps ran and Natalie missed a bit. ‘Uh huh. Uh huh.’
Uh huh what? Natalie strained her ears.
‘Well, I don’t look forward to making that decision, Kim. I hope it would be my decision . . . Yes, I understand that head office is taking a hard line, we all are in light of what’s happening, what I think is . . .’
Her heart rate sped up, but just as Selina was about to reveal the key details of the call, her own phone began to ring, booming around the cubicle. Natalie scrabbled around in her bag to turn it off, but it had slid down to the bottom when she’d taken the test out and had apparently turned invisible.
Immediately Selina went silent.
Oh shit, Natalie panicked, feverishly unearthing it from a tangle of paper hankies. It was Johnny, and at that exact moment he hung up, and a strained silence descended over the loos.
‘Let’s talk later,’ said Selina pointedly. ‘Not a great moment.’
Realising she had no other choice, Natalie flushed the loo, and opened the door as nonchalantly as she could, not even looking in Selina’s direction.
It’s not my fault if my manager decides to conduct sensitive conversations in the ladies’ toilets, she argued, but it didn’t make her feel any less uncomfortable, or less curious as to why super-controlled Selina had sounded so, well, nervous. Natalie could see out of the corner of her eye though, as she washed her hands, that Selina was staring at her with an unfamiliar expression on her face, and she straightened up in surprise.
She dried her hands and wondered what the etiquette of awkward bathroom encounters was. Luckily, Selina solved it for her.
‘You didn’t hear any of that,’ she snapped.
‘Hear what?’ replied Natalie, deadpan.
As soon as she was back in the comparative safety of her office, she called Johnny.
From the noi
se behind him, she guessed he was supervising the lunchbreak.
‘Hey, gorgeous!’ he said. ‘Want to come and see a man about a dog tonight?’
‘What?’ Natalie tapped her pen against her chin. Cautious probing of Andrea had revealed that no one else knew what was going on at head office, which only increased her concerns. But listening to Johnny made her feel better about most things. He had that reassuring teacher manner about him, that everything could be worked out with some effort and application.
‘A man about a dog. Bill’s getting a dog from that rescue place on the Hartley hill, and he wants us to come for a second opinion.’
‘But you’re the one who’s had a dog, not me.’ Natalie kicked off her shoes under the desk and wriggled her toes. One of the benefits of a corner office, with window. ‘I’ve only ever had a rabbit, and that was twenty years ago.’
‘I know, but he values your female intuition. I’m just there to tell him what kind of dog to get, you’re the one who’s supposed to guide him towards what suits him. You know what Bill’s like.’
‘Yes. I know what Bill’s like,’ said Natalie. ‘He likes a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth, if there’s someone else around.’
‘What time can you get away? By five?’
Natalie looked at her email inbox, already stacked up again from the thirty minutes she’d taken off to eat her lunch. And she had appointments all afternoon and a report to start compiling about whether ‘getting into the veg box market’ was working out for GreenPea’s shortbread range.
As if he could read her mind, Johnny added, ‘Come on, Nat, you worked late all last week. Can’t Selina give you a gold star?’
‘That’s it, though.’ Natalie dropped her voice. ‘I think Selina’s on the lookout for people who don’t have gold stars. It’s not a good time for me to be leaving early.’
‘But Nat, I thought we could see this dog, have some dinner and then, you know, still have time for us this evening?’