The Difference a Day Makes

  I clear the plates away, running them under the tap to clean them as best as I can without the aid of Fairy Liquid or a dishcloth. I can hear Guy telling the children of rolling fields and magical animals, and it makes me smile to myself. My heart contracts when I think that one day he’ll make a lovely dad.

  When I’ve stacked the plates so that they’ll drain, I turn round to see that both of the children are flat out. Guy is still telling his story, even though his audience are long gone to the Land of Nod.

  ‘Job done,’ I whisper to him.

  He glances at the children and seems surprised to see that they’re both soundly asleep.

  ‘You realise that I’ll now have to make up the second instalment.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re more than up to the job,’ he says as he stands and stretches.

  ‘How’s the patient?’

  Guy checks on the lamb. ‘Also sleeping like a baby.’

  ‘Good.’ Imagine the tears now if anything happened to Stuart Little. I hope he’ll be up and reunited with his mother by the morning, then I can leave without feeling too hideously guilty. ‘More wine?’

  ‘Hmm. Great.’ Guy takes the two sleeping bags and sets them out side by side, folding them so that we can sit near the Aga and keep an eye on our charge. I refill his glass and hand it to him. He takes his place on the sleeping bag and I sit down next to him.

  ‘I used to be the doyen of sophisticated parties,’ I tell him. ‘Now look at me.’

  ‘You’ll be back to that soon enough.’

  I will, I guess, and I wonder idly whether it will hold the same appeal for me now. Have I changed so much since I’ve been here? I certainly don’t think I would have given house room to a sickly lamb in my former life.

  ‘I’m glad you stayed,’ Guy says. ‘Somehow it felt like you were rushing away. It’s been nice to spend this time together before you go.’

  I study him in the soft light. ‘You are such a nice man,’ I say. ‘Did I ever tell you that, Guy Burton?’

  ‘And you’re a very lovely woman.’

  ‘I feel I’ve really messed this up.’

  ‘I know this sort of conversation scares you, but do you think there might have been something between us if you were staying?’

  I nod. ‘In the long term. We might have become close over the last few months, but you know that I can’t possibly consider a relationship so soon. It wouldn’t be fair.’

  ‘No.’ He paused, then said: ‘I don’t want to lose touch with you or the children though. When you all come up for the weekend, you’re more than welcome to stay with me. There’s plenty of space in my house. You know I’d love that.’

  ‘I’m going to miss you,’ I tell him honestly. ‘You’ve been very good to us.’

  ‘I’ll miss you too. And the children.’ He glances sadly at Tom and Jessica. It would be impossible to replace their father, I know that, but Guy has been there quietly and steadfastly for them throughout our time at Helmshill Grange and that means more to me than you could know. ‘I know that you’re having second thoughts about all this. Is it really too late for you to pull out?’

  ‘I’ve already signed the contract on the house,’ I tell him. ‘The Gerner-Bernards are due to go to their solicitor to do the same as soon as possible. I’m not sure what the delay is. I’d hate to let them down now. They seem to be mad keen to move into the house.’ Though I wonder how much of it will be left of its heart once they’ve stopped knocking it about and have got rid of all the animals. ‘Plus I’ve taken out a six-month lease on the flat. I can’t back out of that either without it costing me a packet.’ I sigh. ‘And, at the end of the day, I can’t afford to stay here. There’s no work up here for me and I need the money. There’s no way round that. I have a great job in Town to go back to. That’s the reality of our situation.’

  ‘There’s really no other option?’

  I shake my head. ‘And I’m looking forward to getting back to work, producing programmes.’ I’ve gone over the brief with Gavin Morrison and already I’m putting ideas together in my head. ‘It’s what I do best. It will stretch me again. Stop my brain cells from dying.’ Or dwelling too much on my loss. Then my business brain kicks in. ‘Oh, can I ask one last favour?’

  My friend nods. ‘The Gerner-Bernards are coming up to take a final look around and do some measurements later in the week. I’ve given the estate agent a key, but he’s been completely useless so far. Can I leave a spare with you and tell them that you’ll be here to let them in?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Thanks. That’s another weight off my mind.’

  Unexpectedly, Guy reaches up and his fingers gently brush my cheek. ‘You look tired.’

  ‘It’s been a long day.’ My voice sounds tremulous.

  Guy’s lips find mine and he kisses me softly. This is the first time I’ve kissed another man since Will died and, despite my qualms, I return the kiss hesitantly. It feels so strange to have the taste of unfamiliar lips on mine. I’m quivering inside.

  ‘Lie down next to me,’ he says when we part.

  And, while I stand, he flicks out the sleeping bags. I slip into mine fully clothed and he does the same. Then, against my better judgement, we inch together until my back is snuggled up to him. I haven’t played spoons with anyone else other than my husband, but this feels nice and cosy. Guy’s body, even through the thick down, is warm against mine and I can feel his heart beating or maybe it’s my own. His arm slides round my waist, pulling me close to him. I didn’t realise how much I’ve missed a man’s touch. At this moment, I think that I would be quite happy to spend the rest of my life here on the floor in this bare kitchen in Guy’s strong arms. But it’s not to be and that thought is going to keep me awake all night.

  Chapter Ninety-One

  Waking at dawn, the view that greets me is a graphic reminder that Hamish is a boy dog. ‘For goodness sake, you unseemly mutt, get your bits and pieces out of my face.’ I push him away, but not before he’s run his lollopy tongue over my face.

  As I wipe the slobber off, Hamish plods off only to plop himself down on top of both of the children with a doggy huff. Neither of them stir.

  I push myself up and peer through the window. All is still dark outside. My back hurts from sleeping on the hard stone floor and I try to massage it with both hands. My head aches and my bum is numb; one of my legs is completely dead. Guy is still fast asleep on his back, arm lifted above his head. What on earth was I thinking about, cosying up to him like that? Blame it on the wine, the warm fire and a lamb roasting in the oven, a need inside me that can’t ever be filled.

  Wriggling myself out of the sleeping bag, I know already that I’m going to feel like death warmed up on the drive down to London today. I try to rub some life into my leg. It was a really, really bad idea to delay our departure even for a sickly lamb. We should have gone yesterday, made a clean break while we could. Now look how complicated things are. I’m cross with myself – just as well as I have no one else to be cross with.

  ‘Hi.’ I turn to see Guy looking up at me. His hand touches my arm. A wave of guilt washes over me. Did I really spend the night watching this man sleep next to me? ‘Sleep well?’ he asks.

  ‘No,’ I say, more sharply than I’d intended. I hardly slept a wink actually. All night, when I wasn’t looking at Guy, I tossed and turned, wondering what I was doing.

  ‘Do you need to get up right away?’ He reaches out for me.

  ‘I’ve got so much to do,’ I mumble, moving away. ‘We ought to get on the road as soon as possible.’

  My guest sits up briskly and rubs his hands through his hair while he stares at me. ‘On the road?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There’s surprise in his voice when he says, ‘You’re not still planning to go to London?’

  ‘Of course I am. Why?’

  Guy looks hurt. ‘I thought after last night . . .’

  ‘What?’

  His eyes fix on mine. ‘After l
ast night, I thought – I hoped – that you’d stay.’

  ‘Stay? Whatever gave you that impression? We had a cuddle,’ I say. ‘And a kiss.’ I push away the image of Guy’s mouth on mine. ‘Which was wrong of us. Wrong of me. I’m still a married woman, Guy.’

  ‘Amy? Why are you being like this? Did you get out of the wrong side of the sleeping bag?’

  ‘I can’t stay here,’ I say. ‘You know that. Even if I wanted to, what difference would it make?’

  ‘What happened during the night to turn all this on its head?’ He looks puzzled. How is he to know that I spent the night berating myself for even considering that I might be happy with another man. It will be so much easier for both of us if I can keep Guy at arms’ length – which is what I should have done all along, of course.

  ‘What would William think of me?’ I say. ‘I’m the mother of his children, for heaven’s sake. He wouldn’t want me cavorting with someone else.’

  Guy risks a smile at that. ‘Whatever we did, Amy, I assure you that it couldn’t be classed as “cavorting”.’

  I don’t deserve happiness, I think. Life isn’t that kind. It’s cruel and it steals love away, it doesn’t hand it to you on a plate. It’s easier to stay rooted in this miserable morning greyness than consider what might happen if I move on. I’m not ready to do that yet. Perhaps I thought that I was, but I’m not.

  ‘I thought that you’d grown to love Helmshill Grange?’

  ‘Look at it.’ I wave my arm round the kitchen which has plenty of shabby, but no chic. ‘It needs a fortune spending on it. A fortune I don’t have. I’m just doing what has to be done.’

  He looks stunned. ‘What on earth do you want from life, woman? No one else will tell you this, but I think that you’re making one big mistake.’

  Hands on hips now. ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘The kids are happy here. You’re happy here.’

  ‘I’ll decide where I’m happy, and the kids. You’ve been great with them, Guy. Really great. But you’re not their dad, and you never will be.’

  At that he recoils. ‘Well, that lets me know where I stand.’

  ‘I’m sorry that I’ve misled you into thinking that it could be any other way, but I think it’s best if we have a clean break. My emotions are all over the place and this just seems like one complication too far.’

  Guy eases himself out of the sleeping bag and stands up. ‘I think that I’ve outstayed my welcome.’

  I daren’t stop him. I cannot stop him now.

  He glances at the Aga. ‘The lamb looks as if he’s okay,’ he says. ‘I’ll take him back to Delila before I go.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m sure that Alan will keep you up-to-date on their progress. If you’re interested.’

  I stand there frozen to the spot, just about holding it all together.

  Guy moves towards me, uncertain now. ‘Amy . . .’ He looks like he’s about to launch into another sensible speech about how I should run my life. Then he lets his arms fall by his side, a look of resignation on his face. ‘I hope that life back in London is all you want it to be.’

  ‘I’m sure it will be.’

  He casts a look at Tom and Jessica still asleep on the floor. ‘Give the children my love. Tell them . . .’ His voice fails. ‘Tell them that I’ll miss them.’

  And with that he scoops Stuart Little into his arms and heads to the door.

  ‘They’ll miss you too,’ I say, but Guy has already gone.

  Chapter Ninety-Two

  ‘You look like something the cat spat out,’ Cheryl told him.

  ‘Thank you, oh kind and wise receptionist.’

  ‘You look like you slept in those clothes too.’

  ‘I did,’ Guy said, then he went through to the examination room and quickly closed the door behind him before Cheryl had a chance to find out why.

  If he was lucky, he told himself, he might be able to string this out until lunchtime before someone came in and told her that he hadn’t been home last night and that he’d spent the night at Helmshill Grange. Actually, lunchtime might be stretching it. A story as juicy as that would be round Poppy’s Tea Room by, say, Guy glanced at his watch, eleven o’clock at the latest. Until then it was his secret. Let the good people of Scarsby and district think what they would. No one really knew what had gone on between him and Amy. To be honest, he was a bit unsure himself. Last night he’d been convinced that they had a future together. This morning he was a man thwarted once again in love, watching the only woman he cared for drive away from him, and, frankly, he hadn’t a clue what he’d done to change that.

  The consulting-room door was flung open. ‘Stick insect,’ Cheryl said as she ushered in an impossibly thin and concerned-looking family clutching a mesh enclosure, and slammed the door behind them.

  Guy rubbed his hands together and checked his appointment schedule. La famille Felix now stood before him, according to his notes. ‘Now Mrs and Mrs Felix – what can I do for you?’

  Mrs Felix pushed one of her two waiflike children forward. Another family that looked like their pet.

  ‘Twiggy’s not well,’ the little girl said, an unhappy tremble in her young voice.

  Guy took the mesh cage from her and set it carefully on his table. He studied the forest of foliage inside the structure but, for the life of him, couldn’t see a stick insect in there. But then the stick insect or carausius morosus – to give the insect its correct title – was the master of disguise. Guy peered intently at the branches. Any one of them could have been Twiggy. ‘Can you just point Twiggy out to me, please?’ Guy said.

  The girl and her family regarded him with disgust. As one, they pointed at the mesh. ‘There!’

  ‘Of course.’ Still looked like nothing but a bunch of twigs to Guy. ‘And what do you think is wrong with the little fellow?’

  Again the scornful looks. ‘Twiggy’s a girl.’

  ‘Ah, yes. I can tell that now.’ Clearly, stick insects were not his specialist subject. Thankfully, he didn’t come across them often enough for it to be a problem. In this kind of rural practice it was more pertinent to know your way round the working end of a cow.

  ‘She’s listless,’ the mother supplied. ‘And off her food.’

  A bit like the rest of the family perhaps, Guy thought. He removed the lid of Twiggy’s home and gently eased out the main branch. Sure enough, after a great deal of scrutiny, there between the leaves he managed to pick out the beautifully camouflaged and elusive insect.

  He carefully lifted it out and balanced it on his hand. It was hard to tell, but it looked perfectly healthy to him. How exactly did you determine whether a twig with legs was unwell?

  ‘You haven’t changed her diet recently?’

  Much shaking of heads.

  ‘These are very sensitive creatures,’ he intoned. ‘As I’m sure you know.’

  Much nodding of heads.

  Guy wracked his brain to think back to what he knew about stick insects when all he really wanted to do was think about the night he’d spent with Amy and the joy of holding her in his arms, even though it had been a very chaste encounter. And then try to work out what had gone so very wrong.

  The vet scratched his head and blew out a perplexed breath.

  ‘Do you think it needs an MRI scan?’ the family quaked as one.

  ‘No, no,’ Guy said. ‘That would cost an absolute fortune.’

  ‘Nothing is too much for our Twiggy,’ the father declared solemnly.

  This was probably the type of guy who would rush into the blaze if their house was burning down to save Twiggy. Guy sighed wistfully. If only someone cared about him so much. Now that it seemed he might have stumbled across such a person, she was currently heading away from him down the M1 motorway.

  Last night he’d thought that perhaps he and Amy could have tried to have a long-distance relationship, but was that really ever going to be viable? Didn’t distance put an unsurmountable strain on even the best of partne
rships? How could he begin to woo her (to use an outdated term), with more than two hundred miles between them when he couldn’t even manage it in the same village?

  Guy looked down at Twiggy perched on his hand. Perhaps he should give all this up and go in hot pursuit of his love. Say goodbye to the moors and set up a highfalutin practice in a well-heeled area of London – preferably close to Amy and the children – where he could spend his days in a cosy consulting room examining the stick insects of the rich and famous, fixing the broken legs of £4 hamsters and charging £400 for the privilege. He could treat chihuahuas wearing cerise pink coats, and Bengal cats with diamond collars, and not spend half his life with his arm up a disgruntled cow’s bottom. A dedicated emergency vet service would deal with all of his out-of-hours calls while he went home at five o’clock, rediscovered the joys of cooking, started watching all of the soaps and spent an entire night in his own bed and not in a draughty barn with an arsey farmer who was reluctant to pay his bill. There was a certain appeal in that even though it wasn’t what he’d joined the world of veterinary practice to set out to do. Would it be worth considering, so that he could be near to Amy? Guy stared out of the window to catch a glimpse of the rolling moors that surrounded Scarsby. Trouble was, it was just so damn beautiful here. Leaving would be nigh on impossible. Could he simply walk away after it had taken so long to build up his reputation in these parts? Would his assistant want to buy out the business? He was young, still inexperienced in many areas. Would it be too much for him to handle? Could Stephen even get the money to enable him to take over? Would Amy even want him to do that? After what she’d said this morning, it seemed unlikely.

  ‘What shall we do, Doctor?’

  The question from Mrs Felix pulled his mind back to his meagre stick insect knowledge. ‘I think Twiggy may be dehydrated,’ he said, after feigning deep thought. ‘The symptoms are classic. Take her home and spray her enclosure regularly. Keep an eye on her and come back in a few days if there’s no improvement.’ Though quite what he’d do if they did reappear, he wasn’t exactly sure.