Maybe we sang the same song.
* * *
I hearda noise from the balcony next to me, a sigh I recognised, would know anywhere. Standing up, I debated the wisdom in hanging my head over there, seeing what she was doing, saying hi.
What was the worst she could do?
I was too far away for her to push me over the balcony.
“How’s your room?” I made sure she could see me, not wanting her to think my voice was coming from some stalker-speaker or something.
“What?”
I looked over. She was wrapped in a white towel, damp hair scruffy and uncombed. Doe-eyes looked over at me.
“Your room. How is it?”
“Probably the same as yours.”
I grinned. “Probably true, but what I meant was, do you like it? Are you comfortable? It was really a question about your welfare and if you’re okay.”
“Fuck off, Callum.”
She picked up a bottle of water and glugged from it.
“Wren…”
“Leave it. I need some time on my own. The next few weeks are going to be pretty intense. Have you seen our schedule?”
“Yes. And the next few weeks will be fine. You’re helping out with animals that potentially wouldn’t get the best treatment unless we were there. Or at least be seen as quickly.”
The frown fell from her face. I remembered the vet student and the first time we carried out a procedure together.
“True.”
“How did you get roped into this?” I was curious. I was, as Seph so graciously put it, a social media whore, and regularly put videos and photos on Instagram and YouTube of my work or general animal shit, so when the production team had been looking for someone, I’d been pretty much at the top of their list. Wren, I knew, had been shifting from post to post where there was funding, some jobs had been headliners – she had a huge reputation for working with horses and had done a stint in Russia with big cats which had picked up a lot of publicity.
“The producer called Stay Wild and asked for my details. I did some promo videos for the charity last year and they must’ve seen them.”
“And you agreed?”
She shrugged, shoulders bare in the last of the sun. “We don’t all have a trust fund, Callum.”
That was low and she knew it. I’d hated being a trust fund kid at university. It had been a well-kept secret until Seph had visited one weekend and outed me. My father’s money was not a privilege; sometimes it felt like a collar from which I was being constantly reined in, his money a death sentence for my mother.
Wren knew about that. She knew about my mother, her suicide, my dad’s absence after.
“It’s a good move. Charities want high profile vets to work for them, just like the big practices do. If this is successful they’re looking at another series over in Russia and Mongolia.”
“How do you know?”
“They mentioned it when they first got in contact with the zoo.”
“Are you being paid for this, Callum?”
I shrugged. “There’s a nominal fee. They’re making a donation to the big cat project the zoo has going on at the moment.”
She smiled, but it wasn’t the joyful one I remembered. It was bitter. And it killed me inside a little. This wasn’t Wren, this wasn’t the girl I used to know.
