•••
After the party, Warren goes back to Cornwall. But I’m staying a few more nights. The next day, I drive for about an hour into the country, where I’ve arranged to meet someone.
•••
I spot her white-blond hair from across the pub. She’s bagged the best spot in the place, close to the open fire.
She smiles when I approach, and I bend down to hug her. It feels easy and right, not awkward as I’d worried it might.
“Sorry. Am I late?”
Her eyes are Arctic blue, but her laugh is full and warm. She looks casual in a T-shirt with a slogan I wouldn’t be able to read without staring, a loose toffee-colored cardigan. “Not at all. I was early.”
Rose contacted me via the surgery a few months ago, asked if I remembered her. I did, of course. Suggested meeting up when I was next in her neck of the woods.
“Cheers.” We chink glasses, her white wine against my lime and soda.
“So how did the retreat work out in the end?” I ask. The morning after we met, I left before it got light. I’d started thinking about Callie again, and I wanted to go home.
“Well, I’ve carried on with the yoga. And I’m down to a coffee a day.”
“That’s pretty impressive. Fruit and veg?”
She runs one hand through her hair. The air turns briefly sweet with her perfume. “Still pitiful. How about you?”
“Oh, my problems were more...” I trail off. I can see myself opening up to Rose in a way I don’t feel fully ready for. What do I say?
“In your head?”
I nod, sip my drink.
A pause. Her eyes are captivating. “Well, I guess we were all there with issues of one kind or another.”
“True.”
“Or, in the words of my ex-husband, when I got home:You go somewhere like that to be fixed, not for a holiday.”
I smile. “Ouch.”
She winces, then laughs. “That was... my clumsy way of saying I’m divorced.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t be.” She sips her wine. “Funnily enough, it was going on the retreat that made me see the light.”
I raise an eyebrow. “The power of affirmations?”
“Yes! Cheers to that.”
We chink glasses again.
“And you’re a vet,” I say.
“Sure am. Did you like my ruse?”
In her e-mail to the surgery, she pretended we’d met at some conference I’d never heard of. A quick search of Google confirmed she’d invented it, of course. But it also revealed that Rose Jackson was a vet.
We chat for a while about our jobs. My time out and route back in, her practice and mine. The pros and cons of outsourcing out-of-hours work(her surgery does, mine doesn’t). Compassion fatigue. Treating wild animals. Being on call at Christmas. I like her straightforwardness, her quick sense of humor. The way she touches my forearm occasionally when I’ve made her laugh. The warmth of her smile.
