The Sweetest Thing (12 page)

‘Why would someone do that?’ I say, appalled.

‘People do the most awful things.’ I notice Wendy’s eyes briefly shimmering with tears before she recovers her composure. ‘I can understand the reasons why people have to give up their dogs – redundancy, family break-ups – but I wish they’d come straight to us.’

I’m aware that Sophie reacts to the mention of family break-ups, reminding me that she is still feeling the pain of ours.

‘We’ll be all right then,’ says Adam, cuddling the dog. ‘Our family’s already broken up and Mum can’t be made redundant because she’s just set up her own business, selling cakes.’

‘Oh, that’s great,’ says Wendy, turning to me. ‘About the cakes … not the break-up, of course. I wonder if you’d be willing to donate one of your cakes to our cake sale – Talyton Animal Rescue are raising funds to maintain our existing rescues, and buy land where we can build a centre to house all our animals. Our last one burned down.’

‘Yes, of course,’ I say. ‘Just let me know when you need it.’

‘Poor thing, was he hurt?’ asks Georgia, returning to the subject of Lucky’s history.

‘He was lucky – hence his name. He had a few cuts and bruises, that’s all. And he brought a few fleas with him, which we’ve treated him for.’ Wendy smiles. ‘He isn’t much of a looker, but he has a kind nature.’

There’s no question of us not having Lucky now. I fill in the adoption form, pay the donation and Lucky is ours.

‘You’ll need to get his vaccinations updated and have him microchipped,’ Wendy says, and I’m thinking that that sounds expensive. ‘That’s the best way to choose a dog,’ she adds as we’re leaving. ‘Let him choose you.’

‘That’s what I said this morning, wasn’t it?’ says Georgia.

‘You’re always so predictably, insufferably right, little sister,’ says Adam, clutching the dog to his chest.

‘I want you to remember that he’s a dog,’ I tell Adam, ‘so he doesn’t sleep on chairs or on your bed. Is that understood?’

‘Yes, Mother.’ Adam sighs and rolls his eyes.

In the car on the way home via Overdown Farmers, a store selling country items for country people, to pick up dog food, a collar and tag, special shampoo and all the other paraphernalia a dog needs, I notice how Adam, every now and then, when he thinks no one is looking, presses his lips lovingly to the top of the dog’s head.

‘What do you call that?’ Guy calls through the kitchen window as the dog goes berserk, barking and jumping up and down.

‘Lucky,’ says Adam, getting up from his chair. He’s been Googling how to bathe a dog on his computer at the kitchen table while I wash up the empty cake boxes and make cheese and ham sandwiches for a very late lunch.

Guy grins. ‘What I mean is, what is it?’

‘It’s my new dog,’ says Adam. ‘Come here, Lucky.’ But Lucky isn’t listening. He dashes off across the kitchen floor, claws skittering across the stone, and starts barking at the front door.

‘It looks more like some kind of rodent.’ Guy retreats. ‘I think I’ll use the back door.’

If you don’t mind, Jennie? I think wryly. I don’t recall inviting him in.

‘You’d better grab the dog, Adam,’ I say.

‘I’m going to take him upstairs and put him in the bath,’ he says, heading out of the room.

‘Our bath?’

‘Where else?’

‘Well, you could use a bucket in the garden or dunk him in the pond …’ I begin, but Adam’s gone and I can hear the tread of his feet on the stairs.

‘Is it safe to come in now?’ Guy looks over the bottom part of the stable door, a rolled-up paper under his arm.

‘I didn’t think someone like you would be worried about a little dog,’ I say, smiling.

‘Once bitten, twice shy. We had a collie on the farm when I was a kid. It pinned me to the ground and bit me through the lip.’ He touches his mouth. ‘There.’

‘Where?’ I say, moving closer and catching sight of a tiny silvery scar that I haven’t noticed before above his upper lip.

‘It put me off dogs, large ones and small,’ Guy says. ‘I’m sorry you had to dash off after milking,’ he goes on, apparently summoning the courage to make his way indoors. ‘I’d forgotten I was going to show you this. I had a think about you starting up your cake business and wondered if you’d contacted the local rag, the
Chronicle
. It isn’t much of a newspaper – not a lot goes on around here, at least not that’s printable – but they do run a regular feature on local business people, and a half-page ad might be a good investment. I don’t know anything about the cake business, but your cakes should speak for themselves.’

‘Flattery will get you anywhere,’ I say. ‘Tea and cake?’ (I managed to hide some from the kids.)

‘I wouldn’t say no,’ he says, a twinkle in his eye.

‘Coffee cake or flapjack? Which do you fancy?’ Fancy? I feel the heat rising to my cheeks. Guy? It’s irrational. I hardly know him, yet … there is something about him, to look at anyway. He’s enigmatic and – butterflies are dancing in my belly – utterly beautiful, especially when his lips curve into that slow smile. The sensation is instantaneous and short-lived, brought to an end by the equivalent of a cold shower
when Lucky comes into the kitchen, bedraggled and wet, stands right next to me and gives himself a good shake. Guy stands well back.

‘Thanks, Lucky,’ I say, looking for Adam who appears in the doorway with a towel. My towel. ‘I didn’t need a bath. By the way, Adam, why didn’t you use your own towel?’

‘Because it was dirty,’ he says shamelessly.

Although I’m ready to grab the dog in case he starts bothering our visitor, Lucky ignores Guy and Guy takes no notice of him, which is a relief – having once heard Lucky bark, I did worry that he might make himself a nuisance.

‘Now you’ve got a dog to look after, you’ll be looking for a part-time job, young man,’ Guy says.

‘Me?’ Adam glances towards me.

‘You were going to apply for a paper round before we came down here,’ I remind him.

‘You can come and work for me,’ Guy says. ‘I could do with some help with the milking now and again.’

I can see Adam isn’t sure.

‘There aren’t many other jobs for teenagers in Talyton St George,’ Guy continues. ‘And when I was your age, I could always do with the money.’

‘I thought I might work for you, Mum,’ Adam says.

‘One day maybe, but I can’t afford to pay you yet.’

‘You might get a cashier position at the Co-op, or waiting at the garden centre in the summer months,’ Guy says.

‘Waiting for what?’ Sophie says.

‘Waiting tables,’ Guy says, smiling. ‘Oh, and sometimes the chicken farm needs egg collectors on a casual basis. Milking would be regular, once or twice a week, depending on when you’re free. You’ll have to show
some commitment – the cows need to get to know you so they trust you. They aren’t machines. They have feelings.’

‘What sort of feelings does a cow have?’ Adam asks sceptically.

‘Same as us, pretty much, I’d say. Happiness, sadness. They stay indoors in the winter – otherwise the fields would turn to mud and there’d be no grass in the spring. When they’re first turned back out, they go bananas, kicking up their heels and gambolling about like little kids being let out of school.’

‘I wouldn’t do that,’ Sophie says, confirming her status as ‘not a little kid any more’.

‘So, what do you think, Adam?’ Guy says finally.

He’ll never do it, I think. All that muck and those early starts. But Adam surprises me.

‘I’ll give it a go,’ he says, and he and Guy shake on it.

Between Guy and the children, all the cake has gone, and it reminds me that I need more eggs, which leads me on to the subject of where to start acquiring a flock of chickens.

‘How many do you want for this enterprise?’ Guy says.

‘Oh, I don’t know – three to start with?’

‘Three? A flock?’ Guy chuckles. ‘Let’s start at the beginning – how many eggs do you need, say, for a week?’

‘How many eggs does a chicken lay in a week?’ I ask, because I haven’t a clue. My best friend, Summer, once had chickens in her back garden in London, but they didn’t get to lay any eggs. An urban fox had them within a week.

‘You can expect one a day when they get going,’ Guy says. ‘So three chickens …’

‘That’s twenty-one eggs,’ Georgia cuts in. ‘That’s a lot of eggs.’

‘You must use more than that in a week, although you’ll need to check the legislation regarding using your own eggs in cakes that you sell to the public,’ Guy says.

‘More red tape.’

‘So, if I can get hold of ten or twelve hens … It’s all right – I’ll get them from the same place I got mine.’

‘You don’t have to,’ I say, unwilling to be under further obligation to him.

‘I’ll see what they’ve got next time I’m passing. It’ll probably be next weekend.’

‘But we’ll be at Daddy’s then,’ wails Sophie. ‘That isn’t fair.’

‘Guy’s doing us a favour,’ I point out.

‘Never look a gift chicken in the mouth,’ says Adam, laughing.

‘Is it fair,’ Georgia begins, ‘to chickens to take their eggs away from them?’

I can see Guy looking at me as if to say, Do your children get their strange ideas from you?

‘Do chickens have feelings?’ Adam asks.

‘You’ll have to watch yours and decide,’ Guy says, his eyes glinting with gentle humour.

‘Lucky has feelings,’ Adam goes on. ‘He loves it here already, although he doesn’t like having a bath.’

When Guy leaves, I thank him for bringing the paper.

‘I’m glad we’ve been able to settle our differences. It was very thoughtful of you.’

‘Yeah,’ he says, gazing at me. ‘You and your family aren’t quite what I expected.’

‘Well, thanks for selling me the house – I love it.’

‘To be honest, I didn’t want you to have it,’ he says gruffly. ‘I didn’t like the idea of selling it to some wealthy townie who hasn’t a clue how things are done around here. Local houses for local people – that’s how I feel about it. The trouble is that the people who were born here can’t afford to buy houses like this.’ He hesitates. ‘There was one other person interested in buying Uphill House, a builder who wanted to develop the barn and sell it on. There was no way I was letting him get his hands on it. You and your family were the lesser of two evils.’

I’m not sure what to say, I think. I’ve not been called an ‘evil’ before.

Guy smiles again, but I find I can’t smile back. ‘Thanks for the cake.’

I don’t expect him to lie to me, but he could have been more tactful. I feel quite hurt, and for a moment, I wish I was back in my old house, near my friends. I recall though what Fifi said about Guy having to sell Uphill House and I begin to understand why he’s been so difficult about the whole thing. I don’t think it was just a business decision: it was an emotional one too.

The photo of me in the kitchen in an apron that has ‘Jennie’s Cakes’ emblazoned across the front, in this week’s edition of the
Chronicle
, is decidedly cheesy, but I hope the ad will attract some interest. I leave it open at the relevant page on the kitchen table in the hope that David might see it.

‘It’s about getting your name out there,’ Mum keeps saying over the phone, but I beg to differ. It’s about getting some orders. For the first time in my life, I’m fearful of opening my credit-card statement. In fact, I half hoped that Lucky might turn out to attack the post as well as the postman so I could blame my ignorance of my level of personal debt on him.

We’ve been here two and a half weeks, it’s Friday evening and David’s on his way to collect the children, to take them back for their first weekend away in London with him and Alice. I’ve had a burst of baking to take my mind off it all, sending them away with a box of chocolate crunch. I can’t bear the thought of being alone here for the first time. I adore my house
and love whistling for Lucky and taking him for a stroll around what we jokingly call ‘the estate’ at dusk, but I can foresee a long two days stretching out in front of me.

When they were at their father’s while we were still living in London, I could at least pop by to see my parents, or visit my sister, or go shopping with Summer, but here … I take a deep breath. I’ll have to get used to it.

I’ve finished feeding the children when David turns up still dressed in a suit and tie. He parks his car outside and arrives on the doorstep. Lucky’s barking again, so I put him out in the back garden before I open the door. David feels the same way about dogs as he does about baggage allowances and speed cameras. He doesn’t like them.

I did suggest that we should start as we meant to go on and meet halfway, but David had insisted on coming all the way to Talyton to collect the children on this first occasion.

‘That’s a bloody long drive on a Friday night,’ he mutters. ‘The traffic …’

‘Hi, David. Lovely to see you,’ I say cheerfully.

‘Hi.’

‘How was the holiday?’ I ask. He and Alice spent the week before last on Kefalonia, but David appears pale beneath his tan.