As I work, I find myself relaxingin a way I haven’t in a long time. No phone buzzing with appointment requests, no colleagues dropping by with “quick questions” that turn into hour-long discussions, no pressure to be anywhere or do anything except exist in this quiet space.
By early evening, I’ve made the cottage reasonably livable. I’ve found sheets in the linen cupboard and made up the bed. The kitchen is stocked with the basics, and I’ve even managed to get the ancient Aga working after some trial and error.
I light a fire in the sitting room, more for comfort than warmth, and settle into the armchair by the window with a cup of tea and one of the paperbacks I grabbed from my London flat. This is what I’ve been craving. Silence. Space. No one asking pointed questions about why James and I split up, or suggesting, the way he always did, that I care too much about my work. As if caring too much were the problem. As if the problem weren’t a man who wanted me to care less.
For two years, I tried to be what he wanted. It’s taken me this long to stop being angry about it.
The sound of rain picking up draws my attention back to the window. Darkness has fallen while I’ve been lost in thought, and the village lights dot the valley floor below. I can just make out the bulk of the forest in the distance, a solid wall of shadow against the cloudy sky.
I’m considering another cup of tea when I hear it.
A sound drifts down from the hills. Distant but clear in the still night air. It’s animal in origin, certainly, but unlike anything I’ve heard before. Not quite a bark, not quite a howl, but something between the two. Something wild and low that seems to carry off the hillsides.
I set down my book and move closer to the window, pressing my face to the cool glass. The sound comes again, joined by what might be an answer from a different direction. Then another, until there are several voices calling across the darkness.
Dogs, I tell myself. Large dogs, maybe a feral pack, as Maggie suggested. The acoustics in these hills probably distort things, make them sound stranger than they are.
But I stay at the window longer than I mean to, listening, until the last voice fades and the night gives back nothing but rain.
Chapter 3
Open for Business
Phoebe
The removal vanarrives at half seven, which is either impressively early or sadistically so, depending on how you feel about mornings. I feel about mornings the way most people feel about tax returns. Necessary, unavoidable, best dealt with quickly and with caffeine.
I’m on my second cup of coffee and still in yesterday’s joggers when the driver backs his truck down the narrow lane with the casual disregard for stone walls that seems to come standard with the job. His name is Dave. He has a neck tattoo and opinions about London traffic that he shares at volume while hefting boxes through my front door like they weigh nothing.
“Nice spot,” he says, pausing to look at the hills. “Quiet, though, innit? You’d go spare out here after living in the city.”
“That’s rather the point.”
He gives me the look I’ve been getting from everyone since I announced the move. The look that saysyou’ll be back in six months. James gave me that look. My mother gave me that look. My colleagues at the Islington practice gave me that look while pretending to be happy for me and already dividing up my client list.
Fuck the lot of them, frankly.
By midday, the van is empty, and the cottage is full of boxes stacked in arrangements that make sense to no one but me. Dave drives off with a wave and a final observation about the lack of decent takeaways this far north, and I’m alone with my life in cardboard.
I should unpack. I should find the box labelled KITCHEN URGENT and locate my good knives, the coffee maker, and the ridiculous Le Creuset casserole pot that James said was too expensive and I bought anyway out of spite. It’s the best thing I own. Worth every penny of the argument it caused.
Instead, I walk into the surgery extension and stand in the middle of the examination room.
The morning light comes in through the east-facing window and falls across the steel examination table in a clean bright stripe. The room smells of antiseptic.Faintly, underneath, the ghost of animal fur and the particular warm musk that clings to any space where creatures have been handled. I know that smell the way I know my own hands. It’s the smell of being useful.
I run my palm along the edge of the table. The surface is of good quality and well-maintained. The Bradfords took care of their equipment. The autoclave needs servicing, and the X-ray unit is a model I haven’t used since vet school, but it works.
The drug cabinet is locked, which is correct, and the key is where the estate agent’s handover notes said it would be. Inside, the controlled substances log is meticulous. George Bradford’s handwriting is precise and slightly old-fashioned, every entry dated and countersigned. I like him already, sight unseen. You can tell a lot about a vet from their controlled substances log. This one sayscareful, thorough, took the job seriously.
The appointment diary is another matter. It’s a paper diary. An actual physical book with a ribbon marker and handwritten entries in blue biro. The last six months are blank, obviously, but the entries before that suggest a steady caseload. Routine vaccinations. Worming. The occasional surgical referral to the hospital in Newcastle. A surprising number of entries that simply read “W. Henderson” followed by a dash, and no further detail.
I leave the diary on the desk and go back to the cottage to unpack.
The village makes itself known to me in stages throughout the afternoon. A woman called Helen pops round with a Victoria sponge and stays for twenty minutes, during which I learn that her daughter has just gone to university in Leeds, her husband farms sheep on the fell above the village, and the broadband in Mistwood is, in her words, “criminal.” A man whose name I immediately forget drops off a bottle of home-brewed cider with a warning that it’s stronger than it looks. Maggie appears at three o’clock sharp, without preamble, carrying a plate of scones and a jar of something dark and viscous that she calls damson gin.
“For medicinal purposes,” she says, setting both on my kitchen table. “The scones are for now. The gin is for later. You’ll know when.”
I don’t ask what that means. I’m learning that Maggie operates on a system of cryptic pronouncements and expects you to keep up.
