Tarkie’s jumping up and down holding his nose. ‘Ewwww, she smells rank.’
Then Oscar joins in, singing, ‘Stinky stinky stinky.’
Milo grins at them. ‘Thank you guys, we’ve got that now.’ Then he smiles at me. ‘We’d better get you home and cleaned up, come on, back to the car.’
I’m picking the straw strands off my furry jacket, trying to brush away the dung clumps without grinding the dirt into the pelt, and I couldn’t agree more.
Libby’s grimacing. ‘No, Milo, I saw your Alcantara seats, they’re even more top of the range than ours, donkey manure will ruin them. And ours are non-plasticised Nappa leather, so we can’t possibly take her either.’
This is how she’s gone so far in business, because she notices things the rest of us don’t even know about. I mean, what the eff is Alcan-bloody-tara?
‘We’ve got a full leather interior too.’ Willow’s like an echo, so maybe she’s less vegan than they’re all making out.
Milo’s nodding. ‘Ambrose is the same.’
Libby’s eyes are wide with expectation as she turns. ‘So that leaves you, Fliss, you don’t mind do you?’
I’m already wincing for her. Even if donkey woman gives me a bin bag to sit on, I’m covered – Fliss’s sporty utility vehicle will stink of donkey-do forever more. I know what it took for her to scrape together the deposit, I can’t do that to her.
I’m truly scraping the barrel here. ‘Or we could ask Bill?’
‘Great idea, his Land Rover’s agricultural, it’s designed to be dirty, I’ll ring him on the landline from the cafe.’ Libby’s already half way down the yard. ‘Hang on there, Ivy, I’ll be back.’
Fliss comes in to give me a squeeze, then gets a whiff and thinks better of it. ‘Let’s go in the stable out of the wind, we’ll get a bale to sit on and have hot chocolates all round. And we’ll all wait for Bill together.’
‘Thanks, that’ll be lovely.’ I force out my brightest smile. Somehow I doubt that cocoa is going to take the donkey dung taste away. But however much I’d rather this wasn’t happening, it’s not like there’s a lot of choice.
