‘I don’t. It’s fine—’
‘How are things with Lauren?’ she asks.
What, the woman I’ve ‘jumped in headfirst with’?
‘Things are great,’ I say tightly.
‘So you’re having a nice time, the two of you?’ she asks, clearly fishing for details.
‘I am. Yeah.’
‘Good for you.’ She chuckles indulgently. ‘There we all were, worried about you having a completely crappy time in Corsica all on your own …’
‘Well, I was okay,’ I say, blandly, keen to leave now.
‘Seems like it,’ Luc offers with a barking laugh.
Now Rhona turns serious. ‘Look, James, I know Miles can be a pain in the arse. But Esther loves him.’ As if it’s as simple as that. But then, I suppose it is – because our daughter is a grown woman now. We can’t choose who she loves. As it seems we can no longer influence her in any way, perhaps Rhona actually handles things better than I do. She’s realistic, I suppose. And maybe she’s right and Idoworry about Esther too much. I mean, if Esther chooses to have a baby with Miles, then I guess I’ll have to accept that too.
This is why my working life is so much easier and less heartbreaking than my family life. Because no matter how stressful or absolutely tragic a working day can be – having to put an animal to sleep, and consoling the devastated owner – at least with veterinary work, you have some kind of control over how things turn out. Not always, admittedly. But you do your best. You make a diagnosis, and you know from your training what treatments are possible and advisable. You weigh up any risks, and estimate the costs, recovery time and long-termeffect on the animal, and you discuss all of this with the owner.
Effective communication is a big part of what we do. (Believe it or not, at work I am known as a good communicator.) At work I generally know the best course of action to take. And if I’m unable to make things better or save an animal, then at least I know I’ve tried every option, and that nothing else could be done.
With young adult offspring there’s no taking the best course of action. It’s more that you try to persuade and cajole them; you might even nag or beg them, and end up making a show of yourself at your girlfriend’s special lunch. But ultimately, your powers are limited and mostly you have to just step away and watch helplessly from the sidelines. And what’s all this about Esther being concerned about me and Lauren? It can’t really be that – about me jumping in too fast. It must be bothering her somehow, that I’m seeing someone. I can’t for the life of me figure out why.
Rhona reaches for her Bloody Mary. ‘Sure you don’t want to stay for a proper drink?’
‘I’m okay, honestly,’ I say.
‘Well, great to see you, man.’ Luc slaps a shovel-sized hand against my back. ‘You look a bit tired, though. You’ve been working too hard, not making enough time for this new girlfriend of yours …’ He waggles a brow and they both laugh.
‘You should take some time off,’ Rhona advises. ‘Do some fun stuff …’ She turns to Luc. ‘Weren’t you complaining that no one will ever go foraging with you?’
‘Yeah, we could go together, James,’ Luc enthuses. ‘There are so many incredible places around here.’
‘Sounds great,’ I reply, making my escape before I accidentally admit that I’d rather eat my own hair.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
LAUREN
I’m aware that things have happened pretty fast with James and me. Although we don’t see each other every day – it’s still mainly weekends – I went on holiday as a single woman and came home madly in love.
But actually, with Frank, it was faster. Of course we had happy times together. Full of life and mad ideas, he was my first love. We met at a party thrown by the magazine I was working on and I was bowled over when he came over to chat. From that night we were fully ensconced in each other’s lives. I moved in with him after just a few months and we grew together, side by side, through our mid-to-late twenties. By the time we’d hit our thirties we very much wanted a baby. It took a while, but when I’d just turned thirty-three our beautiful Charlie was born.
However, pretty much the whole time there was also an awful lot of drama. Not just the major stuff, like when we took Charlie to a festival and Frank went off on his own, ‘just for a wander’. This ‘wander’ lasted for twenty-four hours and had me frantically checking the medical tents and reporting him missing to the police. He’d bowledup finally, obviously wrecked and wearing a mohair jumper I’d never seen before that looked like it had been run over by a tractor. He then crawled into our tent and slept for an entire day. For Charlie’s sake, I had to pretend that everything was okay.
For Charlie’s sake.I could have applied that phrase to so much that went on during those years. It was as if our marriage was a shabby house requiring superficial fixes – that special paint that miraculously covers damp patches – to get it ready for viewing. There was the time, at Kim’s fortieth, when he’d arrived late for her party, already smashed, and insisted on pounding the venue’s piano very badly until, having taken a poorly aimed swing at Lorenzo, he was packed off home. They were among the big ones but there were numerous mini-dramas too; forgotten photography equipment left in various locations, emergency dashes to collect cameras, tripods and lights from all over London and beyond.
For those first few weeks with James I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was so different about being with him. How absolutely unlike my marriage it felt, and how light it made me feel – rather than weighed down with worry. Of course the difference is, there’s no pretending or glossing over things. I’m not performing a perpetual cover-up job. The fact that Esther and her boyfriend caused a bit of a scene at my house is all forgotten now and, as I’ve told James several times, that wasn’t his fault.
He is unfailingly thoughtful and kind, and when he says he’s going to do something, he simply does it. James is reliable. It’s a much underrated trait. I’ve had all the fireworks and drama and it’s immensely comforting to be with someone who arrives at my place when he said he would on a Friday night; who just does things, without fuss, like booking restaurant tables, cinema tickets and saving my parents’ dog’s life.James is a genuinely lovely man who works hard and clearly loves his daughter and tries to do the right thing.
Secretly, I might have fantasised about Charlie and Esther hanging out together on subsequent visits, becoming friends and drifting away to watch a movie together. But this isn’t about them. It’s about me and James, and we are fine; in fact,betterthan fine as our lives intertwine. We meet each other’s friends and he takes me into the surgery to meet everyone there. Although I don’t want to get in anyone’s way, Mikhail, one of the veterinary nurses, lets me ‘help’ (I’m not sure I’m much help really) by holding a chinchilla as he bandages its paw.
Over the past few months we’ve crossed paths with pretty much all of my friends in the village. I know they’ve all been curious to meet James. There have been ripples of excitement about ‘Lauren’s new man’; the handsome vet I met on the first day of his holiday. ‘Did the Corsican passport control guys tip you off that he’d arrived?’ a neighbour teased.
One crisp November evening he meets a bunch of my friends from our magazine days. We drink too much in a Stoke Newington pub and everyone makes a huge fuss of him, firing questions about his work as a vet, which he doesn’t seem to mind.
