Page 32 of Not Just for Christmas

Something rough brushed against Dylan’s face, waking him up.

‘Have some respect for my personal space, will ya, buddy?’ Dylan pushed Gus’s paw off his face and scratched the fur behind the dog’s soft ears.

Gus yawned and smacked his chops, sending a waft of hot fishy breath in Dylan’s direction. Then he stretched, pressing his two front paws into Dylan’s chest.

‘I’ll take that as a No.’

Gus had crept up during the night, hopped onto his bed and made himself comfortable. Dylan hadn’t known what to do, or whether the dog was allowed upstairs, but he hadn’t wanted to disturb Lucy to find out, so he’d decided to follow the old adage of letting sleeping dogs lie. Besides, Lucy’s spare bedroom was freezing, a draught had whistled in through the bottom of the window and the huge heavy unmovable dog pressed against him had been better than any draught excluder. If less fragrant.

He rolled over to check the time on his phone, but it wasn’t there. Oh yeah, dammit, it had died on him yesterday. He was lost without it. Whatever the time was, he was wide awake and needed strong coffee.

He flung back the duvet, swung his legs off the bed and sat up, rolling his shoulders to ease the stiffness in his neck, caused by having to share a pillow with Gus.

The dog jumped down and pawed at the bedroom door to be let out. Dylan pulled on jeans and a shirt and followed the dog down the stairs and into the kitchen. It smelled of fresh baking, and Dylan’s stomach rumbled. The rest of the house was quiet, but the kitchen lights were on and the radio was playing. There was a laptop open on the kitchen table and the kettle felt hot to his touch. Lucy must already be up and working. Dylan flicked it back on and opened cupboards to find mugs and a jar of instant coffee while Gus slurped from his bowl, sending a tidal wave of water over the floor. He took in the kitchen, trying to work out what was different about it. The big things were still the same, it was the small things that had changed: piles of stuff on the table – Lucy had had to wriggle the vase to make space last night. The shelves of the dresser used to have glasses on the top shelf, ornaments on the second, their ‘nice’ mugs on the third. Now it was jumbled up. The windowsill looked different too; it had always housed pots of fresh herbs – the pots were still there but dried up and empty. There were still happy touches – Sam’s artwork and family photos pinned to a noticeboard, but Dylan could feel the difference to the space: less curated, more chaotic.

He wandered to the window and cupped his hands above his eyes It was still pitch-black outside, but there were lights on in the milking shed. Farmyard sounds drifted to him through the closed windows: cows mooing softly, the clank of metal, the rumble of a diesel engine in the distance. A hive of activity, and there in the centre of it all, a small figure in a dark coat, her face and hair lit up every second or so by the sweep of torchlight. Lucy.

Grief clutched at his chest for a moment. Jack hadn’t been part of his every day, but they’d always been there for each other, a phonecall, a message away. It wasn’t so much that he missed his presence, more that his absence felt so wrong, so unjust. Jack should be here now, talking at a million miles an hour, his hands drawing stories in the air; he should be here loving Lucy and Sam, loving life. He’d left a huge hole in all their lives.

Gus whined at the door, dragging Dylan from his thoughts. He poured coffee into two mugs, added a splash of milk to one and strode to the door.

‘I’m guessing you want to go out, huh?’ He set down the mugs, opened the door and was hit by a blast of cold air and the unmistakable aroma of cows. The dog went bounding out to where Lucy was, at the far side of the yard.

‘Dylan, is that you?’ Lucy shouted. The torchlight seemed to be close to the ground now. She gave an exasperated laugh. ‘Gus, get off me!’

‘Yes, I’ve made you coffee. Do you want to come get it?’

‘Arghh! Actually, can you come to me? I’ve slipped and I think I might be stuck. Dog, for God’s sake, you’re not helping.’ Her voice attracted the attention of two cows, who wandered over and dropped their heads to see what she was doing. What was she doing?

‘Sure. Er …’ He was only wearing socks. Back home he might consider stepping outside like this, but here you never knew what you might put your foot in.

‘There are some boots on the rack behind you that should fit, and help yourself to a waterproof coat.’

He turned round and glanced at the higgledy-piggledy stash of muddy boots, from Sam’s little ones to enormous gumboots splattered with muck, one pristine pink pair among them. ‘OK, give me a second.’

‘Can you make it half a second? I’ve got three cows trying to push me over.’

‘Shit. On my way.’ He grabbed the nearest pair of wellies, pulled on a green wax jacket and after closing the door to keep the heat in, jogged over to her. The cows turned to look at him as he approached, one of them skittered sideways nervously. He stopped running and held his hands up.

‘Should I be scared? Are you scared?’ he asked.

‘No and no,’ Lucy grunted from her position on her knees. ‘They’re just like kids, curious, and sometimes a bit frisky like teenagers … Well, like I was as a teenager anyway.’

‘I bet. I mean …’ He gave an awkward laugh. ‘I don’t mean you were … Anyway, what’s going on here?’

‘Can you free me? I can’t move forwards or backwards, and I don’t know why.’

He squatted down beside her, trying to ignore the feel of a cow’s breath as it snorted in his ear. Lucy was on all fours, wedged between two metal bars of a fence. He ran a hand along her back.

She held out the torch. ‘Here, take this and see what’s going on.’

It was wet and slippery in his hands; he didn’t even want to think what the liquid could be. He ran the torchlight along her spine. Her backside in jeans was sticking up in the air. His breath hitched and he flicked the light away guiltily.

‘I see the problem.’ The loop at the back of Lucy’s coat had snagged on a protruding metal spike. ‘OK, so if you arch your spine up towards the sky it’ll loosen the loop.’

‘Like a cat stretch?’

‘Exactly.’