A Roll in the Hay, стр. 19
Tess checked her watch, which doubled as her step counter and general bleeping reminder of everything important in her life, and saw that her first appointment was almost due. “Says a lot about a person, how they treat their animals. And how animals treat them. And whatever else she’s done, Susannah seems to have made a good impression on Waffles. He’s all over her whenever she appears.”
“Well, with the best will in the world, Tess, that dog isn’t going to be joining Puppy Mensa any time soon, is he?”
Tess laughed, watching Waffles tear around the field outside. She would bring him back into the surgery between appointments, get him fed, and let him flop out in the big dog basket in the corner of the staff room. “Are you calling my dog thick?”
“I’m saying you only have him because he flunked out of guide dog school. Was he the one who kept trying to lead people into traffic?”
“No! That was his sister, Pancake. Waffles was the one who got too excited to pay attention every time he met a new trainer. So, yeah, you might have a point. He’s not exactly discerning.”
“What about you? You don’t seem quite so anti-Karlson as you did in the pub the other night.”
Tess shrugged. “I don’t care much either way, but I don’t think anyone deserves that kind of thing written about them. I know you find small-town stuff quaint, but for me growing up here, even one line of that in the parish newsletter would have destroyed me. Still, she’s probably made of sterner stuff.”
“And has her millions to console her if she’s not,” Margo added. “What’s up first for you?”
“Spot of neutering.” Tess put her coffee mug in the dishwasher and washed her hands. “We’ll catch up later, yeah?”
Margo nodded, already back to reading the paper.
Tess took off down the corridor, trying desperately not to think about Susannah Karlson and “relationships with women” in the same sentence. That just sounded like a whole lot of trouble, and that was the last thing that Tess needed.
After lunch, Tess took great delight in loading up her car again. She’d managed to get two local farms not currently using their vet services to agree to a meeting, so she was going to get out there and drum up enough business to make this practice the success it needed to be.
She headed out along the long and winding roads, sticking just below the speed limit because she didn’t trust herself with country driving yet. Still, it was a damn sight easier than dealing with the M25.
Her phone bleeped from where it sat charging in its little dock and providing her some slightly better GPS directions than the car’s system did. No more ending up stuck on the wrong access road. Tess couldn’t have endured the mockery. She tapped to answer the call via Bluetooth, and an unexpected voice greeted her.
“Hi Tessie, how are you?”
“Caroline?” It took considerable white-knuckled control not to swerve off the road. “Is everything okay? Why are you calling?”
“No reason. Well, I’ve got some post here for you, and I couldn’t find your forwarding address. Doesn’t look urgent, but I thought you might want it.”
“Yeah, sure. I’m driving just now, but I’ll email you the address.” The same address that Tess had already sent by text, email, and left on a Post-it with her keys when she finally left London. “I’m sure you’re busy.”
“No, I’ve got time. What about you, Tessie? Keeping out of trouble?”
Tess gritted her teeth. She couldn’t remember how the Tessie thing came about, but it never seemed to go no matter how many times she said she hated it. “Run off my feet, actually. New life, new job and all that.”
“Oh, that’s a little…well, you know. As long as you’re filling the time, I suppose. As for me, well, I have a little news, and I thought you should hear it from me.”
Great. No doubt she had franchised their old practice, or won the lottery, or some other stroke of luck that would make Tess feel sick to her stomach. And how patronising? To just assume all Tess had was her job. Caroline wasn’t wrong, but she was definitely bloody condescending about it. “Do tell.”
“Well, it’s all very quick, I know, but I did meet someone. We’re, uh, well, best to just rip it off I suppose? We’re engaged.”
Tess expected she would feel like she’d been punched. Any second. Instead there was a sort of dull, echoing nothing that was somehow even worse. “Sorry, did you say engaged? You, Caroline, who calls marriage—let me get this right—‘a trap for the dimwitted bourgeoisie’…you’re getting married?”
“Now, don’t be like that. Bitter doesn’t look good on you, Tessie. I just didn’t want you to hear it from our friends first.”
“I don’t talk to our friends, remember?” Tess took the turning for the first farm she was visiting, relieved she would soon have an excuse to hang up. “You saw to that when you turned them all against me, even though you were the one who cheated and almost ruined our business without telling me.”
“Oh, here we go again.” Caroline sighed. “I know being single can be such a drag, but you have to look on it as an opportunity.”
“Who said I was single?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Did you think I moved halfway across the country to be on my own?” Uh oh. Where the hell did that come from? Tess was well aware of her flaws, but she wasn’t generally a liar. She stopped the car when the track widened into a parking area. “Anyway, it’s new, and I don’t really want to talk about it to everyone yet.”
“Oh, come on. Details please. Assuming she’s even real,” Caroline scoffed. “I mean, talk about convenient timing.”
“I’m not that bothered about keeping up with you, and it’s not like I’m engaged to her or anything. We are having a very nice time, though.”
“And her name?”
“Susannah. Well, of course you don’t